Best products from r/KerbalSpaceProgram

I assume you mean just learning about rockets, not literally building your own. Building your own is a hundreds of thousands of dollars endeavor (at the cheapest) and requires regulatory approval from your nation's government - it's no easy task.

I've found that /r/SpaceX is a good place to learn the ins and outs of orbital rockets, though as you might expect it's pretty heavily SpaceX focused, so you'll learn a lot more about Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy than other launch vehicles. The sub's wiki and FAQ sections give a very good overview of SpaceX and rocketry in general, and you should consider giving those a read.

Beyond that, the best thing you can do is seek out opportunities to learn. Do you have a favorite science, engineering, or mathematics professor at school? Talk to them about your interest in spaceflight and what opportunities there are to learn more. There are some great books out there about spaceflight as well, from historical narratives like "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, which talks about the history of spaceflight. John Anderson's Introduction to Flight was a textbook I used in one of my introductory aerospace classes, it's a bit pricey (though you can save money on an old edition) and obviously reads like a textbook, but give a good technical overview on both air and space systems.

After you've done all that, if you really want to get into the details of orbital mechanics and spacecraft design, you're going to need a college education. Are you in the United States or interested in studying here? I'd be happy to recommend some schools to keep an eye on if you're considering making a career out of this.

Edit: formatting

I remember watching Manley's "Interstellar Quest" series, and watching his huge trip to Duna transform into a sci-fi horror-show as his vessel was twisted by the dark forces of the Kraken. He tried his best to save his Kerbalnauts, but he couldn't save them all. It was inspirational in a lot of ways.

I'm not entirely surprised by this, and I actually predicted something like it in a novel (https://www.amazon.com/Protostar-Automatic-Apocalypse-Jesse-Pohlman-ebook/dp/B018RUW4EY). Lemme give you the relevant passage; and, might I add, I made another prediction. ;):

"A smile touched the robot's face, and somehow Lahira believed it reflected a genuine moment of feeling – something an Automaton could not do. “I find it interesting how popular science may have
been a magazine title, but the internet did wonders for your kind. An astronomer named Manley used that video game full of little green men to entice a generation of children to learn orbital physics, and helped to restore America's attention to space. He was far from alone, and their video shows helped groups like the B612 Foundation getting financial support to build an asteroid defense system from lay citizens who observed a former astronaut, Ed Lu, repeatedly crash rickety rocket ships in a computer
game. As you know, their organization later went on to develop the shields that protect your starships from micro-meteorites.” "


I'm always a little sad when a favored creator drifts towards a new project, one I'm not as sold on. To be honest, I stopped watching him regularly some time ago; I just couldn't get into his Real-Scale series, and I couldn't get into his individual videos on KSP because, frankly, I'm just not that into KSP as a player and it sort of lost its novelty over time.

I'm glad to hear he's making progress, and I've definitely watched some of his science videos. I look forward to his progress.

If you want to get super serious about this game and really know what you're doing, then I'd suggest getting this book and reading up on actual rocket science. Taking a class on astronautics in college was when I personally really started to understand the concepts required by KSP. However, in the interest of saving forty bucks, there's a lot out there on the internet that can teach you this stuff just as easily. Scott Manley's videos are pretty good. I'm also sure that there's some written tutorials out there.

By far the most important concept is that of deltav, which is actually formally written as Δv. Mathematically, this literally translates to change in velocity. When Kerbal Engineering Redux tells you how much Δv one of your stages contains, it's telling you that if there were no gravity, and your ship was floating in a pure vacuum motionless, and you pointed in one direction, and fired your rockets and emptied that entire stage's worth of fuel, that Δv number is how fast your rocket would be going at the end of the burn. Δv is a measure of how much "effort" your stage can put out and how much of a change in velocity it can impart on your rocket as a whole.

