Orbital_Decay

Brainwashed by what? "The media?" The same bunch that's criticized military spending since I was born? My schools? Television? Don't think it's a reasonable conclusion to make? So, I'll ask you this. If military development has no effect on scientific development, how come it took until the Gulf War for GPS networks to actually take off? How come it took until V-2s started hitting Britain for the idea of rocketry to spread around and become what it is today? How come it took a rivalry between the USSR and US for either power to develop good rockets? Surely everyone shares the same idealistic notions about space, right? Surely everything's done out of the good of the human heart, right? Look, regardless of the organization, government, nation, people, or whatever else, the only reason technology takes off is if you can either kill someone with it, save someone with it, or sell it as a consumer product. That's how it is in any human nation. There's tons of neat scientific developments around that have never seen the light of day after being designed? Why? Because no one found a practical use for it. If it isn't practical, it isn't used. Sure, you can pin that on any number of things to shift the blame. Sure, you can say how that's wrong and everything. At the end of the day, the only reason anything gets done is for practical reasons. Cool, starry-eyed idealism is a beautiful thing. But, countless people were blinded by that idealism to the point where they lost track of practicality. Their motivations go "beyond human concepts" (even though, being human, they are still human concepts) is a nice way of saying they're doing something that basically only useful to a handful of people. The space races and all the space programs around the world were great, not just because of where we sent our rockets, but rather the "trickle down" tech, if you may. Not just the beautiful notion of putting your flag on another world, but also the treasures you get along the way. If it weren't for that "paycheck motivation," where exactly would we all be? If everyone took the "pretty jobs" of just making really neat stuff just because it was neat, where would we be? If you didn't basically bribe those kinds of people into making something for the at-large population, where would we be? Still think it's evil to make sharp minds develop things for the rest of us? It evil? No more evil than making people load trucks, or any of the other monotonous jobs out there. You have to motivate people to do that stuff because without it, where are we? Believe it or not, even the sharpest of us can go in the wrong direction. No one is above that. Neither politicians nor scientists. No one has that perfect compass. That's why you have to leverage people around. You have to motivate dreamers to do not dreamy things because, at the end of the day, reality is not optional. Better to economically coerce someone into practicality instead physically locking them up and into it. We'd all love to escape to some dream-verse and do random cool things all the time. That's a terrible foundation for progress. I'll just assume you're familiar with goal setting. That ultimate endgame of limitless exploration isn't realistic. In fact, it's so open-ended that it's almost not a goal. If your ultimate objective is just wandering, you're never going to finish. So, we're here again. You need to create practical goals with an end in order to go somewhere. You know when you make progress. You know when your efforts pay off. You know when you're really effecting the public at large. Well, I threw a few clauses in for that. I threw in a groundwork on how Kerbals are likely more human than we think. I threw in a lot of stuff. Just get repulsed by the part where I attributed tech development to militaries? And I'm still doubtful Kerbals are fully responsible for their own successes.

