SOXBLOX

The Moon, for sure. Plenty of water, and the proximity to Earth is a huge boost to its potential. It would probably be used for mining of water and construction materials to supply gravity ring stations or O'Niell cylinders in cislunar space. Mars, on the other hand, well... It isn't suited for much that would be useful in near-future terms. Better destinations are probably Ceres, floating colonies on Venus (strictly because of its strong gravity), and Callisto.

Ugh. Starship again. What would we launch with it? Does it have any use? I mean, I'm all for colonizing space, but this isn't the way to go, in my opinion.

Absolutely right! The bombs would each require an internal containment system, making them incredibly complex and bulky. And it only takes one failure...

Clouds!?! Metallic Hydrogen!?! NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN SPAAAAACE!?! *bounces up and down hysterically*

Sent a Comsat Block II constellation to Minmus, pulled off an orbital rendezvous (my second ever) and getting ready to build MOAR BOOSTERS!!!

I busted a gut when I read that! The #%@&#%@ idiots! [Snip]

Cyπep pokot! But seriously, AM pulse units have to store the AM for long durations. This means that they're bulkier than -simple- nukes. Just go with AM catalyzed fusion instead.

Saw Starlink a couple weeks ago; counted something just over 50. Cool at first, but very disruptive to astrophotography. I would much rather use a small number of large sats which are reliable enough to deorbit after their service life ends, but no, Mr. Musk must have his Starlink. Nevermind the other seven billion people on Earth who would like to see the stars properly... I guess Elon is a Kesslerizer.

Fantastic! Can't wait to see it, then. Thx!

Heh. Rask and Rusk are double. Oops.

I don't think they'll move the launch site off the equator; it would be tricky for beginners. It will probably be on the east coast of a continent. I hope they use roughly the same map, whatever else they do. The current one has three, maybe four, good locations for a launch site on the equator with lots of ocean to the east; they are the desert to the west of the KSC, the Korea-shaped peninsula to the east, just across the bay which contains the island airfield, and some spots in the Crater Sea, waaay to the east of KSC. Although we can't entirely rule out an inland launch site (privyet, Baikonur Cosmodrome), I don't think the devs would use one for KSC itself. With the addition of multiplayer, I think the other locations like Baikerbanur and Woomerang will get reworked as full launch sites as well.

Yaaaaaay, ULA! Can't wait to see Vulcan fly! This is probably total flamebait, but I like Starliner better than Crew Dragon and Atlas and Vulcan better than Falcon.

But, I found this. In the cinematic trailer at roughly 1:58 we see a ship apparently decelerating towards a moon. I focused on the ship, and from the radiator arrangement and spherical fuel tanks, I believe it is the ship shown in the next scene, from which the lander departs. Looking at the nozzle, we can see some trusswork with, perhaps, beam emitter units pointing in at the nozzle. Maybe it's a small Daedalus, but I don't think so. The deceleration is too similar to the Epstein drive in the Expanse. I'm very confident these clips are our torchdrive. It looks similar to the ICAN -II from Atomic Rockets. (Engine List 3, ACMF) Given that we're getting the Orion, I don't think this antimatter drive is out of the question. It would be a good fuel for colonies to produce, and would form the very late-game drive hinted at by the devs.

I'm wondering what the torchdrive will be. Nate Simpson said it would be the craziest engine on Atomic Rockets. That could mean the NSWR. Thoughts?

Ah, no. Perhaps you're thinking of negative mass? Negative mass-energy is an entirely hypothetical concept. As it's mass is negative, a force which pulls normal matter would push it, and a force which pushes normal matter would pull it. It would also generate antigravity. But antimatter has positive mass-energy. You can tell because it produces positive mass-energy (gamma ray photons) when it annihilates. It looks kind of like this: x+x=2x Negative mass- energy would annihilate with any positive mass-energy (even normal antimatter) to produce...nothing. They would cancel perfectly. Like this: x+(-x)=0 And no. You cannot extract enough energy from any system to propel yourself faster than light and therefore, backwards in time. It requires an infinite amount of energy to do so. This would also cause the establishment of a preferred reference frame, thereby breaking special relativity. It would also overturn causality. That is a VERY big no no.