Δv is one of the most important concepts in navigating space, because in order to change from one orbit to another, there is a very specific, easily calculable change in velocity that must take place. You probably know that in order to orbit at a certain height above Kerbin, there is a very specific speed that your ship must have in order to maintain a perfectly circular orbit(this is assuming your orbit is perfectly spherical and not elliptical like most orbits are). Similarly, there is a very specific velocity that your ship must have when it leaves that orbit to head to the Mun in order to get that smooth elliptical transfer to the Mun. Therefore the difference in velocity between the circular orbit and the transfer orbit is the Δv that must be imparted onto the vehicle in order to transfer to the Mun. This is approximated for you on those Δv maps like this one.

So, by using Δv maps and maneuver nodes, you can figure out how much Δv you need to make your maneuvers, but now you need to figure out how much fuel you need to perform those maneuvers. That all depends on how much fuel is burned, how efficiently it is burned, how much structural weight is present in the rocket, and the weight ratio between fuel and structure. Another point to consider is that rocket acceleration is not constant, for as the rocket burns fuel, it will constantly get lighter and experience stronger and stronger acceleration, assuming that it is experiencing constant throttling. This has all been simplified by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. For all non-air breathing engines, Δv = (g0)(Isp)ln(Mi/Mf), where g0 is the gravitational acceleration at the surface of Kerbin(this is constant everywhere in the game, it's simply a unit conversion constant), Isp is the efficiency of the fuel and the engine burning it, Mi is the initial total mass of the vehicle before the burn, and Mf is the mass of the vehicle after the burn. You can calculate this yourself but since Kerbal Engineering Redux does this for you, why bother? However, it is important to understand the main criteria for adjusting Δv in your designs. g0 and Isp are mainly fixed values. The main variable to adjust in your designs is the mass ratio Mi/Mf. The less dead weight on your vehicle(this includes upper stages that haven't burned yet), and the more fuel burned, the more Δv you'll achieve in your designs. This is also why staging is so important. By staging and dropping your dead weight, you're decreasing structural mass hindering your upper stages and gaining more Δv. If you want to get more serious about your designs, you can add up the masses of the parts you want on your ship in a spreadsheet and calculate optimal staging sizes for your ship using the limited parts in the KSP inventory.

Other considerations are TWR, or Thrust to Weight ratio, which is simply the thrust of that stage matched to the weight of the whole ship. Changing the reference body in Kerbal Engineering simply adjusts the weight for each body. A lander on Minmus doesn't have to be super powerful, and might have a really small TWR on Kerbin, but that doesn't matter because all it needs to take off from Minmus is a TWR greater than 1 on Minmus, whose gravity is way weaker than Kerbin's.

I'll also throw out another tip that I hardly ever see mentioned here. Before you launch, check your center of mass and center of lift. In a rocket, your center of lift should always be below the center of mass. If it isn't, then you need to add stabilizing fins at the bottom of your rocket. A rocket with the center of lift above the center of mass is very likely to flip over backwards during its launch. Also, if you're attaching control surfaces, they're more effective the farther away they are from the center of mass, so it's always important to know where your center of mass is.

Eh, You don't really want an i9, Kerbal is still single threaded, so you're primarily going to be affected by IPC and clock speed. An i9 is going to suffer in both, so you're spending more money for less performance.

You don't even really need to break the bank tbh, since you're not going to need a super high-end video card, and you don't need all of those extra cores or a shitload of memory.

If we take the consideration of a "Kerbal machine" seriously, your best bet would be to buy a 5.3Ghz 8600K from Silicon Lottery: https://siliconlottery.com/collections/all/products/8600k53g and put it in something like this: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wkvmkd I've spent a good chunk on the SSD and RAM here, since access times do have a measurable impact on most single threaded applications, but you could make either substantially cheaper and still get 95% of the way there. I've also spent probably more than necessary on the video card, since I'm not sure how much Kerbal relies on storing assets in video memory. My guess would be not a lot in vanilla, but this ought to help you with those sick visual mods you want :)

EDIT: I've done more research!

