Hannu2

Display of coordinate axes, node detectors in every orbit (with possibility choose reference plane (ecliptic, equator of center body, target orbit (it exist already)).

That would not give much to gameplay. It would be practically a three sat contracts maybe with some instrument and mouse clicking science. It would work if there were for example extremely tight orbit tolerances and long term scientific experiment but there are not suitable maneuvering tools and science mechanics in KSP.

If that game were really an option, I definitely want them to make only 64 bit version and debug it to tolerable level and after that use all resources to develop KSP2. Unfortunately, there are far too few people who wants to accurate physics and precision flight management tools. Most want to explosions, crazy contraptions, eyeballing maneuvers and numberless spaceflight. The only hope to get spaceflight game with proper physics, good performance and usable planning tools is that there will be some kind of hobby project like Orbiter with possibility to plan missions and spacecrafts. Simple models and graphics but very high levels of realism, physical modeling and technical details.

I do not think so if they use an old missile. SRB does not have to be 5 m. Only simple (compared to spacecrafts) adapter is needed. You limit this discussion too tight. Certainly nobody here knows exact costs of options. If somebody knows he is not allowed to tell. We can only guess costs and reasons of decisions without knowing many things which are very important for Nasa.

I think that SRB is so much cheaper than Delta that it is no problem to make adapter. I am also sure that somebody have thought changes in Nasa. Even if it is not true there may be complex political reasons and restrictions in Nasa's decisions. Nasa uses several times more money to achieve things than for example private companies but it is government's way to support to US aerospace companies.

You need TWR of over 1 when you lift from surface. But when you are on orbit you do not have to fight against gravity. You push forward and even extremely low TWR can accelerate your ship to high velocities. Probes with a real ion engine can have TWR of 1/100000 compared to g and they are capable of high dv interplanetary travels from LEO (actually much more capable than probes with traditional thrusters). However, very long burns are difficult to time. There are not suitable tools in KSP or any mods. My thumb rules are: 1. stage (+possible SRBs): dv 1500-2000 m/s, TWR (at start) 1.3 - 1.5. 2. stage: dv 1500-2000 m/s, TWR (at start) 0.7-1.0. At this point ship is on low Kerbin orbit. If my destination is Mun or Minmus, it is typically 100 km and 300 km for interplanetary operations. 3. stage: dv depends on target and mission profile, typically from 1000 m/s (Mun) to 5000 m/s (Moho), TWR 0.25-0.35. The lower TWR you have in ejection burns the larger errors you have, if you do not calculate exact trajectory and time burn with separate software. Therefore I use 300 km orbit and TWR around 0.3. The higher parking orbit the less errors you get but you have to use more dv because you do not get Oberth effect. And the higher TWR the shorter and more accurate burn but payload ratio is hit by heavy engines.

I put it on top of the Mk1 pod and execute first kerbal rescue missions. Later I use it sometimes in contract satellites for aesthetic reasons (with MJ controls). It is sad that it has been chosen to be the most primitive pod without SAS and reaction wheels instead of for example boring cube shaped one.

I think that this would not fit very well in KSP's current scope. Railgun would be optimal for very frequent launches of hundreds of payloads, for example automated supply transports to colonies or sending automated mining systems to bring resources from asteroids to kerbin. But there is not such possibilities in KSP. KSP concentrates to earlier phase of space technology where single missions are important and player plan them and execute them. Railgun would fit better to game where basic piloting is automated and player manages larger scale logistic operations in solar system.

Or one step further. At this time it seems that gravitational waves behave very accurately as general relativity predicts. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2077162-revolution-in-physics-as-gravitational-waves-seen-for-first-time/

It is difficult to justify from here that solutions of space companies are completely wrong. However, it seems to be extremely difficult and expensive to develop and build huge engines to the point that their scale economics begin to benefit. There are few historic examples and they have had large problems. F1 was a propaganda machine far too expensive for all commercial use. Four chambered RD170 had not much users even smaller 2 chamber versions were more popular. It seems that also SpaceX has severe difficulties to plan large Raptor because engine shrinks in every new rumor. 9 engines gives also benefit in return. They use only one of them and it is "too powerful". It can not be throttled so low that stage can hover. Landing with such engine must be extremely accurate and well controlled.

