List of new propulsion systems

[GoldForest]

2 minutes ago, Kaerbanogue said:

Antimatter engines is a technology that is well theorized, but in practice actually impossible to make. All we have to create some antimatter in the CERN LHC (particule accelerator) but none as much as we would need to power an engine. 

 

Through as KSP 2 sets in the future it could be implemented. The only problem is that I read somewhere that such engine could go at more than 90% of the lightspeed, a lot more than the laser confinement drive which could go something like 12% of light speed. So won't it be overpowered? 

That's why it would be end end game. The last parts you unlock, and it would have a high price. 

Also, it's not impossible, we can make anti-matter right now. The process is just time and energy intensive. We would need arrays of fusion reactors to sustain a anti-matter factory. To make the engine, it would basically be using Project Daedalus' engine, but instead of fusion fuel and lasers, we just use an anti-matter explosion. 

[The Aziz]

I doubt if the same engine, even a ship would able to survive such acceleration. I know this game is placed in "near future" and materials are much, much stronger for gameplay purposes, but we're talking about going above 200000000m/s. And I think I've heard something about part structure limitations.

Star theory said no magic, and I don't want to see the mythical unobtainium.

1 hour ago, GoldForest said:

The process is just time and energy intensive. 

Well there you said it. Why bother if you can make it faster AND cheaper?

Also, for "endgame" I really choose the Orion Drive. It is already beyond what we can do, and I do think that the devs will balance it so well that anything more powerful wouldn't be needed to make interstellar journeys enjoyable.

[DStaal]

I have another thought on how to tease info out of what we have: What are the tech trees?

Let's assume they haven't changed the tech/science system much - you still gather science and advance through the tech tree to more advanced technologies, each influencing what's available next.

Looking at it that way, I think you could consider the Daedelus as the end-tech on the same tree as the Orion - both are about dropping a fuel nugget behind you and detonating it, the Daedelus just has advanced the type of fuel and detonation, as well as the evening out the bursts of thrusts and getting better at collecting the energy.

Then Epstein drive would be a different tech line - it's conceptually much more similar to an evolution of chemical rockets, though is obviously a few steps up the tree.  What's in between?

And what would be on the same tech line as ion drives?  Or would they be a dead end, never really useful for anything other than small probes?

(And of course this is just a tech tree that came to me quickly.  There's reasonable arguments for other layouts obviously - but I thought it might be able to give us more of a framework to speculate on.)

[DStaal]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Also, for "endgame" I really choose the Orion Drive. It is already beyond what we can do, and I do think that the devs will balance it so well that anything more powerful wouldn't be needed to make interstellar journeys enjoyable.

I'd actually argue that the Orion is early-game.  It's actually likely *within* what we could do even twenty years ago - if not forty.  We just decided it wasn't safe enough to try.

[GoldForest]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I doubt if the same engine, even a ship would able to survive such acceleration. I know this game is placed in "near future" and materials are much, much stronger for gameplay purposes, but we're talking about going above 200000000m/s. And I think I've heard something about part structure limitations.

Star theory said no magic, and I don't want to see the mythical unobtainium.

Well there you said it. Why bother if you can make it faster AND cheaper?

Also, for "endgame" I really choose the Orion Drive. It is already beyond what we can do, and I do think that the devs will balance it so well that anything more powerful wouldn't be needed to make interstellar journeys enjoyable.

 

10 minutes ago, DStaal said:

I'd actually argue that the Orion is early-game.  It's actually likely *within* what we could do even twenty years ago - if not forty.  We just decided it wasn't safe enough to try.

First era - Chemical rockets
Second era - Fission engines - Orion Drive as well as Nuclear propulsion engines
Third Era - Fusion Engines and Magnetic Engines
Fourth Era - Project Daedalus

This is how I see it going. 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

17 hours ago, [email protected] said:

Ok guys. I do hate to remind you but look carefully in the first 20 or so seconds of the announcement trailer.

 

it clearly says NOT ACTUAL GAMEPLAY! 

Note you may need to just let it play because that disclaimer was DELIBERATELY PLACED to be completely obscured by the you tube time slider overlay.

 

seriously its a old advertising trick. Make the game look better than it actualy is then pretend you made it obvious that the trailer is non representative.

