SOXBLOX

What assumption?

Not more energy than it has expended to propel itself through the water. See " Laws of Thermodynamics". [snip]

You just repeated everything I said!!! We agree!

No. 90° won't work. If your intake is pointed downwards, then diverting the airflow 90° puts it at right angles to your descent. To point the exhaust stream down, you have to divert by ~180°. And superheated steam and oxygen is doubly corrosive. You really don't want to try to find an alloy to compromise between steam, O2, and radiation resistance. And Orion is "realistic" the way the Nuclear Death Water Rocket is; that is, it is only realistic if you ignore the fact that A) no military leaders in their right minds would let anyone move nukes out of a secure facility and B) no one wants this flying over their heads. And you don't have to refuel after landing in order to lift off again; its just that if you don't, you can't land again under NTR power.

Hm. First of all, never ever pause an animation. Second, I don't want to have to micromanage populations, but I would like to see something similar to Stellaris, where you can optimize colonies for different tasks, and expand into other areas later. Recruiting kerbals might be affected by the location you are recruiting from, too.

Pretty sure air intakes generally need to divert the airflow by less than, say, 90°, to achieve any kind of efficiency. Oh,and if you're thinking about mixing water vapor and air containing oxygen in a superheated reactor made of metal, the metallurgy department will come screaming after you with torches and stuff. Also, if you want this submerged to any great depth, you will need two (at least) pressure hulls. One for compression loads, from the water, and one for hoop stress loads, from the atmosphere inside (assuming this is manned). Maybe this could work, but it will be a committee -designed horse, workable, but not optimized for anything, and performing all jobs poorly. Well, all jobs besides giving local sea life cancer, that is.

So a light year is, to massacre the SI, a "decapetameter". Cool.

Heh. Google "laws of thermodynamics" .

I will definitely be voting. Could you add an option specifically for a mission like TESS or Kepler?

Sauron says he likes it! It's an eyeball world! Is it actually tidally locked to its star?

So, for the sake of the debate, and those just seeing this thread, I will recap the arguments presented here. It is now generally acknowledged that mmH is not plausible IRL. Both sides agree on this. The differences lie in whether the devs should keep it in the game. One side feels that even though it doesn't work in real life, we should keep it in the game. No one on this side expects perfect scientific accuracy in a video game designed to be fun to play. It would be equivalent to a thought experiment, and as we can predict the properties of mmH, it would be reasonably hard science. The other side feels that since it isn't possible IRL, it should not be in the game. They feel public opinion of science might be damaged by misconceptions about mmH, esp. in areas like funding for science, etc., a valid concern, as KSP's influence is broad. *** Obviously, I am of the first group. The other side's reasoning has some problems. First, they ignore the fact that any misconceptions inclusion of mmH causes can probably be explained away in less than five minutes. If the misconceptions can be so easily dealt with, then it is less work overall to simply leave them in and provide an explanation or disclaimer. Secondly, the same arguments they use for removing mmH could be used to make Realism Overhaul and Principia stock. Not everyone wants that. Finally, they are concerned that presenting it in a realistic fashion might damage the opinion of society regarding science in general. This argument, aside from implying that the originators occupy a position outside of society, suggests something of what they think of "society" and "the general public". The problem is that "for the greater good" and "to protect society" can be used to justify many things, of which the removal of unobtanium from a video game is the least...counterproductive. These arguments are as old as humanity, and they always seem to lead to unfortunate events. Thus, this argument is fallacious. It's absolutely not my intent to make these remarks personal, and I hope y'all won't take them that way. *** Now, away from philosophy and back to the crux of the debate; I am quite willing to see a compromise. I would suggest that we find a suitable one quickly, so that, perhaps, the devs have a chance to implement it. I see a few possibilities, and would greatly welcome additional suggestions. We can remove mmH, and replace it with slightly more realistic tech with the same performance regime. Dragon01 has suggested liquid -core NTR's. The drawback is that mmH seems to be important in the motivation to build colonies. I see no such reason for NTR's to provide the same motivation. Also, I think fission fuels are pretty scarce or inaccessible in our solar system, excepting Earth's crust, so to stick with hard science... We can keep mmH, and add some sort of disclaimer. "Some scientific accuracy has been sacrificed for gameplay" or something. My personal preference, assuming KSP 2 uses something vaguely similar to KSP 1's tech tree, would be a sort of "tech tree editor". When you create a career (adventure?) game, you can move parts, categories of parts, etc. between nodes to suit your preferred progression. You should be able to add or remove entire types of technology as well, such as the "unicorn fart" engines. Drawbacks are that the community loses a common progression. I think, though, that the benefits in personalization outweigh the cost in collective knowledge of how individual games progress. The above would be functionally equivalent to a toggle for the presence of mmH in the game, though a toggle specifically for mmH might be simpler. What solutions have I missed? I would like to know what others think of the "tech tree editor concept" as well. Has a system like that already been proposed? I have enjoyed our debate regarding the topic, but I find that I have become too serious regarding it. So, at the risk of sounding grandiose, I believe I shall excuse myself from the conversation regarding reasons for removing/retaining mmH. Thank you all for the good time; you've made me think, and that's always a win! I hope you all get to say the same, and that we all enjoy KSP 2, regardless of what degree of accuracy it has.

