Nuke

this sounds less like a flight model improvement and more like a dirty hack to me.

looks like i plucked the wrong number from wikipedia, my bad.

i can see p-b11 only being used in terrestrial applications. in space you got to use whatever you can find. aneutronic fusion reactors would be preferable in space, since they reduce maintenance requirements and will likely have a longer operational life. it might also be easier to boost boron to orbit at this point. or we could fall back on he3-he3 reactors, not because of the qualities of the reaction but because we can refuel at the moon. he3 is still pretty rare, so it might just be an initial supply until we can find better fuel sources. p-Li7 might also be an option, lower cross section but larger output than p-b11.

i wouldnt mind having a pre-launch action group. anything in the group will triggered once, when the ship is spawned on the launch pad. or tweakables.

4x just doesnt cut it for me. id rather build a massive nerva ship than a ion ship (with a fraction of the mass) just so the maneuvers dont take 2 hours. its the structural simulation that really ruins things. perhaps if your craft meets certain requirements, low mass and low thrust for example, those can be just switched off. it would be very difficult to cause a structural failure with the thrust output of an ion engine (even if you were trying to). you essentially have a warp mode that welds the ship together while its running (but you are only allowed to use it in certain situations).

technically yes (you have to be a videophile to notice, i certainly cant), but practically no. especially considering the fact that you can go up to the next power of two and still come out with a smaller texture. its actually an amazing format, all colors are encoded as 5'6'5, but thanks to floating point interpolation and range reduction capabilities of the format, it can achieve output colors at greater depth than an 8'8'8 uncompressed texture.

biggest problem with ion engines is power. you would need to handle scenarios when solar panels get blocked by an object causing your engine to spew you propellant uselessly into space. depending on the angles your solar panels can turn based on the orientation needed for the maneuver and the position of the sun, it may not be possible to get 100% performance out of you engines at all times. so throttling and power management and roll control (to better expose your panels to the sun) would have to be done automatically. i dont think doing it in the background would work because of all the extra factors involved.

i kinda think the p-b11 reaction will be the pinnacle of fusion reactor design, the fuel is abundant on earth and produces no neutrons. but we will be using neutron spewing reactors for decades before we get there. also have to agree with satellite refueling services. though i have a feeling the propellant wont be lh2/lox (especially lox which likes to boil off over time, less your tanks rupture). satellites usually use hydrazine for station keeping, and ion station keeping thrusters are replacing those rather rapidly. there are also exotic means, like feep, which are perfered on space telescopes for their control resolution, and those run on liquid metals. you will probibly need a wide variety of fuels/propellants to bring to market. and eventually radioactive materials will be desirable to refuel fission powered ships.

i was thinking a hypothetical primarily methane atmosphere, titan is a poor example as it only has 1.6% methane, not sure if that is enough to base an effective engine on. its ridiculously easy to fly on titan though, you probibly dont even need to burn fuel at all, simply use electric propulsion.

pure death. if not from spaghettification the radiation would cook you.

not against better input code at all. but these problems usually can be solved just by mapping buttons directly to keystrokes rather than binding the buttons in game. this should be possible in the x-52 software (at least it was before i started using ch joysticks and threw away that piece of junk x52).

land of course! habitable space is probibly a rarity in the universe. so if they dont outright try to take it from us, they might try to buy it. there will likely be a biology trade, especially food crops and livestock. any species well invested in genetic engineering would likely derive useful sequences from the planet's various genomes. mining rights within our solar system might also be up for grabs. it may be less economically viable to take them and then have to defend them when we take notice of what they are doing and try to stop them, than to just give us a cut to look the other way. raw materials in general (especially water, i hate it when a movie uses water as the reason for invasion) probibly aren't worth very much. after all if they can come here, they could probibly fetch the materials from an uninhabited system with fewer issues. though there are of course exceptions. perhaps were the only source of some rare element for light years. or we are in a strategic location, such as along a trade route. radioactive material, being something that decays with time, might be rare in much older solar systems. where the material has either been completely mined out or has decayed into something you cant use. of course atomic engineering is pretty much alchemy, so they may have the tech to transmute isotopes however they like. if everyone is using orion drive, in which case nuclear bombs are the fossil fuel of the universe, that makes earth just another gas station for interstellar truckers. you might also have a demand for synthetic heavy and ultra heavy elements and possibly antimatter that we could exploit. im going to also have to agree with information (including cultural works). though thats probibly something you can get for free with some strategically replaced transceivers and a few flimsy morals. and finally, consumer products. just because something is primitive, doesn't mean you will have a hard time selling it. a single authentic earth slinky from the market place of walmart might go for a billion whatevers on another planet.

for a moon like titan you could probibly get away with a rtg powered fan.

i usually just move fuel around. a ballast tank to offset a side mounted rover or lander will be jettisoned at some point. if its fuel, you can transfer it to another tank before getting rid of the tank. dead weight has no use, so you put some dv into moving it around and then just throw it away and its a waste. better it be mass you can use.

i kinda like the beerware license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware

whats cool is if you have a methane atmosphere, instead of bringing fuel, you just bring oxygen instead. i really wish ksp had more varied atmospheric compositions so we could do this, as opposed to, has oxygen or not has oxygen.

you could probibly have a nuclear reactor provide the thermal energy neccisary for a turbine engine to function, without the need to actually burn anything.

its more about organizing otherwise useless matter into something you have an immediate need for with a complete disregard for efficiency. you still need a warp core to power the damn thing.

id like to see where you level up kerbals, and they can gain skills, either through ground training or flight experience. this gives players incentive to keep them alive and not abandon them.

well the titan might be a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28supercomputer%29 though i have a feeling ksp would lag on it too. seriously there is nothing you can do. possibly get the most recent high end intel cpu and overclock it. but the problem with ksp performance wise is that it is still a work in progress and hasnt been optimized very well thus far.

if you got the money, buy ch or thrustmaster. if you dont, get a saitek. if you cant afford that, im sorry.

im gonna have to say elite. way ahead of its time.

you would have had to exist in the 70s

near future propulsion pack has some good reactors. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52042-0-22-Near-Future-Propulsion-Pack-%28v0-30-rebalances-fixes-a-new-solar-panel%29 though i dont think its the droid you are looking for

i like how everyone is forgetting the animated series.