That's just the visuals, not the parts. There's no reason not to expect all the parts shown in the trailer to be in the final game. Especially since some of them can be seen in the pre-alpha gameplay footage too.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, DStaal said:

I have another thought on how to tease info out of what we have: What are the tech trees?

Let's assume they haven't changed the tech/science system much - you still gather science and advance through the tech tree to more advanced technologies, each influencing what's available next.

Looking at it that way, I think you could consider the Daedelus as the end-tech on the same tree as the Orion - both are about dropping a fuel nugget behind you and detonating it, the Daedelus just has advanced the type of fuel and detonation, as well as the evening out the bursts of thrusts and getting better at collecting the energy.

Then Epstein drive would be a different tech line - it's conceptually much more similar to an evolution of chemical rockets, though is obviously a few steps up the tree.  What's in between?

And what would be on the same tech line as ion drives?  Or would they be a dead end, never really useful for anything other than small probes?

(And of course this is just a tech tree that came to me quickly.  There's reasonable arguments for other layouts obviously - but I thought it might be able to give us more of a framework to speculate on.)

Good point, one point in KSP is that there is few truly obsolete parts, the staysputnik and some of he early probe cores might be the only ones as the octo2 with an small reaction wheel is lighter and more capable than the earlier ones.
Granted the T30 might qualify as its mostly useful as an liquid side booster engine but later on you either use the large SRB or liquid boosters with stronger engines. 

But its rare, so I assume most engines will serve an role even if its just an niche at the endgame, on the other hand kSP2 might be different here. 

[ChrisSpace]

On 24 August 2019 at 9:33 AM, TBenz said:

While this is hardly a solid confirmation, the craziest engine I can find on the Atomic Rockets website would be the Nuclear Salt Water Rocket. 

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#nswr

Essentially, the Orion on steroids. Continuous nuclear detonation just outside the nozzle. 

Which fits with the other statements that there are some torchship like engines that haven't been found out yet.

IMO the "craziest" engines on that list are the antimatter ones.

On 24 August 2019 at 9:57 AM, bartekkru99 said:

Maybe we could compare the engines from the trailers to parts we see in NFT, FFT and KSPIE? I don't think that there are many proper visualizations of many theoretical propulsion systems we are discussing, so devs might have used some modded parts as an inspiration

I like this idea. Can someone please line up screenshots or something of all the engines in these so we can easily compare them to what we see? Edit: Already been done.

19 hours ago, GoldForest said:

First era - Chemical rockets
Second era - Fission engines - Orion Drive as well as Nuclear propulsion engines
Third Era - Fusion Engines and Magnetic Engines
Fourth Era - Project Daedalus

Personally I'd put Daedalus in the fourth era, with the fourth era being set aside for stuff that'll either be at the very end of the tech tree or added in mods (antimatter, black hole starships, etc).

Edited August 25, 2019 by ChrisSpace

[GoldForest]

1 minute ago, ChrisSpace said:

IMO the "craziest" engines on that list are the antimatter ones.

I like this idea. Can someone please line up screenshots or something of all the engines in these so we can easily compare them to what we see?

Personally I'd put Daedalus in the fourth era, with the fourth era being set aside for stuff that'll either be at the very end of the tech tree or added in mods (antimatter, black hole starships, etc).

Daedalus is in the fourth Era. 

As for anti-matter and singularity drives, those should be fifth or even sixth era. Too OP. 

[M_Rat13]

On 8/24/2019 at 12:35 AM, nubeees said:

metallic hydrogen engine?

 

On 8/24/2019 at 12:36 AM, DStaal said:

Just thought I start a thread to try to analyze what engines we've seen in the released material so far.  Obviously the most talked about so far have been the Orion nuclear pulse, and the Daedalus inertial confinement fusion engines.  However, there's definitely others in the trailer and what's been seen so far.  For instance:

In this picture, the central engine *may* be a Daedalus, but it's also slightly different than the one leaving the Jool station: There are ports inside the bell, and the rim is more separated from the bell.  It also appears to be much smaller, based on the scale of the rest of the ship.  As a guess, it's likely another inertial confinement engine, but a smaller one.  However, there's also the eight engines surrounding it.  They could be the same engine as this shot:

But they could also be a something completely different.  I don't have any ideas off the top of my head on it.  Anyone see something familiar?