High-end KSP machine: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Intercold/saved/gqzQVn

• It turns out KSP does benefit from hyper-threading, but only slightly (margin of error basically): https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/34179-advanced-users-improve-ksp-performance-on-intel-cpus-with-hyperthreading-tested/
  
  
• I'm also not certain if more cache will help KSP (couldn't find any info anywhere), I know it does for other single threaded math-heavy games (such as Dwarf Fortress), so I'm going to go with an 8700K for a "Win-the lottery" style build. https://siliconlottery.com/collections/coffeelake/products/8700k52g?variant=47048295116
  
  
• I've also swapped the cooler for one of those recommended on Silicon Lottery's suggestions, and I've swapped to one of their recommended motherboards.
  
  
• I've increased the capacity on the SSD, since the 1TB model is slightly faster http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/413203/PM981-NVMe-Samsung-1024GB. EDIT2*: This should perform substantially better, but it's not on Pcpartpicker yet, it will also eat one of your PCIe slots: https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Optane-900P-280GB-XPoint/dp/B0772T4BVZ?th=1
  
  
• I found slightly faster RAM as well (going by the handy CAS/Speed rule for access times). Note: using 2 sticks of RAM gives to redundancy, which is nice. You're also getting a slight speed boost if your MB supports Dual channel (most do).
  
  
• I swapped the PSU for something more reliable (Important for high OC) based on the list here: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-psus,4229.html
  
  
• Video card performance doesn't seem to matter at all from the research I've done, so I just chose a decent mid/low range card. Freesync also has some advantages over G-SYNC in my opinion (Controversial, but I like that it's an open standard, and it performs better at low FPS), so if you have a monitor that can support it, that's a plus.
  
  
• For this high-end build, if you wanted to go custom-loop, you might want to swap the motherboard for a Gigabyte Gaming G7. You don't want to go with that if you're not using a custom-loop though, since their VRM cooling is inadequate: http://www.overclock.net/forum/6-intel-motherboards/1638955-z370-z390-vrm-discussion-thread-5.html#post26380035
  
  
• And of course, for maximum cooling performance there's always the new Ncore direct die cooler coming out later this year: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/341758082/ncore-v1-naked-die-cooling-waterblock-designed-by/
  
  For reasonable/budget minded people this should be more suitable: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Intercold/saved/Ppwd6h
  
  
• i5 instead of i7, since as I mentioned, the performance difference is close to margin of error. Although you could still go for the fancy Silicon Lottery chips, for this price range you're not getting much more than the delid as far as clocks go, since 66% can reach 5.1: https://siliconlottery.com/collections/all/products/8600k51g
  
  
• Cheaper PSU, since you'll be getting lower clocks (probably), and thus pulling less wattage.
  
  
• Cheaper MB for the same reason
  
  
• More reasonable RAM (performance difference is probably too small to notice)
  
  
• More reasonable SSD (you'll maybe just barely notice)
  
  
• Cheaper case as well, since again, airflow isn't as important if you're not pushing those higher clock speeds.
  
  
• Cheaper AIO cooler for the same reasons. The H75 is well rated, and I can personally confirm that mine at least performs well even with a high OC hotwell (1st gen Haswell) processor, and it's quiet as hell.
  
  EDIT3: Typos, cleaned up a bit, added perma links for the second two builds since the high-end one somehow ended up with a not-up-to-date link.

Quite literally, it means change of velocity. When people talk about "needing enough dV to get somewhere," what they mean is that, they need enough fuel to get there. I'm going to use arbitrary numbers right now because I'm too lazy to look up the actual ones, and simple is better anyhow.

Lets say you have a craft in low kerbin orbit. You want to go to the Mun. You're currently traveling 2300 m/s. In order to intercept the Mun, you need to be going 2900 m/s. Once in the Mun's sphere of influence you're traveling at 800 m/s, and you need to burn retrograde until you're traveling at 200 m/s to achieve orbit. The opposite is true to achieve escape velocity, and then once you escape, you're traveling 3000 m/s and need to reduce your speed to 2700 m/s for your periapsis to allow re-entry to kerbin.

