tater

You can superimpose them in the VAB, and this pod is indeed slightly bigger. 4 seems crowded, but 3 is the mk1-2... A 2 man would be more useful (there is another modded one out there, I know). Would it be possible to do 2 man with some additional feature, like perhaps having a external "locker" that might contain science parts (where the hatch is, but on the other side)? Then at least it makes use of that extra space. Nice pod, BTW.

Heheh. It is, indeed.

Randazzo… did you play ww2ol?

No mechjeb, no KER, playing jumbo32… I have no idea what the dv maps are even like. Last night I had a new 2-man lander design to the Mun to swap scientists (I role-play rotating crews) with a base. It was made well enough to land and TO again, but I started my descent late, and had to do a little unplanned flying as I wanted to be within a few hundred meters to avoid a few km trek. Fuel was VERY low. I should have sent another mission to rescue (I don't load saves), but .... Took off, and turned downrange immediately, hopping to gain orbit… ended up achieving orbit only by burning 3/4 of my mono propellant (8xspherical tanks).

Ions are fubar unless they come up with a solution for constant thrust trajectories. Vasmir shares that issue. Stuck with the situation now, ions could have spool up/down such that they are not useful as lander engines.

Throttling is something that can be looked at for all engines, frankly (not just spool up/down). RO does this, obviously, but it is a simple way to balance various engines (even finite restarts are a possibility).

That's pretty cool. I was just rereading a bunch of papers from the late 80s and early 90s I have on the subject. They've progressed a little to be sure. My dream would be to really build proper bases in situ (regolith on top as shielding, etc).

Hehehe. I can dream, right?

Increase the size of kerbin slightly, which fixes the problem.

Serious ISRU (on airless worlds) is either a huge, industrial process, or it takes a LONG time. Anything fast enough that you can even notice a small tank filling that doesn't look like a factory or something is magical, likely.

This makes a lot of sense. I've never made a nuke lander, myself because I don't see them as lander engines.

Rover from the mid 1950s became Nerva in the early 60s. It was tested fully functional in the mid 60s. That's the problem with the tech tree, stuff really came about almost simultaneously. the trouble with many high Isp options is the inability of the game to deal with continuous thrust.

I suggested a while ago that they rename "Mission Control" to "Mission Planning," and add "Mission Control" to tracking. (Mission control and tracking)

True, if that was a mod I'd already have it installed. As Niven said, any sufficiently interesting drive is also a powerful weapon. i should add that I put Verniers pointing forward on nukes so I can brake without pointing at whatever I am attempting rendezvous with (kill most velocity off axis, then finish with RCS).

Science is no hindrance. In a system like this, choosing broad mission goals could unlock tech. Tech is developed for a purpose, not because you learned planetary science.

Nukes are supposed to be the be all end all in vacuum. Split atoms, not wood.

Nerva Isp in game is already low in atmosphere, and about right for vacuum. The test nerva (a friend's dad actually worked on it here in los alamos (tested in nevada at the test site)), and they ran it 28 minutes at full power, (and around couple hours total). Not many in-atmosphere burns in KSP that exceed 28 minutes are possible, lol. Nukes should be used for everything in open space, frankly. That was NASA's plan in the 60s On topic, aren't the jets simply absurd?

My current is a "normal" career with dead is dead, and maybe another box unchecked (can load it to check right now). I only ever revert or use saves if there is a bug (or I notice no chutes while on launchpad ). That's on jumbo32 (3.2X RSS setup), though, and I was unsure about what I'd need money wise (did the same with 64X). As is true in all KSP career games I've messed with funds only matter at the very beginning, then you swim in them (I don't use the strategies at all, all they do is make even more money, faster I think).

Agreed, I've proposed something similar. "Contracts" for science should be Linus and Werner suggesting missions for your program. You'd pick a broad mission set (explore the mun) which would then open all the suggestions you make above as what would now be "contracts.

Too late, you already have it. Look at the VAB, there are kerbals driving/walking around. If you are not controlling all those, the computer is. That is all the AI that is needed for mining. Kerbals driving bulldozers around and pushing regolith into the hopper. With better AI for kerbal workers, they'd look more convincing/interesting (stopping, getting out and going to airlock, new workers coming out, etc), but if you want them to look as boring as the ones in the VAB for some inexplicable reason… whatever.

I'd play with realistic ISRU, but I think that that would be well outside the scope of current KSP. "Realistic" (even in a lower grade KSP realism sense) would, even if it concentrated on water ice in polar craters as the only resource, require mining perhaps a few 1000s of kg per day to generate useful amounts vs bringing incremental amounts of extra fuel from earth/kerbin. That's a substantial mining effort. Extracting from plain old regolith requires mining vast amounts of material, and then introducing rather large amounts of heat. Ideas for doing this talk about temps of 1000-1500 degrees, and then you have to somehow move the material through this while keeping it clear and not gunked up… non-trivial. I think it likely has a more realistic use ("it" being local resources) for construction, not propellant. Again, outside the scope of KSP I think. Assuming an atmospheric processor might work (mars/duna), it needs to take a long time to fill a tank on a single vehicle if it is not to be magic. Think many months or a few years. Regardless, no such equipment should be small or light.

1 min, 36 sec with an RSS config and several mods (FAR, etc). Stock is much shorter.

I want AI kerbals driving bulldozers on the mun to collect the many 1000s of cubic meters of regolith needed to get meaningful amounts of propellant. Would add needed life to planetary bases.

I was rereading papers from a symposium that turned into a class I took (rather along time ago), and to get 100,000kg of hydrogen (about a what a shuttle launch used according to this paper from guys at Johnson Space Center), they'd need to mine about 400,000 m^3 of lunar regolith, then process it. A small operation compared to terrestrial mining, apparently. I suppose to role-play something like the proposed system, you build a munar base for like 100 kerbals, supply them with bulldozers, etc, then place your one "mining" part.

As someone who has not used karbonite, why would you not process it on the ground, breaking it into fuel there?