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