Can You Use Escape Pods to Get to Space in Kerbal Space Program?

when something goes wrong in kerbal space program my usual technique is just to revert the flight and try again sometimes though if you want to be realistic there is this piece called the launch escape system the idea of it is simple if you attach a command pod to it you can easily clear a malfunctioning rocket and save the precious kerbals inside my question though is can you use only the launch escape system to get to space so let's get into it now starting off here i'm gonna need something to troll this and this is the latest probe core that i could find so just put that down here and of course on that and put down a launch escape system now honestly i just want to launch this and see how it would do some launch pad here and once i go to launch it it works but not exactly in the way i wanted you'll notice it burned all of its fuel up in like half a second and also that it went off to the side quite a lot these are both things that are going to be kind of difficult to overcome here but i figured at least for some stability could add on some fins and give it another test and going off it is a lot better you can see i'm actually going in a straight direction but it's still slightly angled itself here and the maximum height i get to is only about a thousand five hundred meters which is only about 500 meters above the ground so i threw in a decoupler here and on that you can see i'm starting to stack some rockets now i think i just put them underneath because it fits pretty well here and there's quite a bit of part clipping going on but it shouldn't be that big of a deal soup on launchpad here want to give it a test and bottom stage goes tough just fine but you'll notice the decouplers are ejecting but the rockets aren't and i guess that part clipping actually was kind of a big deal because nothing's really coming off it was still a lot better than before i got to a much higher height but carrying all this dead weight isn't really going to help me and i want to try again here and just go for a really beefy second stage you can see i'm just cramming in a ton of rockets and on that i'm actually putting down another stage that's made up of the stage above it so with that ready to go here you can see i have quite a few more rockets and testing it out that bottom stage has quite a lot of force the second stage though didn't quite deploy right and it seemed like the stage below it kind of messed it up so i went down on some fins here to hopefully improve the stability and maybe keep things slightly more controlled as i decouple and testing it out bottom stage still works and then that happens which sort of reminded me of the wii resort opening theme for some reason but anyway i gave it another try here this time it actually did work mostly if you ignore the back flip and the second stage doing that and then that's how stage went and it wasn't bad but it's still only getting up to about 6500 meters and it's a long way away from the 70 000 i need to get out of the atmosphere so i was thinking a good optimization now would be to start cramming the rockets in even closer on each stage to get even more power so you can see i'm using the move tool and pulling things over and once i get everything situated here i have a lot more rockets on the stage basically i was just hoping that the more thrust i had the better i would do soap went to launch pad here and that happened so i just had to make sure to turn on auto strut and this time it actually did seem to be okay and launching off now there's quite a lot of power on this bottom stage not sure where that rocket came from i'm sure it's fine though second stage goes off fine and of course top stage as well i'm almost at 500 meters per second and you can see here i'm capping out at 9 000 meters that was the highest i got to yet and it was clearly a massive improvement over before so sort of just thinking why not just add more stages it seems to be like a good way to go here and launching off here i had one rocket sort of glitch out it was fine though after that next stage went then the second stage and the top stage here and it's almost at 700 meters per second and this time i was projected to reach right around 13 000 meters that actually wasn't that big of an improvement i thought it was gonna be a lot better than that and i was already starting to feel the effects of lag but i figured maybe just more rockets is the way to go but you can see the lag is getting very intense and also things are starting to get quite a bit more glitchy now and not quite working out as intended now when to clear this rocket and try something else instead because i had a new idea instead of just stacking a ton of rockets on each stage what i want to do is have one rocket on the top stage two rockets in the second stage and just keep doubling the amount of rockets on each stage but right here on stage three already reaching problems i should have eight but only six are showing because two of them are clipped right into each other and the next stage it's only showing nine even though i know they're 16. and just trying to place these rockets was very glitchy and it just wasn't working out as intended eventually though i did manage to get it and i wanted to try this out on the launch pad here so giving it a test now bottom stage went off fine but then the stage above that was not quite great it seemed like the intense part clipping was really causing things to start breaking here and instead what i wanted to do was make that second stage have only six rockets and get rid of the two that were clipped into each other i'm losing a little bit of thrust this way but i should still have plenty so i figured it should be okay and with that stage done i copy this over for the stage below it as well but now i don't have symmetry mode on so copying everything over is actually kind of a lot of work but once i get everything put in place there add in a couple more rockets and launch off the bottom stage here of course that was fine but actually all the other stages were pretty good too now the top stage got a little bit wonky because the stage below it didn't quite launch off right but overall it wasn't bad now i did notice there's a lot of spinning during that fleet so i want to add in some fins here to hopefully mitigate that i think the problem is that when i put on these rockets i didn't pay attention to where the side vents were and they're all pointed off to the side meaning that it naturally wants to make it turn and i was getting up to 600 meters per second here but it really wasn't that much better than before and this was kind of a lot of work to set up and i tried