You can do a true Falcon 9 without mods. When you stage, you need to make sure your second stage has the TWR to push the AP out fast. Then do a boostback burn with the first stage, but it's AP needs to get over 70km. Once you reach the 70km, you can switch back to the Stage 2 and circularise. It's difficult at first but once you try (alot) it gets quite easy.

This just in, Falcon 9 booster stage lands on KZfaq's "Matt Lowne" home. Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, has "No comment" on the matter.

Matt, thats no asteroid, its a kraken egg and its hatching

"Elon Musk, come at me, bro." -Matt Lowne, 2017

The day you take control of SpaceX is the day a rocket explodes on the launch pad

The magic boulder will no longer submit to your shackles! FREEDOOM!

Do not taunt the magic boulder...

Hey how about Elon musk try to recover the fuel too ;)

Breaking News: Elon Musk hands SpaceX to random guy; Cries himself to sleep. SpaceX stock 'skyrockets'

if it's fully recoverable then i'd like to see you reassemble it. and launch it a second time

When the space station blew up it reminded me of intersteller.

12:20 that music change was PERFECTLY synced when I landed my reentry module from returning from the Mun, in an Apollo style mission

Matt, I like that you don't obsess over returning the rockets right to the pad, and I also agree that returning them to KSC itself, in reality would be much too dangerous. But I don't think you're giving Elon enough credit, seeing as earth's orbital velocity is 4x that of Kerbin's and the aerodynamic forces and heat are proportionally worse for real missions :)

Press "f" to pay respects for the space station.

if you activate the parachutes in orbit they will deploy when it's safe (note: this only works if you have the parachutes set to deploy when safe) i do this to build science return pods that don't need a pilot or drone module added. this would allow you to control a return booster stage without worrying about the command pod falling to the ground

I just stumbled into your channel and I've been watching for hours now, it's 11:30 and I haven't slept, you're funny, have my sub.

hey matt, i absolutely love this! it inspired me to try something similar, and you had mentioned that mods would be needed for a "true' recreation of the Falcon 9, i found this to be not quite true, as i was able to set up my trajectory so that at the apoapsis the payload would deploy and accelerate to orbital speed, at wich point the booster was still falling towards the atmosphere, i could switch to it and land it. still, i love this design! :D keep up the awesome work friend

EJ_SA have a real falcon 9 with it launch process without mods

I have been waiting for this for so long

I really like these videos of yours! Subscribed!!!

Also, for your problems with exploding space stations: may I recommend Kerbal Joint Reinforcement? It will ease physics-loading, sometimes preventing issues like this...

Man, last time I watched you you had like 20k subs

You have been my inspiration for everything I do in ksp. You probably inspire many other people. I started watching you when I wanted to do something new in ksp and I still do.

Approaching Nirvana's music is amazing. great combination!

It would be kinda weird if the crew capsule wasn't recoverable. Possibly illegal, too.

THE SHED IS NOMINAL

Wow just in general this is such a good video!

this helped me a lot thank you!

I ate the shed.

The Dragon (upper stage spacex module) is a reusable module, so why did'nt you made it? Also the 1st stage was brilliantly designed! edit: my bad, the trunk of the dragon is jettisoned during reentry, F9 is not a fully reusable lifter since stage 2 is also jettisoned

You kind of can do it in KSP, with mechjeb you can send payload on the 80km orbit and then switch to the first booster stage that still going to be falling from a 60 km suborbital tragectory at 1400m/s. Another great tip the solid booster separators are great at deorbiting stages.

One thing I found out to stop those spazzing out things from exploding on approach was to have a not too fast moving close approach, swap to the object in danger, and wait until the smaller craft makes it way to full physics range, or since I don't know the exact number for that, I had them go to about 500m or closer, before switching over for matching orbits and docking. I had an unruly space casino from the career missions that I could only get to by following those hoops. Asteroid stations in general seem to be in danger for whatever reason.

If you're using KER why don't you add the suicide burn info to your HUD? Works perfectly for me... everywhere except the Mun for some reason...

