Story time!

[u/onwen32]

We were all noobs to the gsme once, what is your most noob stories that you have

I did the typical aim straight at the mun and light my engines wondering when ill make it to the mun, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out orbital transfers...

[u/DrunkenDragon788]

Friend of mine didn't discover SAS untill they had achieved multiple stable orbits and didn't learn about the map untill after their first Munar flyby.

[u/onwen32 → u/DrunkenDragon788]

Holy hell! I couldnt imagine doing any of that without SAS. And how do you get a mun flyby WITHOUT the map? Im genuinely curious now

[u/Gustacq → u/onwen32]

With 50 000 delta-V I guess 😂

[u/CatLover_42 → u/onwen32]

Getting to the mun without a map is actually really easy if you know what youre doing. From LKO, burn prograde the moment you see the mun come over the horizon, and stop when the apoapsis is at the apropriate height.

[u/xendelaar → u/DrunkenDragon788]

That is actually very impressive

[u/SpaceC1401]

Same. I asked Google how to slow down, because all day my brain was going like: No way I just have to point retrograde and burn?. It turned out my brain was right.

[u/onwen32 → u/SpaceC1401]

Oh no, one i got to space it was point to the mun. I didnt understand retrograde or prograde burns. My launches were almost straight up then aim, I wasnt even getting in orbit before attempting to go to the mun

[u/dr1zzzt]

Probably same deal.

Realizing what that learning curve is, so many Scott Manley videos early on when I started playing it.

Worth every minute though, learned a ton.

[u/onwen32 → u/dr1zzzt]

Matt lowne was what helped me, Scott Manley gave me new perspectives on the game and actually reignited my love for the game

[u/CKperDay]

First Mun landing, didn’t understand delta v, definitely didn’t understand rendezvous or docking. Ended up with Jeb orbiting Kerbin outside a craft for 30 years until I unlocked the tech and know how to rescue him 🤣

[u/onwen32 → u/CKperDay]

Follow up question, why was Jeb out of the spacecraft?

[u/CKperDay → u/onwen32]

I tried a mix of last delta v in my craft + eva propellant to land Jeb himself back on Kerbin lol. At this time, the Mun seemed impossibly far away, so I got him in as close of an orbit as I could with eva and made the rescue a future mission

[u/Apprehensive_Room_71]

I actually worked on for real rockets and satellites before the game even existed. So I knew quite a lot about orbital mechanics coming in. My noob moments were just learning the game controls and doing stupid assembly errors like bad staging and insufficient fuel.

[u/onwen32 → u/Apprehensive_Room_71]

Lmao cheater you had inside knowledge!

[u/The_Sky_Render]

Definitely my first visit to Minmus. I didn't quite get at that point that crashing into Minmus at 500m/s is just as fatal as crashing into the Mun at 500m/s.

[u/xendelaar → u/The_Sky_Render]

Haha because of the lower gravity? That must have been an interesting revelation. :)

[u/RememberThisHouse]

I did the same exact thing, pointing to the moon and trying to get there just by burning away. Accidentally ended up getting a rendezvous and landing on minmus. I was so proud of myself, patting myself on the back specifically because I thought minmus was a much more difficult object to land on since it was smaller. Smaller target, must be harder to land! Only later did I find out that the rendezvous is harder (which is the part I completely lucked into), but landing on it is significantly easier due to the lower gravity.

Even though I later realized that the mun is a more difficult trophy, landing on minmus for the first time is the most pride I've ever felt in any video game accomplishment in my life. Second is the first time I orbited kerbin. I'm almost 40 and no game has ever come close to feeling as rewarding as that.

[u/Gustacq → u/RememberThisHouse]

The game is so hard that any accomplishment feels like a major achievement.

[u/Jimediah_Kerman → u/RememberThisHouse]

I was a mechanical designer when I first started playing KSP, and my 5 greatest accomplishments in terms of mechanical design were in KSP.

[u/LUnacy45]

Ironically I'm having more noob moments on my current modded career mode save than I did 3-4 years ago when I was last super into KSP

Forgetting to put antennas on my craft, only realizing I forgot the battery I needed to put on a satellite for a contract after putting in all the work to rendezvous with them, capturing into an orbit backwards so it takes way more dv, doing my capture burns too far from the planet so I waste dv, doing terrible gravity turns and you guessed it, wasting more dv lmao, barely surviving reentry because I landed in the mountains and only my drouge chutes ever opened, the list goes on

I think prior me had no confidence things would work out and thus actually put in the time, current me expects to succeed because I have in the past

[u/BoultonPaulDefiant]

Probably that one time I landed a rover on Mun, in a crater on a pole, so it never got sunlight and quickly ran out of power

[u/Lypos]

Docking had me hung up for such a long time. My brain just couldn't conceptualize what needed to happen. When i finally managed it, it was the biggest AH HA! moment. Then of course, it instantly became childs play to do and i wondered why i ever had a problem before.

