Blog Post 2: Back to Kerbin

I have made significant progress since last post, which was just yesterday. For one, I have discovered three different websites that I will be using, and did today. In order of easiest to understand to hardest to understand and all, they are: here, here, and here. The first link is from NASA and the California Institute of Technology. It consists more of the concepts and less of the formulas involved in orbital mechanics and such. It links to the second site I've been using, which is primarily formulas for orbital mechanics. The third site I haven't really used yet, or even validated as much as I should have, so as I look into it I may find that it is incorrect and simply not use it.

On the subject of orbital mechanics, I must say that there are a lot of formulas. At first I was using the second link mostly, but as I reached the halfway point I began to get a headache from all the numbers; or the lack thereof, really. I went over to the NASA/CIT one and found it much easier to understand, as it gave examples in addition to explaining each topic; I wouldn't have understood foci very well if it wasn't for the NASA/CIT site explaining it to me. I'm still looking through both websites, but I made it about 50% of the way through the second link so far today and read two or three pages of Chapter Three in the NASA/CIT website.
I have learned some important vocabulary, some important formulas (none of which are memorized, mind you), and the basics of what I would need to do to get from the Earth to, say Mars. That knowledge can be applied here to discover the trajectory which will help me get to the Mun with a minimal amount of fuel. I still need to read up some more from both sites, and likely others, before I feel like I can really say I understand the subject well enough to explain the most basic of the basics to someone else; I'm still learning the basics myself, after all. I can definitely say as it stands, however, that I do know the most basic of the basics right now. I know what things like foci are, I know how to calculate some things like the eccentricity of the ellipse, and I know some of the orbits that I will be basing my trajectory off of to reach the Mun.

There are some things that I should touch on that I brought up in the last blog post, and some other clarifying comments I myself was unaware of.

Let's start off with my 'safe elliptical orbit'.

Look how safe it is now!

 Do you see that blue line? That is the orbit now. The orbit that I had, which was not as obvious to me until letting the simulation run for 25 in game days, was not really an orbit at all. It was a 'sub-orbital trajectory'. It may have looked like an orbit, and it was for 25 days, but the periapsis (the point of the orbit closest to what the rocket is orbiting around) was too close to the primary (which is to say Kerbin, what the rocket is orbiting around). It basically hit the atmosphere one too many times and is now crashing into Kerbin.

Luckily, however, I found a different screen recorder to show it all.

It's no cat gif, but it'll do

Here it is for anyone who is curious. It is called Screen Recorder, and works well enough for smaller things. If I had to complain, which I do, I'd say a couple of things: the color is off, the frame-rate is low, the quality is even lower, and the audio is wonky. As I was recording the crash into Kerbin, everything was going fine enough, the quality of the textures were OK, and I could hear the crash well. However, when I viewed it in the player it looked much worse, and I did not hear a crash and instead some weird clicking sound near the end?

Here is the (admittedly sub-par) view of Test Rocket One crashing into Kerbin. It's three minutes long, but I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't watch it all:

 

If you cannot view it in this Blogger format, I also a Youtube mirror here.

Although the screen recording isn't the most important aspect of this all, and I should be and have been focusing on the research aspect of this project, I do want to give you a nice recording of at the very least the manned Mun landing. If you know of any good and free screen recorders for PC, I'd be happy to hear about them.

Another thing that I should mention about last post is this: the Kerbol system (the one in Kerbal Space Program) and the Sol system (ours in real life) are remarkably different.

In the center of the screen Kerbin (Earth equivalent). Smaller circle Mun (Moon equiavalent). Larger circle Minmus (additional moon, no real world equivalent)

In the center, Kerbol, the sun of this system. Various orbits surround it. This is the Kerbol system in its entirety (as of the most recent update).

Our solar system in its entirety, including the Oort cloud for comparison. Found here.

This means that I will no longer be referring to anything as 'Earth' or 'Venus'. Although many planets like Kerbin are made to represent others like Earth, some bodies, like Minmus, have no real-world counterpart. One of the things I learned from my research was the importance of consistent language to convey information. I will be attempting to do just that here.

That is, for the most part, it. I cannot think of anything else I should need to mention in this blog post besides who I commented on, and to give you this image of my headquarters at night. I thought that it was interesting.

My headquarters at night.

I commented on the following people's blogs. If the links don't link correctly, they are the most recent posts:
Trevor Bert's
Jacob Cohen's
Paul Scott's

Blog Post 1: To Space (and orbit)!

