I re-enacted Gravity's final scene in KSP. The station de-orbit and landing.
I tried to video it with fraps but it was only after I tabbed out of the game that I realized after a good 3-4 hours of trying and failing and trying and failing and FINALLY succeeding to to it... somewhere along the lines I had mixed up the on/off record toggle. I was too busy ingame to realize it wasn't recording once the scene started playing out perfectly. Because I thought I was recording, no screenshots were taken. I'll see about trying again, but with how many takes it took, I'm not sure I have the motivation.
Here's the abridged version though:
I had built a station replica based on the fictional Tiangong-3 (named Kerbgong-3 in this scenario) seen in the movie Gravity, with an accompanying Soyuz lookalike (stockalike) module attached, set using HyperEdit at exactly 71,000 altitude so I would only need a minimum of Delta-V to de-orbit. The scene was staged to begin during an EVA that I would begin after de-orbiting the station using some cleverly placed mini SRBs.
The trick is to complete the EVA part of the scene before hitting atmo, because during EVA, your kerbal doesn't fly with the station anymore. Otherwise he gets quickly 'blown away' by the wind and the station continues on without you. So, the mid-air EVA scene in the movie is impossible because of game mechanics.
With that in mind, I make my approach as fast as possible. In keeping with the movie, I enter the station's farthest hatch into the storage module. Using the Crew Manifest mod, I simply transfer Jeb from the station to the Soyuz descent module, which takes about as long as it does in the movie. During this time, the station enters a spin on its own.
I didn't expect that spin, as all my other attempts at the scene did NOT cause a spin, or at least I didn't notice it. By the time I was ready to stage, I realized I didn't have the decoupling staged correctly at all, and wasn't able to find it. So I had to manually cursor-hunt for the docking ring itself, rather than the decoupler I had placed ahead of it. In retrospect I could have spammed space... but then I wouldn't have been surprised by what happened next.
In the midst of solar panels and radiators shearing off, the whole station now fully aglow in orange flame, the spin finally reached a critical point and broke Kerbgong-3 into two chunks. In my frustration, I had given up hunting for the docking ring and was now reorganizing my staging. The break happened around the same time I finally found the decoupler and staged it out. In my haste, I had also screwed up my Soyuz staging, but it was mostly saved by my self-reminder to continue spamming spacebar.
So, tumbling in four or five pices now is the remainder of Kerbgong-3 and the Soyuz stockalike. Debris is everywhere, and at least one thing blew up (no idea what). Realizing I had finally done it, I looked at Jeb, wondering what his reaction was...
Abject maniacal laughter.
Jebediah Kerman was certifiably fucking insane.
After touching down on the surface, chutes working correctly still, bombs of station parts falling all around me... I took one last look at him...
... looking back at me with that smug little snack-eating grin of his. Fucking nutjob.
On typing this out, suddenly I want to try recording it a 20th time.
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program (Read 11705 times)