Breaking Kerbal Space Program by Only Using Monopropellant

I wouldn't have called the editor to be the most unstable part of the game, but it crashed in there six times and never crashed in flight.
My Discord: / discord
KSP playlist: • Kerbal Space Program

[@ReidCaptain]

I still want to try using the mining equipment in the future. I was thinking of doing a planet hopping mission, but does anyone have another good idea?

[@robotrick6891]

Maybe capturing an asteroid? I don't know if this is possible, but you could refill your fuel by mining the asteroid so it could be possible

[@SephirothRyu]

Redirect asteroids to crash them onto the space center. Yes, ONTO.

[@jakemckee1923]

I recommend making fatter rockets out of bigger parts, and making much stubbier landers. Big tall landers like these are much harder to land. Also, when returning to Kerbin, the easiest way to land is to just send down a capsule with a parachute and heat shield into the water

[@snowboyz0825]

Yo you got this idea from me! Commented on the solid rocket booster vid. I'm not mad, honestly just happy

[@snowboyz0825]

@@robotrick6891 It is possible, pretty hard though. Done it myself

[@robotrick6891]

You can press alt+LClick to copy stuff, but ctrl+Z is also a creative way to do that

[@circuitgamer7759]

You beat me to it :)

[@MattStryker]

@@circuitgamer7759 He beat me to it too. I love alt-click.

[@sine_nomine_ct]

Undoing in KSP is too unstable and unpredictable. I hate using strg+z

[@bjboss1119]

Oh really? I have only ever used the ctrl Z method

[@tim.1576]

Jeez, I finally know the key bind to copy things now. I did it the Ctrl+Z way all along

[@theencolony5595]

Here's a couple tips: if you alt-click a stack, it will copy the parts If you open the actuation toggles on the RCS parts, you can enable "control by throttle", allowing them to be used like regular engines

[@LLDJ_]

finaly someone who isen't stupid

[@JMetal_enjoyer]

@@LLDJ_ considered running your comment through a spell check before talking about people being stupid?

[@user-iu8mt6ps5p]

@@JMetal_enjoyer 😐

[@emanuelkubrikstanni4324]

@@JMetal_enjoyer :|

[@plane15man]

@@JMetal_enjoyer :|

[@dawica]

Engineering Advice: - You should put more effort on minimizing weight. The rocket equation means that removing 1 kg of dry mass is *much* more effective than adding 1 kg of fuel. For example, the Mk I cockpit is one of the heaviest single-kerbal command modules in the game. The Mk I Lander Can is nearly half the mass - You can improve FPS and decrease flop by using larger fuel tanks. As you found, the tanks all have roughly the same mass ratio, so fewer, larger tanks will be more rigid while holding the same fuel and being the same mass. - As you found out, it's not a good idea to add a payload right at the start. If you aren't doing careful mathematics, you can't know how much your rocket will be able to lift before you build it. - Make sure you're using small, lightweight upper stages. Up until the final design, your final stages were missing out on a lot of delta-v because of how much extra mass in engines and empty tanks they were carrying.

[@catiku5969]

I like how he specifically added the docking ports so he'll be able to save bill later. He just knows he will abandon him

[@idontwantahandlethough]

Sometimes I abandon them _on purpose_ so just so I have to do an epic mission to save them later! Except Jeb, he never gets ditched (on purpose, at least.. he _does_ have a tendency to accidentally tip over all my landers :|)!

[@catiku5969]

@@idontwantahandlethough lol

[@Hotrob_J]

Ctrl+Z in kerbal is pretty broken. It can even cause memory leaks in crafts where you use it, so I try not to when I can avoid it

[@yesseru]

@@idontwantahandlethough uh

[@charlesgarlets5362]

Hey RC, I love the channel, and I have some tips for you about KSP. 1. In the editor, you can press the 3 buttons above the symmetry to show center of mass, aerodynamics, and thrust 2. In flight, there are a few buttons on the bottom left. the bottom purple one is very useful for showing flight info like apoapsis, periapsis, and when you will hit them. 3. You can enable/disable fuel crossfeed throughout decouplers when you right click on them (to prevent fuel going though to different stages) 4. In the editor, there are 5 blue buttons at the top. The 2nd one allows you to make button presses or actions (like pressing numbers on keyboard) that can do actions, like toggle an engine or extend solar panels I hope this can be useful.

[@chri-k]

5. The CTRL-Z copy method is unfavorable, undoing is very unstable

[@pr0hobo]

@@chri-k yeah use alt-click

[@OlaftheGreat]

Kerbal Space Program is one of the few games where making something usless and incredibly stupid requires legitimate knowledge and skill to pull off correctly

[@AkashWShah]

I swear the wiggly rocket is the most cursed thing I've ever seen I love it

[@Denamic]

It's actually more efficient to have 1 double size fuel tank than 2 smaller ones, even of the amount of fuel is the same, as joints can be a bit wibbly wobbly and end up magicking energy away into the nether instead of making you go more up. Especially if it's a load bearing joint.

