justmeman117

I lived in Germany for 4 years and never heard that expression, lol. That's pretty funny. That's about the same reason I didn't reenlist in the military. In theory, we had usual 40 hour weeks... But usually that would turn into 50 from staying late at least 2 hours for dumb reasons every day, and quickly turned into 60-70 hour weeks when you consider ancillary nonsense you were required to do "on your own time" (training, working out to pass the PT test, in-processing/out-processing TDYs, etc). These things were supposed to happen during the duty day, but when on midnight shift for 3 years straight, that basically never happened... But they still had to happen. And occasionally we just had bad days that turned into 12 hours or more to get a job done. I remember one time we had a jet hard land, and had to remove all 4 engines for inspections... That was a month of 12 hour shifts. During that month, they also pushed out my CTO days for weekend duty, and the result was I ended up basically working 12 days straight at one point. People literally lose themseves when they have nothing but their job. I genuinely think overtime should be practically banned to ensure paychecks do actually stay in line with inflation (instead compensating with overtime), and given how often employers abuse it. I hope the KSP 2 dev team are doing ok. Of all the dev teams out there, I hope they in particular aren't going through dev crunch. I genuinely think crunch harms the quality of programming in a game, since it forces devs to do bandaides to get stuff done by certain deadlines, rather than create permanent well functioning systems. I think the end of physical media for consoles and PCs means devs dont have to take time, slow down, and ensure their games are well optimized to run off limited storage space, and the result has been ballooning timeline expectations by publishers (as well as ballooning game sizes).

I'll have to try this, I've been centered on the cockpit and everything I tried to translate didnt seem to work. Thanks.

I think thats been a thing since docking ports were added. I havent had too much issues with that in a long time, but I think thats might because I stopped trying to do as many megaprojects in space. I think the docking magnets causes oscillation in one or both vehicles, especially if theyre misaligned or wibbly wobbly. Then the docking probably adds that little but extra stress into that oscillation necessary to rip apart one or both vehicles. I'd be willing to bet that, if you used the matt lowne lazy method of docking to get both ships perfectly aligned, then turned off docking magnets, and docked slowly, it might keep that from happening to your ships.

I'll at least download it then. done

I'll try it out. Might have to get back to you in a day or two though, I have some calculus homework due tonight.

Did you build it exactly the same? If not, post a screenshot of your design. I can hop on, and modify mine to test out your design techniques, see if I can find a problem child part.

Btw, the Whiplash, in my test flights, peaked around, I dunno, 300-350 KN for me? That was at round 12,000+ meters, and 1,000-1,100 m/s. So it definitely isn't the engine, it's very responsive to lots of ram air and gets up to VERY high thrust in the right speed regime, just like the KSP1 engine. I think your issue is most definitely drag related. Even with no engine, a slippery enough plane should break mach 1 in a dive like that I think. I tried pushing my super draggy jump jet in the same manner to test my ejection system. In a 60 degree dive with full afterburner, from 8,000 meters, it could only hit 250 m/s by 6,000 meters, and then just HARD stopped at that speed, then slowly slowed down as it went into thicker air. It's a good way to test for drag.

Hmmm... I love the look, it's quite close to the real deal, but this is a tough one to troubleshoot. I don't know enough about KSP 2's drag model yet, but it does seem to consider certain parts very draggy considering the sluggish top speed of my panther powered jump jet. In my build I made a deliberate choice to get most of my intake air from inline precoolers, since those should be fairly low drag, being so incorporated into the fuselage. I only added the two small ones to the 0.625 meter tanks at the wing roots for realism purposes (running a jet engine WITHOUT a visible intake bothers me on a physical level as a jet engine mechanic). I chose these small ones, because they get the job done, without causing much drag. Your design appears to have two large scoops, and two hypersonic scoops on it. I generally try to avoid the large scoops, because they just look draggy to me (and probably are). So to troubleshoot, I would try removing the radially attached intakes. Then see how it flies. The whiplash may also need a ton of intake air. I mentioned in my post, I used 4 precoolers, which should be WAY more than it needs, and keep it gasping as high as possible. When flight testing, monitor your whiplash in the parts manager, see if its KN value jumps around up and down. This is a sign it's being air starved. If it is being air starved, I recommend replacing one of your fuel tanks with another precooler intake. If those dont work, then I have 4 other things I'd check. I generally put my landing gear just inside fuselage parts, because I hate how those bulges stick out if you just slap them on. I see yours are embedded in the wings. It's possible those are causing a ton of drag that occlusion prevented on my build. I've also never used an empenage as a nose cone before. I see why you did it, since the F-104 has a long nose. But, since it's usually used in game with the fat end facing forward, it could have some weird drag calculation where the fat end forward actually reduces drag, and the pointy end forward increases it. You could try replacing that part with the 1.25-0.625 Methane tank, and a 0.625 nose cone. It would still look decent, and might fix any drag coming off the original empenage part. The other two big things... So Vaos (a youtuber) figured out that any open and unused attachment points (the green balls on parts in VAB) actually trigger drag, in the drag calculation. For example, a fuel tank with no nosecone. So in his builds, he tries to streamline his builds by putting nosecones on any open attachment points (even if he has to hide the nose cone for asthetic reasons). This, btw, is why he puts nose cones on the exhaust end of his Rapier engines (a weird design choice, but it massively reduces drag). I see two possible parts that might have open attachment points. First, that antenna you're using as a pitot tube on the front. If I recall correcly, in KSP 1, that had an attachment point (no idea if KSP 2 has one or not).... Also, it's quite possible an extended antenna is triggering drag too, maybe try a test flight without it. Second, the tail end of the 0.625 rocket propellant tank. If there isn't a 0.625 nose cone there, embedded inside that thud motor, then put one on right there. Those are my recommendations. Hopefully you figure out what's causing the drag. If you do, lemme know, I'd like to know what parts to avoid as far as drag is concerned. When you do your test flights, leave it in a 15 degree climb, and level off between 12,000 and 18,000 meters. If the whiplash never gets up to above mach 1 by that altitude to begin with, then the thrust it produces is pretty bad. It really needs ram air to produce more power. For that, it needs more speed (even in denser air, it seems to run better with more speed). For more speed, it needs to fly high, so the drag can drop off. So I've found a gradual climb to that altitude to be best. (PS, it's also quite possible that the inline cockpit somehow causes a buggy amount of drag. I haven't used that cockpit yet, it's another difference between your plane and mine).

