Jonfliesgoats

Kerbals can live for extended periods of time without food and they are green. Is it possible that they are mild autotrophs? Since they can exist for long periods of time in metal capsules and EVA suits perhaps their chloroplasts are optimized for something other than p680 photons? Maybe Kerbals are most efficient when exposed directly to low and medium levels of gamma radiation? Kerbin, being as small as it is, probably has a very weak magnetosphere and only a wee bit of protection from solar radiation. This means the Kerbals likely evolved on a planet bathed in radiation and have also developed an uncanny knack to repair their own genes. While there are different Kerbal sexes, there are no observable Kerbal children and no references to Kerbal reproduction. Perhaps Kerbals need to get into space to support their asexual Kerbal reproductive cycle? Are Kerbals clonal? Are the clones math-literate at creation?

Missed them by some years. I had my older brother's Apollo themed bedsheets.

Big ideas are tied to little rockets. This was true in human history and it's true regarding Kerbal Space Program. Compared to other games, like Elite: Dangerous, KSP is light hearted and fun. Ironically, we are more invested in the fates of our Kerbals, their lives, their fiery deaths and their combined efforts to fly than we ever are in games like Elite: Dangerous. It's true that in those games we can warp around with our frame shift drives (Albecurrie drives for those who haven't played the game) hauling slaves, blasting innocent merchants to smithereens around Barnard's Star. Those games are fun, but fundamentally they don't involve the emotional connection that one gets with plucky, little green astronauts desperately trying to rocket themselves into cosmos. A ten year old version of myself or my daughter could dryly check the commodity prices of Imperial slaves in one game, but would be deeply frustrated when Valentina burns to a crisp with a poorly planned re-entry. This is why KSP is a great vehicle to introduce kids and adults to ethics of technology. Compared to other games, the thought involved by the player to get their craft flying along with the characters of the Kerbals leads to an investment that simply doesn't exist in other games. Back in the 90s, when I was budding psychopath, I got the idea to grab my pet hamster, put him in a plastic bottle, strap him to my big styrofoam glider and see what happened. Luckily, the thought of killing my pet compelled me to place hamster-like rocks in the plastic bottle and engage in a styrofoam glider test program. I could never get myself to put my hamster on my rockets, radio control planes, etc. The desire not to murder my pet combined with the desire to fly those same creatures got me into learning about aerodynamics, force coupling, aviation and space history, math, engineering, etc. I was going to fly my pets, but I was going to do it right. That experience was just from masking tape, Estes rockets and foam. Eventually, I wound up doing the flying myself and getting degrees in a bunch of unimportant fields. KSP is unique in that it gives kids and adults alike the chance to experience those same feelings and have similar epiphanies without actually murdering hamsters. I would suggest that we make the tech tree an order of magnitude more expensive to progress through and offer a great many more opportunities for science, especially early in the game. A cute, fluffy Kerbunny Kapsule could be mounted on rockets allowing players to choose whether they want to blast their lovable Kerbunnies into suborbital trajectories for science or try to preserve the cute bunnies and simply air drop from them from planes into ocean for science. More science could be gained by recovering Kerbunnies alive. Having a live creature that is somewhat more disposable than a Kerbonaut, requires less mass to fly but is several times more cute opens up a whole range of new experiences and decisions to players. This also allows for much more variety in how you progress through career mode, especially early in the game. It's also a nod to the early years of the Space Race. (note to the moderators: I am making a sincere effort to be apolitical in this post. I am not sure if my reference to another company's game is okay or not. If I run afoul of some regulation, I apologize. As usual, my taste remains poor and my humor remains juvenile.)

Doesn't the AGU address a number of concerns with regard to surface bases? I would like to see some system of cabbies or umbilicals so you can link power and other resources between proximate surface modules.

I'd love to try it!

That launch window planner is great for fast transfers as well as economy transfers.

I love this!

