Hannu2

Owners of companies want to have profits in sane time. In any case they want to make profit in their lifetime. In current situation there are far too much uncertainties that space mining would be interesting investment. It need so much technology to develop and nobody can estimate how long or how much money it takes. Only sure thing is that time is very long (compared to typical industrial investments) and costs are enormous. I think that mining industry become interested when there are large and reliable reusable lauchers. Maybe 200-1000 t to low orbit at one tenth or less of current costs per kg. But I do not believe that mining companies develop such launchers. It will probably be governments job because there are not much commercial use for such giants.

I disagree. Everybody knows that used rocket is a risk. Nobody knows exactly how big risk is but it is clear that it is risk. Therefore it would be insane to sell, buy or insurance them at the same price as a new. If insurance companys can take age and model of car into account, if customer's payment is few hundreds of Euros per year, I think that they can also change agreements of tens of millions if rocket is used. I would compare buying of launch service to buying of car. Every launch consumes large part of rocket's lifetime. It is unrealistic to expect that rockets can be used tens or hundreds of times in several decades, if ever. You do not buy an used car at same price than a new car or without knowing that it is used. It is shame to car manufacturer if new car fails, especially if there are many cases, but it is not shame if old scrap fails. You can save money and buy old scrap but you know that there are much larger risks of failures of missions and eventually every car broke so that it is not sane to fix it. Maybe at some day, if rockets last hundreds of flights and failures are counted as parts per million instead if percents, like cars, planes of ships, they can sell services without telling which rocket makes the job like plane or ship companies now. But currently we are in very experimental phase and very far away from such situation.

I remember that. But they did not have cheap launches. If they could have sent 10 probes at same costs than one before, failures of single crafts would not have led to failures of missions. Only reason why they use hundreds of millions to ensure that probes are perfect is that launch costs in any case hundreds of millions. I am sure that if launch costs drops to one tenth or less there will be cheaper probes and some kind of "mass production" of probes.

I think that kerbals have modular building philosophy, because that is one of the basic ideas of the game, and make new stages. Of course I have long developed basic solutions and results are often very similar. There may be one fuel tank or couple of SRBs more or less, depending on payload.

It seems that it has been tried. Results were not satisfactory. Trains have attractive payload ratio compared to rockets but TWR need some improvements before they are suitable for orbital operations.

Of course propaganda and indirect show of power have been essential motivation for such projects. But tendency to just accumulate enormous private fortunes only to get even more money is relatively new phenomenon. I hope and think that there probably will be times when richest or politically or religiously most powerful individuals can get more power and fame by funding monumental projects, for example ambitious and expensive space programs. Most such projects, like huge old cathedrals all over Europe, seven wonders of ancient world, the great wall of China, expeditions to poles, Apollo-program have been economically just throwing away insane amount of economical resources for their financiers. They have bought fame and power, not invested to get more money than they paid.

It may be true on far future when they have much experience and know that used stages are practically as reliable as new. But it is far too risky during experimental phase. If SpaceX had one price then accident of used rocket would hit its reputation and insurance payments. If it sells used rockets as used rockets with higher risks customer takes part of responsibility. If somebody wants to maximum reliability, he buy a new one at full price and if somebody wants to cheap launch even with a little risk he buys an used one. I think that there are markets for both.

After ISRU my stations have had only small fuel capacity. I have mining ship on surface. It have drill, refinery, crew cabins and life supplies. Then I have a large tanker with (typically) second largest 3.75 m tank for fuel only for interplanetary nuclear ships and other for fuel and oxidizer for landers and local ships. Tanker is normally docked to station and its tanks is used as a storage. When some resource is empty, 2 kerbal crew land tanker near refinery, fill tanks and fly back. I use KAS to connect ships.

I tried to learn to play with left mouse hand to continue my Dres project. My right hand have some medical problems and I have to avoid using of mouse.

It is Musk's fantasy but it does not sound very realistic objective. Even if SpaceX succeeds to reuse stages in short time, other rocket manufacturers develop their reuse systems soon and SpaceX's window to get ridiculous profits will be short. It is totally impossible to earn tens of billions pure profit in such time, maybe 5 years. Tens of billions are superoptimistic estimate of cost of new manned Mars capable spacecraft totally from scratch. I would say hundreds of billions.