Thanks for your input, I don't work in IT myself... But I've had other similar experiences. I used to work as a jet engine mechanic in the military, so there was always a balance between getting fixes done right, vs in time enough for planned missions to please bosses... At some point, I realized it would never be "fast enough" for them, especially with out resources, and just tried to do it right regardless of time crunch. It also gave me a lot of troubleshooting experience (a lot like bug hunting), which is a lengthy and methodical process. I've also tried to teach myself programming, and will probably have to actually learn it as a physics major at some point... It's insane how one missed thing can completely implode a program, and KSP 2 probably has a couple hundred such lines of code hiding in its bowls somewhere. It's easy to judge from the outside looking in, but programing and game development isn't easy, and it gets even harder when you got a soulless corp like Take Two calling the biggest shots like release dates. I'm also sure the devs and Take Two are as unhappy with the launch as the player base, this will probably hurt their profits and reputation in the long run. I've also wondered if Steam fines publishers for refunds, in which case, KSP 2 has incurred a massive cost that wouldn't have happened it they just left it in the oven as it were. I still ultimately blame Take Two. It was most likely their call to release it by this arbitrary release date. And it's such a TRASH way of managing developer time. They've wasted how many developer hours now having to gut the entire game of anything unfinished, and whats left never had a chance to be optimized? And now they have to optimize what's left, and THEN return to the unfinished content, THEN finish it, THEN implement it piecemeal, THEN optimize each piece, THEN still get bug reports from annoyed players that then become your play testers now that it's "released". It reminds me of doing 4 times the work to cannibalize parts off of grounded planes, just to get other planes up and running slightly sooner than waiting for parts to ship through the supply system. This is the kind of trash workflow that leads to developer crunch and burnout culture. I get that games need to come out SOMEDAY, but Take Two are literally blind if they think this was done enough. You can't just WILL a game into being complete enough by an arbitrary date, to release. I get the impression publishers put release dates on devs to pressure them into working harder to get it done by that date, but when it's SO out of line with reality, it becomes physically impossible.

Yep, KSP 2 has some kind of halfway house I think. Better aerodynamics than pre 1.0 KSP 1, but still no thermals yet. OG KSP 1 had absolute SOUP for atmosphere, so I think KSP 2 is already better than old KSP 1 in that regard. Thanks for making this post btw, people forget just how LONG it took to get many of these features in KSP 1. KSP 2 already has many features that weren't even added to KSP 1 till over halfway into its 12 year development. It might be worth making a flipside post too, all the stuff in KSP 2 currently, and when it was added to KSP 1 (if at all). For example, KSP 2 already has 5 meter cargo bays, plus a 5 meter cargo bay nose... 5 meter parts werent added stock until Making History (one of the last additions to the game), and even then, the 5 meter structural fuselages are almost useless as cargo bays (trust me... I've tried... and tried... and tried... Lol. Only so much you can do with a toob and no doors, without invoking the kraken).

Wasn't when I played it back then (2013 I think?). Back then I had a crappy laptop, no GPU, and 3 gb of ram. I distinctly remember frame rates starting at like 30fps, then going down from there depending on what I was doing. Systems have come a long way since then. I'm sure if I went back and played 0.18.3 on my current system, I wouldnt have frame rate issues too.

Bro, I was so mad at myself about the DLC. I started playing KSP in 2013, inside the window to get the DLC for free... But as a teen with parents who hated video games, and no credit card, I must admit, I pirated it. I probably have another thousand or more hours in the game that Steam hasnt logged, because of this. In 2015, I finally bought. Ended up getting the DLC anyway, but I was kicking myself for not just finding a way to buy it back in 2013. I watched every ESA video I could, and I dunno man, it seemed pretty buggy even then to me. One of the youtubers showed their plane just... disintigrating into a pile... IN THE VAB (lol. It wouldve been actually funny if it didnt destroy that persons work). So far, it's actually been less buggy than the ESA videos to me. I have yet to have a VAB vehicle do something that insane to me. To be fair though, the most time I've spent in space is one suborbital flight in a plane. And it seems like most of the truly game breaking bugs people are complaining about are quicksave/quickload on longer missions, kraken attacks on big rockets, and phantom forces interferring with orbital dynamics. I've mostly avoided all that so far, just playing with planes. Btw, Im running the game on an i7-6700k, GTX 1070, and 64gb of ram, 1080p min settings. It definitely chugs, but I can get like 15-20 fps with small planes around the KSC. I wouldnt call it unplayable, I've been enjoying it actually. The multiple running engines and fuel flow calculations do make the game chug though (one of their current optamization priorities). Im probably going to go see if I can improve framerate with my jumpjet by making one that flies well with only 1 engine on, instead of needing 5. I'd kill for a 4090. But, I recently spent my life savings on a plane to pursue a private pilots license, so I cant really afford to upgrade for a hot minute. If its gonna come between playing KSP, and finally chasing my dream of flying, flying is gonna win. I dont get 15 FPS sitting in a real plane, lol.