An excuse to overthink a videogame? I'll take it! I have doubts that Kerbals are solely responsible for their own successes. It's not because they "act too stupid" to be space-fairing. It's not because they're biologically maladapted for space transit. Though I still laugh at the Wiki article that says Kerbals just developed the ability to walk. The way they act and are doesn't seem to line up with their technological sophistication. I get that they aren't human. Still, you see a few human traits in them that makes me want to say they are pretty close to humans. The way they can organize and socialize, the ways they can risk it for "the greater good," just their conduct looks like cartoonish human behavior. But it's a little deeper than their conduct. Something else about them seems decidedly human. The way they design things. I'm not going to argue that humanity figured out the answers to everything and that all intelligent life follows are path because we're right. What I am going to say is that like-minded people often problem solve in similar ways. People that have similar experience, mental capacity and "mental parameters" (the way they think), often will give similar answers to an issue. That's just how it works between humans. I'm saying that since Kerbals produce nearly exact copies, or convincing effigies of human tech, they, in some way or on some level, do mirror humans in a mental way. What makes sense to them would make sense to us. What we think are good solutions and good approaches would be considered good by Kerbals too. They think like humans to an extent. After all, a creation is a reflection of its creator. So if a bunch of creations look and function similarly, would it be that much of a jump to say their creators are similar or at least have something in common? I'm going to go with "yes" on that. So, if Kerbals think like humans to some extent, because they make designs that humans have made using presumably human methods, that leaves a few huge question marks for me. Everyone basically disregarded Robert Godard's rockets in spite of how revolutionary they were. The NYT even mocked him at one point. However, everyone took note when Werner Von Braun started landing ballistic missiles in Britain. The first Soviet spacecraft were refitted ICBMs. Still to this day, the biggest innovations in rocket and aerospace technology remain rooted in military equipment. In fairness, what would the civilian use be for vectored thrust? What would the domestic market need afterburners for? We all forget that science truly takes off when it becomes practical. Einstein's famous equation relating energy and mass was only famous with the scientific community until it was put to work creating a WMD. So rocket science never took off until it had an immediately practical use. Where else would such things be practical beyond a military? What would the average person gain from gigantic rockets? Not much when rockets were crude. But a military definitely could gain from even the most crude rockets. Do you see the direction I'm going? Extreme equipment is designed for extreme uses. Militaries have plenty of extreme cases for extreme equipment. But the Kerbals don't show any signs of military capacity in stock KSP. There are no "other guys" to compete against. It seems like the Kerbals designed rockets just to aimlessly wander through the stars. The Kerbals don't even see rockets as a means to an end. It's like they see the rockets as the endgame. That doesn't seem right. You can't get that kind of success without immense focus and direction. Anyone here do real science? I don't, yet. But, what I can say for certain is that nothing works out if you don't have a goal in mind. Sure, you can create some nice trinkets along the way, but they stay trinkets until you have an end goal for those trinkets. Then they go from novelties to tools. So, in short, most major innovations are made in a military context because that's what you need in a military context. But there's no competition on Kerbin. Kerbin's so inactive, you wouldn't expect much to come from it. Innovation comes from competition because why fix what is already working fine. Kerbals appear to have some concept of competition since they have businesses, but somehow that doesn't translate to the big picture on Kerbin, which is just odd. The scientific data you gather doesn't even seem to be consistent with the tech you develop. I know we know nothing about that weird Mystery Goo, but, that doesn't mean it's magical. That doesn't mean it's just a magic wand that somehow gets you complex electronics and nuclear power. The atmosphere tests make sense in a scientific context for developing wings, but some of the other science doesn't quite seem to line up. How does one get solar panels from seismic tests? Just... So many things aren't right with the Kerbal's tech progress... I'll just sum it up any future paragraphs quickly: Kerbals demonstrate no signs that would normally indicate innovation and tech development, yet they have technology on-par with human technology. Kerbals are pretty new (because that weird walk = just developed the ability to walk = likely new species), yet they have what took humanity centuries to develop. Something doesn't add up for me. This doesn't seem right at all. Am I folding a tinfoil hat or do I have a point?

Oh, definitely in this community base... Well-armed and equipped military forces are not a threat to international stability and peace. They're actually a requirement for peace and stability. Si vis pacem, parabellum.

To be honest, I've actually played Career mode with that kind of stuff from the start because I've tried to see if you could profit from ISRU in stock KSP (results were disappointing). Also, true sandbox feels "hollow" sometimes. No rewards screen, even when rewards don't truly matter, makes the game feel hollow. I get that sandbox is for testing. It makes sense. But, seeing your tests work and then having absolutely nothing else to show for it feels empty to me. Bringing Kerbals back in one piece is nice. But that's the expectation (someone did most of this IRL without killing someone after all). What else did I accomplish?

At 40m/s, all you'll really have is an expensive rover that doesn't even drive on the ground. You're looking for quick, long-range transit, right? You'll definitely hit the long-range factor with an electric aircraft. At least you'll have good endurance times. But, that's not fast. You could keep it if you realize you really need endurance more than speed. If you go for a faster, rocket-propelled aircraft, you could still get range, but not for very long. You may not endure well with rockets because of the way rockets are. You also may want to consider "payloads" if you may. An electric aircraft is going to suffer from any additional weight, so one cannot really handle a significant payload. That could cause you some trouble if you want to carry a lot of material with you in flight. A rocket aircraft could make up for a payload with raw thrust if you get down to it. TWRs are really important to keep in mind. You may even understand why if you play long enough. If you have a higher thrust, you can have a higher weight and still manage to keep a good ratio. So, are you looking more to cover ground and move equipment/supplies, or are you looking to just observe the Dunan landscape below?