[@thirsty_yt6481]

This dude is literally the definition of "more is better"

[@ryanspence5831]

4:41 you’re wrong, it calculates the mass of physicsless parts by adding it to the parent part’s mass

[@chri-k]

Which can sometimes have very unforeseen consequences on weird rocked designs ( like these “only X” rockets )

[@eddieguyvh4765]

I'm speechless. While doing almost everything wrong, you still manage to achieve quite challenging goals in this game! From the building to the staging, everything is insane! This game was meant for that, and you've earned my subscription. You're joining Stratz, Matt, Scott and associates. You're like the unprofessional version of them, I feel like watching a hamster on cocaine and I love it! Keep doing what you do! (All is meant as a compliment, by the way ;) )

[@Shoteaux2]

hamster on cocaine watafak

[@Sintarzus]

It's humbling for all us idiots out there. His builds reminds me of my first ones. Four layers of boosters, going double on engines for 15% more efficiency, all that stuff.

[@AmryL]

On top of all the other tips that people have given you: if you click on the 'Total delta-V' number at the bottom of the stage bar (bottom right in the VAB, bottom left just above the attitude gauges while in flight), the stage bar expands and gives you useful stats fot that stage, like Thust-to-weight, burntime at max throttle and delta-V. On top of that, in the VAB the DELTA-V button in the app-bar allows you to set the parameters for those calculations. You can check quickly your T2W of the final stage on say Minmus, which is in low gravity and in vacuum.

[@jmejuniper]

Protip: You can hold alt while dragging them to duplicate :D You can also enable "control by throttle" on the RCS, which basically makes them an engine.

[@ZeLunatic]

10:48 ah yes, the good old unintentional "Check yo stagin'!" PSAs mandatory in every KSP video. :)

[@haph2087]

The last thing an astronaut on the pad wants to hear is "I guess we are doing a decoupler test? The decoupler appears to work properly!"

[@Hibbyhubby]

i just found this channel and i love the quality of your work!! keep it up

[@felixcaskey4193]

Crazy what an engineer can do with a compressed air tank.

[@thatguybrody4819]

With what this is, I'm both impressed at how successful this was without a visit from the Kraken.

[@wr1ght939]

I’d love to see the rapid fuel tank purging concept get used!

[@ReidCaptain]

I want to try it more seriously at some point because it's just so funny to watch

[@wr1ght939]

@@ReidCaptain For sure! Can’t wait to see what you might do with it!(No pressure of course!)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I think there is a video where someone ttys to reach orbit only using the force of decouplers. it is quite the .... interesting sight

[@safehavenonice6431]

In case no one else let you know: There's an option you can use in the *decouplers* to disable crossflow between stages. Good for use in disposable booster stages. Edit: A wise Scot also told me that the max G's you hit in atmosphere ideally shouldn't top 2 or 3, otherwise you're just wasting thrust pushing around air.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

yup, when any other part of the rocket besides the engine starts to glow red, you're going too fast.

[@eekee6034]

14:16 Pogo spaghetti! :D Rather more intellectually, you can look at TWR -- thrust to weight ratio -- to see how it'll take off. Click a stage thingy (with the orange top bar) for extra info. One of the 'apps' is a big-ish panel which configures which data to show for stages; it has checkboxes for several things including TWR. The top of the panel is all about TWR; it controls which body it's calculated for, and how deep into its atmosphere. Rockets always need a TWR over 1.0 to take off and to enter orbit. (Spaceplanes can get away with less within the atmosphere.) It can be interesting to play with the controls and see how things change. Some rockets - the ones with the best vacuum efficiency - lose a lot of power at Kerbin sea level, but experimenting with these controls shows they get quite good sooner than you'd think.

[@patrikcath1025]

You make me feel like an expert at the game, thanks

[@hand13932]

Control Z copying causes crashes because assets get stored in ram and never unload, so the more you copy and use copied parts the more likely it is to spill over and muck everything up Edit: oh, this is conjecture, by the way. I just know others have that issue.

[@Hazmatguy117]

Dude, your floppy silicone rockets are cracking me up haha

[@asparagusstaging430]

You can see the thrust to weight ratio in the editor.

[@hinglemcgringleberry]

seems like your ship is just ...excited to see space.

[@ajdinhalilcevic6270]

Considering the means of propulsion, this is just a giant bottle rocket.

[@minecriteo6423]

me: *lands 0.001 m/s over the stress limit, everything explodes and everyone dies* him: 11:54

[@RagerBlazer1]

You know that when Reid Captain uploads a video its already chaotic...