I have similar worries about Take Two, because youre right, it wouldnt be out of character for them. Take Two is the one variable that makes me doubt my decision in buying the game. But, I wouldnt claim the devs only worked on shiny stuff. The more I play, the more hidden features I find (like what seems like a more complex damage model for vehicles and parts, something I've always wanted, or struts that WILL bind to the part you tell it to, regardless of part occlusions... Which imo, is a big improvement over KSP 1 struts). Also, BECAUSE they've been rushed, I wouldnt be surprised if the last few months of dev work has actually been about stripping out stuff that simply wasnt going to be ready in time. We already have a load of in-game footage for content like the late game propulsion systems, and the other solar systems... Do they not get credit for developing stuff that is in progress, and that had to be stripped out to try and make, what is ostensibly a dev version of the game, somewhat playable? Considering what they were working on in the dev videos, I get the impression the dev team was under the assumption they wouldnt release the game until that content had been reasonably finished, and probably got a rude awakening from Take Two. Its a reasonable criticism to argue they should have made a solid core game before EA... I just get the impression they intended on doing exactly that with, well, a larger and more feature rich, core of game than their publisher allowed time for. Had they gotten all the parts and planets done first, then they could have more completely and easily squashed bugs after that (rather than introducing both parts, planets, AND bugs, piecemeal, the same way KSP 1 did that made that game a slog to develop). Now that it's out, Im more concerned about them rushing bug fixes and feature development in a bandaide solution manner, the same way KSP 1 feels like its held together by hopes and dreams sometimes. PS, planes wobble themselves apart on the runway in KSP 1 too. Its a known problem with a known solution, Matt Lowne even made it a point to Nate Simpson himself. The nosewheel is the problem. Disable automatic friction control, and braking, on the nose wheel, on all your aircraft. Ive done nothing but make planes in KSP 2, and theyve all gone down the runway just fine with these settings (except one really botched landing).

Yeah, if they do ever add wind, they should absolutely change the runway layout to a wind rose. It'd make KSC huge (like DIA. I live right next to that airport). But it'd be worth it. I got a weather mod for KSP 1. It rendered some of my larger planes unable to take off in anything but mild cross winds, as they'd get pushed off the runway.

THIS. And honestly, I'd rather fixed prices go up to stay in pace with inflation, than continue allowing what publishers started doing 10 years ago INSTEAD of raising prices (hidden monetization out the rear with microtransactions, lootboxes, day 1 DLC, you name it). Prices have been going up in games, just not in the raw price. I'd happily pay 100 dollars for KSP 2 if it came with a written GARUNTEE from Take Two that they will always allow mods and never introduce nonsense like microtransactions.

This. Gamers generally forgave No Mans Sky after it spent years listening to player feedback and massively improving the game... But who here heard a peep out of Sean Murray after that game released? I kinda hope Nate Simpson doesnt dissappear into the background like... Well... That Simpson meme (pun intended), I actually like the guy. Besides maybe the "slay the kraken" goal (which, I think the devs will learn the hard way, it will never be truly slain in any physics based game like this). I generally dont think KSP 2 or Nate overpromised on release like the NMS did. They were pretty up front about what you get in the EA (and, they CALL it an EA. NMS released in EA in all ways EXCEPT by name), they were up front about what features are on the road map, and they didnt try to hide the performance issues (they LITERALLY made the minimum specs and ideal specs listed as super high to make that point... People got mad at that... They responded by lowering those requirements... Then people got mad at the performance, lol). Probably the biggest thing was letting youtubers play it prerelease and didnt hold them to any major NDAs in regards to bugs and performance issues... And those youtubers to their credit, SHOWED those problems. ... I guess in short, I get why people are dissappointed, but I dont know why theyre THIS mad about it, to the point of getting so many refunds and giving negative reviews day 1... My guy, we had plenty of info on how this release was going to look, most of the people who got refunds shouldnt have bought it in the first place. I knew I was buying a buggy mess for a GTX 1070 well before clicking buy. I knew the game was probably going to have a bad release even just watching the dev videos, you can see their rigs chug trying to make the game look good on high graphics settings Anyway, point is, I really dont think the dev team are deserving of this level of backlash. This just isnt NMS or Anthem, or any in another long line, they never tried to sell you on a full game day 1. How many asterisks do you really need after "Early Access"? Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet this release date at this price was a take two decision they forced. Nate's normally pretty happy go lucky in the dev videos, but the dude just looks really stressed out in that Matt Lowne interview, like he knew what trainwreck was coming. I genuinely dont think he wanted to release it in this state. Unfortunately, we'll probably never know, because publisher/developer contracts probably have all sorts of legalease saying "take the blame when bad crap happens over terrible publisher decisions, never badmouth us". If it were still a Star Theory project and not "Intercept Games", they probably woulda left the game in the oven another year or two, and released with some FPS optimizations day 1. In any event, players be mad, and the last thing I want is the dev team going through thousands of angry hot takes, getting depressed about it on one side, while being dev grinded by Take Two on the other side. I'd rather they just sift through legit feedback and bugs from the people who didnt refund day 1, and leave their public socials off for like... I dunno... A solid 6 months? It'll help productivity, and by then, they'll hopefully have a couple solid patches under their belt to alleviate a few of the bugs and performance issues. I already think its a good sign that, A, KSP 2 at least CAN use more GPU/CPU resources (KSP 1 refused to use your full rig), and B, that one of their first goals is tackling fuel flow FPS hits. Stratzenblitz identified that issue in KSP 1, and I dont think Squad ever addressed it.

You can already, most of my planes are painted that way. When you do your paint, there is a setting to set the opacity of the paint. Set that to 0, and it will give the plane a bare metal finish.

I always thought this should be a feature of KSP 1 as well. It'll be even more important in KSP 2 if they decide to add wind and other weather (which, they might, now that they have clouds in the stock game). Then you'd want to chose your runway based on headwinds and cross winds. They might even want to add a 3rd runway that crosses the other two, running north south, down past the landing pads, to give even more options in the face of winds. ... Now that I think about it, I wonder if the combination of colonization and career mode will lead to more customization of KSCs layout.