As far as I know there are not other stable orbit around Earth than Moon and its trojans. Minmus would be ejected out from system or crashed to Moon in relatively short time (astronomically). It is also impossible to use artificial satellites as time capsules (except maybe trojans).

Part 10:First return to home. In this part we follow return trip of first crew. At next time kerbals get a new toy, large space telescope.

I agree. Mun is so large that inclination of couple of degrees does not make transfers more difficult for beginners who do not care where they land. You get just somewhat inclined orbit. For example, I have to avoid Mun when I go to Minmus from parking orbit in Minmus's plane. 6 degrees is not enough to avoid Mun's SOI. It is time to learn little orbital mechanics when you are more advanced and begin to make pinpoint landings or use orbits with defined inclination and LAN.

I would like to start with simple rocket and probe. Just like real space technology. I think that KSP should be spaceflight game. I do not want to begin by inventing fire and wheel or even plane. However, manned flight should begin at about tier 3 or 4.

Part 9: Rover excursion and crew exchange. I have got little bored to KSP and also have problems with my mouse hand which have restricted playing games. It is difficult but possible to play KSP with left mouse hand. However, I have not learned to play games with first person view. In this part kerbals test a new rover. It seems to be better than the first version but far away from good. Fortunately Squad (or Unity) updates wheel physics in next version. There are also a crew rotation. New crew stays in Station, station crew moves to Base and base crew returns to Kerbin. In part 10 first crew will try to return home.

In my opinion current balance between Mk-1 and Mk1-2 is good. Larger capsule is intended to longer trips and have more room, equipment and life support per kerbal. However, lander cans, especially larger one, does not fit very well. They should be lighter but have very low heat tolerance and weak structural strength. They could be used to land on low of medium gravity bodies. You should pack them during ascent so that they are not structural parts of the launch stack. There could also be life support issues in mods.

Escape velocity from 100 km Ganymedes orbit is only 790 m/s. It can not explain 7 km/s difference. Drag sounds reasonable. Titan's atmosphere is much thicker than Earth's.

No, but I thought that there should be some realism in this discussion. Scifi fantasies are another story than real space exploration, in which 10 years is relatively short time. Most if not all missions which will fly in next 10 years have already been funded and in some phase of building or at least developing. It is not realistic to invent some fancy grand tour to all planets with superpower nervas and list it. If we are optimistic, we think that all missions will success. There will be JWST which will certainly give loads of real life science points in many areas of astronomy. BepiColombo will be launched and continue Messenger's job after about a decade. Juno will arrive to Jupiter in this year and give some science. Nasa will probably make SLS and Orion in some nerfed form but it will be far too expensive to be anything else than propaganda (and political corruption) spacecraft and they will be scrapped after couple of test missions. Or maybe SLS will be used to launch some huge spying satellites or other military stuff for US army. Army has an infinite budget but I do not know if they need huge payloads. Lisa Pathfinder will show that technology works and actual mission will be funded but it will not be launched before 2030. Some other planetary probes will be funded by USA, ESA, Japanese and Chinese but economical problems in these countries (including developing of SLS) decrease science funding so that we will not get anything spectacular. Europa Clipper will be nerfed and use Falcon heavy instead of ridiculously prized SLS. Any of them will not fly before 2016. Asteroid capturing craft will be sent but it does not get asteroid to Moon orbit before 2026. Commercial side will also develop slowly. SpaceX begins to sell used rocket phases. First as a risky low cost alternative but later they can sell at least 2-3 full prized flight. Maybe they can use first stages 3-5 times and will decrease average prices to 1/3 from current level after 10 years. There will be some other company or two with same price level and payload capabilities. Space agencies will buy manned and cargo transports to ISS, which will be continued to at least 2026, but there will not be other private launches than communication satellites and some small cubesats. There will be some suborbital tourism flights at 20's and maybe couple of billionaires in ISS. Tourism will not be significant business or develop space technology. SpaceX will introduce Raptor at about 2020 but it will be smaller and more expensive than expected. They will begin to develop rocket stage for it but it takes more than a decade before first flight test. There will not be any large scale change of international political attitudes. Chinese, ESA and some other countries fund some probes but launch mostly communication and military satellites. Russians lose their interests to space exploration and manned operations when commercial crew capsules of American companies take their Soyuz business. There will be much repurposed bovine waste talk about Moon and Mars missions from governmental agencies and private companies but nothing will be funded. Manned operations will be restricted to LEO except one circumlunar test flight with SLS and Orion. There will not be any new nuclear powered ion propulsion systems or other fancy stuff. Falcon Heavy will be the largest launcher (except SLS which is uselessly expensive for all scientific probes).