[@callumprice1710]

That amazing thumbnail is soo good.

[@tech_of_steel20official]

Reid: Shows footage from saving Jeb at the start of the video. Me: Hey! I just watched that.🙂

[@thewanderer4564]

Here are a couple of tips: Put a cargo bay somewhere there, offset the drill, solar panels, and radiators into it for aerodynamics. Autostrut EVERYTHING! Offset the engines into the monopropellant tanks. Use some mods like TweakScale and other part mods. Offset everything to your satisfaction!

[@guywiththeheadphones]

The closer your engines are to you center of mass, the better your thrust is going to be. Also it's much more stable when you've got wobbly engines.

[@Calbeck]

"Welcome aboard the Wiggle Worm! Barf bags are twenty Kerdollars each."

[@goobermcboogerballs1420]

One way to concerve fuel is not increasing the throttle to you until you have reached the upper atmosphere. The air resistance is really high near the ground and all your doing is wasting fuel.

[@VictusUnus]

In the early days of KSP, there was a weird bug/quirk in how RCS was first implemented. You could slap a RCS thruster on a small probe and get incredible amounts of delta V.

[@the5thbandityep480]

when you angle the boosters towards the fuel tank in the first rocket, some of the energy is wasted as it's cancelled out by the other opposite thruster and the elastic force of the rocket

[@Terminarch]

Instead of using Undo for copy, just hold Alt when clicking on what you want to copy. It chains down to whatever is attached to it.

[@eramires]

those fuel tanks flexing made my crack up so much 😆😆😆

[@ashercd6487]

"How much fuel do you want?" Reid Captain: Yes

[@TraficconePremium]

Thanks for the science lesson

[@marshmallowsgamer9405]

Ctrl+z is the undo command and even tho it can let you copy stuff it's easier to just hold alt and click the part or cluster of parts you want to copy

[@theburgerbox9576]

you can copy stuff by holding ALT while clicking on a thing Its really useful

[@siyacer]

That rocket seems happy to see you

[@MaximillionBucks]

A lot of the time when KSP "crashes" it can eventually fix itself given enough time. Anything that makes it lag too much will trigger the window prompting to close it, but if you don't close it, it will usually come back.

[@cdburner5911]

Your rocket wiggled itself to orbit!

[@bobjoebo8933]

Thank you bonnie!

[@O5MO]

You can click on the stage in build mode and when flying to see its parameters, including TWR, instead of guessing did you put enough engines to lift off.

[@deanb500]

To copy stuff, hold the ALT key as you click a group and it holds a ghosted version of the part group and leaves the originals attached.

[@iainbagnall4825]

Yeah monoprop will draw from all the tanks on the rocket regardless of stack separator fuel valve settings etc so you gotta watch your level yourself, its a bug. Its caught me out a few times when I use very minimalist service modules on return capsules/eve ascent vehicles etc where i set rcs to fore by throttle and use the big thrusters as orbital manoeuvering engines a bit like soyuz and find manouevers from earlier int he mission have drawn from the monoprop I thought I'd valved off and RCS thrust disabled correctly to ensure I have fuel left for final orbital docking or retro burns.

[@mamathapaladi5069]

This guy is good at science

[@tommyb1088]

1:08 You can also duplicate parts by moving them while holding the ALT key on Windows, or RSHIFT key (the SHIFT key on the right side of your keyboard) on Linux.

[@thekingofeverything9829]

I love my videos thank you for making them they make my day

[@shakumyn]

Amazing Assuming that in KSP monopropellant is hydrazine, like in real life.. Well, each time these rockets explode in mid-air, an ecological catastrophe probably happens on Kerbin

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

and with so many tiny tanks, it would be the equivalent of a chemical shotgun

[@drake52]

I remember using rcs as my main propulsion in space flight simulator

[@melancholicwaffle]

some of the wobble in the second stage is coming from feedback with SAS; I find it can be alleviated by deactivating it and correcting attitude with more gentle control inputs

[@Kingstallington]

fyi you can check the thrust to weight of a stage in the VAB by clicking it on the right hand side

[@sebastianlippold9120]

At 15:20, another reason why it has so much delta V is because the isp increases the less atmosphere there is

[@acompletelynormalhuman6392]

their are fule lines that basically do what you were doing with the flow priority

[@maestro-zq8gu]

I did something like this a few days ago. I used large tanks and had every part using auto strut and rigid attachment.

