kOS Ascent Guidance
Tutorials for the Kerbal Operating System mod: each lesson pairs a kOS mechanic with a derivation you do yourself. Six arcs and sixteen lessons are planned; the first six pages are written. The scripts are the ones I fly with.
| Lesson | What it covers | Arc |
|---|---|---|
| 01 · Cooked control and the flight loop | LOCK STEERING and THROTTLE, WAIT UNTIL, HEADING(): a hardcoded climb and one pitch-over | Make it fly |
| 02 · Functions and the pitch program | pitch as a function of altitude: derive the lerp, then clamp it | Make it fly |
| 03 · Staging and the delta-V budget | Tsiolkovsky, burn time from mass flow, and autostaging debounce | Make it fly |
| 04 · Telemetry and the loss budget | log a run to CSV at a fixed rate and break the delta-V down into losses | Measure it |
| 04a · Where the delta-V went | reading those logs: gravity, drag and steering losses | Measure it |
| Flight log analyser | drop flight-log CSVs in and get overlaid plots | Measure it |
More
- Lesson plan, all sixteen lessons, and writing notes on how they should be built.
- The .ks scripts: launch, circularize, intercept, rover and more.
- Δv computer and orbit viewer, browser tools for orbital maneuvers.