[OUTDATED] The Standard Guide For Making It To Space

Overview

[THIS IS OUTDATED] USE THIS GUIDE This guide will help newbies to the Kerbal Space Program design and build their very own rocket that will take them to space. Please note that this is NOT for making an orbit around Kerbin or other planets.

Introduction

Hi Guys,
Welcome to the Kerbal Space Program! If you are a normal or experienced player, this guide should be very basic stuff. This guide is for players who might need a little help working on a basic ship that will take them to space. Now, if you are looking to create an “orbit” around Kerbin or other planets, I recommend any of this guide below, this guide is not made for that.

Orbit: Let’s Begin Our Journey
This guide is “compatible with both the demo and full versions.

Building Our Craft

Ok, so first, (just so you guys know, this is my first guide on any game), I’m going to try to use ALOT of pictures to try to help you guys out, you might just want to follow the pictures in some parts if you want but be sure that you understand what you are doing.

You are going to want to start out with a command pod, now in the demo version, you are always going to have to start out with one in order to access any of the other parts. Since this is compatible with both the demo and full versions, go ahead and add the Command Pod Mk 1 to the building area.

Now that you have added the first and most important part of your ship, go ahead and follow the images below to help construct the rest of your ship.

**Please excuse any parts that you may see lying around the scene, as well as any cut outs (things that were in this picture but not in the last one), these were parts added out of order and I was going through the process of adding the parts as I went taking the screenshots.

1
Added FL-T400 Fuel Tank

2
Added FL-T800 Fuel Tank

3
Added FL-R25 RCS Fuel Tank

4
Added LV-T45 Liquid Engine

5

Ok, at this part you can begin to use the symmetry button located in the bottom-left-hand-corner of your screen. Click it to turn on symmetry. First you have double, then triple, etc…until you have up to 8 parts. Click on this button until there are 4 slices or quadrouple symmetry.

Added RV-A8 Winglet

6
Added Mk 16 Parachute

7
Added TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer: These arms will extend to your spacecraft to hold it into place while on the launchpad. It should be located near the bottom of your staging list (we’re getting to that). When staged, the arms will release, hopefully while engines are running and allow a sudden burst of energy to your flight.

8
Check your stages: these places located in the orange bar on the right-hand side of your screen are known as stages. Each of these small boxes are icons to let you know what will happen when it is staged. In the image in the lower stage “1” box (indicated by the number located inside the orange bar), we have the main engine and the stability arm. Since these items are in the first stage to launch (this stage will ALWAYS be at the bottom of the stage list), they will be the initial part of our launching sequence. Always be sure to check your stage list before launching. Sometimes KSP will place the stages in a different order than what you want.

Now we will proced to our next part.

Building Our Craft Pt. II

Now we are going to add a very important piece of staging equipment. The decoupler. We are going to add a “Radial Decoupler” to our ship. To do so, we will need to move pieces of our ship. Click on the white fuel tank directly beneath the command pod, then move it out of the way, the pieces should follow your mouse. Now click somewhere else in the building area (Not In The Parts Screen! You’ll Delete Your Craft!). Now go to your structure tab (indicated with a crane) and select the TR18-A Stack Decoupler.

Place this directly beneath the command pod. Now we are going to move our lower ship parts back into the ship. Click on the top piece of your ship stack. Move it back to the ship by placing it beneath the new radial decoupler. It should look like this.

Be sure to check your staging! Make sure that the new icon (double horizontal bars) is not in the box where the engine release is. You will need to move it. You can either add it to the parachute box (Stage 0 indicated by the number in the orange bar) or we can create a new box, which will add a new stage to your list. The benefits of adding a new box is that when releasing it, you will not cause other stages to activate, for example, of you added the decoupler piece to the engine box, when you activated that stage, it would activate both the engine, release arms and your decoupler. That’s not good because your engine would fire and then relase your engine from the command pod. Trust me, you can’t go anywhere like this.

To add a new staging box, click on the little orange “+” button near the bottom of the “0” stage. A new box should slide up. Now select the decoupler icon and drag it up to that box to add it. You should have 2 stages; “0, 1, & 2”. Now we need to save our craft and prepare for launch!

Saving Our Craft

To save our craft, go to the top-center of the screen where it says “Untitled Space Craft”. Click in the textbox and delete the letters, give your ship a name!

Now you have to save. Click the Save button near the right-hand top-corner.

Time for launch!

Launching Your Craft

Launching is something that will happen very often in this game. To send our newly created spacecraft to the launchpad, click the green Launch button up in the right-hand top-corner of the screen.

Let the game load the craft and let it settle on the plate. This might take a couple seconds.
Our craft might look something like this.

**Please disregaurd my stageing list, I myself forgot to check it in the events of making this guide.

Now to get ready for launch, we need to know what type of engines we have. If you remember we added a couple “Fuel Tanks” and a “Liquid Engine” to our craft. Since this craft uses liquid engines, we need to crank up our throttle. Press and hold LShift to increase the throttle to full power, the top line in the throttle gauge. Also, we need to enable the S.A.S. System. Press the T button to toggle SAS. This module is preloaded in the command pod we added at the beginning. We will need this to help stabalize our craft when we are in the atmosphere. See this picture.

Our SAS system is activated and ready to go. Also, our throttle is at full. To procede, depress the spacebar to release the stabalizing arms and start the engines.

Space, The Final Frontier

Now that we have launched our craft, we must wait as our craft slowly moves up through the atmosphere. You can check your progress and altitude on the gauges in the top-center of the screen. Big number meter is your altitude and the bar with the fading black/blue is your atmosphere showing where you are. Eventually we will run out of fuel. Check the green bar next to your staging list to check fuel levels. You will burn out around 40,000 meters. No worries, once the fuel tank burns out, depress the spacebar and we will activate our decoupler to release the fuel tank and engines. This will make our craft exceedingly light. Now all we should have is our command pod and parachute.

At 70,000 meters we will reach space, no worries, after we released the fuel tank, our craft has lost weight and thanks to lower levels of gravity and pull, our craft no longer needs fuel. Give our take about 15-20 seconds we will reach space. You will know this by checking the altitude meter for 70,000 meters or above or by the atmosphere bar, if the tick marker is at the full black mark, you are in space.

A good and easy way to know you are in space is by the music the game cues when you get there.

Congratulations, You have made it to space!
You will eventually make your way around the craft’s orbit back into the atmosphere. When your craft reaches about 60,000 meters press the spacebar, this will ready the parachute for action when it is time for release. Also, when you get to 550 meters the parachute will expand outward and slow the command pod down exceedingly. You will either land in the ocean or on land, but either way, if the parachute expands, the little kerbal your ship carries should be ok.

Be sure to check out the “Orbit: Let’s Begin Our Journey” guide at the top of this one. This will help you change your orbits and make standard orbits around both Kerbin and other planets. Thanks for reading this.

Special Acknowledgments:
TaylenTaylor for making the Steam Guide – This guide has no association with TaylenTaylor or the products they release. Thanks.