this again by separating out the rockets to make it less glitchy but this just made it really bendy and that was sort of the opposite of what i wanted so i deleted mount rocket here and i had another idea that i thought would work out really well now again here i'm starting with the probe core but on that i'm putting a decoupler that's so i can attach four rockets to it and put a nose cone right on the probe cord that will be my top stage i'm going to launch it up kind of like a bullet and hopefully just shoot all the way to 70 000 meters now you see here i'm using a decoupler and a rocket for each stage and i'm not trying to multiply the rockets for each of the stages i'm trying to use just one and keep it as simple as possible this seemed to work out really well here you see how the launch pad still has plenty of power but as they get up higher and higher there's more thrust and that gets me up to a pretty good speed now the very top stage didn't really shoot off properly and it kind of just failed immediately but first i just wanted to add on more rockets so that's what i did here and you see testing it out it's literally over the launch pad but that should be fine and honestly it's really not that bad bottom stage still has plenty of power as i get further and further in again i just keep adding more speed so this is looking good i just wanted to fix up that top stage and do that i want to add on some fins i was hoping the extra stability might help it in the atmosphere and after that i added on more rockets as well because why not and trying it out now it seemed to be okay the bottom stage was beginning to struggle a little bit but it still seemed to be holding its own and you see getting up higher and higher basically the same thing as before but once you got this top stage again still just aired out so of course i added on more rockets because why not and i also pulled everything away from the very top stage i was hoping this would improve it a bit and you can see now finally i launched off here and i'm going up in the air the problem though is i'm losing speed really quickly here which was kind of bizarre but i was thinking if i could just get up higher i might get out of the really thick part of the atmosphere and that might just save me but instead of more stages the very last stages i'm actually using more powerful rockets instead and also i'm adding on four extra arms here mostly because it fit in pretty well and see once i got those in place i'm testing it out on the launch pad now it's getting very laggy but it still does seem to be holding up well and the very last stage really pulled everything up but you can see i'm getting a lot of speed here and it just keeps pulling into the middle this time though you'll notice it's starting to slightly turn and i think as my very first stage deployed it accidentally hit into the rocket and that caused it to slightly turn and i have nothing to correct that so it just kept getting worse until eventually it just was going down now more fins i figured should solve the problem so put that on both sides here and after that put down a whole bunch more and i figured i might as well give it a test and again launching off here that very last stage really seemed to pull up the rocket and i was hoping they didn't mess it up too much here and as i went up more and more it was slowly starting to turn but it did seem to go pretty straight overall this is very top stage here and once it starts to burn i get up to a really high speed it is degrading really quickly again when it quickly checked here it said i was gonna get up to 31 000 meters now i also added on more rockets because again that's just sort of how we do things and i wanted to go for a test here of what i'm gonna call the snowflake design it works pretty well the problem though is that it's very laggy and i'm pretty much at my rocket cap right now now getting up higher and higher actually didn't seem to be too bad but it was also reasonably unstable and it was hard to keep this going straight now i'm sure that caused a little bit of speed loss but the problem is i'm only projected to get the 30 000 meters that's nowhere near the 70 000 i'm gonna need and really i have no more space for rockets and i tried the launch again here and you can see i went a lot more straight and overall it did seem to be better because i was going up to 44 000 meters but it still was kind of far away from what i needed and also it was really unstable still and it just degraded speed really fast now i tried sinking in four more boosters in the middle of the rocket here but it was really starting to reach that cap and already that was kind of getting unbearable to pilot now all this lag is making it really hard for me to get this top stage of the rocket going upright and you can see i have boosters falling off too early that's mainly me just spamming space and it just not working out the way i want here and even when i got the top stage going off here you'll also notice that the bottom stage is starting to go above it that's obviously not exactly what i had in mind so to hopefully improve the top stage i added on batteries this extra mask should let it punch through the atmosphere a bit better and hopefully lose less speed now we kind of went for broke here and just added on as many rockets as i could and this is realistically the best i was ever going to do with the snowflake so it was gonna work it had to work now and get enough launch pad it was extremely bad and you can see it's already starting to turn up slightly and that caused me to have to revert the launch that's when the game just crashed though and that was probably a really bad sign so i got back into the vehicle assembly building here but that's what i noticed also the save said it contained locked or invalid parts i don't even know what that means but that's probably really bad now trying to load it in here it at least seemed to be okay so hopefully that was just whatever and i went back to the launch pad here and just gave it another test now this time the same thing happened it started to pitch back too far and i just want to give it another launch here and try it again but of course again the game just crashed but this time when i tried to load it i just got this error message and nothing happened unfortunately i did make a save right before i started building the snowflake out which was good because that was pretty much the part i wanted to revert to anyway so i started building up my final design here and this is what i'm going to call the window now this one i get a lot more rockets packed in and you see now once you have the bottom stage i have very little thrust as it has to launch