I was just thinking about airbags, not just for lobbing rovers at Duna in the funniest way possible. It was always was kinda rude to subject a kerbal to a 10 m/s landing on land with no cushion (thats like 20 mph btw). One of the biggest reasons the US never bothered with on land landings (except in emergencies, or in controlled flight like with the Space Shuttle) was because of the extra equipment needed to soften the blow when impacting the ground. The soviets never had the luxury of landing in the ocean. For them, it was more convenient to land within Soviet territory. During Vostok, they would have cosmonauts eject and fall under their own parachutes, since the capsule's parachute wasnt strong enough to keep from breaking the pilots back on impact. This incidentally is why the recovered Vostok capsules on display are... well... Smushed. They literally smashed into the ground. Theyre supposed to be spherical. The soviets kept the landing process out of the press initially if I recall correctly, because it was embarrassingly jank. With Soyuz, landing this way wasnt exactly an option. You'd have to have 3 cosmonauts climb out the top hatch to bail out... And lets be real, bailing out was ghetto anyway. So with soyuz, they would blow off the heat shield, and underneath were 6 retro rockets. These rockets were designed to fire just a meter or two above the ground, providing an impulse that softens the landing. But there are other options. Every time the US experiments with capsule landing on land they tend to use softening airbags to absorb the imact. This is because, unlike Soyuz, the US capsules are required to at least have the option to land in water. This usually means having airbags anyway as a floatation assist (where the Soyuz can, and has, sunk like a rock when landed in water). Anyway, with KSP 2's jank water physics currently, I've already had a capsule sink like a rock. It made me wish the game had airbags, if only to make capsules float (and honestly, it would be cool if all capsules had the potential to sink, unless you added floats). I also like the idea of incorporating more telescope gameplay. Especially with interstellar travel coming up, and more detailed planets in Kerbol. You could use a space telescope to scan Kerbol planets from afar, and identify features worth landing near, before ever sending a mission. It would give focus for mission planning.

That'd be interesting. I bet it could be doable IRL too, if you injected the oxidizer after the nuclear core, so all it serves is to add a little extra chemical energy to an already hot LH2 exhaust. After passing LH2 through the core, you could probably handle higher exhaust temps. It would kill ISP somewhat because of the oxygen's molar mass, but it could increase thrust by quite a lot.

I mean... In defense of the Expanse's writing (I wont defend the acting, they do play it deadpan, and its not everyone's thing), of the crew, only Jim and Alex have any prior military background, and both of them are from different (opposing) militaries, both disenfranchised with them for different reasons. Meanwhile, Naomi has terrorist baggage with a mob boss for a side kick. Besides that, theyve had at various times, Jim's assassin, a cyborg spy, a detective, and an ate up marine who ended up defecting (now thats a turnaround), in tow, and thats all before getting to the predicament theyre stuck in. In any other universe, everyone on the boat would be enemies for some reason or another. Military vessel or not, this is about the least military crew you could give it, and it's actually weirdly wholesome that the most they do is squabble, instead of ripping each others throats out (except that one time Holden left the spy to die for screwing them over). Ps, there's nothing undramatic about military life anyway. I was a USAF jet engine mechanic for over 5 years, and I cant talk about it without it sounding like a crap soap opera. The military likes to present itself as hyper disciplined as a recruitment tactic, but all I ever knew was a crappy work culture surrounded by drama queens, squabblers, and people with actual drama mixed in (like my buddy who got brain damage from a jet fuel allergy the military doctors refused to diagnose for 3 years). So I never found that aspect of The Expanse particularly unrealistic. By n' large, I thought the internal squabbles of the crew in that show were pretty tame compared to some of the crap that actually happens IRL.

