[Praise and things we like]

The tutorials are very well done and it made it super easy to my wife into the game as well. That was a difficult task with KSP1. I also love the countdown clock but, I'm annoyed the launch plume is a static animation. Upsidown rockets shouldn't leave a plume under the launch deck.

Also the sound design and procedural wings! So good!

[Problem with Astronomers Visual Pack]

Sounds like you're missing EVE Redux.

[Must have visual mods?]

I run Parallax 2.0, TUFX, Eve Redux, Scatterer, and Astronomers Visual Pack with 8K textures. Throw in some Real Plume, Waterfall and you're off to the races

 

Probably one or two I'm missing but, those are the big ones.

[Why Jool like that? [SPOILER THREAD]]

14 hours ago, K^2 said:

The surface looks pretty intentional. We know that Intercept decided to stick to the metastable metallic hydrogen as one of the fuel types. It is based on an old, outdated hypothesis that hydrogen has a metallic state under high pressures that can be maintained under much lower pressures once achieved. While metallic state of hydrogen is pretty much a certainty under the right conditions, these conditions turned out to be far higher pressure at much lower temperatures than originally anticipated, and there is no longer a reason to believe that there is any metastability.

KSP2's Kerbol system is located in a different universe, one where materials have somewhat different physical properties to our own. This is inescapable from the fact alone that Kerbin has 9.8m/s² surface gravity with a 600km radius. The average density of Kerbin has to be about 58g/cm³. Densest known metal on Earth is osmium at 22g/cm³. We don't know of any materials that would reach 58g/cm³ even at the pressures in the Earth's core. Clearly, planets in KSP and KSP2 are made of some other stuff. Or, at least, stuff that behaves differently.

So circling back to the metallic hydrogen, the surface pressure of Jool is a little over 5MPa. That's a touch over 50 bar. The "air" density, however, is only 6.7kg/m³ at 200K ambient. Substituting that into the ideal gas law, we see that the atmosphere of Jool has an average molar mass of 2.23. Which means its' mostly hydrogen. In fact, this is a good fit for 90% hydrogen, 10% helium, <1% methane. In other words, Intercept probably took Jupiter's composition for the basis here. But now we get to the surface. On the real Jupiter, that hydrogen-helium soup turns into a supercritical fluid, which continues getting denser without a big change in its other properties until we get to (what we believe to be) liquid metallic hydrogen layer. That liquid metallic hydrogen "mantle" of the planet extends down to the core, which has a rather fuzzy boundary, resulting in no real solid surface. The transition from supercritical hydrogen to metallic is also likely to be a fuzzy one, meaning there are no sharply defined boundaries anywhere, but we can break down the broader regions into the solid icy/rocky core, liquid mantle of metallic hydrogen with helium droplets, supercritical lower atmosphere of molecular hydrogen and helium, and gaseous upper atmosphere of the same.

And now we get into the topic of metastability. If in Kerbal universe the hydrogen becomes metastable, what properties do we expect of this Jupiter analog? Well, we still expect the planet to have a liquid metallic hydrogen mantle. However, as the mantle circulates, the liquid metallic hydrogen that would reach lower pressure and temperature of higher altitudes instead of evaporating to a molecular hydrogen would instead solidify to its metastable metallic phase. This phase transition would expel much of the helium mixed into the composition, meaning the density of MSMH would be slightly lower than density of the liquid metallic hydrogen of the mantle. This is a very similar situation to what happens on Earth with all the molten rock in the mantle - the parts that solidify first near the surface form a lighter layer of various oxides that float on top of a molten metal-rich mantle. We end up with a solid surface. Except, on Jool, it's a solid surface of metastable metallic hydrogen. And indeed, the surface of Jool looks metallic.

Naturally, at a low enough pressure, we expect MSMH to sublime into molecular hydrogen. Apparently, in Kerbal universe that happens at around 200K at 5MPa of pressure. Which is fairly extreme, but reasonable enough for storage and transportation for use as fuel. And, well, Jool is the place you get it from. How we're going to be transporting it off the surface remains to be discovered. But in a world where MSMH exists at all, surface of Jool would be one place you'd find it, and indeed, a surface made of the stuff is exactly what you expect and predict based on extrapolating Jupiter analogue planet to Kerbal scale.

This explanation was more informative and entertaining than any science class I've ever taken. Thanks!

[Maneuver nodes are... really, really bad]

Totally agree. I was really bummed to see the Maneuver Node tool from the first game was missing. It was almost a requirement to fine tune a lot of the burns instead of fighting your mouse every step of the way.

Here's to hoping it makes a return as well as them fixing the complete mess that are currently Maneuver nodes.

Dont even get me started on the encounter icons. Obtuse and a pain in the ass. We have a long way to go....

 

 

[Info about the first patch]

Their priorities seem a bit odd considering the state the game is in but, at least we should be getting a patch soon!