(Again, these numbers are ball park, not exact).

So, the dV you need to get to the Mun's SoI is 600 m/s (from 2300 to 2900). A capture burn is 600 m/s, and an escape burn is 600 m/s. A final burn for entry is 300 m/s of dV. So, the total dV your ship needs in this scenario to go for the whole trip is 2100 m/s of dV.

Now, this does get a little more complicated when in an atmosphere, because you'll burn more fuel trying to escape than you would in a vacuum. Also, the effect of gravity on your craft is going to change the efficiency of your rocket depending on how much vertical and horizontal velocity you have at various points of your burn. When people say they're building a ship with ideal dV, what they typically mean is "I did the math and found that if I manage to fly the most optimal flight path available to use my fuel the most efficiently, I need enough fuel to perform dV burns at various points in the trip totally this number." The math behind all these variables gets a lot more complicated, and if you really want to nerd out, "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" will help you to understand what the hell is going on just a bit better. I like that book because it has the math, a brief explanation, and diagrams all in one package. You'll learn all about various transfer types too!

...or you can just download mods that do the work for you, like many people! Or, you can just wing it and hope for the best like even more people! I mean, worst case scenario it's time for a rescue mission, right?

Let me add, that I bought this game back in 2012... Looking at my email receipt:


>Aug 6, 2012 19:29:07 EDT | Transaction ID: 0XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

>Hello Derfherdez,

>You sent a payment of $18.00 USD to Electro Chango S.A. de C.V.

So, yes it was worth $18 USD back then, and it sure is worth that today. At the same time I've gifted about 5 copies of this to friends/family over the years so I've spent way more on KSP, and it's totally worth it.

If you have ever seen the right stuff, Apollo 13, or even been inspired with the idea of the next frontier... This is an incredible buy. It's realistic enough that it's nothing retarded like pressing 'F' to pay respect, but enough that people here have even bought books like Fundamentals of Astrodynamics to get a better idea on how things 'work'.

The game will challenge you in ways that nor mindless button masher ever will. And maybe, just maybe inspire people to take us to that next great leap for mankind.

10/10 I'd buy this game over and over.

Get the demo, build a rocket, try to get it to do something, then get the game before the sale runs out!

PATREON PAGE: https://www.patreon.com/CupcakeLanders
CRAFT FILE(S): https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/25343-cupcakes-dropship-dealership/

After the explosion at the particle accelerator rumours started spreading like wildfire. Some of the engineers were convinced a gateway to another dimension had been opened and the Kraken had broken through. Others talked of a black hole being formed that would soon devour the entire Kerbol system.

Unfortunately in their haste to flee the Kerbals neglected to shut down the nuclear reactor that powers the facility. Unless the control rods are lowered fast the reactor will go critical, and Minmus's famed ice skating facilities will become nothing more then a slushy memory.

Seeing as nuclear is the perfectly safe power source of the future, Jeb has been sent on a top secret mission to fly into the bowels of the facility and manually shut down the reactor. Once this is done the containment doors will automatically come down limiting the fallout but also trapping Jeb inside, unless that is he can improvise some sort of escape? Eeep!

The song featured in this video is Paddlin' Madelin Home which was quite the hit in the 20s!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaAhE0UBuqE
The version used in the video comes from the wonderful Chaleston Chasers who have put out a very spirited rendition.
https://www.amazon.com/Steaming-South-Charleston-Chasers/dp/B000009D54
I'd also recommend giving Max Raabe a watch if you enjoyed the track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUc0p3iBdOQ
I don't own the rights to this recording, however it never fails to put a smile on my face. :D

MOD LIST:
Spectra
Camera Tools
Scatterer
Vessel Mover
Mechjeb
Editor Extensions
Hyperedit
HullcamVDS

I looks like the default controller built into the SAS is underdamped, causing severe overshoot. Control gain tuning would help stabilize your specific ship, but the controller would not perform well once you staged.