Hi there. I'm a recently separated USAF jet engine mechanic, and a current Physics student. I have a long time interest in propulsion systems, and have learned a great deal about them even outside of the few engines I've had wrench time on. I bring all of this up mostly to brag if I'm honest, but also hopefully to lend my opinion (and it is just an opinion) a little more credence. I know the feedback the devs are looking for currently is probably on performance and bugs at the moment, but I can't help but already make gameplay suggestions, lol. For all I know, the following suggestions are already planned, but I thought I'd chime in if not. KSP 2 is introducing different fuel types into the game (beyond solid, liquid, and xenon), which I think is great. KSP 1 oversimplified fuel types, which is great if you're new to rocketry, but opens up exploits, like unrealistic densities when it comes to LH2 derived engines. However, I think KSP 2 could be implementing these different fuel types into the game a little bit better in the future. Currently, it looks like SSTOs are more difficult now that jet engines and NERVAs do not share fuels. And, SSTOs SHOULD be more difficult than in KSP1 imo, SSTOs are anything but easy IRL... However, I think they should be more difficult in a different way than simply not sharing fuel types... Because in reality, these engines should be capable of sharing fuel types... In short, I think KSP2 developers should consider introducing more fuels, and, make some engines multifuel capable, either in VAB, or in the field (as well as make well researched decisions on which engines are multifuel, how, and why). RP-1/JP-1 to JP-8/Kerosene/Diesel/Alcohol/Gasoline, etc: Wholly Too Much Information About RP-1 One fuel simply absent is a generic heavy hydrocarbon based liquid fuel. I understand the choice to, at least starting off, make most engines "Methane" powered, as most rocket and jet engines can be made to run off of Methane, at least in theory. It's a good every-man fuel. In reality though, its lower density and cryogenic requirements often make larger hydrocarbon fuels cheaper and easier to use. It's why my own plane (The KC-135) was powered by JP-8. Methane is rising in popularity mainly because it provides better performance than larger hydrocarbons, while not being quite as demanding storage wise as LH2, but there are still plenty of reasons to use old fashioned hydrocarbons. There are probably hundreds of iterations of the "cheap storable hydrocarbon" fuel, but KSP 2 could easily simplify this concept down to say, some fictional fuel called "LP-1", that serve as a universal stand in for all of these variants... Because they all have similar chemistry, similar density, similar performances, etc... For example, one could conceivably throw RP-1 (a rocket propellant) into a jet engine, adjust its specific gravity on the fuel control, and it might run just fine (in fact, I believe that was one of the military requirements in the specifications for RP-1, that it could be used to run existing military jets in a pinch). One reason to choose this fuel in game is that, although it's dirtier and less efficient (lower ISP) than Methane or LH2, it would also be far denser (smaller tanks for the same mass of fuel), and in the future career mode, it could also be a lot cheaper than any fuel requiring cryogenics (like Methane or LH2). Less efficient fuels like these heavy hydrocarbons can remain competitive against the higher performance stuff, because the lower tankage requirements has the potential to save on dry weight. Jet Engines (and some rocket engines): Igntition! (Truly, one of the books of all time) Jet engines are generally indiscriminate about what they will burn. John D. Clark even states as such on page 32 of his book Ignition. It's actually one of the advantages of jet engines, as in WW2, it allowed Germany to use low quality fuels (pretty much just diesel) in high performance aircraft. As such, it would make sense in KSP 2 for jet engines to be able to burn either Methane, or this fictional LP-1... However... It should also be able to burn LH2. Although it is an uncommon fuel for jet engines, it is completely conceivable to run a jet engine off of LH2. In fact, running hydrogen fed jet engines was an important stepping stone in jet engine development. Hans Von Ohain ran his first jet engine in 1937... Off of gaseous hydrogen. He chose this fuel because it doesnt leave coke behind (it has no carbon in it), and as a gas, it's already atomized before even entering the engine. Even liquid hydrogen, is easier to atomize than anything based on hydrocarbons, because of its very low boiling point. Using hydrogen, he was able to get his first prototypes up and running, before working out the issues on using hydrocarbon fuels. He briefly talks about it in the book The Jet Age on page 33 (an awesome primary source that collects accounts from the greatest jet engineers from the jet engine's early history). Again, generally, hydrocarbons are simply more practical to run in jet aircraft. But, some modern jet engines are designed to run off of LH2. For example, scramjets require the fast atomization properties of LH2, due to how little time intake air spends inside the engine before being exhausted. And, the Sabre engine (the engine the Rapier is based off of) also is designed to run on LH2 for precooling purposes (I'll get to the Rapier in a minute). In short, I think players should be able to select between LP-1, Methane, and LH2 to run their jet engines off of. This would require a lot of thought from players on whether they want low cost and ease of storage of LP-1, the high efficiency but poor storage of LH2, or the middle man of Methane. Jet engines are generally aircooled, which means the main consideration in adapting a jet engine to run on different fuels would be the fuel pump, fuel control, and injectors... Which on my engine at least, wouldn't be that difficult to change out. The bigger concern would be going from normal hardware to something that can handle cryogenics, rather than the physical act of mixing the fuel and air properly. Maybe the fuel lines would need to be changed out for insulated ones as well. But, even in the field, those are all line items a qualified mechanic could change within a few shifts. Also for LH2 in particular, a service engine would likely need to be made out of slightly different alloys, to combat hydrogen embrittlement. Perhaps these changes could be reflected in the fuel efficiency, cost and weight of the engine in the VAB in game (maybe one day give them slightly different models depending on fuel type). Perhaps the player could select one that could be multifuel in the field (meaning, could be refueled with any of the three fuel types in situ), but also be the most expensive and heaviest version (since it would likely require multiple fuel pumps and some sort of adaptive injector). Rocket engines could also be selectable, but should maybe require a lot more thought from the devs on which fuels, which engines, and why. Many of them are designed with active cooling or special turbopumps that rely on a specific fuel. For example, I don't think an RS-25 (the Vector engine in game) could be very easily adapted to run on LP-1 due to its active cooling and special preburning closed cycle turbopump. By the time you redesigned that into an LP-1 engine, it would basically be a totally different engine anyway, sharing few traits with the original. So perhaps an engine like that should be limited to LH2, and maybe methane. Point is, while in theory rocket engines should be as simple as jet engines to adapt to different fuel types, in practice, it may be really hard, and therefore, not worth doing in KSP 2 for many types of rocket engines (particularly the more advanced and realistic ones. Perhaps multiple fuel options could be restricted to OG engines, like the LV-T30, LV-T45, Skipper, and Mainsail, since those engines are more fictional anyway... Would also give some reason to use them more often). The Rapier Engine: Wholly Too Much Information On The Sabre Engine (Upon which the Rapier engine is based) The Rapier Engine in particular is currently running the wrong fuel. I think one could be built to run on Methane, but above the other jet engines, it is specifically designed to run on LH2 in real life (the Sabre engine), to take advantage of the cryogenic LH2 for precooling. This is one of the reasons why Skylon is so big, that SSTO needs to store LH2 to run the Sabre engines. Jet engines get most of their energy out of a fuel by having a difference in temperature between intake air, and exhaust. The greater this difference, the more power and efficiency the engine has. Engines are made out of non-fictional materials however (kind of a dumb way to put it, but it's apt), which means there's only so hot they can get before they literally just melt or fail inside. This places an upper bound on exhaust temperature. However, the intake air can also get pretty hot as a lower bound for this temperature difference. The act of forcibly compressing air through ramming (which basically every jet engine does except for Scram engines, which can't afford to do that very much) increases intake air temperature before it even has a chance to be burned, reducing efficiency and thrust. This problem gets worse and worse the faster you go, as shock heating at supersonic, and then hypersonic speeds, increases intake air temperature to the point where it's as hot as the exhaust... This is the end of the road as far as normal jet engines are concerned, as there is no way to burn fuel at those intake temperatures, without the exhaust just melting the engine. The Sabre engine aimed to solve this problem with the use of a precooler. Instead of using ram compression to compress intake air, it instead uses an extremely efficient heat exchanger between cryogenic fuel (liquid hydrogen) and intake air. This is pretty amazing technology actually, as it allows the engine to both compress AND cool the intake air, rather than trade off between compression and heating. Since it cools the intake air, it allows the engine to operate at airspeeds far higher than any other jet engine. This doesn't just have applications in the hybrid jet/rocket Sabre engine, in theory, adding a precooler like this to any suitable jet engine, should massively improve that engine's efficiency, thrust, and top speed. Unfortunately, the precooler in KSP1 doesn't do a whole lot besides act as a decent inline intake. KSP2 should probably rectify this by making the in-game precooler do what it says on the tin (cooling intake air to allow faster operation of jet engines, particularly for the rapier engine... In fact, the rapier probably shouldn't be able to go faster in airbreathing mode than the panther or whiplash, without a precooler). Considering all of this... The rapier engine should probably come standard as using LH2, and requiring an LH2 fed precooler to run at peak performance... Conveniently, this would mean it uses the same fuel as the nuclear engines, to the rejoice of SSTO builders (though also require the massive fuel tanks and the new low density LH2). As for the selectability of those two components... Well... Methane is still cryogenic to some extent, so maybe that would work. LP-1 wouldn't be cryogenic at all. However, even LP-1 ran through a precooler could be better than no precooler at all, due to the difference in heat capacity between any liquid state fuel, and the gaseous state of the intake air. That's actually one of the reasons why the precooler is so efficient IRL, it's not just that the LH2 is cold, it's also that it is in a liquid state, far denser than the intake air. So even tepid LP-1 could be used as a coolant against thousand degree intake air. So perhaps the Rapier and Precooler could be considered multifuel as well in game... But there would have to be some performance penalties for using less or non-cryogenic fuels. Perhaps the devs could reach out to Reaction Engines to ask them directly whether or not the precooler/Sabre concept could even remotely work with anything other than LH2 to confirm. NERVA: Wholly Too Much Information About Nuclear Rocket Propellants The nuclear engines are perhaps the most multifuel capable engines IRL, of the engines on this list. In nuclear engines, the "fuel" is actually the fuel rods (Uranium or Plutonium), and what is exhausted is just propellant. A propellant is literally anything with mass, and in NERVA engines, are little more than a coolant for the core... So any fluid that can suitably act as a coolant, can be used in a NERVA engine. There is no need for combustibility for a NERVA propellant, so even completely inert fluids are usable (Helium, for example). The main reason LH2 is used is that, in any rocket, a higher exhaust velocity increases efficiency. That exhaust velocity is, at least in any thermal rocket (from chemical rockets to nuclear thermal rockets) a function of both the energy produced (heavily correlated to temperature) and the molecular weight of the exhaust... LH2 is the lowest conceivable molecular weight (unless you want to get into some crazy fuels like metallic hydrogen, plasmas, or laser light), which means that for the same operating temperature, hydrogen can be accelerated to the highest exhaust velocities possible in thermal propulsion. There's also a big reason not to use anything else. Most of the NERVA's efficiency is achieved purely through the use of such a lightweight propellant, and not by achieving high temperatures. The peak allowable temperature of the core of a nuclear rocket is actually often lower than what temperatures can be achieved in chemical propulsion (though the nuclear engines in game appear to achieve pretty ludicrous core temps)... This means that running something heavier, such as perhaps water, could leave the NERVA operating at as low, or lower ISP than high performance chemical rockets like the Vector (RS-25) engine, depending on the core temperature of the NERVA. Although LH2 is clearly the best option for a nuclear engine, there is still good reason to give a player the option to run suboptimal fuels. For example, maybe a player just wants fuel compatibility between engines and between other spacecraft, so they're willing to take a hit on engine efficiency if it means only dealing with Methane. I think the best reason for it is to ensure greater usability in deep space where fuel production is limited. Let's say you're busy colonizing the Jool system, and only have simple H2O or Methane mining set up, but no real LH2 production set up... A suboptimal fuel on a nuclear powered spacecraft is better than no fuel at all. In fact, I think having the nuclear engines have an in situ mutlifuel option would be pretty amazing, even if that version of the engine were ungodly heavy, if only because it gives the player a lot of capability in fueling it with basically anything they can find out in deep space. One could literally just melt ice from comets, and with no electrolysis or croygenics for LH2 production, run straight water to get back to Kerbin, then switch over and refuel with LH2 in LKO for the outbound trip. I found a 2016 research report which shows predicted ISPs for different propellant types, LH2, NH3, H2O, and CO2, at different core temperatures. This graph peaks at just over 1100 ISP for LH2 at a core temperature of 3600k. The bigger nuclear engine in KSP 2 achieves 1450 ISP, which suggests a pretty insane core temperature of more like 4,000k. Although this chart doesn't go that high, we can still make some educated guesses. Methane has a molecular weight of about 16 g/mol, which should give it an ISP slightly better than NH3 (which has about 17 g/mol). Now, the two nuclear engines in the game are at 900 ISP and 1450 ISP with LH2 (if I remember correctly). Going off the graph in this document, it would be reasonable to have a methane propelled version at 500 and 800 ISP respectively... Which honestly, is nothing to sneeze at. Even H2O propelled versions (if H2O is ever added as a resource) would manage 350 and 500 ISP respectively (even worse, but better than nothing, and still just outperforming most chemical rockets... Though in a much heavier engine than any chemical rocket). Then LP-1 could be used too, though I'd imagine its ISP would be awful (maybe as bad as monopropellant)... That'd be the sort of thing a player would just use in an emergency, like if they're willing to throw ANYTHING in the core to get back home. That reminds me, it would be nice to use oxidizer as well, as a way to use unspent oxidizer... Though that might not be the best idea IRL, given most oxidizers, particularly liquid oxygen, HAPPILY react with metals in high temperature environments in the absence of fuel to react with... Perhaps that could be a funny feature though, like, use oxidizer in a nuclear engine for an emergency, but take care not to use it too long, or the engine blows up. BTW, this is sort of in-line with the performance of methane and water nuclear thermal rockets from the game Children of a Dead Earth, which is another realistic space sim that does allow for different propellants on nuclear thermal engines. One final advantage of allowing for different fuels on nuclear engines, is heavier fuels may actually increase the TWR of the engine (it's easier to get higher mass flow rates out of heavier fuels, if for example, the propellant pumps and injectors being used are more volume flow rate limited than mass flow rate limted). This could mean that these otherwise very heavy nuclear engines could be more useful in landing in taking off from worlds using Methane, and then switch to LH2 for long hauls between planets. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, this has been a long winded case for multifuel engines. If you've managed to drag yourself this far through my word vomit, then I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are as a player. Do you think this would add to player choices, dilemmas, and improve game-play, or do you think multifuel engines only needlessly complicate things? Personally, I like the Dilemma of... Do I rot in deep space for eternity, or dare use the forbidden propellant (pure oxidizer) in the 10 ton nuclear power plant, rolling the dice on getting back home alive? Or detonating in a mini Chernoby that can be seen from Kerbin...

