peadar1987

Not sure about the programming behind it, and how it could work with the game engine, but perhaps it could be modelled as an area with drag, and an effect similar to the "Deadly Reentry" mod, where your spacecraft heats up on passing through it, to simulate the effect of smashing through a cloud of dust at orbital speeds. Do it once, or at relatively low speeds, and you should be okay, try and place your orbit inside it, especially retrograde, and you're going to Hoole your spacecraft

Well, anywhere near the shores would be okay (especially if you were near a mountain, which would block out any of the radiation from its direction. Also forgot to mention, my calculations assume a flux of 36 Sv/day perpendicular to the atmosphere. I don't know what the flux is like in the van Allen belts, but if it's directionally-biased, you're looking at having a far lower dose rate on the surface, especially when you're shielded by the planet from the worst of the radiation. I'm guessing it'll be pretty dark, so agriculture will be very difficult, and it'll be on the chilly side, but I don't reckon frozen (this is just going on the characteristics from the game, they say it's not frozen, so the greenhouse effect must be enough to keep it from freezing!). And you're right, not dying of radiation poisoning on the surface is the easy part, it's getting through the lethal doses on the way there that's the problem, you're going to need a seriously heavily-shielded capsule! (incidentally, the highest point on Laythe is about 5600m, the dose rate there with Io-levels of radiation would be a whopping 875 Sv/year! You would not be a healthy Kerbonaut if you went climbing!)

Aw, thanks!

Closer to 12.1uSv/hr, as a conservative, all gamma-radiation figure, which corresponds to about 105 mSv/year, and a slight increase in the cancer risk. You're getting into some serious dose rates at even a few hundred metres above sea level now as well, better not be into hiking! It is a bit of a fudgey calculation though, and it doesn't take into account the fact that if you're a colonist on Laythe, you're going to be working inside for most of the time anyway, giving yourself extra shielding. It also doesn't take into account radiation from other sources though, like rocks, food, and the air, which are all pretty significant on earth. Basically though, if the atmosphere is toxic, you could probably go out and about your business wearing normal clothes and breathing apparatus, and not have to worry about giving yourself radiation poisoning, or even a very large increase in the risk of getting cancer, unless you're particularly high above sea level.

Well, 70km of atmosphere isn't going to block radiation as well as 70km of water or lead, but it will block it as well as a few metres of water or lead. It take surprisingly little to stop radiation. I've stood with 3 metres of water between me and more than 100 spent nuclear fuel rods, any one of which would give you a lethal dose in well under a second. My radiation meter showed only a minimal difference between standing there, and sitting in an office. Now, gas isn't nearly as good at stopping radiation as water (especially not when the water is boronated), but when you have 60km of the stuff, the gas only needs to be one two-hundreth of a percent as effective as the water. And that's assuming that the radiation outside is as severe as that coming from a nuclear fuel rod, which is wouldn't be, unless there's something very fishy going on at Jool! And, (damn you), you made me interested, so I had a stab at working out what the radiation level would be. I used data from here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_protection) for the halving thickness of air (150m at full pressure). I assumed that the halving thickness scaled linearly with density, and the density scaled linearly with pressure (not quite true, as the temperature will drop the higher in the atmosphere you get, and the density will actually be higher for a given pressure). I whacked that into an excel spreadsheet, and starting from the top of Laythe's atmosphere (density, height, and scale height from the KSP wiki) for each 100m increment, I worked out the density of the atmosphere, and from that, the expected halving thickness. I then divided the 100m increment by the expected halving thickness as a rough linearisation to work out how much of the radiation would be absorbed, and fed that into the next 100m increment until I had reached the ground. Long story short, the radiation dose rate at sea level on Laythe, assuming a dose rate at the top of the atmosphere of 5.4 Sv/day (Europa's environment), and an earth-like composition for Laythe's atmosphere, is 1.8uSv/hr. This corresponds to an annual dose of 15mSv/yr, which should pose no risk to human health (although Kerbal health is anyone's guess). Careful though, the higher you climb, the greater the dose. If you get above about 600m, you're going to be getting a dose of 100mSv/yr, which is firmly linked to an increased chance of cancer. It should be noted that those figures are likely an overestimation of the dose, as they underestimate the actual density of the atmosphere, and assume that all of the radiation is hard gamma radiation, which it isn't. Particles and softer electromagnetic radiation will be easier to stop. Graphs here (everyone likes a graph!):

Perhaps a simple check box to turn the talking heads giving you missions on and off would do the trick. First-time player who needs a bit of guidance? Or just someone who likes meeting specific objectives? Leave the talking head on. Done it all before and want to unlock the entire tech tree in 4 missions, starting with an Eeloo colony? Turn it off.

