NERVAfan

According to the wiki, LV-1 is 290 s vacuum Isp, 24-77 is 300 s. Has that changed? Xenon tanks do have a worse mass ratio, but I'd be surprised if it made up for 290 s vs. 4000 s specific impulse. I'd rather keep the Isp and drop the TWR a lot. You don't need that much TWR to land on Mun (or most airless bodies) and the 48-7S IMO doesn't really need to be a great ascent-from-Kerbin engine.

I've seen the Rockomax 48-7S engine described as overpowered, and the TWR does seem very good... I'd like to suggest that it if gets changed, the thrust should be lowered rather than raising the mass, since the only other in-line 0.625m engine (well, besides the ion) is the LV-1 "ant" engine, which is kind of useless. So the 48-7S IMO is a needed engine (for small landers on Mun and so on) even if overpowered. Maybe the Isp could be lowered a bit too? For that matter, the LV-1 probably needs a bit of a boost. It has bad TWR and unimpressive Isp... it probably needs a slightly better vacuum Isp. Just some thoughts....

I almost always stay under 100 parts... but then, I haven't gone beyond Minmus yet, I'll probably need more to do serious interplanetary stuff.

Well, if we assume that Eve's oceans are actually water (Eve surface pressure according to the wiki is 5 atm; the boiling point of water at that pressure should be roughly 150 C), then the biochemistry might be fairly similar to Earth hyperthermophiles. The highest temperature organisms discovered so far are Methanopyrus able to actively live and reproduce at up to 122 C, and Geogemma "Strain 121" at 121 C (though it can survive - inactive, but able to revive if cooled - at slightly higher temperatures).

2, maybe 3 times? Once or twice back in 0.21, then I didn't play for a while, then one so far in career 0.23 (plus an unmanned lander first to test it out...) EDIT: Haven't landed on Minmus yet, though (or done anything interplanetary).

OK, thank you. So if you had a sufficiently good computer it would not happen? Or is it a limitation of KSP itself rather than the computer?

Why does physics warp amplify forces? Is that supposed to happen?

Actually, a solar sail has actually been made and flown in space: JAXA (the Japanese space agency)'s IKAROS mission. The solar sail was only 7.5 micrometers thick (made of polyimide film). They launched it on the same rocket as the Akatsuki Venus probe and measured its acceleration while it flew toward and past Venus. NASA also demonstrated deploying a solar sail in space with the NanoSail-D2 mission (a 3U Cubesat), but it was in LEO and so I'm not sure it accelerated much because of air resistance... The Planetary Society has a solar-sail built and waiting for launch (LightSail-1) and there's a NASA solar sail (Sunjammer/Solar Sail Demonstrator) planned to launch in 2015. Anyway, point is, solar sails are totally a real technology: I'd say more so than VASIMR and most nuclear propulsion options (NERVA was never flown in space, but it was pretty heavily developed, so you could make an argument for that one...) EDIT: ninja'd by Merinsan. As for the physics warp thing, doesn't KSP Interstellar have solar sails that operate under "full" time warp? (I don't have the mod, so don't know for sure, but that's what I've read...)

Nah, there aren't any elements that dense -- osmium, the densest, is 22.59 g/cm^3 which is only about five times denser than Earth. I think Brotoro suggested that the planets are shells around micro-black-holes... there was a funny thing he wrote about Magratheans building them...

A good point. Kerbin is roughly 10x denser than Earth; if the water is actually 10x denser too, then steel (more like 8x as dense as water) would float. Unless the steel is denser too, of course...

The masses and radii of the planets are given in the Knowledge Base in-game. So it's definitely the density thing, not different laws of physics.

Could we have a display that shows the mass and TWR of your vehicle while you're in the VAB? Right now, AFAIK, you have to launch it and go to map view to see the mass, and while you can calculate the TWR from the engine thrust rating and that, again it requires going to map view. A delta-v readout would also be nice (though possibly trickier due to Isp changes with altitude - maybe an "in vacuum" number?).

Yes - I would like decouplers to be on the first page of structural.

OK, I just built that solar escape probe, 0.57 tons (0.51 with empty tank). 9 parts: HECS core + one 700-unit xenon tank + ion engine + six OX-4L 1x6 solar panels. I got the solar escape with about 7-8 units (out of 700!) of Xenon left, but I didn't do everything the most efficiently (wasn't totally at periapsis when I started the burn, and I noticed that I'd been burning a bit off prograde too). Still, it's pretty borderline.

I use ions for when I want tons of delta-v, and build the craft very small. I sundived a probe with an ion engine about a week ago; I'll probably build another one to try to get solar escape velocity soon.

OK, I am just about to begin to explore the vast world of mods... but how do I install them? Just put them in the KSP folder?

Ah. oops. sorry

I thought there was no way for atmospheric heating to destroy a craft in stock - that's what Deadly Reentry is for. But then I stuck 22 sepratrons (the most I could fit) to a Stayputnik and launched it. It very briefly reached 782 m/s before turning into a puff of smoke, and when the "Catastrophic Failure" screen came up, it said "Stayputnik Mk. 1 exploded due to overheating." I repeated it a couple of times and it still exploded, so it's not a fluke...

I would like to see another "biome" added in the Sun sphere of influence that's something like "Very High Above the Sun" that only starts out well past Eeloo (or the last planet if/when more are added). That way you can get science credit for a Voyager type solar escape mission.

I would also like to be able to see the results text (and go to the R&D building to see past results) in sandbox mode.

That screenshot... how do you zoom out that far in the VAB? I have trouble building things with a couple of jumbo tanks...

Is it some kind of bug-powered spacecraft?

Actually, it works in Fahrenheit: -400 degrees F is about 33 K.

I WOULD like to have some actually really thin atmosphere, somewhere (whether below or above 70km). The scaling is a bit odd. Kerbin is 600km radius, and scaling based on the same Kerbin:Earth ratio, you'd get - tropopause ~1 - 1.5 km (9-17 km on Earth per Wikipedia) stratopause ~5km (~50km on Earth) mesopause ~8-10 km (~80-100 km on Earth) thermopause/exobase ~50-100 km (~500-1000 km on Earth) So 70km is actually pretty reasonable for a "negligible atmosphere" height, by this scaling; but by that same scaling, the scale height of Kerbin's atmosphere would be about 800 meters! Which would make ascent WAY too easy (basically no drag), so I am NOT suggesting this.

A way to see your spacecraft's delta-V, TWR, and mass in the VAB (without mods). More non-easter-egg details on planets ... plus dynamic features like clouds on planets with atmosphere, volcanoes on Eve, frost in the morning on Duna, cryovolcanoes on Eeloo, etc. The ability to explore Jool's atmosphere all the way down to the crushing-pressure level. Resources.