tater

BEO with a return on investment would likely mean asteroid mining for rare earth elements. Red Dragon is cool, I love that they plan on doing it. But it's not a market, and has to be paid for the old-fashioned way. That's why the economics matters---because Mars is a hobby for SpaceX, it cannot be a business. I think there is certainly overlap in the threads, but that thread at least is more about real launches.

You keep saying this, and all I have asked for is what, imaginary payload exists to support vastly more launches. Assume that SpaceX need not grow at all from its current size. It needs to make at least as much as it does now, and more if it needs to also build MCT, etc (take them at face value as goals). You are simply making up the notion of more payloads. I'm saying there are 12 launches per year available. This is based on, you know, the history of actual launches over the last few years. If you claim more launches due to lower costs, show your work. I'm not even saying it's not possible, I'm saying that a 10-20% price drop is not transformative---you are making a positive claim that is is, I think, so show us]. Markets? Past LEO? It's Elon playing with his rocket. It is not a market, there is no market at Mars. Never will be, either, there is no possible movement of value from Mars back to Earth unless transportation costs are nearly the same per trip (not per km travel) as on earth.

That is my point, exactly. Slightly cheaper than their competitors means that they take that business. That means maybe they get all 12 available launches. Maybe that tiny price reduction results in a few on the fence enterprises launching a few more satellites, or starting a new business. We've now upped the total market to what? 15 launches? 18? (and we are assuming 100% of all commercial launches are now SpaceX). 12 launches, that's the market. If you imagine more launches, you need to imagine what cost would be so transformative that it creates a new, unimagined market. 10-20% cheaper is incremental, not transformative. My thought experiment was how cheap such LEO access could possibly become. Even at single-digit millions per launch for a few tons to LEO I'm not sure what new market emerges. How many pieces of cubesat junk do we need in LEO? Note that for private enterprise to Mars, they need to generate huge piles of money---and Mars is a money pit with no possible RoI.

A 100% increase in available launches for commercial carriers, and ALL such commercial launches going to SpaceX means about 24 launches. If they are half as expensive, they just did 2X the work for the same profit. They need MANY more launches, where are they coming from?

Gotcha, had it loaded up, so I figured I would test. On the cupola tests I set SAS on so it would stay as level as possible. I'm pretty sure my KSP and SSTU are the latest. I have SSTU-0.4.31.108. Not really arguing, just trying to "get" what is going on.

Even the LEO constellation ideas end up with finite sats. What is the minimum cost of a useful LEO commercial sat? They have to be pretty cheap to be so disposable that they create a market for many hundreds of launches per year to replace the downed sats. What are the fixed costs for a given launch cadence? Can the extant crew launch weekly? Daily? Thought experiment: Boosters are free. Launch cost is labor and fuel, plus second stage cost. What is the minimal cost figure possible? The booster use and fuel plus labor have to be at least 0.5M. Assuming that 1/10th the cost of F9 is the 2d stage (likely low, but we're spitballing), then they'd want to charge ~4-6M for that part alone, plus the 0.5M for the booster (and some markup on that). They cannot possibly sell a launch cheaper than maybe 5-6M$. So instead of making 10s of millions per launch, they;re making a couple, or maybe 3M. So to keep the lights on, they need 10X as many launches. You need to show that sort of demand for it to make sense. What will they launch?

For the cupola, it need to hit the pad at over 17 m/s. I got a blow up at 17.9 m/s, and low 17 was OK... hard nail exactly. Stock engine does as well at this much shorter drop. Tried SSTU engines. Bounce. Tried apollo orbital version on the nose... it blew up! On the bottom, it blew up. MUS-CB, bounced at this lower drop (~18 m/s), and also at closer to 30 m/s. Same with the large tanks, they bounce. It is not all parts, just those where the shape transforms?

Cupola (glass down or up) blows up in impact at 28 m/s, stock (drop from highest clamp) I had KJR as well, so I yanked the folder and the cupola still blows up for me. So what collider is it using that is indestructible? In general, KSP is too forgiving on impact anyway, IMO, so is the fix t set the colliders lower in impact resistance on parts like tanks, engines, etc? The LEM engine bell typically ended up maybe 10-20cm off the lunar surface. In at least one case, overpressure from the engine operating near the surface for a second actually damaged the engine bell. Landings of the LEM were very gentle by KSP standards... Maybe the engines need all colliders set way lower than 6.

