Matayoman

I posted a suggestion a while ago to make this idea a reality. Wonderful that someone has made it happen. I'll have to download and try it out. Cheers.

Very well put, and yeah, good point here dude. The fuel loss would be a tricky and friggin annoying topic to cover with every flight. But at a minimum, I think the topic of power should be of concern. Any newb player wouldn't have to worry about battery degradation at first, because they will be way more excited they could even get to orbit in the first place. But when a few months of kerbal time passes and their launches get more efficient and better payloads developed, then they will notice their old satellites are becoming dysfunctional. It could be a mod, and hopefully soon will be a mod, (even if i have to team up with somebody to make it happen), but it could very well become a part of gameplay. A topic we always harp on in the lab is that "there is no random failures." Having a degrading power system would be a perfect opportunity to introduce that to KSP. If properly planned for, it won't be an issue immediately. If you cycle the power on each orbit to the battery, full discharge, full recharge, then you will have problems very soon and very similar to what we deal with in reality. It won't mean that you're entire satellite fleet would die, but they may begin to operate less and less with each pass until they only operate in the sun. These could also be repair opportunities for EVA missions just like repairing the parachute and repairing the wheels.

Yeah, I was thinking about these things when we were working on our satellite and then it hit me, why hasn't this suggested for KSP. Power Systems is one of the first steps in space-craft design. KSP already has the parts to do this, it just needs some refinement into them to make the parts slowly become inoperable. It could also bring greater meaning to short duration satellites similar to the one I am working on. Our lifespan to work with is less than a year so we can focus on the science and less on the infrastructure.

As the title says, "Battery Life Degradation & Propellent Degradation." Or "Battery Life Cycles - Solar Panel Efficiency Decay - RTG efficiency decay - Propellent Degradation." I think it would be cool to include some of the realism of maintaining the fundamentals of space exploration. Below I will list off the four things I am interested in seeing for the sustainability of both Orbiting and Deep Space mission Spacecraft. 1. If Batteries appropriately decay during their cycling. Giving a defined lifespan of the satellite based on how many orbits it can survive before the battery can no longer hold a charge. Eg. If the battery is rated for 1,000 life cycles, and you burn 0.05cycle/1orbit, then the satellite will survive 20,000 orbits before the battery approaches failure. But lets say you waste an entire 1cycle/1orbit, then you will only last for 1,000 orbits. That could be the difference of a 5 year mission against a month long mission, and an important part of spacecraft today. 2. Solar Panel Decay in orbit. Give panels a defined solar efficiency life, and the panels will slowly reduce their efficiency as they orbit over time until you barely receive a trickled charge. Eg. A Kerbin Satellite with an appropriate battery, operating for several years begins to lose it's solar efficiency. This in turn causes it's power regeneration to become slowly reduced; This in combination with suggestion 1, would result in reduced orbital efficiency until eventually it doesn't fully recharge on an orbital pass and destroys the battery even faster. LINK 3. RadioIsotope Thermoelectric Generator's in the very science of what they are, should decay. I know that the RTG in KSP does show an efficiency item on it, but I have yet to get that efficiency to drop with any spacecraft. Eg. This in combination with degrading batteries could result in more realistic operations of the spacecraft, particularly rovers. 4. Propellant Tanks consuming power to keep the propellant from degrading. When a propellant tank has propellant in it, it will consume an amount of power proportional to it's propellant. 4.A. A Propellant Tank without power will slowly become unusable in proportion to its amount of propellant against the time power was not applied. Eg. A space probe is sent to another planet and needs to perform a deltaV at a defined point. It will provide power to it's propellant tanks to keep them operational, if the power to the tanks is lost then the spacecrafts propellant will slowly become unusable while increasing the spacecrafts dry-mass. 4.B. Propellant Tanks consuming themselves to remain operational. When a spacecraft no longer has power applied to the propellant tanks, the tanks will consume propellant into increased dry-mass to keep the remaining propellant usable. Eg. A spacecraft in orbit disables power to it's propellant tank to conserve power. The propellant tank then begins to waste propellant to conserve it's remaining propellant over a period of time determined by the propellant tank size. 4.C. Propellant Tank's no longer connected to a command module nor a power source will then go entirely bad and will not be usable at all after a short amount of time. Eg. A spacecraft ejects a propellant tank in orbit and returns to it several hours later. The propellant tank, unmaintained by a command module instantly decays with full propellant and doesn't preform 4.B. _________ Thank you for reading my humble suggestions. I would hope that after some Ker-refinement they can become reality in the Kerbal Universe. Thank you. TLDR: Make Batteries, Solar Panels, and RTG degrade in a semi-realistic fashion. How do you think these Power and Propellant Degradation could interact with the Kerbal Universe?

You wouldn't get ultrasound to work. But radar or infrared would be an option that could do the job. PS. don't know to much about the game, just got it yesterday. Very amazed with it, interested in assisting with dev/mod community after seeing how robust this games environment is. ~Aerospace Engineer (ERAU) (NASA)