Personally, I prefer using a Lyapunov-stable control law:

u = -Ks - P(w-wr) + I(wr_dot - w x wr) + w x Iw

s: modified Rodrigues parameters for attitude representation, with shadow set switching
w: body angular velocity
wr: reference angular velocity (zero for reorientation maneuvers)
wr_dot: reference angular acceleration (again, zero for reorientation)
I: spacecraft inertia matrix
K: proportional gain
P: derivative gain matrix

We again come to the problem of gain tuning, however. But we can look into Lyapunov Optimal Control. Something like this paper could help.

I suggest Squad take a look at Chapter 8 of this book.

Well, that's the thing, I'm not sure how sugar rockets differ from traditional model rocket engines. Then again I'm sure someone could just get the certification needed to buy an O power rocket motor, or find someone who does. You would think when making it that air would get trapped in there though, since it's just compressed by hand. There's just a lot of unknowns, since even high power model rocketry never gets to the stratosphere. It will definitely go significantly higher per stage, provided everything works as it normally does at sea level. The chances are almost guaranteed that something goes wrong though, with a relatively unstable launch platform and handmade engines that are using a powder fuel. Also, there's little way without instrumentation to detect how far it goes to see if we're even successful, so what we should hope to do is use a GPS tracking system(they actually already use these in model rocketry and with retrieving the weather balloon stations). The GPS system is probably around $300(we might need two, one for the platform, another for the top of the rocket). The weather balloon costs about $100, while the platform itself would probably be handmade out of balsa wood(if we don't care about retrieving it) or more expensive if we do want to try to retrieve it, and the multistage rocket would be hand made using ~$50-60 in materials(stump remover, cardboard tubes, powdered sugar, clay plugs), and then the cost of helium(or other lighter than air gas). We could also use a much cheaper balloon, a timing system to ignite the rocket when the balloons pop, and a single stage rocket to just do a practice run and not care about tracking it, and just trying to follow it with binoculars/telescope(you could also get a much cheaper radio transmitter that doesn't have GPS and a handheld directional ham radio and track it as it goes up - you should be able to get an idea of how high it reaches from the angle you have to point to get the strongest signal, though it leaves a lot to be desired). So there's the ideal experiment, and a super cheap version.

Believe it or not, Strauss wrote more than just the Blue Danube; I think this is a pretty good collection of his music.

There's also SETI, if you're down for some low-bpm ambient. .beacon14 off of that album is pretty good; you'll love it if you like the music in Eve. In fact, if you're at all interested in astronomy, you should have a listen to SETI; a lot of the samples they use are from radio telescopes: pulsars, CMBR, stellar radiation, and such.

Science mode limits the available parts until you do the science to unlock more, without having to deal with restrictions like funding. You're almost literally forced to start simple, which is very useful given the steep curve of this game.

I'm no education expert, but I've been playing games since the NES came out. And what I've seen of this coming generation, they're pretty sharp, even if their reading skills are limited. Don't expect a 4 year old to understand delta-v, but fully expect them, after a few weeks of play, to not need to worry about it. If they can survive the steep learning curve, they'll know what engine they want by the picture (most of us do anyway) and they'll know what it does because they tried it and saw for themselves. It might be useful at the very least to explain "this one makes you go fast but uses up all your fuel, this one makes you go slow but uses less fuel" and stuff like that. Basically, talk to them as if you're quoting this book.

A child's mind is a very wondrous machine. If nothing else, trust that, if their interest is strong enough to overcome their failures, they will blow you away sooner than you could ever realize.

Depends on if you want a simple joystick, brent1123 mentioned one.

Or if you want a HOTAS System, meaning a joystick plus a throttle control. That's going to cost a bit more, but it certainly feels nice. I only have experience with the Saitek X52 which is great, then there's a cheaper one with the Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X people seem to like.

It's all calculable, but quicks starts needing a lot of math once you include orbit changes and air resistance.

An easy start is to determine your desired orbit's dV requirements, then plug your engine's Isp into the rocket equation to determine its propellant-mass fraction. Then you can use the weight of the engine plus fuel tanks and payload to estimate the fuel required to reach orbit in an ideal rocket.