I did a version of your experiment with the cupola on my laptop at lunch (mk1-2/medium tank/cupola). It blew up. Tried it with both directions. I did the same with stock engines upside down. Blew up. Tried the stock cupola alone. It blew up. Your engines bounce. I'm not seeing it stock.

50% is not a mass market, and launch costs don't drop towards fuel/refurb costs until you are more than an order of magnitude cheaper. There are a finite number of launches available, and while lower costs can set the bar lower in terms of investment in payloads, the company needs to not just make the same amount, they presumably need to grow. We have comsats. We have earth observation sats. Could we have some more? Sure. Will we start needing thousands of launches per year instead of 10s? Not bloody likely.

I added a note on the KSP bug tracker that this is a Mac issue as well, it's not windows specific (in case they care). I tested several stock engines, they all blew up. Wonder if it is "sided" somehow (a preferential direction).

Is this like kerbals being indestructible if they land on their heads?

No. You can make a million $ by selling 2 million things that cost $0.50 for $1. You can also make a million by selling one thing that costs $0.50 for a million plus $0.50. In order to do the former, you need 2 million people willing to buy the product, for the latter, you need only find one customer. I counted the launches in the last few years, and if you subtract "national" payloads outside the US (China, Russia, India, etc) that will never use a commercial LV, and you also subtract launches of test vehicles of other commercial companies for their own purposes, then there are only on the order of 10-20 launches available per year for SpaceX to get. They get those launches if they charge 60M, 40M, or 10M, the only thing that varies would be their profit, the less they charge, the less they make, period. For the lower cost model to work, they need to create new demand. The lower the launch price, the higher the demand. If they drop launch costs to 1M per launch, they will need to launch 60 times more payloads. That seems stunningly unlikely.

There are some issues with the engines and impact. Make a craft, and put a launch stability enhancer on it, and drag it as high as it goes in the VAB. Place an engine on the bottom. Drop test. Impact in my tests was over 30 m/s. Stock engines blow up on impact. SSTU engines bounce. Pad destroyed, craft bounces. I was too lazy to test all, but the 5 I tried all did this. None of the stock engines did. I added a github comment in the appropriate thread. I'm unsure why stock is different in this regard, but it's a problem. I noticed last night when I used a crasher stage on a munar lander, and as I was landing, I passed it going UP (after a bounce) as I was descending.

Cutting costs is a goal that people theoretically want, but how does it serve the interest of SpaceX? It's like diamonds. They should be cheap, but they are held artificially high. If I found 100 metric tons of perfect diamonds in my basement, I'd be a fool to dump them on the market. SpaceX needs to sell launches and make money, they have no incentive to reduce retail price below what customers would be happy to pay. The only alternative is a bottomless mass market... seeing many trips for a small price. I doubt such a market exists, except maybe passengers some day, assuming there was a destination, and it was perceived as very safe.

I don't imagine many would pay th large airfares required for such a convention, particularly if it could not be included in another trip---in short, the destination would need to be worth it regardless of the event. That writes off most places proposed. It needs to be someplace a tourist would actually want to visit anyway. How about June in Italy (because I'll be there on vacation, anyway )? In the US, assuming Europe needs to be close, then it needs to be East coast. The obvious choice is Orlando to Cape Canaveral area. Disney, Universal, and a short drive to KSC. There are countless flights from anywhere in the US, as well as direct flight from Europe. Next would be DC, as there is the Air and Space Museum (and annex). Ditto on many flights from everywhere. No other destination makes much sense. The trouble of course is that those destinations tend to be expensive for facilities.

This. If there is no hatch, there is no point of entry at all, it's hermetically sealed.

I don't see the barn as "poor," but I do see it as rural. Unless Kerbal architecture goes from primitive, wooden structures from the mid 1800s (as an earth analog) to mid-century modern and beyond in the course of a handful of days, the barn is inappropriate.