the entire thing up but overall it actually seems to be quite a bit better here as it just keeps shutting off rockets i get up to a reasonably good speed i have no stability at all on this but it managed to stay straight for the most part and honestly for a first test that was a lot better than i was getting with the snowflake so starting out here i wanted to add on more rockets to the last two stages just to give it a little bit more power right off the launch pad it is quite a bit better and shutting off rockets and getting right to the core here get quite a bit of speed and honestly that's not half bad and as long as i get that center stage working i should be good to go here now trying to launch that off quite often here is still just not working but sometimes it would come off properly and it seemed to be okay to reduce the air resistance i actually got rid of the fins because i realized they're not that necessary you can see i'm really just shooting straight up into the sky here and i was getting it all the way up to 20 000 meters now i was wondering if i could get up even higher if i added on more batteries just to give me more momentum and it seemed to be pretty good i got up another 2000 meters here but that still was quite a distance away and reducing the air resistance definitely seemed like the way to go so i got rid of my nose cone and replaced it with a launch escape system this should give me a lot more thrust at the last second as well and see now launching it off here i got up to a thousand meters per second that was really good and exceeds projecting i'm going 60 000 meters that was a huge improvement and also the air resistance of this thing is really low i did run out of gas around 52 but still that's not that much ground to make up here and i figured i could definitely do that with just some small improvements now my first thought was to add more rockets to the two stages right before the last one and i figured that this would be a lot more of a punch at the last second here but adding this in added a lot more weight from the bottom stages to carry and this seemed to be not that great overall and of course shutting off all the stages getting the top stage here it seemed to be okay you'll notice the speed i got up to it wasn't even a thousand meters per second that was actually going lower than before now my next idea was actually to add on more rockets a little bit earlier on the flight and what these are going to do is instead of just having one i'm gonna have three launch escape systems i'm gonna lower their thrust to 35 that means that overall i'm producing slightly more thrust but their flight duration is going to be three times as long that extra time is gonna get me up a lot higher and hopefully i can avoid the very thick parts of the atmosphere the last stage and that should probably make the difference and you can see after that i'm up to about a thousand twenty meters per second and the projected height is about sixty thousand meters so i just sort of did more of what i did before i just added on even more of those rockets here and see now i'm getting up to 66 000 meters that is super close to where i need to be and i figured one more stage is probably all i needed here you can see i added on 2d couplers at the top and i'm adding on two launch escape systems after that i pulled them away from the top here so that they wouldn't head into it and i wanted to give this a final test here and see if i could finally get to 70 000 meters so given a test of launch pad now seemed to go fine at first nothing seemed to be too crazy there was a slight deviation early on but it was easy enough to correct here and you see now shedding more and more rockets in the middle i actually did start to make a slight mistake i pulled them off a little bit early and lost quite a bit of fuel doing that now fortunately nothing hit into anything else but i really was starting to pull these off too early here and it seemed like the lag was making it kind of hard for me to control i did get further and further in though but you'll also notice when i'm launching these off it's really unstable it's bouncing up and down a lot here and especially these inner stages just completely break the rocket and i start flipping up and down and it's doing this really weird thing so turn on auto strut real quick hopefully to keep everything together and finally here i wanted to give it a full launch soap off launch pad again everything seemed to be fine and i just kept pulling in these rockets now i was having slate problems for whatever reason with these middle stages sometimes they would turn the rocket it seemed easy enough to correct but every time it happened i was worried i was losing a little bit of energy but it seemed to be mostly okay and see now burning off these rockets here i'm actually doing this really efficiently just happened to hit my timings pretty much perfectly and there was slight bouncing going on which i didn't like but it seemed to hold together well enough and once i shut off this stage everything seemed to be good here and after that launched off my top stage here and finally now the final stage everything seemed to be good i was going over 1100 meters per second and here is projecting 80 000 meters the problem though is this was degrading really quickly it was already pulled down to 71 after not too long so i wasn't entirely sure if i was actually gonna make it there but i wanted to be surprised if it would happen and see now in the 60s my speed is really starting to diminish and at 69 the hundreds are going up quite slowly here and i was actually worried i wasn't gonna make it but you can see now actually across the finish line here and i'm finally out of the atmosphere here and into space now i'm also going to show the process of me falling down cause i thought it'd be kind of funny but something really weird happened once i got there and you'll see that in a second so guys thanks for watching definitely a lot of footage in this one mostly because each attempt just took forever to load the rockets it was so complex but thankfully i finally found this window design and everything seemed to be good to go almost wonder if orbit would be possible but for that i might just need a better computer so if you have any other video ideas make sure to leave them down in the comments below make sure to subscribe if you want to see more content like this if you have any other questions or comments feel free to leave those down below as well and otherwise till next time

Channel: Reid Captain

Views: 448,152

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Id: aSEQnmXAtpA

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 14 2022