So You Want To Go To Space

Part 3: Launch

Your rocket stands before you, the product of your blood, sweat, and tears. It's finally time to send it off to the stars. But... how do you actually fly a rocket, anyways? Good news! You don't have to, the Remote Control System can take care of that for you. Let's make one.

The Remote Control System is the command and control center for all of your spacecrafts. From within, you can see a list of all your crafts, get details on them, and even configure the various modules. But most importantly, you can launch your rocket! Right click the Remote Control System to be presented with the craft list.

So far, there's just one craft here, the one you just built! It might have a different name, the number is randomly generated. Click on your craft to view the details screen.

On the left, you can see your craft. At the top, the drop down can be expanded to show craft statistics such as position and mass. The button at the top right will switch to map mode, but this is only useful if you have a terrain scanner on the craft. Any warnings are shown at the bottom of this window. Currently we see a "No Batteries!" warning, but this can be ignored since we don't have anything using power (yet).

In the upper right, you can change the name of the craft. Just below that is the "Modules" button which will show you a list of all the modules on your craft, and let you configure them. Below that are the resource meters, these will show the exact contents of your tanks if you hover over them. Finally at the bottom of the right pane is the long awaited "Launch" button. Clicking this will launch your rocket to the stars! But before we do that, let's explore the rest of the Remote Control System.

Clicking the "Modules" button will give you a list of all installed modules.

Here you can see this craft has 9 struts, 19 fuel tanks, one fuel valve, 5 thrusters, and a controller. The modules without any configuration are greyed out slightly, but the Satellite Controller does have some configs. Let's click it and see.

That's a scary looking button. I'm not sure what it does. Probably shouldn't click it...yet.

With that done, right click twice to return to the craft details screen. Finally you can press the long awaited button. So what are you waiting for? To the stars!

Once the rocket leaves your screen, you can go back to the Remote Control System to check up on it. As you can see, the rocket made it to space!

Now, you can start using all those useful modules you attached...oh, right. Well maybe now is a good time to go read up on all the many modules you can experiment with in your future space voyages.