A Titan II rocket able to ignite its engines.
Launch is the phase after building a rocket before and during its ascent through HOM's atmosphere. Rockets sit on the launch pad. The pre-launch phase is 20 seconds long, and during that time, the VO will say a few things. At T-20, he says "T minus 20 seconds.", before saying "All systems nominal." at T-16. At T-12, he will start counting down, and at T-8 the igniters will start. When the engines are successfully ignited, he will state "Engine Start".
Launch[]
At T-0, the VO says "Liftoff.", and the launch clamps release the rocket. If boosters are mated to the rocket, the VO will announce "Booster ignition and liftoff." instead. As soon as the rocket clears the tower, the altitude gauge appears and the VO says "Tower cleared.". Approximately 3/10 of the way up, the roll gauge will begin to turn, beginning the gravity turn (indicated by the VO saying "Commence roll program."). When boosters are jettisoned, the VO says "Booster Sep". When the a stage is jettisoned the VO will say "Stage Sep", often followed by a connector/interstage separation ("Skirt Sep"). About 3/5 of the way up, the sky becomes darker and stars soon appear with the air dissipating. When the rocket passes the top of the Altitude Gauge, the screen transitions to orbit. If during launch the rocket were to turn more than 90 degrees or to lose too much velocity ,the rocket flips over and the VO says "Vehicle falling" ,while the altitude gauge turns red. At this point the player can't correct the rocket's axis and velocity because the game disables the engine start and separation button and the player must either abort the launch(in a sandbox), destroy it, or crash.
Trivia[]
- Payloads can overheat and explode if a fairing is not used on the payload.
- The thrust button must be pressed at T-4; any later than that, not all engines might start.
- On Apple devices, smoke can be seen coming from the rocket, this also occurs on some (but not all) Android devices. This is likely the rocket venting to get rid of extra fuel andor engine chill.
- A good way of saving some fuel is cutting the engines when the stage separation button greys out.
- If you are launching a rocket with a N1 Block A first stage, the clamps are smaller and have arrows on them.
- Even though the Roll Program is incorrectly named, as the rocket is tilting on its Y-axis, and should be called the Yaw Program instead, NASA referred to it as the "Roll Program" & the "Roll Maneuver" during every launch of both the Space Shuttle and the Apollo rockets.
- You can skip the launch sequence to T-6 by tapping the countdown timer.
- In older videos of Space Agency; dated 2012-2016, they didn't know the secret about tapping the timer.
- There is a bug that the launch/re-entry music plays before the launch. The same thing shares after the re-entry.
- In real life, the atmosphere is pitch black starting at around 1/3 of the Karman Line.