This. Speaking of Holden, the mag boots in Expanse were toggleable, and the characters frequently did that on screen. I do think it's an awesome feature. Mainly, I look forward to having my kerbals able to walk around on, say, the deck of a ship going 20 m/s (if I can get boats to work, the water physics are... perplexing), or even better, maybe even inside a cargo bay of an aircraft going 100 m/s (though that may be wishful thinking). Also, it would make proper gravity rings possible (I mean like, big ones, made out of cargo bays). In KSP 1, although grav rings do technically work, because its a moving reference frame (just like the boat or the cargo plane), the kerbals would just ragdoll against it. But on non-metallic surfaces... Like the surfaces of planets... It feels off somehow. And yeah, half of not only the fun, but the learning, for the younger generations, is the literal experience of different gravities. There are times on minmus or gilly where I've wanted something like mag boots, but more often than not, I prefer walking on planets without them. And I feel like EVA packs fill that niche anyway. If the gravity is light enough to make long distance running annoyingly slow, then it's light enough to zip across the surface in a fuel efficient hover... I've actually never ran out of EVA fuel doing that (I mean, jesus, for most of KSP 1's history, you had like a 500 m/s DV EVA pack), and nowadays in KSP 1, you can carry extra EVA fuel with you (presumably a feature eventually coming to KSP 2). I also tend only to do this in like, odd scenarios or emergencies. Normally if I know my kerbals will need to hoof it, I just send along a rover. Or in Minmus's case, I like sending along an ion powered hover car that can hop into parabolic arcs to get around long distances. I do think mag boots should work on roads however, if that really is going to be a thing in the base building mechanics.