There are quite a few online calculators like this one, that give you a sense of what order to calculate things and the terms to look for in equations.

If you're really interested in deeply understanding the maths behind launches and orbital mechanics, I can recommend this book which is a commonly used aerospace engineering text: Fundamentals of Astrodynamics.

I'm a fan of my old copy of Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, by Bate, Mueller, and White. It was, by far, the cheapest textbook I purchased for my Aerospace degree (~$7; Amazon has it for <$3 used) but it is one of the primary texts in the field--most other texts wind up referencing this 1970s book. I seldom reference it anymore, though. FoA primarily focuses on how to calculate the motion of a spacecraft. It covers the Patched conics approach, various basic maneuvers, and interplanetary trajectories. It also covers how to figure out the orbit of an object based on ground measurements as well as perturbations--how things like uneven gravity, solar wind, and magnetism can affect an orbiting craft.

I also have read some of the AIAA edition of Space Vehicle Design, but it is considerably more expensive. It goes over more advanced concerns for the design and operation of practical, real-world space craft. If you have the coin and are interested in such things then you could pick it up. I've found the AIAA editions of Aerospace books to be well written in general. That book is only really worth it, though, if you have enough money that you won't miss the $70+ to buy or if you need it for your degree.

I've also had some luck with MIT Open Courseware, but I don't see much on aerospace that would be terribly relevant to KSP.

Okay, the ELI11 made it sound like the simplest approach would be best. The rocket equation link still applies.

As for canned aspects of orbital mechanics, Kepler's 3rd law and the Vis-Viva equation still apply.

More generally, I like braeunig for a website and Fundamentals of Astrodynamics for a textbook. It's probably best to look into exponential functions and Algebra (with an eye towards Calculus) as soon as possible, though.

Because this was an impulse buy I didn't have the patience to order online and wait, so I drove to my nearest Best Buy (haven't been there in a while) and picked up a Logitech 3D Pro.

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Extreme-Joystick-Silver-Black/dp/B00009OY9U

The joystick can be twisted to allow for rotation as well as pitch and yaw, but I'm still tweaking the sensitivity since its very easy to start spinning out of control.

The hat toggle on the top and the throttle on the bottom are my favorite features. The hat toggle is connected to my lateral thrusters so I can use my thumb to nudge my ships up down left and right while using the main stick to tweak my angle. It made docking a real breeze when I tested it last night. The throttle, as I mentioned, makes burns very accurate as you can go from max thrust to minimum or anywhere in between with a flick of the lever.

Oh I know, but it's remembering what direction when you're in a different orientation. When I dock or using landing a can I like to use my Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick; I picked it up when someone on this sub recommended it as a cheaper setup and works really well with KSP. I'm glad I took the recommendation because flying and landing planes is sooooo much easier now.

You will have to program the axes in the KSP start menu but it's pretty self explanatory.

This is the one I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009OY9U/

But I'm there are others out there that might be better so don't take it as a strong recommendation from me because it's the only one I've ever used. I haven't had any issues with it though.

I have it on my shelf! It's a good read!

​

I recommend supplementing it with Equations of Motion: Adventure, Risk and Innovation by William F. Milliken, It's a lighthearted approach of one mans musings on making things go fast rather than from a strictly engineering approach like most books on the subject.

These were the 3 I picked up.

This one seems to be the most popular, probably because of it's publication timeframe, 1971. Not too early, not too late.

This is an earlier textbook and is considered a classic at this point. Still useful.

While less popular (and more expensive), I found this one to be my favorite. Hard to say why, some combination of layout, examples, and teaching style. The fact that it was also published in my lifetime, unlike the other 2, might have something to do with it as well in terms of language, etc.