There's also several of what are fairly likely to be magnetic confinement nozzles - best shot I can quickly find for one is here:

 

Part of me thought I recognized the tanks before the smaller engines, and the single engined craft. At first, I thought they might be large Xenon engines, but they look nothing like the Dawn. Then, I looked at ore tanks, and it's surprising the similarities. However, what this means for what these types of engines are, is beyond me.

[ChrisSpace]

I don't think this engine has been shown here yet:

It's clearly some magnetic nozzle, referring to the screenshot selection (https://imgur.com/a/9q74GFS) it seems to be either:

A plasma-core antimatter engine (unlikely, not enough radiators)

A mirror cell fusion engine

A small Tomahawk fusion engine

Or an antimatter-induced fusion engine

[GoldForest]

10 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

I don't think this engine has been shown here yet:

It's clearly some magnetic nozzle, referring to the screenshot selection (https://imgur.com/a/9q74GFS) it seems to be either:

A plasma-core antimatter engine (unlikely, not enough radiators)

A mirror cell fusion engine

A small Tomahawk fusion engine

Or an antimatter-induced fusion engine

Any time I see a nozzle like that in the KSP gameplay or trailer I always think it's under construction lol. 

[ChrisSpace]

So, I think I've figured out what the Epstein Drive equivalent is going to be.

Look closely at this part of the video:

The rocket is decelerating quite far from the planet's moon, so it must need a long distance to slow down, so either it has a low acceleration or it's going very fast on a torchship trajectory. Now look more closely at the innermost ring and the planet's surface.

At the start of the clip they're barely touching, if at all.

But later on they intersect much more clearly, so the rocket's position has changed noticeably in those two or so seconds.

So it must be going quite fast, and to slow down at the moon it needs to have a significant acceleration. And considering how subtle this detail is, I don't think it was just put in there for cinematic purposes.

In conclusion, I think this here is the KSP2 version of the Epstein drive.

Edited August 26, 2019 by ChrisSpace

[Bill Phil]

42 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

So, I think I've figured out what the Epstein Drive equivalent is going to be.

Look closely at this part of the video:

The rocket is decelerating quite far from the planet's moon, so it must need a long distance to slow down, so either it has a low acceleration or it's going very fast on a torchship trajectory. Now look more closely at the innermost ring and the planet's surface.

At the start of the clip they're barely touching, if at all.

But later on they intersect much more clearly, so the rocket's position has changed noticeably in those two or so seconds.

So it must be going quite fast, and to slow down at the moon it needs to have a significant acceleration. And considering how subtle this detail is, i don't think it was just put in there for cinematic purposes.

In conclusion, I think this here is the KSP2 version of the Epstein drive.

Well we're not aware of what the camera is doing in this scene.

That could just be a few ship lengths that it travelled, depending on the angular distance and so on.

That said it does look like a high energy drive, though it could be many different types of plasma drive...

[ChrisSpace]

40 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Well we're not aware of what the camera is doing in this scene.

That could just be a few ship lengths that it travelled, depending on the angular distance and so on.

Angular distance, rotation and so on don't matter here. What matters is that the innermost ring begins to disappear behind the planet over the course of the clip, meaning the ship must have travelled at least half a dozen kilometres, potentially much more.

[nubeees]

11 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

Angular distance, rotation and so on don't matter here. What matters is that the innermost ring begins to disappear behind the planet over the course of the clip, meaning the ship must have travelled at least half a dozen kilometres, potentially much more.

Entire reasonable velocities if its coming from an interstellar transfer

[TiktaalikDreaming]

The trailers make me think they're just advertising the atomic rockets website. I hope they credit their research sources

[DStaal]

From another thread, quoting a transcript of an interview:

23 minutes ago, nikokespprfan said:

By the way, some of the vehicles in the trailer, especially at the beginning, the Lunar Lander Module, have exactly that drive, namely a vacuum-certified metal hydrogen propulsion system.

That's obviously this ship:

Which has the magnetic confinement nozzle.

An interesting part of that statement is that the engine is vacuum-certified.  Which leads me to wonder: are there atmosphere-certified versions of metal hydrogen engines as well?  Perhaps that's the finned engine (with lots of cooling) we see here:

 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

1 hour ago, DStaal said:

From another thread, quoting a transcript of an interview:

That's obviously this ship:

Which has the magnetic confinement nozzle.

