Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T: Part 14

Onward to the galactic core!

huzzah!!!

Space is alright I guess. It ain't as cool as the deep sea tho.

Wow due to the VR stream I didn't even see this was up till now!

Stealth Kerbal!

Yay!

Can't wait for them to beat up space Dracula and solve this wretched puzzle of flesh.

I just love the "Previously" intros.

"BUT THE STARS ARE NOT FOR KERBALS."

I'm still terrified...

Wasn't sure if this would be out today. Talk about being pleasantly surprised =) !

Had to pause, get up, and pace around the room with all the mistakes in this one. Hard for me to tell for sure but looks like the pulled that escape maneuver on the exact opposite side of the planet than they should have

Alex is always the pessimist

It might take a thousand years, but I have faith that you guys can bring him home. Try not to run into Mt. Everest this time.

It's amazing to me how they all seem to grasp orbital mechanics when they're orbiting Kerbin. But when orbiting the sun? We shall go wherever the winds take us!

EDIT: Oh nice, I skipped ahead and they must've figured it out somewhere along the way! For the first time I'm optimistic about actually rescuing this Kerbal...

#doable

~14:45 Why on Earth are they pushing a fuel-less ship when they need to get that Kerbal in another ship anyways? This whole sequence was a complete waste of time. Just abandon that ship, a Kerbal by itself has like 500 m/s of dV... you only push a ship with a Kerbal when you're trying to nudge the ship into a landing trajectory so you can hop back into it and use it to land. If you're trying to rendezvous with another ship a fuel-less ship is just a hunk of space junk that you're able to sit in.

Makes me wonder how Kerbins ever got to the point where they even achieved space flight

watching these is like watching a dog try and get though a door over and over with a stick in its mouth thats a bit too long for the width of the door

Also I really hope one of them reads this:

RCS thrusters rotate your ship by applying a torque to the ship (and unbalanced torques affect angular momentum - in layman's terms the more torque, the faster you can rotate). Torque is equal to the force times the distance between the force and fulcrum, times the sin of the angle between the force and the vector pointing to the fulcrum. For RCS thrusters this angle is always 90 degrees (unless you do something silly like place them on a slanted surface - don't do this) so we can just talk about the torque as a function of the force and the distance from the fulcrum. The fulcrum in this case is the center of mass of your ship.

What this means is that when you are placing RCS thrusters, to get the maximum amount of rotating out of a set amount of fuel, you want to place the RCS thrusters as far away from the center of mass as possible (while making very sure that you're comparing to the center of mass of the stage in which you'll be using the RCS thrusters, not the entire ship).

All of this is to say, your ship controls like an oil tanker because you put your RCS thrusters very close to the middle of the ship, essentially minimizing the torque they can generate. You usually want to either put the thrusters at the top of the ship, at the bottom of the ship, or both (so that when you jettison the last stage you don't lose RCS control).

15 minutes in and i literally have no idea what is even

This episode is a roller-coaster of emotions. From the curiosity of the initial idea to have that poor Kerbal fly off sans ship, to the frustration of watching an ant pushing a boulder, to the terror of actual orbits being mechanized... all the way though to the exhilaration of the stinger.

Oof.

Yea, let's match orbits when he is INFINITY AWAY from us instead of when we're right next to him. The complete lack of awareness was cute for 13 episodes, but now? Common guys, this was supposed to be about you learning and succeeding, not making the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over and over.........

Yeah. : \

My favorite time of the week when I scream at my monitor for an hour.

But that moment when they achieve right results doing all the wrong things is worth it.

Regarding Austin's comment, "space is big."; you might be interested to know that KSP's solar system is much smaller than the real deal solar system. The size of the planets in KSP system is roughly 1/10th that of their real solar system counterparts, and the distances between are accordingly greater, although the developers have fiddled around with the relative distances quite a bit. Minmus, for example, is closer to where the Mun should be if sticking to a 1/10th scale version.

This picture sort of explains it easier. For frame of reference of things you have already seen in KSP, the real solar system Earth's moon is larger than planet Kerbin is in game.

Fun space fact; space doesn't really have a temperature in any real meaningful sense of the word, because temperature is a form of energy stored in matter. Dust and gas in space is what is being measured when scientists say that space is a little above absolute zero. Space is a great insulator, because heat can only be transferred by radiation, instead of convection, conduction, and radiation.

Space IS big :D

omg I can't wait for next episode

Good episode! It definitely seems like they're getting it now. Sure they're probably overlooking some things, but they're learning! I can't wait for next week's!

Trying to bring in the solar orbit by burning prograde... Bruh

You guys are going to live steam when you watch the Scott Manley episode, right? I would pay a lot of money to see your reactions to his solution. @vinny

I'm still waiting for them to accidentally crash one ship into another at speed and murder everyone.

You guys really, really, really didn't need to worry about matching the apoapsis. You should have focused more on getting the intercepts as close as possible, at which point you could spacewalk across.

Edit: Worked out though!

@j-mack: Usually when people talk about the temperature of empty space, they're talking about the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background, not dust and gas.

Yay, after a few minor hiccups this episode the preview for the next episode left me so hopeful :D

Let's do the time warp again.

And again.

And again.

I'd rather have fewer episodes that were slightly longer because of how it ends is incredibly deflating.

Can you imagine if this had a realism mod where you had to worry about food and such...?

Can't believe they're trying a sun orbit rescue before even attempting a trip to Duna. I've landed on every major planet but I've not once dared try this.

@apothaeos: Why? Never fiddled around with the ions. I thought it should work for them, but they'll have to burn for hours.

Once the guys finish rescuing, I'd like to see them do some more weird stuff. Maybe like drilling on other planets / moons / asteroids for fuel components or something like this:

@jdp83:

I fear that they will end the feature when, they rescue the last Kerbal. They'll probably watch the Scott Manley episode and record that and then call it a day.

What a treat of a thing to wake up to

Project B.E.A.S.T day is B.E.S.T day

Edit: The fact that the agonisingly slow pushing and pulling of orbits has ... eventually ... worked before is a real yolk on the shoulders of this project. It means that they always try to replicate every aspect of the first successful rendezvous, including the ridiculously close approach and sloth-like relative velocities. It is the only way the kerbals know, the One True Path.

But the failure point of the last mission was the insane high-speed re-entry, which meant all the previous work was wasted. Why not practice that so you get it right?! So much time spent obsessing over intercept projections and 0 time spent re-learning how to land this damn ship. It's all going to happen again isn't it. 200k altitude, 2km/s and they will abandon the engines and fuel. I've seen it... in the stars.

Thank you Alex for not allowing the cheating to happen with the EVA suit.

That poor Kerbal is a boneless lump of tumors. The solar systems first organic planetary body.

Austin with the slick Luda reference 5 mins in

Kudos to vinny for that whole "get in the engine" trick. Idk if he actually planned it or not but you need to always keep center of thrust in line with center of mass , and getting into the engine with your eva pack is the single best way to do so reliably

Candlelit vigils around Kerbin, newscameras point to towards the sky, support from farm boys and businessmen, the time has come, the green light is lit....bring our Kerbals home.