Tutorial: Getting Started

Introduction

This tutorial will get you up and running in RP-0. We'll cover a couple of the easily-missed bits during installation, then dive right into gameplay. At the end of this tutorial you should have breached the Earth's atmosphere and have enough science to unlock tech nodes required for orbital launches.

Installation

We suggest you install RP-0 via the CKAN.

• Texture pack: Unless you are running KSP on x64, you will not be able to use the 8192 texture pack for RSS. Get the 4096 or 2048 pack instead. However, you can manually download the 8192 pack and swap in, say, the Earth textures from it--that should work.
• Recommended mods: Please download all the mods that RO and RP-0 recommend (it's a tab on CKAN). That will get you the full experience. Note that some of the recommended mods make things harder. Check here for more info, and make sure you are ok with the changes they make before installing them!
• Procedurals: Make sure you get Procedural Fairings, Procedural Parts, and a procedural wings mod (either Procedural Wings or [preferred] B9 Procedural Parts).
• Info mods: It's highly recommended you grab either MechJeb or KER; you'll want some way to show delta V values. RCS Build Aid is also very useful.
• Part packs: Note, however, that RP-0 doesn't support all the part packs that Realism Overhaul does. FASA is decently supported and if you want more than RP-0's base parts you can install that too. However, it's perfectly possible to play RP-0 with only the required mods, so don't feel you have to add part packs.
• Extra bits: Note that RealSolarSystem may not be selected by default. Make sure you add it or you will be playing in the Kerbin system and RP-0's contracts will fail.
• RAM issues: Since RP-0 doesn't need that many part packs, your RAM issues will be lighter than with a full RO install. However, if you're on Windows we highly recommend running KSP in DirectX11 mode.
• Depending on how you installed RP-0 and RSS, you may need to install "SmokeScreen" to be able to see flames and smoke.

Starting

Now it's time to start playing RP-0! Note that the first start will take a while to build the ModuleManager patch cache. When KSP finishes loading, the planet in the background will be Earth. Click Start. If you haven't yet, go into Settings and select Earth Time (rather than Kerbin time). Now choose to start a new game, pick your name and title, and then select your difficulty level. We recommend Moderate or Hard, but no matter what you choose change "Funds Penalties" to 100% since that controls building upgrade costs. When done, click accept and then click to start the game and away you go!

At The Cape

You find yourself at what looks like Cape Canaveral in the early evening of December 31st, 1950; it's January 1st 1951 over in Greenwich, England.

The first thing you're going to want to do is dismiss the tip window. Now you need to deal with the settings windows: click close on the TAC Life Support window (accepting defaults), and click "Select Preset" on the Kerbal Construction Time window. Select the RP0 preset, and click save.

Next we'll apply our first upgrades in KCT. Now click "Spend Upgrades" and choose the Upgrades option. Sink all your points into the first VAB rate--we'll be building rockets to start with. Then click Close.

Your upgrade window should look something like this now:

Mission 1

Now it's time to go to Mission Control and check assigned contracts, so click to enter the Mission Control building. If it's hard to see, don't be afraid to warp until morning; you have plenty of time. Once you enter Mission Control, you'll see some contracts. Some contracts are already active. Don't accept first available contract as it will expire in 1 day and if you have KCT mod you won't be able to finish it in time. Focus on those that are already active.

My First Rocket

Enter the VAB, let's build our first sounding rocket! Dismiss the tip and then look to the left; you'll note that a fair few parts are marked "Non-RP0." This means that they are not properly placed or costed by RP-0. Some parts say "RP0 nocost"; these are parts in the correct tech node but don't have correct cost. If you want the full RP-0 experience, please don't use either of those sets of parts.

We're going to build a small sounding rocket. The first thing to note about this rocket is that it will be unguided. You'll be able to stage (and shut off the engine if you wish) but you won't be able to make it pitch, yaw, or roll. For that reason, you'll need a very high off-the-pad thrust to weight ratio, but happily such a thing is very possible. There will be a warning dialog in the VAB throughout construction letting you know that the rocket is uncontrollable (it'll say insufficient avionics mass, but that's fine--the sounding rocket avionics core will never allow control).