Nice video as usual, Matt! **likes**

The fairings do actually get surfed through the atmosphere now and are collected via boat... AWESOME

Impressive. I have done this too. I made my own mix of the spaceshuttle and falcon 9 design. The ressult was a super cost-effective fully reusable interplanetary spaceship.

Ask Tape Gaming how he does the booster recovery in career mode :>

I AINT THE SHED

That was pretty damn close to the complex... i am impressed.

One guy I know took a steeper than normal profile, at around 35km, he sepperated, and sent the second stage on it's way as full throttle. This put it on a high enough trajectory that once it left the physics range, that he could boost back, land, switch and circularize.

in this video Matt looks older but on Debunk Video he looks like 20 years old but on this he looks like 40 years old

You make this game look easy...

you sir. I have hated and rolled my eyes impatiently at every single impractical and inefficient kerbal-endangering craft you have ever built. until now. you have finally impressed me. bravo

Dammit Matt! I was working on one of these yesterday and tried the lose your sanity method and I was going to come back today to get the flight finalized and here you are, mocking me.

*SpaceX wants to know your location*

Actually, docking without mods is not so hard. Just use the target indicator on the navball to align both ships to the others' docking port (with control from here on the docking port if needed) and approach.

2:39 "somewhere in the vicinity" - gets closer than I've ever gotten lmao

KER Has a 'time to suicide burn' meter, very helpful for landers and falcon 9 replicas.

i ate the shed

Man it's been ages since that discord channel started up. Glad it's really active now.

Cool rocket. We want more of these videos

If you don't think the falcon 9 is properly possible in stock ksp you haven't seen EJ_SA on twitch

what up notification squad

The asteroid bit really kraked me up.

Hey, Matt. Happened to me, too. Solution would be to autostrut everything into place before adding new modules.

im aint the shed

I ate the shed

Ouch!!!! Im hearing you say that and Space X put two astronauts in orbit today

Fantastic!

i aint the shed

who watched The falcon 9 launch livestream

I love the recent uprising in SpaceX-style rockets

i like how he did a full turn and landing next to the facilty in the first 3 min

Am i the only one who knows Matt from Duna Attacks?

I can make reusable rockets! *_its called not using them_*

EJ_SA flies completely stock Falcon 9's. His ascent profile is very steep, he separates and fires 2nd stage once, performs 1st stage boostback, circularises 2nd stage and then lands the 1st stage. Usually explosions happen.

5:26 thank you for the song

Matt landing on ksp complex: no we’re not gonna do that

Command modules have some built-in RCS fuel, typically enough to deorbit themselves if you place a couple of RCS thrusters on them..

All my reusable boosters are orbital. I usually use them to launch things to other planets so the boost phase put's it into a parking orbit and the payload has enough fuel to get it where it needs to go.

*YoU DidEnt REcOver The HEAT SheiLD*

Simply make sure you have a high enough apoapsis that you can circularise before the booster hits the atmosphere, or be an SSTO, then re-enter and land.

Another viable way of reusing the first stage is to actually attach many parachutes to it and stage them with the second stage ignition. I use lithobrake modded parachutes but the stock will work just fine if you strap enough on. My first stage is 5m in diameter, having a probe core(so I don't need to turn on display debris) and airbrakes. It is also complete with air protection shells covering the second stage which is using a rhino engine. It has ~2400-2800 dv so it is more than capable of pushing the upper stages to a high altitude and gain fast horizontal speed. The rhino on the second stage also have no problem at getting the AP further up which gives you enough time to switch back to the first stage and land it in water to the east of the space center. Only problem being that you cannot guide it back to KSC for max value. I get ~75% value of the first stage back, which is about ~60% the cost of my whole rocket, and I am satisfied. Guess I could boost the recovery value if I choose the transponder strategy.

You should use the world stabilizer mod, it keeps that explosion from happening when approaching space stations, or from your craft going insane when you click fly in the tracking station.

Very nice

aww yis the famous safe landing when things randomly explode.