Yup, the only time I'd use it would be for a moment of satisfaction after a safe landing on Kerbin. EVA... aaaaaaaand, helmet off. There, Bob, was that really so bad?!

I'd have it as a branching system of accomplishments (combined with a sort of "fog of war") So you'd have at the start: -Send something into space -Get something into orbit -Orbit the Mun -Orbit Minmus -Impact the Mun -Impact Minmus -Land on the Mun -Land on Minmus Which, once you'd orbited the Mun or Minmus, would get you more possible achievements such as "retrieve soil sample from X region of Minmus", reflecting that you now know more about these bodies and their characteristics. ... Then more branches later on, such as: -Land on Jool Transforming to "Deploy atmospheric probe into Jool" once you get close enough with an appropriate science probe to realise it's not got a solid surface. This could also mean that you increase the functionality of your space stations, as objectives like "Add a Science Module to your space station core", or "Construct a space telescope with X, Y and Z parts" could be added to the tree of challenges. This should give direction to novice players without overwhelming them, while hopefully still keeping the people who want to go straight to Eeloo reasonably happy by giving them Eeloo-based objectives (even if the start is just "send a probe to Eeloo", so you can find out which experiments are going to teach you the most about the place)

-Laythe is not Europa. I don't buy into the hand-wavey, pseudo-scientific explanations for the tiny size and high density of the Kerbolar system's planets, I just take it to be that they've been scaled down for gameplay purposes, and imagine Kerbin to be the size of earth (not the size of Charon). With that scaling, Laythe would be almost earth-sized, far larger than Europa, and comparisons between the two aren't really relevant. Laythe would be able to hold onto a far thicker atmosphere, and with a substantial greenhouse effect caused by the right composition of atmosphere, could easily maintain a saltwater ocean near the equator, especially when combined with upwelling of warm water from tidal heating of the core. I doubt it would be habitable though, as most potent greenhouse gases are toxic at partial pressures needed for use as a buffer gas. Sulphur Hexafluoride maybe? And entire moon of people who sound like Barry White would be pretty awesome!

Inflatable modules make sense, use internal pressure to hold your colony components in shape, rather than relying on heavier structural members, which you have to fly out.

Step 1: Uninstall Deadly Reentry Step 2: Profit

I'd imagine they'd have a longer lifetime up in space than if they were located in a dusty desert with wind and an atmosphere.

One of the main problems is stopping weed growing on the damn things, secondary problem is stopping them being destroyed in bad weather, as parking them isn't quite as simple as feathering the blades as you would on a wind turbine. You're right though, although tidal power doesn't run 24:7, it is predictable and slow-changing enough that you can ramp up and down the load on another base load plant without needing the rapid response of a gas turbine

I know, it was more to preempt the anti-nuclear strawman that pro-nuclear people supposedly believe nuclear is 100% safe. Ideally, we'd have geothermal, biomass and nuclear CHP for base load, wind, wave, tidal and solar on top of that when conditions were right, and hydro supplemented by CHP CCGTs for smoothing out variability and dealing with spikes (As well as dealing with a proportion of base load in the case of hydro). The energy mix would vary by country, but there aren't many places on earth where some combination of those would work, and work economically to deliver near carbon-neutral energy.