Building the rocket:

• Give your vessel a name.
• Put down a sounding rocket avionics package
• Attach the thermometer and barometer to the top of the avionics ring, balancing each other.
• Go to Action Group mode and add action groups for the "Perform experiment" option on the two instruments and your avionics core (the "Analyze Telemetry" option).
• Now attach a Procedural Nosecone to the top of the avionics ring, and change the diameter to 0.3m and the length to whatever looks fairly streamlined (0.6m is probably good). Give it whatever texture you like.
• The nose section is completed; now add a procedural tank and place it under the avionics core. Make it, too, 0.3m wide, but relatively long (~1.6m). Change the type from Structural to Fuselage (if it's not already on Fuselage). Don't worry about the 86% utilization; for this type of tank, it's the approximate amount of the cylinder volume that's actually used by the capsule tank(s) inside, and 86% is about right for the two propellant tanks.
• Attach an Aerobee Sustainer engine to the bottom of the tank, then right-click the tank and choose to autofill it with propellants for the engine (IRFNA and Aniline/Furfuryl Alchohol).
• Now add some fins to the base of the rocket, if you're using B9 proc wings you will need to use right-click drag on the sliders to get fine enough control. Once you've added the fins, right-click and set their strength to 0.3 to save mass (they'll be edge-on to the wind, so not much strength is needed).
• Examine your TWR. If it's less than ~2.75 at sea level (MechJeb->Delta V stats window, click All Stats, SLT column; KER->atmospheric mode, min TWR) then shorten your procedural tank. The high SLT is needed here so the rocket can quickly reach a speed where the fins can stabilize the rocket.
• Now go to rotate mode, then click on the avionics core. Turn off angle snap, then click the blue ring and tilt the rocket slightly towards the opening of the VAB. This gives the rocket a slight eastward lean, to let it cover some distance (and to try to keep it away from the rest of the KSC in case something goes wrong).
• Add a launch clamp. That's your last part. Right-click on the clamp, and click "Enable Pump" to keep your rocket topped off until launches (it's not a problem now, but later when you start using cryogenic fuels some fuel may boil off before you launch and/or you will want to run the engine for a second before releasing the clamps; the pumps in the clamps keep everything topped off).
• Finally, check out the staging list on the lower right. You want your engine only in the first stage, then the launch clamp at the top. Firing the engines before releasing the rocket makes sure that the engine ignites properly, and helps get through the initial firing period where engines have a higher failure rate (if using TestFlight) and a slow rampup to full thrust. You don't need to worry about consuming fuel because the pump keeps the tank topped off. If your engine fails to ignite (use the F3 log to check), you can right-click the engine and manually activate it.

With the rocket done, click the "Save" button, then the "Launch" button. If you have KCT installed (as you should) it will bring up a dialog. Choose to build the rocket, then exit the VAB, otherwise skip to Go For Launch. Now, click the KCT icon and it will show you a list of building vessels; click the warp-to button to warp to completion of the rocket. Once it's done, click the rollout button, then warp to completion of rollout. If it's not daylight, use "Warp to daylight" to warp until you can see things--unless you prefer a night launch! Finally, click the green-text Launch button next to the vessel on the KCT window.

Go for Launch!

With your bird on the pad, it's time for launch! Once everything stabilizes, hit space (or whatever you bound stage to) and your engine will ignite. Hit space again to decouple the clamp and off you go! Make sure to do all your experiments once you're flying, and choose to transmit them all (pure-data experiments have no transmission penalty, and all experiments return full value the first time--no more grind). Note that there is no data from experiments done on Earth's surface, so don't expect to get anything from before launch (or later when landed or splashed, for recoverable vessels).

If you break 50km and/or the biome you're over changes, take another set of readings. Now watch as your rocket makes a gentle arc and then impacts the ground (or the water, if you're far enough out).

We've Got A Problem

Due to TestFlight, engine reliability is simulated. The Aerobee sustainer is a very early and finicky engine, and for that reason it might cut out before you finish your burn. If it does, go back to the VAB and load your vessel, then either choose to build it again (and repeat the steps) or launch it directly (if you don't have KCT). The more you launch, the more data you build up and the more reliable your engine becomes.

Higher, Faster

Once you complete your first flight, go back to Mission Control. You should see a Sounding Rocket (Low) contract. Accept it. If it's for an altitude under whatever apogee you hit with your first rocket, repeat the Go For Launch process again, noting that you won't be able to get science again until you hit 50 kilometers apogee and/or reach a biome you haven't before. Then come back to this step. Once it's higher than what you can reach with your rocket, it's time to build a full-on early sounding rocket, i.e. a booster and a lower-TWR sustainer. We're going to model it off the WAC Corporal / Aerobee (just as our one-stage one was modeled off a shorter version of the WAC sustainer).

Building the WAC

Go to the VAB and load your sounding rocket. We're going to lengthen it and add a kick stage. The steps:

• Detach the launch clamp
• Click the avionics core to pick it up, then hit space. That will reset orientation.
• Extend the procedural tank until the sea level TWR of the rocket is down to 2.0. If the fins don't stay at the bottom of the tank, move them down.
• From the structural tab, grab a procedural decoupler and place it under the engine. Resize it to 0.3m
• From the engines tab, grab the Tiny Tim kick stage, and place that under the decoupler.
• Click the buttons in the lower left to show Center of Mass and Center of Pressure (KSP calls the latter "center of lift").
• Now add some fins to the Tiny Tim stage, making sure that they are large enough to have the blue CoL icon below the yellow/black CoM icon.
• Finally rotate the whole craft again, then add the clamp back, and lastly reconfigure staging. The clamp and the solid booster and the liquid engine should be in the first stage (from the bottom), and the procedural decoupler should be in the next stage. We need to light the liquid engine at the same time as the solid engine to be sure it lights correctly; if we try to light it only at decouple, the drag the rocket's suffering may lead to the tank vapor being at the bottom of the tank rather than the top, and that can cause the engine to fail to ignite, reporting vapor in the feed lines.

