Outlander4

I did. Well, acceleration (unless it's about ion engines) is usually quite high so most of the time we indeed just coast along our trajectory. It's true that it'll be a bit different for interstellar missions (longer, that is), but it's still mostly about waiting in high warp. And in career mode it'll be possible to balance everything (especially the nuclear pulse-type things) by insane costs, need to assemble the damn thing in space far away from Kerbin (possibly using resources extracted from several planets/dwarf planets/asteroids). You won't be able to launch it from Kerbin (forbidden by environmental protection law - kerbals are crazy but not THAT crazy)...you won't be able even to research it while on kerbin - just test-firing the engine needs to be done somewhere far away in deep space. Actually, the same could be applied to sandbox mode minus the cost of the project, I think Basically, make building it so hard that it'd be much easier to use NERVAs for going to Jool and beyond. I can't think of any good explanation why FTL can't be used for moving from solar orbit somewhere between Eve and Kerbin to solar orbit somewhere between Jool and the next gas giant. It's far enough from gravity wells; it totally should work. By the way, the mantra is 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic', though I prefer 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device'.

Aye, AngelLestat messed up his quoting again, and it went directly into my quote. Corrected it. I don't smoke, but I like good Scottish whisky. It never made me fail at quoting the right people, though.

Then there are no chance since NovaSilisko is allergic to the letter K Seriously, though - KSP makes use of generally accepted principles of physics exaggerating them slightly for gameplay reasons. Like, planets behave mostly like real planets apart from being ridiculously small and dense. Solar panels behave like real solar panels apart from not following the inverse square rule when decreasing efficiency with distance from the sun. Magnetic docking ports are physically possible and even act more or less as docking ports apart from magnetic forces following inverse square rule instead of inverse cube of the distance, just to make our life easier. Ion engines work as real ion engines do, but they have more thrust to make our lives less miserable, and so on. FTL, on the other hand, is a totally fictional concept bearing no resemblance to the real life, violating laws of physics and even in case of Alcubierre drive being a mathematical concept only. Of course, KSP is a game and it's for entertainment, but its appeal comes greatly from having valid general principles of physics and working with them. Another point that everybody ignores - when the rest of the Kerbol system gets added, it would take a lot of time at maximum time warp waiting for planets to align, and quite possible hours at high time warp to travel to the outermost planets and icy bodies of the Kerbal analogue of the Kuiper belt. For some reason, it doesn't scare anyone off, but when we start talking about spending similar amount of time waiting for interstellar travel using some plausible slower-then-light methods of propulsion people suddenly start saying that we need an FTL. I can't understand this, honestly. Kerbal clock plug-in made playing KSP much easier - I basically sent off a mission to Jool, put the timer on, and spent the transfer time doing LKO/Munar stuff, designing and launching ships and modules for the next mission. And we all know that some sort of timers and mission planning are going to be implemented anyway, so waiting won't be a problem - we'll have things to occupy our time.

You can easily use sailed beam for in-system travel,it would be a waste of resources but space in general is a waste of resources. We do it because we can, really. Space is not a ocean. You're not thinking here. With computers or without, orbital mechanics remains the same - you'll need to assemble the damn thing (solar collector) somewhere in orbit, and then slow down its velocity relative to the Sun to ZERO to allow it to fall down towards the Sun until the point where light pressure and solar wind balances it against the pull of gravity. I don't know if it's possible in the first place (calculations are needed), and in real life changes in Sun's luminosity and solar wind due to solar flares will knock it off-position in no time. KSP is free of such concerns, though. Slightly less than that, actually. But all the time when Sun is somewhere between you and your target you'll have quite a lot of trouble aiming at it. It's not physical, it's engineering challenge. Space is not an ocean. You can bring your orbit down and thus get closer to the Sun; it is not the same as cancelling your orbital velocity entirely and just hanging somewhere motionless. It can't, and it doesn't. One questionable discovery of one strange strand is not enough to imply that RNA and DNA can be built fully with arsenates instead of phosphates.

Don't want to sound as a moderator, but as one of the previous posters told you (in an ironical form), this has been suggested in some form or the other from the very beginning. From the day KSP went public, I believe. Your suggestions and the way you presented them are good; please consult [thread]36863[/thread] [thread]44952[/thread] before posting any suggestions; and if you'll find anything you might want to add to the list then post a suggestion. If you want to discuss some specific details you'd like to see when those suggestions gets implemented start a discussion thread.

