GoldForest

Well, an unlimited resource launch platform is way better for launching 10 large scale supply missions to supply 1 interstellar mission than launching 50 supply missions from ground to supply 1 interstellar mission.

Lets routine flights to restock the station with the orbital construction yard meaning more time getting interplanetary missions under way.

As said earlier, it would be an unlimited resource launching platform to orbital construction stations.

Nothing complicated about going up by 0.625 each step. Just a little math.

Well idk how it will work. CKAN is kind of like steam workshop without the auto update. I've had a little trouble with CKAN and just gave up on it. Steam might not be able to handle KSP mods. We'll have to wait and see how mods work in KSP 2.

Okay, I will admit I see where I was doing my math wrong. But your math is still wrong too in some places. .625 * 1.5 = .9375 (I know you said this one was an exception, just adding it for argument sake) 1.25 * 1.5 = 1.875 1.875 * 1.5 = 2.8125 2.5 * 1.5 = 3.75 3.75 * 1.5 = 5.625 By your math the 2.5 m parts and the 5 m parts should be bigger. So no, it's not right or safe to assume they went with 1.5. It is safe and right to assume they used the multiply of .625 to a regular non decimal number (1,2,3, etc) or they just simply added .625 to the previous number. As for the unused numbers, they're skipping to either give more spacing between parts or something. Idk why.

@sarbian This.

I believe this question was asked to Nate and I can't recall an exact quite, but he said something along the lines of no answer which means they dont know yet. Have steam be a place for mods would be good like you said, but as long as Steam workshop wasn't the only place. We all remember the Curse controversy...

Resources. Space elevator connected to the ksc would have unlimited resources. Orbital Construction Array needs its resources brought to it. So cheaper to launch from Space Elevator that could carry unlimited resources to and from KSC than to waste money and resources ferrying resources to the OCA to build and then launch the interstellar ships.

That's why it would be very end game, to make interstellar travel easier from Kerbin. Once you're out and about, it wouldn't matter if you launched from the mun or the space elevator.

Oh, right. Doy lol. Totally forgot. And I'm the one that copied the info XD. Well in that case the height of the counter weight is about 3.3 times that of the geo station, so 2,863.33 (keo) * 3.3 = 9,448.989 km

Well, we all have our opinions and I respect yours. I feel we could have a working space elevator with a decade or three. I feel they are indeed very possible, just not probable in less than a decade. I do agree there are more problems than just the nanotubes, but the nanotubes are the biggest concern I feel. Other problems, wind restraints at the various levels of the elevator. Storms and earthquakes, it would need to be a less active area of Earth. Material, the ground structure, although would only be a mile or two high and supported by nanotube cables, would still need to stand up to high winds and stresses. Political problems would plague it certainly. A space elevator would have to be put in a neutral territory or in international waters and have a multi-national team governing it. So, yes, lots of problems to iron out, but a decade to three decades isnt a far fetch in my opinion. Why does it need unobtainium? You could build it out of steel and titanium and other super strong metals just fine. Nanotubes are unobtainable, just difficult. Mun wouldn't interfere... it would deck the space elevator every orbit. Ksp system = 1/10th sizes, right? Mun orbit = 12,000,000 meters Space elevator orbit = 144,000,000 / 10 = 14,400,000. But the irl space elevator height comes within 1/4th to 1/3rd give or take of the irl moon's orbit. So if we use that... Space elevator orbit 1/4th scale = 3,000,000 meters. 1/3rd scale = 4,000,000 meters So it will be fine.

No, but the people who did the interview inside the book are. It doesn't matter that the interview is in a book, it's still valid. So dont say "video game book" like its supposed to make the interview mean nothing. Da Vinci set the idea of flight is what I'm saying. He also did have a little science to his work. He studied bird wings to make gliders. He was the first one to look into the way birds generate lift. And I am American. Weaponized rockets are not the same as space rockets. Rocketry does have a long history in weaponized rocketry, but I'm talking manned rocketry. The Saturn I and V were the first official space rockets. All other space worthy rockets were weapons. Atlas A, Titan, Redstone, all weapons. None were intended for space travel. As for Goddard, I forgot about him to be honest. I was more in the frame of humans on rockets and not people learning how to get get to space or testing technology that would one day take us there. Fantasy means it is very very unlikely to impossible to happen. Space Elevators are likely to happen though, so no, it's not pure fantasy. Science Fiction that will become science fact, maybe, but not fantasy. It's just a matter of time and maturing carbon nanotubes, the only thing holding us back are those tiny things. On an unrelated note, Carbon Nanotube CPUs were created by MIT. So... not that far off from space elevators after all. joking.

Not rocketless travel, something to augment them. Space elevator could lead to an orbital launch platform for rockets and interstellar ships. Mass Drivers were there to help SSTOs, and I can see them being used for small rockets as well. What took a medium rocket to launch a medium payload could be a small rocket launching the same medium payload. And nothing is fantasy about it. Both have research and data to back them up with scientific theories which are sound. Yes, it's still on paper, but everything was on paper at one point. Planes were works of fiction until Da Vinci came up with the idea scientifically then the Wright brothers took it off the papers. Rockets were the work of fiction until Van Braun came along.