But take /u/The_Mother_of_Robots advice and don't do it. This is a slippery slope thick atmosphere in a deep gravity well. There is no Lagrange point, just the abyss.

oh it's worth it. i bought a logitec 3d pro over fathers day and it is the only thing i use to fly now. there is something very satisfying about pulling a trigger to activate your next stage. not to mention, i have essentially everything i need rebound to the joystick, so i am barely touching the keyboard at all when i play (except for RCS)

the absolute best thing is a physical throttle. you cannot get the same precision out of the ctrl and shift buttons.

I haven't gotten it yet (it arrives later this week), but I'm planning on using the Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS, as I wanted a "hand on throttle and stick" joystick in the same price range as you mentioned. =D
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CXYMFS?ie=UTF8&qid=1415866438&tag=as_li_tl-20&sr=1-1

The can't miss movies are;

The Right Stuff

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

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Apollo 13

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

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From the Earth to the Moon

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120570/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

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Books;

The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America's Race in Space

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Moon-Astronaut-Americas-ebook/dp/B003G93ZCM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2MQP4OQ2TQEWZ&keywords=last+man+on+the+moon&qid=1567546025&s=books&sprefix=last+man%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1

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Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

(BTW, I think this book ought to be MANDATORY reading not just for space fans, but every kid in Jr. High. I swear to god, Massimino figured out how to do goals in life like nothing I've ever read before.)

https://www.amazon.com/Spaceman-Astronauts-Unlikely-Journey-Universe/dp/1101903546?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-osx-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1101903546

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And even though you didn't ask for fiction

The Martian

https://www.amazon.com/Unknown-The-Martian/dp/B00B5HO5XA/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+martian&qid=1567546146&s=books&sr=1-1

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Artemis: A Novel

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y55SB48/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

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Delta-v

https://www.amazon.com/Delta-v-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B07FLX8V84/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=delta-v&qid=1567546200&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

This book was my textbook for my Spacecraft Dynamics course and honestly is awesome. It's not light reading, but if you just want to understand it, this is the book to read. There should be .PDFs online for free

I got a T-Flight HOTAS from Thrustmaster the other year for under 30 dollars; http://www.amazon.com/Thrustmaster-T-Flight-Hotas-Flight-Playstation-3/dp/B001CXYMFS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371512568&sr=8-1&keywords=thrustmaster

However it's over $40 now so I'm not sure if it's the most economical choice anymore. It was an amazing value at the price I got it at though.

It might still be the cheapest one to offer a great big stonking throttle on a separate/detachable base though

There's a lot of great books on the subject. One in particular I would recommend is Gene Kranz's book "Failure is Not an Option." It's from the perspective of his seat in Mission Control, and touches on almost every aspect of early spaceflight. If you're not familiar with him, he's the white-vested Flight Control Director in the Tom Hanks Apollo 13 movie, and the inspiration for KSP's Gene Kerman in the Mission Contol building.

If you're looking for something to watch, I can't more highly recommend anything than the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon."

Yup, kinematics, basic orbital dynamics, and simple rocket equations are just algebra! Anybody interested should really check out one of the best Astro books out there: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486600610

> He’s right: altimeters measure height above sea level, but mountains and flatlands at high elevation can be hundreds or thousands of meters above that.

Gene Kranz addresses this in his truly awesome autobiography. He talks about how the parachutes on the capsule would open automatically at a certain altitude, but if your re-entry was off course and over a mountain, you could slam into the mountain before the parachutes had a chance to deploy.

It looks like they actually got that off of my RedBubble store—it's a version of the OG that's available there


Edit: Nvm. Someone is selling it on Amazon apparently sooo. Not sure what to make of that

BUT! Anyone's free to use it as they see fit... I had the full size SVG file available for everyone to use, but the link to the DropBox doesn't work any more and I need to re-upload it

I should do that.

Thank you for thinking of me though!

So how about something like this? I just so happen to have $30 left on an amazon gift card.

Absolutely, it adds a great degree of control and immersion.

I'd recommend a cheap joystick to anyone interested in flying in other games, too. I couldn't imagine flying without one anymore in Arma. And certainly there are people out there who swear by joysticks in KSP, and I don't mean to contradict them. My opinion is nothing more than an anecdote.