Last night, the release of this game made me want to watch The Right Stuff again, lol. Holy crap, it's like a 3 hour movie, and a lot cheesier than I remember. Still, I enjoyed it. Watching that made me want to build my third aircraft, this time to go to space for the first time. I decided it'd be a cool challenge to try to do so in an NF-104 inspired aircraft (the plane Chuck Yeager crashes in both the film, and in real life). The NF-104 was the predecessor to the X-15. It was a standard F-104 Starfighter, that had been modified with wing tanks removed, a hydrazine rocket in the tail just above the engine exhaust, and the radome replaced with an RCS system (monopropellant tanks and a few thrusters for maneuvering in the rarified air). My build is not quite a 1:1 replica, instead it's just inspired by the real deal. I wanted to use my ejection cockpit from the jump jet build, whereas the inline cockpit would look better for an F-104 replica, so I decided not to adhere to an exact replica. The major difference (besides the cockpit) is relocation of the RCS thrusters to the wingtips and just behind the cockpit, instead of trying to place them in the tiny nose this cockpit affords. Some of the proportions are also a little off, mostly because I built it from memory. I didn't get any screenshots of the ascent unfortunately. I didn't know this was going to be a successful flight, so I didn't document that part. I'd already had a couple unsuccessful flights that usually peaked around 60,000 meters. BTW, I tested the ejection cockpit again at 1,200 m/s at 13,000 meters on one of these flights, and it still worked great, came well away from the plane (I thought I'd have to add more separatrons for those speeds). Most of the plane's fuselage is precoolers, because they're fairly low drag intakes that work well at high speeds and altitudes. They also fit with the plane's aesthetic. I also didn't want to use fuel tanks in the main fuselage, as I knew I'd have to keep weight down. I spammed 4 precoolers and 2 of the small intakes to try and keep the whiplash running into the highest altitudes possible. I had already exchanged some mono-propellant for more methalox tanks, but it was still failing to get to space. I decided the only way to get that last 10k meters without changing the aesthetic of the plane was to go light on fuel, so I reduced my methane fuel load to 1/2 of what it was before... This plane was light on fuel already, so this is a sketchy decision. Long story short, it was a 15 degree climb on the Whiplash up to about 18,000 meters, then a shallow 10 degree dive to 12,000 meters to get up to 1,200 m/s as fast as possible. Then a full pitch up into an 80 degree climb. Another reason for the dive is to maximize the amount of time the Whiplash keeps running during that 80 degree climb. Diving back into thicker air also improves authority over the elevator, so you're not taking forever to pitch into the 80 degree climb. Any lower than 12,000 meters though, and you start to bleed too much speed. Then, upon your pro-grade reaching 80 degrees, I fire the Thud rocket. I don't wait for the Whiplash to quit, firing the Thud a little early improves airspeed for more ram air, feeding the Whiplash a little bit longer. Once the Whiplash gets weaker, I use a hotkey to close all the intakes (it makes a huge difference on drag). The Whiplash uses whatever intake air is left in the closed intakes, and chokes out around where it would fail anyway. This flight, it JUST barely made it to 71,000 meters, just enough time for a 60 second space walk. Reentry was pretty sketchy, about 900 m/s at about 70 degrees below the horizon for prograde. The fully moving elevator helps arrest the descent around mach 1, and around 12,000 meters. Then begins a LONG turn for home, since the wings arent very effective at that altitude. But I dared not go lower, for a very important reason. Now the hard part. I left with only 2 tons of methane to begin with. I reentered with just over 1 ton left, and by the time I finished my turn, was down to 900 kilos. That's all I had to get back, and for such a normally thirsty engine, I wasn't sure if I could get back. If these engines have a regime in which they could be called "efficient", it is at 12,000-18,000 meters, at their maximum speed. At these altitudes, it doesn't burn quite as much fuel because there's not quite as much air to mix it with. And, it doesn't matter too much if it drinks it quickly, because you're covering over a kilometer of ground per second. On a mileage basis, it's actually a pretty efficient way to travel. This is why I did my turn for home at 12,000 meters, any lower, and it would have been a struggle to get back to that altitude without burning off the rest of my fuel. I left it in a shallow climb, until it was running at around only 30 KN of thrust, sipping gas, and cruising at 1,200 m/s. This put me in a parabolic arc up to 24,000 meters. At that altitude, I could literally cut the engine entirely (not that it would run well anyway), and just.. Coast. I turned off the intakes again, and again, let the engine quit on air starvation. This is actually proving to be a pretty useful trick, I gained a decent amount of altitude and speed during that time waiting for it to starve, because the engine still runs on stored intake air, but you don't suffer the drag penalties of open intakes. It actually had a decent amount of legs flying it this way, it probably could have flown much further on that 900 kilos. I left the SAS at about 10-15 degrees above prograde. Although this caused drag, it extended my flight time in that high altitude air where drag is minimal. Although it slowed me down, with the engine off, from 1,200 m/s down to 500 m/s, I had only gone from 24,000 meters down to 22,000 meters. This equates to far less drag loss overall, then allowing it to maintain speed, but descend. And by that time, I was almost straight over the KSC, and had to descend anyway. I spiralled down, bleeding off speed and altitude as much as possible. I still had about 610 kilos of fuel left, which is enough to ensure I made the runway, or even do a go around (which, as you'll see, I should have). I almost botched the landing. I was surprised by how fast the runway was coming up to meet me despite my low airspeed, and 4-5 FPS made the plane almost uncontrollable... It was weird, normally I get 10-15 at the worst around the KSC. ... Yeah, lol, maybe you can spot the problem with this picture... I had turned up the timewarp to descend faster, and had forgotten to go back to 1x for final approach and landing. With how narrow the wheel base is, and how bouncy those landing gear are, not to mention the tiny wings and a plane that flies like a brick, this wasn't going to be an easy landing to begin with... And I'd made it way harder than even that out of inattentiveness. Because of the timewarp, it bled speed too fast for me to react well whenever I cut power. I'd allowed it to stall out way too high, and it clunked down onto the main landing gear VERY hard from probably 50 meters up. The one thing that saved me was the decision to use the bigger landing gear for the main wheels. Then, because of the tall suspension and narrow wheel base, it swerved side to side down the runway, striking both wing tips. Again, a decision I'd made in building saved the plane. I'd insisted on using the LARGE wings, even though this was about the smallest wings you could possibly make with them (they have minimum chord/tip lengths and thicknesses). I like using these wings, even on small planes, if I can, because they have a very high crash tolerance. This kept them from getting destroyed during the wingtip strikes. I didnt realize my mistake till I had tried to EVA for a photo op. The game wont let you EVA at timewarp. I was like "Well hell, now I'm surprised I landed that at all". I decided to recover the plane instead of revert to VAB, for posterity, since it survived the flight. The recovery screen confirmed that I indeed broke the lower roll RCS ports on the wing tips during the wing strikes, and interestingly, I apparently broke the main landing gear... I think maybe KSP 2 is going for a more complicated damage model than KSP 1 because, although this records the landing gear as having been broken in a hard landing... They didn't explode or anything, the wheels were still actually attached to the aircraft. It makes me wonder if landing too hard makes the suspension give out or act weird (kinda like how in KSP 1, you can physically break wheels without completely destroying them). If this is the case, I think it's a cool feature.