I am not sure if it has some approximations which are inaccurate at high inclinations needed in RSS but at least it takes small inclinations of stock solar system into account. Why both of dv maps above say that it takes 7600 m/s from low Titan orbit to surface? Titan have approximately same mass and size than Ganymedes, which have less than 2000 m/s. Orbits are different (100 km vs. 1000 km) but 7 km/s is far more than escape velocity. Does that mean ascent and try to take drag losses into account?

I do not believe that they are so independent production lines as SQUAD says. I am sure that console ports limit developing of PC game. But on the other hand, SQUAD needs money from console customers. I fear that without that income they would decide earlier that it is not economically feasible to develop KSP anymore. It is sad reality that restrictions of consoles affect to most commercial PC games. I love KSP and have lots of opinions what SQUAD should do in my opinion. In many cases they are very different things than they actually do. But I can not complain quality or game value of KSP or demand more than I have got. I paid 23$ (If i remember correct, it was 18.0). I have played more than thousand hours. Maybe 2000 (I do not want to know). More than any other game ever. Fun for the buck ratio of KSP and mods are at least order of magnitude greater than any other entertainment product I have ever seen. And it will be even better because SQUAD and modders make updates and more content without extra payments. I would have no problems to pay more if I would get something interesting.

As far as I have understood migration to new unity breaks mods very badly. It has taken near a year to port the game, so there are huge changes in code. It certainly takes several months to get essential mods to work, and maybe we lose some, but it must be done. 32 bit with heavy memory limitations are not enough for KSP anymore. I recommend that everyone keeps 1.0.5 and mods on side of 1.1. I am not going to even download new version before necessary mods are updated. Therefore I hope that SQUAD makes everything they can to ensure that game is as bugless as possible so that modders and SQUAD can concentrate to add content in later versions. But it is somewhat pointless to add things now if migration and bug fixes probably break it soon.

OK. I think that we can not achieve agreement. Time will show who are more right.

I live in Finland and I am old enough to remember Soviet union and communism maybe too well. I do not mean that. Fear and slavery driven systems can never product enough to make Mars colonies. But it is not true that humans never like working. In every country and culture people use huge amount of work, money, thinking etc. to polish their status in their society of to get entertainment. They buy clothes, status things, they go to expensive concerts and sport happenings, they pay and use significant part of their lifetime to watch TV. I did not mean dictator or religion lead forced ideology but such situation that significant part of people are interested in new kind of things. For example colonization of space. Exploring and science are probably too nerdy stuff for average Joe but expanding human being to other planets could be as interesting as other entertainments now and people accept that small part of their taxes is used to such activities. Entertainment and sport industry get now large support from states all around the world. I think much more than governments use to space exploration. Think for example olympic games. States and cities put billions to them and many taxpayers accept it even they know that they never get money back. They think that fame and joy are more valuable. And one part of it may well be competition between leaders of states. They could show their mighty and productivity of their ideologies by financing space activities. I think that there must be both, people and leaders have to be interesting in colonization.

I agree. Migration to 64 bit is the most important thing. And after that debugging and optimizing of engine and UI as much as possible. I can get details from mods. In any case I expect that SQUADs version of communications is too simplified and I continue to use more technical mods.

I think that typical values are something like total budget of billion and launch takes 200 millions. It is not insignificant part of cost. And as you say, saving of launch costs is important thing which increases cost of probe. Only reason why probes must be light is launch costs. If launches costed 1/10 of current costs they could send 10 x more massive probes at the same price. Then there would be many options to lower costs. If large total mass were possible probe could be make with very safe margins and redundancy by using reasonable cheap materials and structures. If maximum mass would be same, scientific payload could be divided to several probes and use extra mass to make cheaper structures. Redundancy would come from many separate probes. Or there could be some combination.