Hi, I remember you well from before the forum wipe. Good old times coming back again I guess we'll need something like nuclear pulse drive to get our brave idiots cosmonauts to the planets beyond Jool's orbit that are going to be added at some point in a reasonable amount of time... I see no problem of this in career mode where money (and possibly other things) will balance everything; the problem is that we use sandbox for some sort of career mode right now making self-imposed challenges; of course the moment any highly efficient drive becomes stock sandbox will become something else entirely...I see no reason why FTL drive shouldn't work inside the solar system unless it's some sort of jumpgate/wormhole thingie which I abhor. To be honest, I'd like to have current physics-limited freedom more than other solar systems or fancy technology or anything.

Yeah, I know about it. Not sure it'll work though. Need to calculate stuff first... and getting anything to this floating things will be ridiculous. Nae, I'd say even FTL is easier than stationary floating thing in space. In case it would be impossible to just float solar sail above the star, polar orbit is the way to go - this way you won't have Kerbol/Sun obstructing your field-of-view. You'll have to put another collector-laser assembly into equatorial orbit to reach stars above and below Kerbol/Sun, and another collector-laser assembly into polar orbit at 90 degrees to the first one. This way you'll cover all directions. That sounds like a lot of work. I know something about solar sail technology; the thing is that it works so much better at moving things away from the star. It has nothing to do with balance, and it works perfectly well for in-system transfer. In fact, with ablative beam sail it would be perfect for it. I'm actually a scientist (medical sciences, and I'm moving towards biology and environmental sciences (and maybe astrobiology if I'll get rich somehow). Life can do a lot of amazing things, but science does not bet on those things. Science operates with facts and evidence, and right now there is no evidence about life's existence anywhere in the solar system except on Earth. We talk about conditions favourable for life, it's something entirely different. This discussion goes downhill, really, since you are way too keen on defending your beamed sail at all costs; I suggest learning a bit more about orbital mechanics and moving stuff around in space just to understand the amount of work required; maybe even constructing something using beams and girders and solar panels in KSP (if you'll do it, show us your pictures! it'd be awesome!) to get the first-hand experience. Otherwise you'll be just dismissing problems with fancy words instead of working out solutions.

AngelLestat, I beg you to be more accurate when responding to several posters at once. It's the second time you've mixed words of several people together, and it makes it hard to get the idea across. Also, please write 'becoz' as 'because', ¿vale? Now, answering your words directed to me: I believe it was JAXA who had anything to do with solar sails. I don't remember NASA doing any large-scale experiments with it. And as I told before - beamed sail technology does not exist so we cannot evaluate how it behaves (yet). And basic rules of conservation of energy still apply - while your laser-propelled ship may be extremely light, the amount of effort you need to put into infrastracture is just as immense as for building nuclear pulse-driven ship. Rules of orbital mechanics prevent object from staying in the same place, so you'll have to put your solar collector-laser thing into POLAR solar orbit so it would be possible for laser to fire continuously in normal or antinormal directions. Now, start KSP and try to put a small probe into polar orbit around the sun. I did it using gravity assists from Jool and Eve, so it's perfectly possible even though it still requires a tremendous amount of delta-V. And KSP is free of many real-life concerns so moving huge things using gravity assists is as easy as small probes. Delta-V requirements would still be big enough to think twice about it. And you'll have only part of the sky covered, so to send your ships to all stars around you'll have to do some funny things again. That's just the most obvious thing. And if you do focusing mirrors, it becomes even more interesting delta-V-wise and you'll have troubles making the system to fire the beam continuously. So, all-in-all, I'd think twice about it. Of course, once the infrastructure is there it can be re-used again and again, it's a plus side. Regarding the plasma thing again - it would require a layer of ablative material. It increases the mass quite a bit, but it also allows high initial acceleration which may be a nice as it reduces the time you need to fire continously. And it's estimated to be much, much more effecient than NERVA. With beam powerful enough one can change orbits of asteroids, and it's not something your average NERVA might do. And finally, about putting stars close together - I told that the fact that it's unrealistic can't be used as an argument to have an even more unrealistic FTL drive. However, we really cannot assume VERY close distances between stars (as we see in star clusters) because we don't know how being in a star cluster may affect formation of planets and general conditions favourable for life as we know it; it's just not a good realistic explanation for in-game mechanics. So 0.8 ly is a minimum I'd say.

It's abusing the game for fun and profit. It's not a gameplay element to begin with - i.e. landing a kerbal on his head is not a standard method of returning kerbals from orbit. FTL is such an element. And the argument about putting star systems very close to each other is not valid since it uses the same kind of strange logic we use to argue against FTL (untealistic!). Just a quick example - there is a star called Tau Ceti. It has a dust disk and may or may not have planets. The closest star to it is just 1.1 light year away; it's considered very close for our part of the galaxy. We can have the same distances in KSP, and that'd be perfectly fine.