An interesting part of that statement is that the engine is vacuum-certified.  Which leads me to wonder: are there atmosphere-certified versions of metal hydrogen engines as well?  Perhaps that's the finned engine (with lots of cooling) we see here:

 

The tanks look similar as well, which support this idea. Pretty sure that's the same 3.75m tank in the middle of the lander, surrounded by 1.25m versions.

Edited August 26, 2019 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[Drakenred65]

On 8/24/2019 at 10:50 AM, DStaal said:

I'd actually argue that the Orion is early-game.  It's actually likely *within* what we could do even twenty years ago - if not forty.  We just decided it wasn't safe enough to try.

Actualy one  consideration made it political suicide .

 

Once you launched it...what keeps it from being used as an orbitsal nuke droping machine gun?

 

See orion battleship proposal.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

29 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

Actualy one  consideration made it political suicide .

 

Once you launched it...what keeps it from being used as an orbitsal nuke droping machine gun?

 

See orion battleship proposal.

It IS a kind of reverse Kzinti lesson, a rocketized weapon.  That said, there were crazier things thought of than the Orion battleship.  There was the doomsday orion idea, a single 86 foot diameter Hydrogen bomb on a robotically controlled Orion.  Park it in orbit as a hemisphere clearing deterrent. That's one to give you nightmares. 

[Daniel Prates]

22 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

So, I think I've figured out what the Epstein Drive equivalent is going to be.

Look closely at this part of the video:

The rocket is decelerating quite far from the planet's moon, so it must need a long distance to slow down, so either it has a low acceleration or it's going very fast on a torchship trajectory. Now look more closely at the innermost ring and the planet's surface.

At the start of the clip they're barely touching, if at all.

But later on they intersect much more clearly, so the rocket's position has changed noticeably in those two or so seconds.

So it must be going quite fast, and to slow down at the moon it needs to have a significant acceleration. And considering how subtle this detail is, I don't think it was just put in there for cinematic purposes.

In conclusion, I think this here is the KSP2 version of the Epstein drive.

Also, evidence of HALF-LIFE 3!!!

[M_Rat13]

On 8/24/2019 at 4:47 PM, DStaal said:

I have another thought on how to tease info out of what we have: What are the tech trees?

Let's assume they haven't changed the tech/science system much - you still gather science and advance through the tech tree to more advanced technologies, each influencing what's available next.

Looking at it that way, I think you could consider the Daedelus as the end-tech on the same tree as the Orion - both are about dropping a fuel nugget behind you and detonating it, the Daedelus just has advanced the type of fuel and detonation, as well as the evening out the bursts of thrusts and getting better at collecting the energy.

Then Epstein drive would be a different tech line - it's conceptually much more similar to an evolution of chemical rockets, though is obviously a few steps up the tree.  What's in between?

And what would be on the same tech line as ion drives?  Or would they be a dead end, never really useful for anything other than small probes?

(And of course this is just a tech tree that came to me quickly.  There's reasonable arguments for other layouts obviously - but I thought it might be able to give us more of a framework to speculate on.)

I've been thinking about the tech tree myself a little:

I think a lot will depend on when interstellar travel is supposed to happen. If you can start it around mid game, then you'll have access to simpler interstellar engines, and as you get to later game, more advanced engines unlock. The alternative would be, if interstellar is late game, that there would, as you said, be different paths for interstellar travel, and you pick which path based on the advantages/disadvantages of that engine type, but maybe also on the access to different resources.

It all depends on how the devs view progression. Is it multiple choices or one thing is inherently better than the other? 

[KerikBalm]

I suspect that the "magnetic nozzle" is based off the magnetic confinement fusion:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesignsfusion.php#discovery2

I'd rather have it be that, than an antimatter based engine like Plasma-Core Antimatter from KSp mods, ie this:

Spoiler

and not this:

 

And I think this engine

is:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#mif

 

[ChrisSpace]

45 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

 

I suspect that the "magnetic nozzle" is based off the magnetic confinement fusion:

 

The "reaction chamber" is a bit small but you could be right.

46 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

is:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#mif

I think you're right.