Save the vessel under a new name, then go through the process you went through for your first rocket to get this one to the pad. When prompted choose "Recover Flight and Proceed" to recover any clamps or other debris on the pad; KCT needs a clean pad to launch.

Go for Launch 2.0

With this sounding rocket, you should easily be able to clear 60km, and perhaps get rather higher. You might even reach the Karman line at 100km altitude! (if you do, see the next section for details on how to handle that). The launch procedure for this rocket is slightly more complicated: first stage to light the booster and sustainer and detach the clamp, then immediately stage again to decouple the now-spent booster (the booster only burns for 0.6 seconds). Then ride the rocket up, remembering to do a new set of experiments once you get over 50km in altitude, if you haven't yet, and if you reach a new biome.

With a rocket this powerful, you can also tilt it right (in the VAB) rather more than 5 degrees, and try to get Shores biome science (if you haven't yet) and even Water biome science (if you haven't yet). You might need 20 degrees tilt or more to reach Water; Shores stretch out to sea quite a bit. Repeat the sounding rocket contract - launch sounding rocket process until you've gotten all the biomes this sounding rocket can reach (see below for if you can get above 100km with this rocket).

Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth('s atmosphere)

If the rocket you built above hasn't breached the Karman Line yet, now's the time. If you don't have a Sounding Rocket (Low) contract active, go to Mission Control and accept another. Now go to the VAB and stretch your upper stage even more, such that your sea level TWR is no more than 1.5. That should be plenty to blow past 100km (the Karman line, for the contract) and 130km (the altitude at which KSP considers you in space, i.e. where you can do space science).

Once you've reached space, remember to run all your experiments again and transmit the data. If you haven't gotten Shores and Water science, ride the rocket down to capture that science and transmit back; otherwise just exit to the space center, there's no need to ride the rocket down.

Moving On To New Things

Back at the space center, go to the R&D building. We've got science to spend! After flying all the above missions, you should have plenty of science--on Hard settings, a minimum of 30 science. First, we're going to unlock Early Orbital Rocketry. That will get us some new engines and a new solid motor. Next, unlock Early Avionics. That will get us some 1950s-era guidance units and some new science cores--in particular, some cores that are lighter than the sounding rocket core. It will also get us two new science instruments. Finally, unlock Early Construction. That will give us the ability to build tanks and fairing bases 3.05m (10ft) in diameter, and it will unlock a new, lighter tank type (Default) which is a lighter version of Structural. Exit the R&D center.

Good things take time however, and technology is no exception. Click the KCT icon to bring it up if it isn't showing, and click the Tech tab. Note that only one technology is being researched at a time, and that it (Early Orbital Rocketry) will take about two years to research at the current research rate. However, we can do something about that! Click the Upgrades button. You have a lot of cash on hand, so let's buy a couple points of upgrades (you probably also got a free point from Science). Now go to the R&D tab of the Upgrades window and sink that into the Development rate. At 8 science a year rather than 5 science a year, Early Orbital Rocketry will only take a year and a quarter to research. If you've got more funds, feel free to increase the R&D rate further.

Now you have some choices. You can just warp until all three nodes are done researching and go directly to the next tutorial (Reaching Orbit), or you can continue to fly sounding rocket missions while you're waiting. Indeed, once Early Orbital Rocketry unlocks, you can upgrade your Aerobee Sustainer--load up an existing sounding rocket craft file, go to Action Groups, click on the engine, and then purchase and switch to one of the new configurations. That should let you stretch your sustainer stage, but remember to remove its existing propellants and autofill for the new engine's propellant ratios! You can also make multiple-stage sounding rockets using the Baby Sergeant as a final kick motor and a wide-body fuselage with the top a fairing inside which is the sounding rocket core, the instruments, and the Baby Sergeant. The upgraded sustainer engine will give you enough thrust to do the stage widening. You'll need to make some of those changes (engine swap, stage stretch, wide-body stage, multiple stages) if you want to take on the Sounding Rocket (Medium) contracts which have much higher required altitudes.

Finally, if you have the cash, you can think about upgrading a building, say the launch pad or the tracking station, both of which you'll want at level 2 before very long.

Once you've got all three nodes unlocked, proceed to the next tutorial, Reaching Orbit!