Look at my Dres mission: http://imgur.com/a/ATbax That is not very good example because inclination is only 2° but procedure is explained. Launch Window Planner (or Alexmoon's calculator) gives angle to prograde of ejection burn and you use information given by MechJeb to time launch to get correct LAN. It saves about 300 m/s compared to equatorial parking orbit if I go to Dres and need 25° inclination. Transfers to Eeloo can save more. I use inclined parking orbit if inclination is 5° or more. When you used to use it it takes maybe minute or two per launch. Typical correction is less than 100 m/s (except Moho).

I think that manned space exploration and colonization can never be justified by economics. It is extremely expensive work which does not give returns in reasonable time and maybe never. Asteroid mining will probably be only economically feasible large scale industry in space in foreseeable future. But it will be mostly robot work. When rocket prices allow severe development of mining machines, maybe after 25-50 years, industrial automation is far higher level than now. Probably there are not much jobs for human engineers in Earth, too. Asteroid mining will also not need planets for anything. Atmosphereless and practically gravityless asteroids give everything such processes will need. But manned operations, especially colonization, must have ideological reasons. Now leading ideology is short-sighted capitalism without any nobler objectives than selfish profits, but this is exceptional time in mankind's history. I hope and believe that this is relatively short period (decades) and there will be times when humans will again do big projects for other reasons than money. The most magnificent project have always been mostly ideological, even during space age. Maybe we will not see it but after 100 years things may be different. Mankind need same attitude it had during great expeditions. Taxpayers and other financiers have to learn to tolerate failures. They have to think over decades or centuries. They have to accept that they will not get other benefits than knowledge that they stay forever in history books as beginners of the colonization of space, which eventually makes mankind independent of one planet and cosmic catastrophes. And maybe it makes mankind as a technical civilization instead of animal population.

Absolutely best parking orbit is 70 km circular orbit. It should be inclined so that you have exact velocity vector after burn which keeps always prograde direction. Burn trajectory is part of the spiral. However, it is very difficult task to execute with KSP's maneuvering tools. Unfortunately there are also not suitable mods, as far as I know. At least MechJeb can not calculate such burn. I tried it because it was interesting engineering challenge to program software to calculate burn and try it couple of times but it is far too laborious to be a permanent practice for every mission for me. Practical best depends on your personal preferences but I use 300 km parking orbit for interplanetary ships. I get typically accurate burn with TWR of 0.3 and can use 0.2 with typical correction of about 100 m/s (for outer planets). Cost difference between correctly inclined 300 km parking orbit and prograde burn on spiral trajectory from lower orbit is just few percents if I do not want to have extreme low TWR and burn times. At many times it is practically nothing because I can not save even single smallest fuel tank of SRB.

I do not say against your style of play. I only explain other point of view. For me the fun thing why I play is engineering. There is planning, building and micromanaging dozens of technical details. I do not want to be a pilot or actually execute everyday functions of kerbals. I get my satisfaction when crew returns from well planned long mission to planet with loads of science points and all objectives executed. My planning and managing have succeeded. Piloting is MechJeb's work and I have also mods to transfer science without annoying EVAs. My modset gives technical information, math and micromanagement tasks.

You was very optimistic. In real life dark age of manned spaceflight began 1972 and there is no real signs that it will end in foreseeable future. There are plans and empty promises but not anyone who wants and can to pay the bill of hundreds of billions of euros or dollars. Single space enthusiast billionaire can not afford it in his lifetime. Fortunately re-using technology of SpaceX gives little hope that era of robotic space exploration could begin in next decades. If launch costs drops dramatically probes does not have to be so extremely perfect and expensive. If you try to make a probe which have 90 % possibility to succeed it costs at least ten times more than a probe with 60 % probability. This is a guess but last percents increase costs to insane levels. But if you can send 10 60 % probes with same money there is probability of 99,99 % that at least one succeeds and 94 % possibility that at least 4 succeeds. There will be significant decrease of costs per "science point" and I hope that it gives possibilities to space science projects to more universities and scientific laboratories all around the world.