I think you'll find yourself making excuses to use it in other games though, once you have it!

The Logitech Extreme 3d Pro is the king of the entry-level joystick market, by the way. And with good reason. That Mad Catz v.1 up there got me in the air, but is a bit clunky.

__

Edit: This comment was edited to remove some information about control surfaces behaving funky that I was either remembering incorrectly or doesn't apply anymore.

This is a great introductory source.

If you want to get more in depth, then you might want to start looking at books about lagrangian mechanics or Engineering textbooks.

If you want physical books (personally, I much prefer them to electronic copies despite being a millennial), check out Dover books on Amazon. They publish old textbooks for $10-$20, so you can pick up a bunch for a lot less than you would usually spend on a single textbook. Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, for example, is an old U.S. Air Force Academy textbook that will teach you a lot of basic rocket science and orbital mechanics.

Some less mathy but still very interesting and semi-technical options are How Apollo Flew to the Moon and To Orbit and Back Again.

I have one of these.

I am going to mess with this over the weekend. I could see this as fun for docking and plane flights, potentially landing.

Orbits and burns I typically just use mech jeb but I enjoy the more challenging things.

Edit: When using the joystick for RCS docking is it going to be a huge pain to have the controls configured to the RCS adjustments instead of normal flight adjustments.

You can always shorten Amazon links with /dp/BO7???????

Like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JPJRC97

Not sure what your mathematical background is, but Fundamentals of Astrodynamics is a highly popular introductory textbook for $18.

His book is excellent and is full of them. I read it on a cross-country plane ride. It's riveting enough, particularly during Apollo 13, that you'll breeze through it fairly quickly.

http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Is-Not-Option-Mission/dp/1439148813

This is a really good book on orbital mechanics:
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics

Get one of these and it'll be much easier.

This is what I use. http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Extreme-Joystick-Silver-Black/dp/B00009OY9U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347427258&sr=8-1&keywords=logitech+3d+pro

Nothing fancy, but it works well and is cheap.

Looks like you're missing one of the most important basic Orbital Mechanics books.

It's $12.45 on Amazon Prime.

Assuming an average dorm room ~12x19 feet and height of 8' (thanks google, despite silly american units), thats about 952 square feet of surface area. Measuring the Fundamentals of Astrodynamics book it's about 8.5" x 5.3", about 45 square inches.

You could cover all the walls, floor and ceiling of a dorm with 3044 books, which would cost about $37,900.

There's no message here, I just liked imagining plastering an entire room with this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486600610


The math for the parched comics stuff actually is not that hard. It's just know what you are looking for and plug it in. Basic algebra. Once you stray from that and do the cordinate transformations and into the the non patched conics stuff it gets a lot harder.

https://www.amazon.com/NTCBED-Jebbin-Comforter-Pillowcase-Printed/dp/B07JPJRC97/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Kerbal%20space%20sheets&qid=1554419488&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull&th=1&fbclid=IwAR1_3IGYnDBfZNqF0j1xIwA0E1A4YhXx3RUqi3C172oIPcYmbmgXx8iYPm8

https://www.amazon.com/NTCBED-Jebbin-Comforter-Pillowcase-Printed/dp/B07JPJRC97/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Kerbal%20space%20sheets&qid=1554419488&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull&th=1&fbclid=IwAR1_3IGYnDBfZNqF0j1xIwA0E1A4YhXx3RUqi3C172oIPcYmbmgXx8iYPm8

Fundamentals of Astrodynamics

Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486600610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407087354&sr=8-1&keywords=introduction+to+astrodynamics

Here is the desktop version of your link

So, I graduated college with a degree in IT and took some calculus and geometry while I was there. I miss learning this kind of thing, and was wondering if there is a way to learn orbital mechanics as a hobby. If I pick up Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, would I be too in over my head?

This one is good and cheap, been using it for War Thunder and KSP:
http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-3D-Pro-Joystick-Windows/dp/B00009OY9U