#Kerbal space program parachute burns how to#

Most rockets will have several sections that you discard once their fuel is exhausted. Landing with no atmosphere you do only once, on the Mun, and I will cover it in that section. If you have a choice, aim for an ocean landing as the default deployment height for parachutes may not be high enough if you come down in high mountains. Then pop out your parachute once you are down to roughly 250m/sec. At that altitude, the atmosphere will slow you down enough to land no matter how fast you are going (just be sure atmospheric heating is turned off). The safest way is to aim for a PE of about 25km. Landing in an atmosphere is relatively easy. The camera will generally swing around as you establish a stable orbit (and when you hit escape velocity from a SOI). Once the AP is high enough, cut the engines, but don’t forget to burn some more at AP, unless you plan on going right back down to the planet. To do it manually, head up to about 10km, then start tilting to 60 degrees east. After a short time (around 4km) set your SAS to automatically follow the PG marker. To do it automatically, at about 2km elevation, turn about 5 degrees (from 90 to 85) in the desired orbit direction (almost always east). The most efficient takeoff is with a “gravity turn” either manually or “automatically”. There’s no need to take off from any other moon or planet. Kerbin is the only launch site for achievement purposes. Objects travel fastest at periapsis and slowest at apoapsis.ĪN/DN: ascending node/descending node, this is where your orbital plane crosses the orbital plane of your target, and is the best place to adjust it to match. Inclination: how tilted your orbital plane is, with respect to the body you are orbitingĪP/PE: apoapsis/periapsis, the furthest and closest points in an orbit, respectively. SOI: sphere of influence, this is the area where an orbit is controlled by a certain body (the largest one in that immediate area), while orbiting something, you are in its SOI. It’s common to have used 90% of the fuel but have well over half of the dV remaining. A rocket often has 99% or more of its weight in fuel and stages that are discarded by the end of its trip.

This is a more meaningful measure than remaining fuel. Unlike the gyroscopes, however, it needs special RCS fuel, so it can run out.ĭV: delta V(elocity), this is how much the rocket can accelerate with its remaining fuel. It is generally much more powerful than the gyroscopes and can actually move the ship a bit in addition to just turning it. In this walkthrough, this is only used for docking. RCS: The reaction control system, is tiny thrusters to change the direction the ship is pointing. Press to bring up a menu where you can select several markers to have it follow or “stability assist” to maintain the current heading. Tap to toggle on/off, hold to use temporarily.

SAS: The stability assist system helps keep you pointed in the right direction. This walkthrough will use a few stock designs, and two designs I’ve provided.

#Kerbal space program parachute burns how to#

But it is useful when running weak but efficient engines for five or ten minutes at a time.įor the purposes of this walkthrough, I’m not going to cover how to design a ship, there are plenty of resources online for that if desired. Physics warp ( + / + can be used anywhere but should be avoided when turning quickly, just about to touch down, and with very large ships (drop some stages first), as it can make things behave unpredictably. Be careful warping close to a planet, you can suddenly be in an inescapable situation that was easily avoidable if you had stopped your warp a few seconds earlier. Warp speed is also capped when too close to a planet. High speed warp cannot be used when firing engines, or when in an atmosphere.

There is a slight lag (maybe half a second) when turning it off, so stop or lower the warp a little ahead of time. High speed warp will speed up time a LOT, up to 100,000x, which is very useful when waiting a year or two for a planet to be in the right place, or are going somewhere very far away. You can’t mix them and must be at normal speed to switch types. There are two kinds of time warp in this game: high-speed and physics.