Later, this will make it easier to better estimate what launch vehicle you'll need for your missions. It is good practice to first construct your payload and only later build the rocket that is supposed to bring it into space (the latter is also often referred to as a “launch vehicle”). So the rules for designing rockets are simple: Make them light, make them slim, and give them plenty of power. A wide, short 'pancake rocket' will experience much more drag than a tall slim one, because air can only move out of the way of the rocket at limited speeds as well. This is why real life rockets and planes are streamlined: They are shaped in a manner that makes it easy to part the air in front and lead it around the rocket. Air acts much like a liquid, and as such your rocket will have to push it aside continuously on its way to orbit. A rocket is simply the attempt to push mass through the air into the void. Overall, the mass of your vehicle is far more important than drag, but a good design still makes valuable contribution to your rocket's efficiency. This is called orbital speed and requires about 4000 m/s of Delta-V for Kerbin.ĭrag decreases almost exponentially until you clear the top of Kerbin's atmosphere (which is at 69,078m). Gravity will continually pull a craft straight down toward the ground but by traveling sideways fast enough, the craft continually avoids falling downward straight enough to hit the atmosphere, much less the surface of Kerbin. You also have to gain sufficient horizontal velocity to, as a respected author once defined flight, throw yourself at the ground and keep missing. But simply gaining altitude isn't enough. Gravity decreases with the square of the distance as you move away from the center of Kerbin. The main rules for getting an object into space from Kerbin and keeping it there (which is called achieving a stable orbit) are fairly easy to explain: Your craft must overcome gravity and drag.

Kerbal space program gravity turn flip