Thanks for the information. They have changed it. I tried (many versions ago) but then renaming needed power. I agree that marking things as debris is not at very high position on the list of annoying things but it also does not take many lines of code to fix it. Of course it is no reasonable to do only it but if they do some kind of management functions overhaul it would be near free to implement.

Good idea. There should also be an easy option to mark craft as a debris. It should be possible also by right click without power or command pod at all.

Both procedural generation of details and aliens (at least macroscopic) are in "do not suggest" -list. Moving visible aliens would be hard to program and sane interactions between kerbals and them would be far out of the scope of this game. Simple life detector and funny one liners about found creatures would not give anything new.

Caves and other 3D terrain would be very great. However, it would need a massive and expensive graphical overhaul to implement them in the game. Practically totally new and much more complicated surface model for planets and procedural terrain generator. It has been suggested many times and Squad knows that (I thought it is in do not suggest -list). We will see if they decide to try after migration, but I would not hold my breath during waiting.

I think this is a good idea and easy and cheap to program into game. Sun's biomes would also fit the game. Actually some real solar probe have used Jupiter's slingshot to achieve high inclination solar orbit to see solar wind and magnetic field from polar latitudes. If surface is necessary there could be simple solid sphere and ship would crash far above it because overheating or pressure implosion. An easy and realistic way to handle approach visually would be to lower light level until everything would be (almost) black at crash level. It takes maybe ten minutes to hit Jool's crash level if you do not have a parachute and use 4 x acceleration. I think it is not too long time to never try, but it is better to use windowed mode and take other activity during descent. It is very important not to use parachute. Parachute does not give anything but if you use it descent through an extreme souposphere at few meters per second will take annoyingly long time. Solar panels crash in Jool's atmosphere even at very low speed (1 m/s). It is better to take one or two 4k batteries to give power for transmissions of atmospheric detector.

Falcon 9 is not intended to land in human control. It's minimum thrust is much more than weight. You can not hover with it and land slowly. You have to use position information as feedback and adjust whole burn so that velocity is zero at landing pad.

Why that is ridiculous trajectory? Near Hohmann orbits are used (both in KSP and in real life) only because DV is so expensive. They are very long and very slow transfers which are typically possible after long waiting. If you have huge DV reserves there is no reason to use slow low energy orbits. Fastest orbits are always hyperbolas around center body. When speed is increased they approach straight lines from departure body to target body, which is very intuitive. Shortest and fastest route between two points is a straight line. Gravity can be considered as a small perturbation in such trajectories. My most ridiculous trajectories are those in which map view does not show encounter with Jool's moon until there is couple of hours to encounter. (I do no understand why Squad never fix such stupid bug, it has been at least from 0.18) They lead to more or less desperate correction burns. Sometimes I have forgot to put life supplies when I have sent manned craft to Minmus and I have noticed it after TMI burn. I have had to make a rescue maneuver. I have also sent small flyby probes to OPM planets with significantly faster routes than minimum dv, however, I do not see any ridiculous in that..

Of course I understand and agree that. But why inspire Squad to make another half baked function, which is far from functional and easy to use and too annoying to replace a mod. Why not implement all functions of alarm clock mod and even more mission management tools? If somebody (for example I have never used all functions of KAC) does not want all stuff he simply do not use and care them. Basic things, like maneuver alarms, are at least as easy than Snark suggested.

Because you can achieve your objectives by hacking couple of minutes. After that your window is what you want and you have an alarm clock mod. Other option is to whine years on forums and hope that at some day SQUAD will listen. And if you are only whiner it probably never happens. They have much more important things to do.

I fear that KSP 2.0 will not be what I want. Instead I hope that there will be some small hobby projects which try to be as realistic as possible and try not to be famous or suitable for everybody. As accurate model of Solar system as possible (and possibility to use custom settings for planets and orbits too), N-body trajectory modeling, possibility to plan and build space programs and ships (more procedurally), FAR-level aerodynamics, highly optimized self made physics engine, sophisticated trajectory prediction and mission control and executing tools, procedurally generated details on bodies (of course not real surface models of bodies), accurate gravity model of non-spherical bodies and much nerdy micromanagement engineering details which can ruin your mission. Graphics could be simple OpenGL stuff but planets should have 3D surface. I could even take part of such project and program physics routines. Unfortunately whole game is too laborious and have too much boring UI-things to do.