This is my version two jump jet, much improved. The original had a vertical TWR of just 1.056, which isn't impossible to fly, but could kill you if you ever allowed descent rate to get too high. Just, no margin whatsoever. So in this version, I added 4 of the small jet engines on the wingtip tanks to augment vertical thrust. Now it can comfortably hover at 75-80% throttle, and can more easily arrest descents. I also think maybe the smaller engines have better throttle response. And, these 4 engines are spread to 4 corners of the jet essentially, which means you can have weight and balance slightly off, and just use throttle limit on these engines to trim it out. I've trimmed it out for a full fuel load (weight shouldnt shift too much from there, but the option for trim is there at least). I've also added two of the small jets to the ends of the wingtip tanks, for more horizontal thrust... Which it needs, because it's actually lost sea level top speed, despite adding these (now between 150-165 m/s), probably because of even more added weight and drag from the new components. It flies like an absolute brick in horizontal flight, but horizontal flight is really just for A to B, I wanted the best VTOL flight characteristics I could get. It still lands pretty accurately, and the extra throttle margin can make for quicker descents and landings without crashing. It does have oversized gear and a tailwheel though, which has saved me a few times. Also, since VTOLs are inherently dangerous, flight saves are buggy (I've already almost permanently lost crew members over it), and there are no Kerbal parachutes yet... I thought it'd be fun to add a capsule ejection system. It worked shockingly well on the first use, and I've been putting it through its paces in different scenarios for fun. 4 Separatrons yank the capsule off the front of the plane, and are angled just so to gently go from horizontal flight (needed to get it off the front) to vertical (to get it away from the jet). It's a 00 system, meaning you can eject on the runway with zero speed, and gain enough altitude to deploy chutes. It works well in a variety of scenarios. I've tried seeing if I could overcome the separatrons and peg the capsule to the front of the jet. It won't do it. The fastest I've gotten it up to in a dive from 8,000 meters is 250 m/s (the plane is just too draggy to go any faster), and the ejection still pulls the capsule away off the front. Generally, so long as the plane is roughly right side up, it will get you to safety without any thought put in, even rapidly hurtling towards the ground. However, in bad attitudes (like inverted, or rolling over), it really can't be a fire and forget thing, the capsule will plow into the ground. It can be hard to control, but if you're quick, you can use reaction wheels to roll the capsule right side up, and halt it in the right spot to gain the most altitude. So even upside down, it's quite capable, it just requires manual flying, and some practice. I've also fixed most of the minor issues of the old version of the plane, from flaps not working, adding struts to strengthen up the cargo bay (which contains the center engine), to sorting out all the action groups. Normally my VTOLs are mediocre at best, but this has been a blast to fly. I'm thinking of posting it to a craft share site if anybody else just wants to hop into an easy VTOL to bum around KSC in. I might also make a version that deletes the ejection system and extra engines, for anybody who wants a lower part count (though slightly harder to fly) version.