I love this idea, but it leads us down a slippery slope. For example, what about variable geometry compressors and stators? Can we tweak those to make trade offs between engine acceleration v. Economy? I would love to be able to control the number of turbine stages on an engine. I would love to have some control of rocket nozzle/bell geometry. I would love to be able to decide whether I can add an afterburner or save weight on various engines. If you give people like me everything we want, you will have an unplayable game which focuses on metallurgy, optimization of fuel nozzles, etc. Eventually, after several hours of design, you would actually fly your Kerbals with real, conservative and boring test protocols. If everything goes well after many more hours of very conservative and careful flight testing, the Kerbals would issue new type certificate data sheets for your Kerbal craft. This is why people like me must be stopped before it is too late. I think the general suggestion here is a good one, but should be careful not to go too far.

I will give that a try! Thanks!

i was looking at a post regarding upcoming jet parts and they have to be able to fit inside appropriately sized parts, like real engines inside cowlings. Perhaps something similar would work for these motors? I imagine that would be a pretty big task, though.

Wumpus' point regarding aggression and mountain climbing is an interesting one. I tend to think exploration is, at some level, an aggressive act, but not necessarily a malevolent one. I tend to gravitate toward aggression in Kerbals, so let's look at other ideas to offset my own bias. Bored Kerbal Theory: As for Kerbin simply being boring, there's an interesting idea in that too. The lack of cities in stock KSP makes one think that the Kerbals have risen from an agrarian society. This also means that vast technological and social upheavals are currently occurring on Kerbin. It is entirely possible that the brilliant youth of Kerbin are simply tired of hauling in the harvest from the grasslands of Kerbin. These vast crops and the green color of Kerbals indicate a diet without much variety which also lends credibility to the bored Kerbal theory. Also, as soon as Kerbals land on Minmus, they are thinking about tasty deserts. Maybe the whole move or become a spacefaring race is built around a lack of confections on Kerbin? Kerbals in Space due to Impact History and Risk: For those who cite the impact evidence on Kerbin, it's conceivable that the Kerbals have risen during the heavy bombardment period of Kerbin's development. This would prevent the development of large cities or organized agriculture, for that matter, and provide ample reason Kerbals to find a way to engage in asteroid redirect missions and build colonies off Kerbin. Perhaps the geology of Kerbin itself drives the Kerbals to space? Somehow, the Kerbals have jumped from cave-dwelling, meteorite-fearing nomads to spacefaring creatures interested in knowledge to further their own defense and survival. Spaceflight could be fundamentally defensive for them.

These are all good answers that came up while I was working! I always imagine their curiosity rooted in a vague expensionist ideology. Kerbal ideology, I imagine, exists with basically two commandments. Kerbal Kommandment One: Go forth! Science! Repeat! Kerbal Kommandment Two: Kommandment One shall be achieved at all costs and as quickly as possible. Kerbal Kommandment Three: Struts and external fuel ducts are a blessing!

I gotcha! My dumb is strong! You know, I am not really sure if we have any true ramjets in KSP. I always thought they would be fun to play with because of their advantages and challenges, though. I gush over all kinds of experimental propulsion to play with. I am sure there are mods for most of this stuff. Still, while we are talking new motors, I wanted to get in some mention of ramjets and also pulse detonation engines,

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Ramjets don't have moving parts. They rely on the movement of the aircraft through the atmosphere to provide compression that axial and centrifugal compressors on other engines provide. The problem with ramjets is that you have be doing about 300 knots EAS for them to really become feasible. So you have to be fast to get your engine to work so you can go faster. They were really popular with some high speed cruise missile ideas in the Cold War. The SR-71 was powered by turbojets that used many, many stages of axial compressors and some really cool shock-cone intakes. There's a whole art to controlling the intakes to manage the shockwave on the intakes and prevent a compressor stall/engine surge on those motors! It's soo cool! I'd drink coffee and blather about it all day long. Anyway, here's a link to a ramjet wiki. There are also some cool pictures available of 1950s ramjet tests. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet

We know Kerbals spend vast fortunes on space flight and they are not shy about sacrificing Kerbals in the pursuit of a wider presence in their solar system. Whar would motivate these guys? Are they hungry for conquest? Are they idealists? What motivates the Kerbal pursuit of knowledge?

