Rebalancing Jet Engines/Atmospheric Properties

[Domonian]

10 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

I described earlier in this thread 3 mods that exist and provide for this intention (DRE, AJE, KSPI-E), and what I believe is a decent application (to the stock game) of heat as a limiting factor to how far and how long you can push a jet engine.

Mods are fine and all, but talking about the base game I would personally like those things to be challenges everyone has to overcome. Even if the devs don't do it themselves, I will likely use mods to fix it, but it would be nice if I didn't have to. 

Speaking of heat and materials, I thought being able to pick between different materials for components would be a neat idea. The farther you get into the tech tree, the more materials are available, with various pros and cons to each one (with more advanced and expensive materials having more pros, of course). However at this point I'm just posting my wishlist for my ideal version of KSP2, so I'll move on from all that. 

[Bej Kerman]

25 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

RAPIER is fine as-is. That's how theSkylon's SABRE engine is. It's a "turborocket" -- a jet that supplements its air intake with LOX so it can perform at even higher altitudes. It's a ramjet -- the ring of nozzles are where excess air from the intake is combusted for upper supersonic performance. It's a proper rocket -- this is what provides powered flight from Mach 5 up to orbit.

I stand corrected - I still maintain that regular jets should not be capable of anything above Mach 2 on the basis of the planet being an entire 90% smaller than real scale. Scramjets would also be a nice thing for the more aviation-oriented players to have, as rockets seem a bit overkill for aircraft that aren't intended to reach space (but are still meant to go really fast). I also hope propellers (if in KSP 2) aren't capable of reaching excessive airspeeds as it seems people have done in KSP 1.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Bej Kerman
Add sentence "Scramjets would ... really fast)"

[JadeOfMaar]

@Domonian Understood. I totally get that. About material selection, that is sometimes a thing I do with B9 Part Switch configs. Upgrade-able resource converters and upgrade-able heat tolerance. The easiest scenario to think up is choosing between default part mass and heat tolerance; something cheap, fragile and less dense (good for cryofuel, anti-boiloff and better lift-to-weight but melts easily); something more dense and expensive (good for reentry heat and crash tolerance); this + some added layer of heat protection like ablator or magnetic shielding against the charged particles of reentry plasma.

@Bej Kerman Gotcha........ For real, though, orbital speeds on DLC robotic props alone. That's a cardinal sin!