This can be done on stock by adding a probodobodyne on the first starge and using the bracket keys to switch back to stage 2. Just set a alram for stage 1 when it hits Ap so you can do your burn for orbit. (You should have about 2 minutes to land, add parachuets just incase things get out of control so you can go back to orbit burn.

I bed you had a heart attack at the explosion when landing the crew module.

This is fantastic! The best I can do at doing a powered landing is break half the lander and get only 35% of my funds back. Please make more videos like this! (EDIT: R.I.P. Magic Boulder Station.)

1:03 theres also a mod that allows you to have a fully automated launch, via programming

*tip : when are in space make sure your orbit is clipping a bit into earth then when you brake off fix the 2nd stage orbit then switch over to booster it’s easier*

Node wooble.. fixable with struts or just long parts. But... as you probably know, long many nodded ships wobble like CRAZY

5:18 R.I.P space station astronauts

I find that if you leave drills in the ground on any base and return you'll cause the Core Kraken or just a rapid unplanned disassembly. It's super easy to fix this, just don't leave the drills extended. I've had the same problem with claws once or twice as well, so perhaps it's just the collision box of the anchors on those items that disagree with physics. It's also possible that you taunted the Kraken-spawn AKA the Magic Boulder and caused a black hole to materialize...

You can build a vertical SSTO with the vector engines, and it should be able to carry a reasonable payload.

There is a other more true to the point way of doing it. Taking the boaster up to a steel suborbital arch. The appoas must be over 68km, but it can be quite steep. The separat the stages just before, then burn the upper stage in to orbit.If it just burns sufficiently fast, its possible to get a stabile orbit well before the boast stage is inside the 45km where its cancelled. Then when the orbit is circular. Just switch to the boaster stage, and land it. I done this with jet boasters.(one with a single jet, one with 3 and one with 8). The largest could take a orange tanke to suborbit. The really nice thing about having jets in steed of rocket is that they just sip fuel. So one can have plenty of fuel to land and the space craft is really freaking smal. WIth jets one can also jump back to KSP landing on the pad and get full recovery

Re the airbrake re-entry problems, there's a nice little mod that gives you ablative airbrakes with 200 points of ablator (tweakable) on them.

Yes Matt. On a slamp.

This is EXACTLY how I learned my hard lesson about how all ground buildings need landing legs if you dont want them eaten by the kraken.

If you ever have anything stuck in space like a shuttle with no fuel or debris you can grab them with the grabby thing you use on asteroids which also supports fuel exchange so what I did was I made a rocket that contained 4 mini rockets that would grab debris and de-orbit them, and if the debris have fuel left in them you can latch on and take the fuel to use to de orbit them :)

OMG, I can't believe how much your audio (voice) has improved .

Matt is the god of space travel

I like to use modular girders for hover slams. The sacrifice in delta-v is balanced by being able to land at 75 m/s! It's not so unrealistic for landing probes, and certainly more realistic than using cargo bay doors to land an escape pod crammed full of Kerbals like some astronaut clown car!

The kraken really had some beef with that space station

Matt the reason why the station was distroyed is because when you warp with drills it has a negative effect on the drill power or the speed of it

Good one, Matt! Your rocket is quite realistyczne, and if w you want new video idea, there it is:Bulid fffffuuuuuuuulllllllllyyyyyyy STOCK (without mods, too) and recoverable UFO (yes, UFO) in KSP and fly it to Mun, Duna, Laythe, Mohole, or Eeloo bases (surface bases, but whatever body you want). If you want, you can dock to them or ,,keepjack" one of the Kerbalonauts.

Good job, man! Btw, what graphic mods do you use? The clouds and the atmosphere look so fancy :D Thanks

I do it slightly differently. My first stage separates way before full circularisation, but late enough for me to complete circularisation with my second stage and then switch to my first stage before it even reaches 45-40km altitude. Though, I'm not using SpaceX style landing - parachutes in KSP can do things they can't do in real life :)

NICE

Matt, the day you control SpaceX is the day we discover Magic Asteroids