All stock parts with crew have hatches. I sorta disagree with @RoverDude on this one simply because: One, the stock contract system doesn't provide the player with enough information to do the contract in one mission in this case---you are asked by some external entity to rescue their lost guy, but you have to rendezvous to see that you cannot get the guy out---they should tell you the part type (this is where the "sorta" comes in, this would be the fix for stock, determining the part, and adding that to the contract). Two, normally (again, in stock) the rescues are scaled to player progress. If you've not sent guys to Duna, you don't get Duna rescues. You don't get munar surface rescues when you have barely gotten to Kerbin orbit. For the inflatable hab shown, forgetting the fact that it makes no sense in orbit with a guy in it, you'd require the claw (and I agree that crew (or fuel) transfer via the claw is something that should not even be a thing, anyway). It's just as absurd to be asked to rescue someone with a part you do not have as to rescue someone at a place you cannot get to. Since the above 2 issues are how the game is designed, and all stock parts have a hatch, I think that added parts without a hatch are actually non-compliant. The stock game would need to change such that crewed parts with no hatch (of which none exist in stock, so this would be a change to support mods) only appear via rescue contracts that include "recovery" of the part. Then at least players would know that the rescue attempt requires a claw ahead of time. Regarding the LS "exploit" of the LS not turning on until you approach, I think that is a limitation of the stock game, as you do not have LS on a craft until you "own" the craft, and for rescues ownership requires getting into range (presumably so the player cannot self-rescue a kerbal via EVA).

The problem is that the part doesn't have a hatch. The stock game randomly pulls rescue contracts from all parts that have crew, so any part with crew that does not have a way to EVA that crew is not fully stock compliant. I'm not inclined to care that much, as in the stock game you can always wait and rescue him/her in a few years. Better would be to have actual craft for rescues, and to have a couple folders for craft allowed to be pulled for rescues: SpaceRescueCraft and LandedRescueCraft.

I'm on a semi-break ATM, myself. I've loaded up the new version and tested a little stock, then tested a little with SSTU. In the last several weeks I've only played an hour or so, and again, I'm testing, not really playing. A simple thing I tend to do is change scale, then everything is new again in some ways, even just Kerbin SoI becomes more interesting when you have to consider staged landers, etc. There's always RSS/RO, too.

Yeah, I let Nils know of this same issue with his planetary bases mod, so he put a hatch on everything that was visible (some had hatches, but only after the part was deployed).

Yeah, it could do that as well. Rescues in KSP right now are 100% absurd (aside from the whole free astronauts standpoint). Rescues imply competing space programs, too. In addition, there are TONS of rescues that happens, which is crazy. I have no flights in space right now (new career), and I think 5 rescue contracts in the mission selection area. Rescues should have various parameters. Dock and refuel might be one. Another might be to repair something. A lander might be stranded with insufficient dv to reach orbit, then you can either transfer fuel, or rescue the crew. There are many options that would make them more interesting. Of course without life support, and the timer starting to tick the moment the contract appears, they are all pretty silly, anyway.

The accuracy with respect to damage isgoing to depend a great deal on the damage model. Many games screw up at that point, and it's important to remember that in terms of "realistic" outcomes (the desired simulation should be to have realistic outcomes, right?) the game is only as realistic as the least realistic bit. In may cases a game would do better to have a board-game style damage table than "simulation" if the simulation is done wrong, honestly (think of a old board/tabletop/paper game like Harpoon as an example). What's the mass of a KE weapon (missile) in this game? What do closing velocities possibly look like? Several km/s? More? You can argue that the hull is a tin-can, and the missile, call it 100kg (incredibly light, IMO) hits at 5 km/s. There was some talk about it going on one side and out the other. I don;t disagree, but it's considerably more complex than that. The volume it passes through is not empty, it is filled with propellant. This means that there will be at the very least a shockwave moving through the tank, which means some of the energy is deposited along the way. Any sensible projectile in this situation might detonate some distance from the target, and pepper the craft with many, smaller fragments at the same velocity. It might not wreck the target outright, but I see almost any hit as a mission-kill on the target unless the propellant tanks are very compartmentalized (which is a mass-expense). He mentions spaced armorm, which is light, but effective vs the sorts of threats that ISS faces... but the weapons hitting these warships are not flecks of paint at 5 km/s, they might be more massive penetrators at those kids of velocities. The spaced armor in this case means that more energy, not less, is delivered to the target. If you stop a round, that energy is left in the target, and this means heat. I'm honestly unsure what would happen... it's a non-trivial aspect of the game, and in fact much harder to get at than the orbital mechanics, etc.

What needs to happen is for rescues to stop pulling a random part that has a crew capacity >=1, and instead have the rescue missions pull whole crafts from a folder of rescue craft files. You'd make a CSM, or lander, or whatever, but drain all the fuel or EC before saving it, then move it to the rescue folder, and that;s one of the craft you'd get for rescue missions.