Basically, I have a lot of multi-role machines in orbit or on the ground. I've gone pretty far with this "multirole" stuff to be honest. Even as far as to build an amphibious scientific research vehicle (no lab, I didn't think to incorporate one) with vehicle recovery ability (robot arm with Klaw). After finishing my amphibious science machine, I started to wonder if I was feature creeping my designs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep (Yeah, Wikipedia. It's just for a simple definition.) I mean, less can definitely be more, but Swiss Army Knives sell well for a good reason too. Minimalism isn't an excuse to be lazy; it's a reason to be efficient, sure. But in a game like KSP, can you really feature creep with scientific modules so small and portable? Are you really that bad off trying to cover all the bases? Especially when one of the important parts of progressing in this game is scientific research. Honestly, so far, I haven't experienced much trouble with this beyond price tags. That's even manageable if you can inadvertently create something that can do many of your contracts with little modification. Do you ever get the sense you may be trying to mash too much into a design? When do you realize you've gone too far? Asteroid harvesters on space stations? ISRU on rovers?

Well, that's actually quite legitimate. With requirements like that, I don't see much else that could deliver. Have any "drafts" yet?

Not as viable as on Kerbin or Laythe. Duna's atmospheric pressure is really low compared to Kerbin's pressure. Less dense atmosphere = less optimal for flight. You can do it, but you'd need large wing area or a lot of thrust. Before we can tell you if the ends will justify the means, what exactly do you need a fixed-wing aircraft on Duna for that other solutions can't achieve?

Well, thanks for the advice. It sounds like helicopters are kind of a dead-end in KSP... What about a Ka-50 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50) style helicopter? It's not a compound helicopter but it does use the coaxial configuration you namedropped. No jets or propellers, just the rotors to hover around with.

Ion engines are weak. Comparatively quite weak actually. That's because they aren't supposed to be what gets you to the stars. Rather they are what pushes you around while your in space. Real-world examples of ion engines are mounted on "lightweight" spacecraft. NASA has an article on the topic. I can't out-science NASA so here it is: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html. The long and short of it is that you will never take off with an Ion engine. You can, however, use one at your "end stages" and use them to keep your spacecraft/ satellite/ probe moving or to keep something in an orbit you like. Just be aware that it is really weak, so you should only use them on small objects. Helpful?

Even with small, local particle systems, that's GPU-consuming for not much of an effect.

I want the effects and all, but I have to go along with @K^2's idea of having it be controlled by difficulty settings. Weather effects completely fit the description of modifying/ complicating gameplay. It should be optional or at least semi-controllable based on difficulty. I'd want effects to be so far as preventing launches, or at least forcing you to do something about the weather. Actions like applying de-icing agents to flight surfaces, shoveling/ plowing snow (I'm a New Englander, snow = get shovel to me), and even dealing with the damage to buildings done by weather. Of course I'd never want things like tornados and hurricanes. If anything's going to tear down KSC, it should be Kerbals and bad rocket launches. It's something that legitimate space agencies, militaries, companies, and any organization that handles space flight or aircraft has to deal with. KSP has earned a reputation for realism, at least as much as you can ask from a game, so why not keep that up? It would at least make for some funny videos later down the road.

So, I got this DLC wanting to make helicopters. I found out pretty fast that metaphorically bought the tool, but not the skill. Yet. The DLC has a few stock "helicopters" which are just ducted-fan VTOLs and flying platforms. However, I'm trying to make a "conventional helicopter" so to say. A helicopter with a main rotor and a smaller tail rotor. So far, my results have been far from desirable. My first rotor-tail rotor helicopter design (image links below) was awful. All it did was break itself. https://prnt.sc/tsxyu0 http://prntscr.com/tsxz61 What's the right way to make a rotor-tail rotor helicopter?

Thanks a lot. I never thought to use servos in place of hinges.

Is it possible to obtain hypersonic flight in KSP? The highest airspeed I've achieved with an airplane yet was somewhere around Mach 4, but can you go any higher?