Like I said in an earlier comment, the distances that mass drivers would stretch our vast. Upwards of 5 to 25 to possibly hundreds or even thousands of miles. The longer the stretch, the slower the acceleration could be, but it would severely hinder launch capability the slower you accelerate. Also, I don't think you understand that Mass Drivers are not meant to do all the work. Mass Drivers serve to HELP the spacecraft accelerate up to speeds able to break the atmosphere. The SSTO would still need to do a lot of work once it left the ramp, including maintaining escape velocity as well as the aforementioned circulation. Mass Drivers aren't there to put things into orbit, they're there to help things escape the atmosphere, that's it. The shuttle still has to do most of the work. I never mentioned anything about the mass driver putting things into orbit on its own. I don't think your math is right. I did math for finding out G-forces and I came out with ~652 miles (~1050 km) need for a 4.06 G acceleration curve. Of course, I may be doing my math wrong, I'm not a math expert by any means, and I might have converted numbers wrong or put them wrong into Excel, but that's what I got. I'm not even going to do the math for this one as I'm to lazy to do any further math, but the Space Shuttle experienced 3Gs of acceleration during liftoff. I would imagine that would require 1,000 to 1,500 miles of mass driver or more, and by that length you've basically built a bridge into space, of course, the 652 miles previously could put you into space as well if the mass driver slopes or angles far enough up. At that point you could just drive rockets and satellites into space.

An elevator would be useful since sending people up by rocket would still be expensive. Even if Space X's starship cuts costs my 90%, A seat on an elevator would be around the same cost to even lower since the only thing needed would be electricity to power the elevator. We technically have a mass driver today, and pilots use it 24/7 in the Navy. Steam catapults launch aircraft all the time, and now we're upgrading to EM Rail Catapults. A mass driver runway would be around 3 miles long, at minimum. 3 miles is a long time to accelerate, so the G forces would not be that bad. Especially if it was longer. 5 miles, 10 miles, 15 miles. The acceleration could be less and less, though less acceleration would be bad in the case of launching an orbital class shuttle. A 5 mile mass driver would allow for a comfortable...ish acceleration while maintaining the essential need for speed. And if they need more speed, SRBs can be attached to the skid the shuttle sits on.

Not railgun, mass driver. It accelerates using rail gun tech but slowly. Like a carrier's catapult. Space elevator is near future to mid future. And the source isnt from the game, but a book based on the game and in the book is an interview with a space elevator scientist.

Well like I said, a group of scientist determined it would take ~ $50 Billion dollars, don't know why I tripled the original estimate, to setup a space elevator right here, right now. Rocket Launches: $6.2 Billion Spacecraft Construction: $6.6 Billion Carbon Nanotubes: $8.7 Billion Ground Facilities: $5.2 Billion Space Facilities: $19.7 Billion Climber (elevators): $4 Billion. Total: $50.4 Billion dollars And I was also wrong about the stations. There would be 3 stations and one counter weight ~Counterweight at ~140,000km ~High Orbit Station at ~54,000km to ~57,000km ~Geostationary Station at ~36,000km ~Low Orbit Station at ~23,750km ~Earth Port(Space elevator) at 0km (Would be placed out at sea or ocean for obvious reasons) Source: Aces at War: A history 2019, page 93, Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.

A static space elevator on Earth is actually doable right now. A group of space elevator scientists calculated it would take, right now, $120 Billion Dollars to set up an elevator. It would have two space stations, low earth orbit and high earth orbit, then there would be a weight in Geostationary orbit to keep the station from speeding up or slowing down.

Thanks, I forgot about that. Updated the poll to reflect KSC specific wants and Colony specific wants.

After thinking about it and doing some math, this is actually wrong. The only parts that are 1.5x larger than the last one, are 1.25 to 1.875. All parts follow the: # (1,2,3,etc) * 0.625 or Previous # + 0.625 rules Anyway, I came back to this post to say I would like longer tanks, not just bigger tanks. Double jumbo 64 or even triple jumbo 64 would be super nice.

I just thought of this, but KSP 2 has no mention of Space Elevators or Mass Drivers of SSTOs. Both of these technologies are near to mid future, so they are in the scope of what is possible. I think we should get the option to build these as upgrades to the KSC. The Space elevator would obviously have to go out in the ocean and it's reach would go all the way up to KEOstationary orbit, but I feel like a space elevator would be great for interstellar missions. A mass driver, preferably like the ones we see in the Ace Combat series (Photo in the spoiler below), would be great for SSTOs. It would make them more viable if they could get a kick boost on take off.

I just chose a random number to be honest. But I do believe it will 2 or 3 other solar systems.

Okay, so I was wrong. There are only 4 launch pads and 4 landing pads, not five.

The other two stars will get names or community made names.