You're an optimist. They told us that we'll have flying cars by 2000... Writers have no sense of scale; scientists better do what they are paid for, and right now nobody is interested in paying for developing any of this. Advances on the small scale do not translate well onto the large-scale applications, safe to say into applying them on the miles-long scales, anyway. And your points have some problems again, mostly with how new materials will actually behave. I am not saying that beamed sail concept is physically incorrect or impossible to implement - I am just saying that it requires technologies that are currently beyond our reach and we don't know how feasible they are anyway. Nuclear pulse propulsion was developed as a concept using mostly existing technology and as such it remains firmly within our grasp and requires only huge amount of money and hard labour and cooperation on the Earth-wide scale which nobody wants to do anyway. And as I stated before, I am against FTL in the game, so both methods of propulsion are fine but I'd prefer nuclear pulse purely because I think it to be more in-line with current kerbal technology and because riding explosions is fun. Regarding the beam-plasma thing - it was developed as a method of de-orbiting satellites and deflecting asteroids; it uses high-power laser beam to vaporise parts of the target; high-temperature expanding plasma it makes physically pushes the target away. And it's much more effective than pure light pressure (and it has light pressure as a component). Anyway, we either should return back on-topic or move to Science section, as some people told already.

Yeah, shadows need some thinking before drawing them. Shall do

I did, that's why I entered the conversation. I don't really have a habit of talking about things I don't know. Clark just loved to hand-wave things. In other words - it's not science! You can't just hook up some strange artefact into your wonder machine and get yourself a meaningful result. Imagine medieval alchemist getting his hands on the modern-age chemical batteries. Will he figure out what they do? Will he be able to built something that uses them? The same with Clark's monoliths - I can't remember humans used any of them to fulfil their own goals. There is no actual evidence that monoliths found across the kerbolar system are similar in function to those in 2001: Space Odyssey. They may be just giant ice-cream machines for all we know. And they are not similar - they have a giant logo on them, which further supports the giant ice-cream machines theory. Regarding CCTV signal - the beauty of KSP right now is that you can go places without actually knowing anything about them. That's the joy of true exploration. It's like real life - you don't need to 'unlock' stuff, you just look at it through the telescope and say: 'Yeah, let's go there'. So this CCTV signal may serve only as a key, as a direction where to go, which star you should visit. Even this is an outrageous speculation, it's impossible to use this signal without external applications. It's sad to see people who don't know much about science try to influence the development. I'd say - let developers make science in KSP work in a realistic yet fun way, and everyone will benefit from it - hardcore players will get their realism, and more casual players will learn about scientific process in the same way they've learned about orbital mechanics. It made KSP special, so why not stick with it? That's a cry from the heart, so I'm sorry if I hurt anyone.

I've just barely survived the forum wipe, and due to my graphics card burning up I can no longer play KSP... I've decided I share some old artwork first before moving on to making something new. First pictures from interstellar probe: Landing you can walk away from... That's how I imagined Laythe before I actually got there. Thanks for watching!

How would decoding a signal or finding a strange piece of rock 'unlock' anything? Science is not done that way. Granted, decoding a signal may point us to aliens who sent it, but there will be no aliens in the game. Let Easter Eggs remain Easter Eggs.

What's the suggestion, exactly? If you want to suggest nuclear pulse drive as a stock part, it was done countless times already, and it was surely noticed by developers. Also, devs themselves are space exploration enthusiasts just like ourselves so they probably knew about it and considered it from the very beginning.

Wikipedia is not an accurate source of information. Well, let's get back to educative values, then - it's all right for a laser beam to accelerate a metal plate to certain speeds; it can be done either by the way of light pressure (not that effective) or by ablating the metal plate creating hot rapidly expanding plasma that pushes your metal plate, reflects your laser beam and is generally cool to work with. Detonating a nuke near the same metal plate would achieve more or less the same result, though it seems that pushing metal plate with a laser beam is more efficient in the long term. Now let's move from accelerating pieces of metal to accelerating spaceships. Here we have some problems with both beamed sail and nuclear pulse designes. The common problem is the size and weight of the ship. And while beamed sail escapes the tyranny of the rocket equation it still must have radiation protection and carry a tremendous amount of supplies. Nuclear pulse designs look much worse of course,nobody will deny that. As many people told, beamed sail ship will have inevitable problems with heat management; also, it is very unclear how one will aim laser beam across interstellar distances. If you miss by hundred of meters, you won't accelerate anything, and you won't know you've missed the target for several years required for the signal to travel back to you. And nobody thinks about it but even laser beams become diffuse with distance and hence less effective. Also, you'll have to put your laser into a very-high-inclination orbit or otherwise you won't have continious beam since the star will be between your laser and your ship from time to time. And moving a lot of mass into a funny orbit is a pain. And also lasers that can continously pump thousands of megawatts simply don't exist. Nuclear pusle propulsion, on the other hand, is something that requires mechanical solutions only; it's something we can understand and deal with. It's not very effective, for sure, but it's doable with the current level of technology. And if you put it into the kerbal universe with much smaller distances it becomes quite viable, so it's ok for the first logical step towards interstellar flight.

