For the sake of future planning...

[Vanamonde]

Some aspects of the game don\'t matter now, but I want to get into good habits so I don\'t have to break bad habits later when it does matter. And I realize there are no hard answers this early in development, so this is as much for discussion as to get info.

1. Do we have any idea how long a capsule will support Kerbals? Right now it doesn\'t matter if you miss a launch window or somesuch because you can just go around again. But will that leave the guys running out of air when 'real' crews are implemented?

2. What\'s a reasonable speed for hitting Kerbin atmo? I\'m still figuring out return flight paths and tend to come down at any old speed, but I don\'t want to incinerate the little guys. And what\'s a survivable G load? (One of my early flights was 15gs for a couple of minutes, which I\'m suspecting is deleterious to the health.)

3. When components start costing, how important will efficiency be? Will we need to fly razor-thin fuel margins? (It will be interesting balancing this against #1: too fast and you go broke, but too slow and crews suffocate.) They\'ll need to strike an economic balance with the game. For example, I liked Railroad Tycoon 3 a lot, but it\'s economic system was unsatisfying because it was geared toward exanding your empire. You couldn\'t lose money, it was just a matter of getting rich as fast as you could, and there was little satisfaction in running your empire once you had it, because money would pile up in heaps and there was nothing to spend it on. I\'m hoping KSP turns out more like an open-ended Sim city than a scenario-with-an-endpoint Tycoon paradigm.

[Luigibro606]

For the air thing, there\'s a Zoxygene Plugin which already simulates this. :3

[Pyre]

2. What\'s a reasonable speed for hitting Kerbin atmo? I\'m still figuring out return flight paths and tend to come down at any old speed, but I don\'t want to incinerate the little guys. And what\'s a survivable G load? (One of my early flights was 15gs for a couple of minutes, which I\'m suspecting is deleterious to the health.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force#Human_tolerance_of_g-force

Apparently, 15g for several minutes is perfectly survivable if you are on your back relative to the direction of force. I would imagine that Kerbals, being smaller than humans, would be able to withstand even higher G loads.

Also, Apollo 16 peaked at a bit above 7g on reentry, so that seems like a good number to shoot for until we hear otherwise.

[Vanamonde]

Interesting article. Especially:

The bacteria were cultivated while being rotated in an ultracentrifuge at high speeds corresponding to 403,627 g.

!!!

[softweir]

In answer to 1: I am quite sure that yes; if your crews run out of consumables such as oxygen, then they will die.

However, that doesn\'t mean the capsule can only carry enough consumables for a fixed period. The main factor is sure to be: 'can I afford to beef up my rocket so it can carry more dehydrated beef rations?' IE, consumables have mass, the more mass you load into a rocket the bigger it has to be to get to where you want to go. If you put too much food or oxygen into a rocket it won\'t get there. If you spend more money and make it bigger, then you will be able to put in double the consumables and have a huge safety margin.

[Vanamonde]

I was looking for a rough estimate for a basic capsule. Should I plan for my missions to last 3 days before return or reprovisioning? Or 2 weeks? That kind of thing. I\'m sure there are variables, the biggest one being that I doubt the developers have come anywhere close to making up their minds yet. But I was hoping somebody may have run across a ballpark figure somewhere in dev interviews, or something like that.

[samstarman5]

One thing that KSP has taught me is that it is good to try it and find out. I would prefer to try and fail and try again than have all the answers handed to me.

I fully expect a bit of a gap in any Mun and Minmus adventures when heat re-entry physics are implemented as players will be sticking to Kerbin orbit in order to discover all the many ways to turn your mission into a shooting star. I know I have always been curious how it would look to bring a multi-staged rocket back into the atmosphere and see how it breaks up.

Most likely the parts and modules marketplace will be campaign-mode only, and as such will open up as each mission is accomplished. That will allow you to get a better feel for the real difference each new part and each new tier makes in how your craft performs. This will allow you to know better what to take with you when you take a campaign mission to the Mun, Minmus, and other planets.

When KSP reaches release and campaign mode is there for the taking, I would go into it accepting the thought that I maywill lose it the first couple of tries. But that\'s okay, as you can take what you learn into the next game. That\'s something NASA or the Soviet Space Agency didn\'t have the luxury of. One has to wonder if Apollo 13 became a failure as opposed to a successful failure, if that might have convinced more that there had been enough Moon missions.

Anyone can go on Wikipedia and find out how our astronauts did it. Anyone that knows fractions can figure out from there what is needed for the kerbals to do it. (Right now, as of .15, it\'s a generally agreed that kerbals are on an approximate 1:10 ratio to humans. That might change during development, however.)

They say that the best way to fly is do it on paper first. I respectfully disagree. I prefer going right into the cockpit and doing it. That\'s how Jeb did it, that\'s how the KSP does it, and it\'s worked out pretty well so far. Well, kind of.

[Vanamonde]

Oh yeah, taking a stab at something and going up in a fireball is part of the fun of the game, and I wouldn\'t want that to change. But right now it feels like cheating when I leave a ship parked in a scenic spot on Mun for a month, or blow a return trajectory and hit atmo at 3km/sec and 20 degrees from vertical, but my guys walk away.

[samstarman5]

Oh yeah, taking a stab at something and going up in a fireball is part of the fun of the game, and I wouldn\'t want that to change. But right now it feels like cheating when I leave a ship parked in a scenic spot on Mun for a month, or blow a return trajectory and hit atmo at 3km/sec and 20 degrees from vertical, but my guys walk away.

Until 0.16 I remain steadfast in that the capsule is actually unmanned, and the crew are back on Kerbin sipping cappuccinos watching the fireworks.

Also, kerbals are plant-based, therefore live under a different set of rules.

[rdfox]

The Apollo crews (or, specifically, the Command Module Pilots) on lunar missions trained to for an Earth re-entry at up to 15G in a centrifuge, because the simulations said that a screwed-up entry trajectory could cause the G-loadings to soar that high without the thermal protection system failing and their burning up. (The CMP trained at that loading because he was the only one who trained for a solo return, if the LM crashed or failed to launch from the lunar surface.)

[GoodGuy]

Well, there is a working hypothesis/theory that kerbals use photosynthesis. Remember, even though we have plants and animals, they may not be set in concrete.

[Zephram Kerman]

Well, there is a working hypothesis/theory that kerbals use photosynthesis. Remember, even though we have plants and animals, they may not be set in concrete.

Especially animals may not ever be set in concrete. That\'s just cruel. Although plants seem to not mind it.

[Vanamonde]

Especially animals may not ever be set in concrete.

How else do you keep them from running away?

Is the photosynthesis thing a players\' joke/supposition, or is that something they\'ve actually talked about?

[Kryten]

Is the photosynthesis thing a players\' joke/supposition, or is that something they\'ve actually talked about?

Mostly a joke, though some people seem to take it seriously. It\'s not been mentioned by the devs.