The Kerbal Player's Guide

Chapter 3. Maneuvers

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to perform common maneuvers that will take you to space, establish an orbit, and proceed to other worlds from there.¹

Launching into Orbit

To get a ship into space, you need to launch it. You do this by first designing your ship in the VAB, and then launching it from the launch pad.

The Launch Pad

When you finish designing your rocket in the VAB, your rocket is sent to the launch pad (shown in Figure 3-1). From there, your ship is launched, and your journey to the stars begins.

The launch pad is connected via a driveway to the VAB and is a little to the east of the main complex (shown in the middle right in Figure 3-2). When you’re done designing your ship, it’s wheeled out to the pad, and you take control from there.

Figure 3-1. The launch pad

Figure 3-2. The launch pad, to the east of the rest of the Kerbal Space Center

You can get to the launch pad in one of two ways. You can either click on the pad from the Space Center screen, or you can click on the Launch button in the VAB to take the rocket you’re working on straight to the pad. If you click on the pad from the Space Center, you’ll be asked to select a rocket design you want to send up.

Test Rocket: TKB-01 “Let’s Hope This Works”

Let’s get ...