The paragraph you quoted was not an argument for mH in the game. You say you want to combat bad science. I would suggest that you create a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel to do this, rather than try to have the tech removed from KSP 2. Catch flies with honey. [snip]Aren't people capable of deciding for themselves what is detrimental? Fine if you want to worry about it, but don't try to take away people's toys to "solve" the problems. Again, science doesn't sweep old ideas under a rug to hide them, lest some fool rediscover them and think they're science (flat-earthers, etc.). Combat bad ideas by showing people good ones. How about the devs put in a disclaimer. "For the sake of gameplay, some engines not possible IRL are included in this game" ? I would be happy with that.

I didn't look at the design. If it's thermal, yeah, I know that trick. Thanks anyways.

Click here to hear a 4 1/2 hour lecture on infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifolds!

I wanna see some stuff on time warp and multiplayer, but that's probably classified.

Two words: Baryon Conservation. Too lazy to see ifsomeone pointed this out.

I hadn't realized any fusion drive could do open-cycle cooling. Thank you for telling me! I hope we see that in-game!

Absolutely! Without a torchdrive, Kerbal players wouldn't learn brachistochrone trajectories. Even though it's basically impossible IRL to cool it properly, etc, we can still enjoy building, flying, and crashing it.The *** Also, some players have decided that since mmH is unrealistic IRL, we shouldn't have it in the game. But this is contrary to logic and the scientific process they claim to be defending. You do not overturn incorrect theories/hypotheses/whatevers by removing or censoring them from the public view, you present counterarguments for those who are interested. "A spoonful of honey catches more flies than a gallon of vinegar", right? Deciding what is best for other humans is a treatment commonly applied to children, who don't know better. Applied to adults, it leads...to topics that do not belong in this forum. I personally look forward to playing KSP 2 in my own personal style, and I hope everyone gets the ability to do that. I believe that that is the magic of KSP.

Hmm. I would say that the categories "pseudo-science" , "technobabble tech", and "bad science" should all be the same category. They are all not possible IRL. Perhaps the categories "handwavium", for where math and physics don't even apply, " unobtanium" for when math and physics can calculate properties, but it doesn't work IRL, "current tech" for chemical rockets, and "tech likely possible in future with significant advances in matsci" for futuristic stuff like gas core nuclear, etc. I do still object to most of your categories, but the part of my quote on bad science was made on a different topic. Also, I objected not because I thought the bias was bad, but because someone wanted to the numbers in the poll to back up a position without noting the slant. Also, if you don't object to a rename which retains the engine's same properties, why will you not accept it being called metastable metallic hydrogen? Is "explodium" better than mmH? If so, how?

A flying carpet! But really, it is a pretty good idea. Tension members are generally less massive than structural components designed for compression loads. Have you checked if 1 mm alloy wire can handle the currents required? It might throw a wrench into your mass budget if you need more cable. I'm not sure what the ion thrusters help with, though. If you need RCS, maybe just use hydrazine instead? The only problem is that under thrust, the hammock will fold up as it tugs the craft together. Maybe use one VASIMR module and hang two carpet panels from arms on the side? maybe you can rotate the module to get the panels to the correct orientation?

Well...they're not really spacesuits, since they don't do EVA. (I don't think so, anyways.) They're pressure suits, designed to keep the astronaut alive in the event of loss of pressure, until an abort is completed or the leak is fixed. For a total failure of the spacecraft, you are right, they'd do nothing to save the cosmo/astronauts, but for something more benign, they would save lives.

Of course you need radiators! You misunderstood me. Your radiators do not need shielding from comets because there are not enough comets to fill the Oort cloud to the densities which make a hit remotely probable. Since you are ignoring this fact (not "sticking with known science"), I was handwaving the issue and asking how you want to "solve" it. Are you saying moving waste heat to an alternate dimension is your solution? Cool, but Lord Kelvin is glaring at you now.

Going bottom to top: Fun is not quantitative. It is an opinion. I may not feel the same way. SPOILER ALERT: I don't. Neither do endless RTG's, magic reaction wheels, or ultradense, physics-defying stars. As I pointed out, you can ignore the flavor text at your leisure. Or just don't use the engine. I assume you refer to Kerik's poll on tech to be included in the game? Those questions were biased. Not a bad thing, but realistically, who here will vote for "aether screws"? "Bad science" is a shortcut around debate; it implies that anyone voting for "bad science" in a game is unscientific IRL. This is ridiculous, of course.

Ok, then. You can ignore the numbers if you want. As long as you don't hit Star Wars levels of nonsense, I'm happy. So, how do you plan to solve your contrived problem of massive, unshielded radiators for your ludicrously OP flashlight rocket? (In the UK, this translates to "torch drive". Heh.)

1: I would not exist inside of the space-time of my universe, I would view it from the outside, and as such, I would not experience time. This would solve the issue of free will combined with omniscience. 2: I would give my creatures rules to follow which would improve their lives if they followed them. They would naturally have the option of following these rules perfectly. 3: As it is highly probable they would not follow them, I would devise a solution to remove them from their self-induced misery. Silly thing: There would be trees 80 feet in diameter, with suitably impressive heights as well. Just 'cause.