Conventional PDE iterations could be fun too.

Along the lines of what Speeding Mullet is saying is there a way to get mirror symmetry in the VAB? Just like he takes planes to the VAB for perspective, I take certain rockets to the SPH to use mirror symmetry.

Think Hubble repairs v. repairs to the Lincoln Calibration Sphere (LCS has to have been hit by a micrometeorite by now).

Porkjet does amazing work! Are we still giving ramjet engines thrust at 0m/s? It would be nice they smoked and sputtered worthlessly until .5 Mach or so.

There is a lot of dirty business associated with rocketry in the middle 20th century. A number of pendants who should have faced trial for war crimes were sent to Huntsville, AL with operation Paperclip. We quietly forgot the slave labor used for the construction of V2s in the hellish tunnels of Nordhausen. If we are going to address these issues so that young rocketeers know that technology, any technology, come with dark applications, we ought to make light of these issues. If we are going to omit any reference at all the dark genesis of the space race, Werner has to go. Personally, I think there is something beautiful in that devices which were designed principally for weapons delivery and reconnaissance wound up uniting mankind. In real life, former Pendants, Imperialists and Communists allowed Human beings to land on another celestial object. That is a feat which is significant on an evolutionary level! In addition to the physics and management this game allows people to experience, it allows us to consider these greater concerns regarding human priorities versus base tribalism. An effort to exercise good taste while tackling these issues is always difficult, but it can be done. Feigning sensitivity to these issues by avoiding them altogether is a missed opportunity. Ethics of technology is something that KSP already lets kids experience. They laugh as they leave Jeb marooned on Duna for years with naught but a smashed lander. I would suggest missions where we launch cute pets, like Laika and space chimpanzees, for research. I would also suggest we find a playful way to address the weapons and world dominating ideology behind these technologies. (Caricatures of Kerbal Stalin?) Big ideas and big gambles come with space flight and rocketry. KSP with its tongue in cheek nods to the loss of astronauts in mishaps, existing references to Pendant war criminals, potential to leave heroic kerbonauts stranded far from their home planet introduce kids and adults to these big ideas. This can be done without having a mature rated game. It just takes some good artists. As an aside, I just wound up on the other side of earth having used satellite navigation and laser accelerometers. All this stuff was developed to deliver nuclear weapons! Instead it helps me have ice cream in Japan! Cool, no?

That's handy! So far I have been relying on visuals and shadows. I am playing primarily on the console right now. Also, I hardly ever play from inside the cockpit, so I will have to check this out. Agreed regarding IVA cockpit layout, but, to be fair, many real cockpits are far from the ergonomic ideal. This is especially true for cockpits of 1950s through 1970s vintage. It took decades to standardize instrument panels and just as that happened, we shifted to screens with different symbology. My point is that the cluttered and haphazard IVA cockpit may provide a more authentic experience.

"Never mind the 6 hour day, oxygen rich moon around a fictitious gas giant planet or itty bitty solar system dimensions. Cannibal, fascist Kerbals are cool too. I, however, draw the line at inaccurate physics and poor references to engineering achievements! I say good day, sir!". This is why I obsess over this game. Love it.

Correction: ridiculous theories regarding fascist moon bases. I fail at proofing posts.

There is some discussion about getting probes into the liquid cores of Europa and Enceledus. I think this would be a great thing to attempt in KSP, but the feasibility of doing this would be a challenge. I don't expect anyone to design internal structures of moons or planets. I do wonder if we can get some more specialized parts or science values from drilling into the icy bodies? I have to play between trips for work, so pardon if I am missing something obvious.