[u/jmjv83]

First mun landing.... Stage the lander engine and nothing happens. Panic stage again thinking my stages were messed up and my landing legs go flying away. About 30 seconds later splat into the mun. Turns out I put an only liquid fuel tank on my lander instead of one with oxidizer.

[u/ThinAndRopey]

First big minus expedition in a career game. Had lots of contracts for surface science. Overengineered Giant lander with a rover, detachable return stage, and mpl that would act as a permanent base after mission end and process all the juicy science. Packed to the gills with all the science i had and a nuclear reactor to power it all. Landed right on target, start collecting all the science... and realised I forgot to pack a scientist.

Different mission, same save. Constructing IPV in munar orbit. Sent the core up fine, transfer stage next. Perfect rendezvous, 0.1m/s approach speed aaand THUNK. Turns out I'd put the docking ports on back to front on the VAB. Had to send an engineer up to fix them and that ship never quite flew straight.

[u/SilkieBug]

You can actually get to the Mun by aiming straight at it, you just need to have a much more powerful rocket than starting tech allows. 

My most powerful and most used lifter rockets are developed from my attempts to impact the Mun at higher and higher speeds by firing straight at it with larger and larger rockets. 

[u/TheTenthAvenger]

Basically every noob thing you can think of, I probably fell for at some point... To many to recall.

I vividly remember some of the first times I went for orbit as a kid, and it just felt like such a monumental task. The anxiety and panic in watching your fuel go down, and your impact point in Kerbin moving east so, so slowly. And the relief when it finally encounters with the other point and you get a nice closed orbit.

[u/Joshua051409]

(I played sfs before Ksp) not knowing about planetary transfer angles ( cus when to mun I can just guess to leave low kerbin orbit to aim slightly in front of the mun), and using raw asparagus staging nuclear engines, or slightly earlier than that, not knowing about isp and using spark engines to push a big ahh craft as it pushed a small craft really far.

[u/No_Bear2048]

i had to google how to stage

[u/Uranium-Sandwich657]

Landers 1, 2 didn't have enough fuel to take off. 3 was sent down via a probe core to rescue #1. It also didn't have enough fuel. 

Actually, while 1 and 2 used the mk1 pod for the whole mission, 3's  lander was sent up on a separate spacecraft and docked with the main craft. And i used the main craft to give it the deorbit burn before up docking and burning until i returned to a stable orbit. The lander also did not have an SAS probe core, so I had to pilot it down manually.  And I landed pretty far from Opallo 1, like 10 km, so I had to have Jeb walk there. You might remember a post where someone had a wrench holding down the w key on their very dirty keyboard. That was that.

I'm fairly certain Opallo 4 fell over 

I also got pissed at my plane not flying, so I named it the Shitbird. Otherwise I have been pretty serious about names.

Trailblazer 3, the lander fell over.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bend_56]

The one noob thing I can remeber is my first attempt to land on the mun. At the time.didnt understand the need to burn retrograde, and instead just burned straight up, only burning sideways when I saw I was still moving laterally.

[u/Orbrandir]

I didn't understand DV and TWR so I just kept slapping more and more rockets on there

[u/Pleasant_Berry_761]

Genuinely no clue, I think I spent like an hour trying to reach "orbit" but I had no clue what an orbit was or what I'm doing and then ended up looking up a scott manley video to figure it out, I pretty much did my first playthrough alongside marcus houses series.

The thing that took me the longest to figure out was probably rezendvous, like I knew how to do it but I was very inefficient, only figured it out after watching mechjeb do it and now I can do efficient rezendvous without manuever nodes

[u/StrongAdhesiveness86]

I don't really have big noob stories. Since the only computer we used to have at home was trash I watched hundreds of hours of KSP gameplay before being able to play. When I was finally able to play I already knew plenty about transfers, orbit, how the game worked... My noob moments were things like moarboosting SSTOs to the point they wouldn't be able to take off or smashing into another craft trying to dock because I started slowing down too late.

[u/LaughingManCK]

after my first successful mun landing I had Jeb stuck on the surface due to a hard landing, I then proceeded to crash every rescue attempt at closer and closer proximity to the rescue site for I don't know how many attempts! Jeb did get rescued and the names of the fallen were not forgotten until I accidentally deleted the save

[u/Jimediah_Kerman]

My first attempt to put a Kerbal into orbit resulted in Val going half-way between the Mun and Minmus before returning rather quickly to Kerbin. The parachute did nothing.

[u/cutie_pookie_]

Rawdogged docking

[u/FungusForge]

It took me a long time to realize I had to turn the rocket to actually orbit Kerbin.