[@Boop__Doop]

Disable crossfeed in the tanks and enable advanced tooltips in options and autostrut everything

[@rampagerslife]

'gaeming' is also my go-to name for saves lol

[@RandomBeefAR]

rocket goes wiggle wiggle wiggle

[@Radical_Larry]

You can turn off the fuel flow thing in the decouplers

[@emilbecker8970]

Seeing wingpieces and stoff not be symetrical hurtig my brain

[@hotmailcompany52]

The problem of the tanks wobbling reminds of really old ksp :) when we had one 1m fuel tank and three engines. Truly the "good" old days ;P

[@Totally_Bonkers]

in my early days this was one of the first things i did. It got to the mun, almost landed but had too much power and i crashed. I then turned that into a liquid fuel rocket.

[@Forbiddina]

13:14 you got a visit from the notorious deep space kraken.

[@odarkeq]

I've been able to correct for some of the 'oscillating' you referenced at 14:45 by turning off SAS and stabilizing by hand. When you have a high torque, the Automatic Stabilizer can over-correct and then have to catch itself, over-correcting again in the opposite direction and creating a feedback loop of oscillation. This was actually a problem for NASA in the Apollo 6 mission, and they had to solve it by putting a Kerbal inside the engine to lightly pinch off the fuel nozzle. The previous sentence is not true.

[@aarononeale7727]

u can use fuel lines from side tanks to mid tank to fix draining

[@JamUsagi]

Past Reid: Your next line is: “Why don’t you just stage each fuel tank separately to minimise weight?” Present Me: Why don’t you just stage each fuel tank separately to minimise weight? Present Me: *:O*

[@vojtechsejkora1554]

Btw Alt+Click allow you to copy to mouse what you select and do not take from vessel.

[@theneonbop]

Important so you don't have to deal with fuel tank priorities: you can set most decouplers so fuel can't travel through them, making the bottom stage not able to access the fuel from the top stage

[@ReidCaptain]

I tried that, but I couldn't ever get the crossfeed to stop. I was going to look into it more, but just watching the tanks wasn't that annoying

[@vesuvius8268]

I cried when the rocket started wobbling

[@InterlacedTech]

wow that was *"very professional"* for an engineer like you. XD

[@tomtoms8480]

I want to try this myself!

[@magoosheres2526]

the kraken in this video

[@Fox420]

hey i dunno if you know about the trick with RCS thrusters, their force increases as they get closer to the centre of mass of the craft (to facilitate even torque during rotation for oddly placed thrusters) so you can get silly thrust if you jam them right in there good and proper ;)

[@ryusuki9151]

I don't understand what happening but I like to watch thing like this

[@PRODUCERSYN]

bro actually payed attention in math and science type classes

[@BradleyWhistance]

More boosters!

[@jakemckee1923]

I passed by and thought, “I know that thumbnail!!”

[@FatOnAxis]

The real.

[@Purman99]

reminds me of this snake ship my friend accidentally made

[@SirFloofy001]

or instead of hitting control Z you can hold control or alt (cant remember which) when you click and it will copy everything in the stack without having to remove anything from the stack

[@6sakibean9]

You should do a video where you circumnavigate Kerban without running out of fuel in the quickest way possible

[@lordsofgaming1060]

13:19 BEWARE OF THE KRAKEN

[@chillenchilla4]

alt left click your stack to copy and in the blue rectangle in staging shows the twr and dv for each stage

[@soupguy9000]

Hey! You can shift-click to copy where the cursor is instead of grabbing then undoing

[@ReidCaptain]

Nice, will keep that in mind

[@Venym_Music]

I don’t mean to compare you to someone else but your content reminds me a lot of Nile red’s content if he played games instead of doing chemistry…however I’d like to add that I found you and instantly enjoyed the ideas you had for your ideas and the games that you played. All the scientifically accurate physics games won’t run on my pc so your videos are just like my random thoughts about games lmao! I’m very happy to be a subscriber as I’m usually always entertained

[@kingboik5902]

me using the refiner and ore to make inf money this dude is actually using it for good

[@samueljames0908]

Just disable crossfeed on the boosters' connections to prevent them from consuming the middle tank's fuel.

[@Pretagonist]

Does crossed also include rcs fuel? I'm not sure.

[@LLDJ_]

if you alt-click a stack, it will copy the parts

[@aidanparkes3168]

ik im kinda late but if you click the stage it counter it gives you important info like mass burn tine TWR

[@monad_tcp]

elon: reuses the entire rocket. reid: burns through tanks and fuel with 1000 stages

[@aviationist1018]

I’m gonna get so smart learning equations

[@josephpentony4804]

1:08 or could just alt click. It copies a part and everything attached to it with only one simple click. No control a needed.

[@SapphirosCZ]

Make floppy rocket, for more kinetic energy.

[@Barnaclebeard]

0:44 "bolth"

[@moazmohammed2430]

Can you try to play space flight simulator (sfs) Also what is the best besige flyer You can make?

[@mosesracal6758]

This is like Soviet Doctrine in action - more boosters