As someone who has worked in the UK civilian nuclear power industry (As a fuel route engineer), I can categorically say that nuclear power is not 100% safe, and the risk is not negligible, especially with Uranium. Yes, if you have a negative void coefficient in a PWR, you can avoid prompt criticality like in Chernobyl, but that's not the problem, the problem is decay heat after you shut down the reactor, which can quite happily cause Hydrogen explosions, blow the lid off a pressure vessel, or melt the fuel through the floor of the reactor building. Molten salt thorium breeder reactors are so interesting because fission only occurs as the salt-fuel mix is pumped through the moderator at operating temperature. If it gets too hot, thermal expansion pushes fuel out of the moderator, and it goes subcritical. If it gets even hotter, the melt plug melts and the entire thing drains into a subcritical cooling area. The primary problem isnt one of nuclear physics or reactor design, it's material science, as we're struggling to find something that can resist attack by fluoride salts over the timescale required for an economically viable plant. Interestingly, even though it's called "thorium power", most of the actual fission occurs in U-233, which is "bred" from thorium in the salt solution. Unfortunately, Thorium power is many years behind uranium, because uranium is more useful for weapons development. Not every program who used uranium did it because they wanted to build a bomb, but as the technology was already in place, it was far cheaper to build on the previous reactor technology than go down a completely new R&D path. As a concept, Thorium reactors are far more passively safe than Uranium, and also the reactions lend themselves far more favourably to "burning" what would otherwise be considered waste (meaning the waste is absolutely screaming with radioactivity for hundreds of years, as opposed to merely very radioactive for tens of thousands) That said, these risks are very small. Even when you take into account accidents like TMI, Fukushima and Chernobyl, the nuclear industry releases far less radiation than say the coal industry, causes far fewer deaths, especially when mining is taken into account, and causes far less damage to the environment. The "best" argument against isn't safety, it's expense. A nuclear power plant is a big piece of kit, with a long payback period, and it's a lot easier and less risky (in a financial sense) for a company to build a CCGT or cogeneration plant that won't last as long or produce as much power, but is significantly cheaper, even if that's not the best decision in the long run.

That's the way I'd do it too, have a few space-station type science modules* that will only give science if they are manned, and have enough of a resource that can only be brought from Kerbin (and plenty of power). And each time you restock it you get diminishing returns, but the reward drops off quite slowly. That way you get a decent incentive to have something doing science long-term close to Kerbin (or further away, if you fancy having to wait for a launch window to resupply) *Orbital telescope, zero-G laboratory, artificial biosphere, tiny screw sorting facility...

I'd like a more in-depth damage system too. You overheat an engine a little, and you damage it and lose some thrust. Do a bit of damage to a fuel tank, and it springs a leak, losing you fuel, do a lot of damage to the same fuel tank (or subject it to an explosion), and it blows up, damaging everything around it, possibly setting off a chain reaction (and forcing you to hit that abort handle pretty quickly!)

Proud and embarrassed in equal measure that I got this. Perhaps it's time to embrace the fact that I'm a space nerd! :S

Satellites/comms networks would be great, but I think line of sight would just be tedious, you want to transmit data, but you have to wait 20 minutes for the satellite to get around the planet? Probably an acceptable break from reality to just let you send the stuff (if you have problems with that immersion-wise, just pretend you're telling the probe/Kerbals to send the data as soon as they have line of sight, and once you've done that, your job is done)

Battery as a structural member? I reckon it can be done.

With subassemblies in 0.22, you'll be able to build rovers in the SPH using the more suitable symmetry there, and then transfer to the VAB. Looking forward to this!

I don't usually use the docking mode, just stick in standard staging mode, and I mainly use the navball to guide myself in, I don't think I actually use the proper view except for checking things. For me, the key is making sure the navball is set to "target" instead of "orbit", burning towards the pink circle on the navball until the speed is about 5 m/s, then use the IJKL keys to keep the yellow prograde marker inside the pink circle. Occasionally I'll get a bit out of whack even doing this, and have to stop, reorient both spacecraft, then start closing the gap again. It's not an easy skill though, very satisfying the first time I got it to work reliably!

Oh, any time I've even considered playing KSP while drunk, that's ended in numerous facepalm moments. Most notable was when I carefully left my Minmus lander in a stable orbit before heading to the pub, and woke up the next morning to find it scattered all over the landscape, and only a vague recollection of what had happened!

@TheHengeProphet Stacking intakes is a bit of an exploit, if you put the smallest cubic strut facing forwards on the front of your wing, fuel tank, or engine body, then you can attach ram intakes to both the front and back of it, so if you stack a couple of cubic struts, then you can get five or six intakes (Or as many as you want, but I'm using the very fuzzy rule of "it still has to look a little like it would actually fly!) onto one engine body without disabling clipping. Then I used the highly scientific method of copying and pasting the engine body with intakes attached wherever the editor would let me! I think once they overhaul the spaceplane parts and fix aerodynamics and clipping it will completely change this challenge

My first "Kerbal in Space" program was the Gungnir Program, after Odin's spear, which, when thrown, would always hit its target. Seemed appropriate. Spaceplanes get named after Odin's ravens, Muninn and Huginn