Ehhhhhhh... Do I even have to say anything? Seriously, you ignored one of the most fundamental axioms of nuclear physics. Neutron stars are made of neutrons not because general relativity is wrong, but because of the very well verified Pauli exclusion principle. Neutrons will not occupy the same space at the same time. A black hole, however, is a neutron star which had enough mass to create a gravitational field significant enough to overcome the Pauli exclusion principle's repulsion. This repulsion is due to the strong nuclear force, a well documented part of quantum chromodynamics. This does not require the overthrow of general relativity, which has been verified in all its predictions to an astounding degree of accuracy. Additionally, the graviton is postulated as the gauge boson of the gravitational force, much like the electromagnetic force has the photon. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces, and the graviton is it's smallest component. No wonder it hasn't been detected yet. Finding it would pave the way to a quantum theory of gravity, such as string theory. Other theories postulate that it does not actually exist (Quantum Loop Gravity). No one says black holes have infinite mass, just infinite density. Any matter pressed into a zero-dimensional point will be infinitely dense. The singularity would not break into multiple pieces, it's gravity is holding it together. If gravity did not hold things together, Earth could not exist. It would break up. And really, experiments and prototypes? It takes the Hubble Space Telescope to study gravity on a universal scale, and you've found a way to build a machine better than Hubble, CERN, or any other of the tools of physics, where, in your garage? Yeah, right. If anything, a serious scientist would be doing theoretical work to make testable predictions. Regardless, I would be happy to see either a black hole or neutron star in game, but not more than one of either. Also want a planet with about 20 moons, or a double planet!

The antimatter containment devices would probably make am pulse units bulky. They'd also have to plug into the ship for long-term power and control. Nukes are already a lot more storeable, so the am's mass-energy ratio advantage would probably be negated. Just my analysis.

I'd say our current best is probably a Nuclear Salt Water Drive assembled with ISRU from asteroids. Everyone hypes about Orion, but realistically, nuclear devices can't be cheap enough to chuck out the back of a ship. Just a few missions would deplete our arsenal, and we need that. Even better, we should just build huge transfer vehicles and dock with them in orbit. Build them with ISRU, drop the NSWR and use chemical engines clustered all over.

The main limitation on torchdrives is waste heat. Anything capable of constant 1g acceleration will be cranking out megawatts of heat, and you have to get rid of it. Antimatter suffers greatly from this problem, as it cannot use open-cycle cooling. If it does (antimatter thermal w/ water) then it is consuming propellant too rapidly. A torchdrive needs a high Isp and high mass flow. Those are sort of opposites.

I just discovered that Boeing's Starliner is more reusable than Crew Dragon. Because the Dragon splashes down, it can't be reused for crew, only cargo, while Starliner lands on land like Soyuz, and can be reused up to 10 times.

Bussard ramjets scoop up hydrogen from the interstellar medium. The medium is now known to be thinner than was thought back when this device was first proposed, and is not enough to sustain steady fusion. Also, it relies on the proton-proton chain fusion cycle, which has a huge Lawson criterion. This means it is one of the most difficult to ignite and keep going. I'm sure it could still work once your ship is moving fast enough to guzzle up the thin interstellar medium, but it's getting to that speed that's the problem.

So it looks like we're getting a few new engine types in KSP 2. My analysis is that we'll get Orion drive; atmo and vacuum rated metallic H, the Daedalus ICF, and the torchdrive we see in the trailer. It appears to be performing a brachistochrone deceleration burn, Expanse-style. I think the tech progression will be roughly Orion>Metallic H>Daedalus>Torchdrive; though it would be interesting if they are alternatives to each other on the tech tree. This would force a strategic decision on which branch to pursue short-term. Also can't wait to see colonies and stock clouds! Any thoughts on the new propulsion types? Anything I missed?