Since I was little, I was always interested in space and rockets. With the ability to learn about anything I want that was given to me by this Genius Project, I will be looking more into that. I will be launching rockets in the 'Kerbal Space Program', a thirty dollar rocket simulation game that can be found here.

My goal will be to learn more about rockets and the physics behind them; I will be learning mostly about Newtonian physics, as that is the focus of the simulation. Using Newtonian physics, I will be having rockets (and space planes) reach orbit and other planets. My end goal, and project, is to have a successful manned mission to the moon and back, something done in 1969.

There is one possible problem with my end goal and project; I fired up the simulation today to test it out. I was unable to record the launch due to some technical difficulties involving either Camstudio, a free screen recording software, Youtube, or two conversion programs I installed (sorry!). However, I can show you some screenshots of what I ended up with today instead of the full video.

Anyway, the problem I noticed is that it may be too easy to get to the Moon (or Mun). These are the images of what I ended up with after my first attempt, which was quite the success. The focus was to learn the controls and test out the recording software, but I also achieved what appears to be a safe elliptical orbit.

Shot of the orbit from above. In the center can be found the Earth, or Kerbin. It is only half visible due to the Sun's location. The blue oval is the orbit I have created with my rocket, and the grey circle is the Moon's orbit. The grey dot itself is the Moon.

Orbit from the side. Again, grey is moon, blue is rocket. Unfortunately some things are in the background here; the sun and another orbit. However, the important thing in this picture to know is that my orbit pretty much in line with the moon's.

Basically what I'm getting at is that my job may be slightly easier than it seems; since I am running this in sandbox mode, I don't have to worry about the costs. Other, more difficult modes exist in this simulation (in that they require funding and also simulate the administrative aspects of space agencies). There are, of course, some issues with my rocket which I will explain below.

Rocket with a view of the Earth.

I know that it might be hard to see some of the things I'm about to point out, but here we are. This was the first rocket I launched, and it won't be my last, but some of the things that should be noted about it are:
No decoupling! Notice those booster engines? The ones that look like miniature rockets? That's a bad thing, representative of my sorry lack of decoupling. This was, I think, a problem I faced with this rocket in that when the tanks were out of fuel I wasn't able to get rid of them. Although I was still able to reach an orbit, it resulted in inefficiencies with my rocket that resulted in less fuel to go further. This brings me to my next shortcoming.
Too little energy! Fuel specifically, but energy in general. There was very little fuel, just enough to get into this orbit, and nothing to give the rocket any electricity. That electricity bit is important for this rocket considering it isn't manned and instead is run by electronics. Although I don't know if that means I will no longer be able to control it or not, which, if I could not control it, would make it space-trash and a potential hazard, but important for satellites and such nonetheless.
It wasn't manned! Although this was a good thing this time, considering its lack of fuel, parachutes, and really anyway to get anyone back home, this means that I will have to consider other things that I haven't mentioned here if I went to get there.
It was named Test Rocket One! This one doesn't matter too much, but what if Sputnik was called 'ABC' instead? That monumental moment in history would have been a bit of a joke I think. This means that, from this point on, I will be naming my rockets more creatively, or at least come up with a creative name to call them all. 

To wrap this up, I'd like to say that, all in all, the mission was a success. My goal today was simply to learn about the programs I was going to be using, and I swiftly discovered that some of my resources weren't working, and the basics of controlling the simulation. I think this quick success spells well for my future, which is to the Moon (and maybe beyond, if I find out that getting to the Moon is too easy)!



P.S. Next blog post will be focused on the research I've done on topics like aerobraking that I already know a little bit about that I used to make it out of the atmosphere. I hope that will give me some more time to find a more reliable screen recorder, which I feel like was the source of the issue we had today.
Also, please tell me if you notice anything strange, have any questions, or have any suggestions about my blog or project. Thanks!
One last thing, here are some more screenshots for your viewing pleasure since I was unable to get the video up and running.

The rocket, with the UI, facing the moon.

UI-less view of the Sun and the Earth. In the middle is the rocket, but it is hard to see.

An image of my headquarters, which is, may I say, quite beautiful; birds can be heard chirping in the background.

Edit: Also, I will be changing the design of my blog over the course of the next few days. I think it will be finalized by this Saturday or Sunday.
Also, I fixed a spelling mistake I noticed in a separate edit.
OK, one last edit, this is it I swear:
 I commented on the following blogs (the most recent posts, if the direct links don't work):
Nathan Leung's
Jason Shu's
Sam Klugherz's
(if you don't like how my links are set up I'd be happy to change them)