1 and 3 - spaceplanes update is planned; I am sure some of your concern will be addressed. Never heard any dev talk about wind tunnel testing though. Regarding nations - it was proposed many times before with no positive response. Kerbals are unified unlike us silly humans.

The risk is VERY low, but with a...err...'carefully chosen' trajectory everything is possible! It'd be more along the lines of 'oh no another encounter...and another...and another...oh no, now I need a correction burn. Bugger'. It's still fun.

I'd like Kerbol system to remain without all the funny planets/moons and resemble our own. For other star systems I'd like too see all the insanity that is possible - brown dwarfs, gas giants orbiting close to the star, planets thrown out of the star system and going through space on their own, stars with no planets at all but a couple of big asteroids (would be a real disappointment getting there, hah), a big and relatively stable red dwarf with a tidaly locked planet, etc. But it's just a wishful thinking

Don't get too excited, people, the density of the real-life asteroid belt is so low you won't even notice passing through it. Star Wars/Star Trek - esque asteroid belts would either grind themselves to dust due to the collisions or collapse to form a planet or something. I know it's disappointing. We'll just have to live with it.

It was suggested countless times before; I doubt it will be implemented since there are many other ways to optimise performance. But there is a mod out there that may help you: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/38577-0-21-UbioZur-Welding-Ltd-Lower-your-part-count?highlight=welded+parts Be advised that such 'combined'/'welded' parts and lower part count makes rockets more durable so they don't behave like stock parts wobble-wise which effectively prevents you from entering stock challenges.

Yeah, I'd be glad to have ship management in interstellar space myself. Things like repairs, moving crew around, course corrections...and it's actually possible to do as well, it's just that we should have different simulations for solar system and for interstellar space...correct me if I am wrong but right now Kerbol (or Sun, if you're pro-NovaSilisko) is the centre of the Universe with everything rotating around it or escaping it into the void. With another stars there should be another set of simulation - stars themselves orbit the centre of the galaxy, and so would your ship once it's left Kerbol SOI...simulating such things (and at ridiculous speeds at which stars orbit the Galaxy centre...also, add simulating planets' movements for all star systems out there) is going to choke down any PC...

I don't really understand the purpose of this discussion apart from trying to educate/scream at each other. My opinion is that KSP shouldn't have any form of FTL propulsion at all because it's not realistic and not fun. Its educative value is zero; anyone can imagine flying around at 100 times c, meeting space babes, seeing places and generally boldly going wherever they want, we have other games for doing just that, and some of them are even free. Using some form of still-not-existing-but-feasible propulsion like nuclear/thermonuclear pulse drives (Daedalus and so on), uranium salt-water rocket (it has trouble with fuel storage though) or fusion aka z-pinch drive (which requires fusing deuterium in a linear solenoid tube - for God's sake, it's so ridiculous it might even be possible) our Kerbals may achieve a decent fraction of the speed of light (say, 25%. 15%? Even 5% is fine!); combined with a simple timer that tells you when your ship is about to reach some point or the other and game mechanics that excludes interstellar ships from the simulation after, say 'locking trajectory and burn time', we may be able to just build the damn thing, fuel it, ignite the engines, and forget about it doing other things waiting for it to accelerate, decelerate, and reach its destination. So, basically, ship will just 'jump' to the other star system...in the amount of time required to fly to it. And with distances compressed to KSP scale it will take only decades of game-time; my Laythe colonisation effort took me almost 30 years of game time (before my video card burned up and I stopped playing games altogether...damn it) I think it's a decent solution; it won't stress physics engine with calculations; it will be realistic enough, and huge effort required to build such a ship in orbit and to fuel it will somewhat limit its use, especially in the career mode. We need just some patience and some long-term planning to do it; two qualities we lack the most in real life.

Yeah, thanks for correction! I may substitute it for something better at some point, but I promise to keep it family-friendly from now on.

Thanks! I'm not sure it was ok to use myself, to be honest. The joke is from the real life (I'm so tired of explaining that there's no "up" and "down" in space...), so I've put it in. I think I won't do it again for a long, long time since it's not exactly how I write or think.