UberFuber

I'll add my small input. I like the idea of adding "massless" part's mass to the parent body they're attach to. Shifting CoM can be abstracted out as that whatever added mass they're adding is balanced off by tweaks to the parent body in construction.

I like to keep the lander "uncluttered" so it's a lot easier for me to track whether I completed all the science in my landing. Plus, since it takes quite some time to scrub out the science parts (for me, it's 1 science jr and 2 material pod. The double up of material pod is mostly just to keep the lander balanced), I use that time to do the science report transfer (I've ladders all setup so that when I docked, and can move from my command module to the lab ships command module quickly). Btw, forgot to mention that my lab ship has its own command module. Since I need kerbal to man the lab anyway, I decided to add a command module for it. It just look... cleaner.

Eh... most of the docking you do should NOT be around Kerbin (if you're constantly traversing to the Mun/Minimus... you're not using the lab to its max potential). It's more efficient to get the lab to orbit around Mun/Minimus. Preferably polar orbit, so you don't need any plane change to reach all biomes. Most of your docking would be around Mun/Minimus which is extremely delta-V efficient. As I said, you don't use lab around Kerbin to do science on Mun. You push the lab to Mun. Then design your lander with ability to transmit (and double up on material pod for max science, doubling up Science Jr. would help, but you might not want to pay for the added mass on the lander). In my case, my lander design is like this. 2x material pod, 1x every other science part (excluding parts that only works in an atmosphere). On landing, run all experiment. Transmit everything except for Science Jr and one of the material pod. Rerun all experiment that got transmitted. Launch and dock with the orbiting lab ship. Store experiment and clean out material pod/science jr.. And repeat at different biome. You get a steady stream of science even during your mission, plus one big lump sum at the end of your mission. Granted, this was back in 0.23. In 0.24 with the budget system, the efficiency might change. Although you can argue that it would be a lot "cheaper" since it requires a lot less launches.

I did leave the lab in space. Only the lander part returned. The lab + fuel-tank remain in orbit. The reason for the Kerbin -> Mun -> Kerbin -> Mun -> Kerbin -> Minimus flight plan is due to the fact that the fuel-tank on my mothership was running dry while at Mun (It's a single orange tank), and I'm by no mean the most efficient of pilot.

There are other methods to "bleed off" saturated reaction wheel/CMG that does not require using expendable resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope#International_Space_Station One method is called the gravity gradient torque. Basically, if you have a really long spaceship, or at least large enough that there's a "gravity gradient" across it, you can position the spaceship such that there's sufficient tidal force trying to lock a spaceship in a fixed orientation. Then, you can desaturate the CMG while being locked that way.

That's why you don't try to recover the lab itself. This is what I did for Mun and Minimus for max science recovery. A lab ship with the lab + metric-tons of fuel. This is your mothership. A small lander with all the scientific instrument, with a command module for kerbal. All two are docked together during transit to Mun. Once at Mun, I do the following. 1. Stick the entire thing in polar orbit. 2. Fuel up the lander. 3. Target a biome, land, do all the science for that biome. 4. Take off and dock with the lab. 5. Transfer all science to lab, clean the Science and Material pod. 6. Repeast step 2 until you're almost out of fuel (leave enough for the tug's return trip) or out of science. Once you're done, do the following. 1. Dock lander to mothership and Return back to Kerbin. 2. EVA, and take ALL the science out of the lab and put them back into the lander. 3. Detach the lander, and land it back on Kerbin. 4. Recover for all those sweet, sweet science. To reuse the mothership. Just relaunch the lander and refuel the mothership (might need a second launch if your mothership has a lot of fuel capacity). The key here is that the lab, once in orbit, never gets back down to ground. You use smaller, more durable command pods to shuttle the science back to ground. With this, I managed to grab nearly ALL the sciences from Muns and Minimus in three launches (two for Muns, due to need to refuel, and one for Minimus).

That sounds very Kerbal. "We got a plane, and a problem." "What problem?" "It flies fine, but have trouble leaving ground. What can we do?" "Ramp it?"

Or the first time you develop a science research station that nets you 4000+ science in one launch? I was like "Hell yeah, I just did that!"

I think that since the photo-voltaic panels are the crucial component, you might as well replace the whole thing.

Yes you can. I have a two flight Mum/Minimus mission. First flight is to Minimus due to its low gravity (hence less deltaVs going down and back up). I have essentially two ships. First is a Mobile Processing Lab with large orange fuel tank and nuke engine for transfer maneuvers. Second is a small lander with scientific equipment. This craft is launched with a decouplable large fuel-tank. The first is launched with most of its large orange fuel tank expended to get into orbit. The second craft is launched twice, once for a Minimus mission, and one for Mun mission. The generally process goes as followed (after the lab is in place). 1. Launch the landing craft with attached fuel tank. 2. Dock it with the science lab, transfer fuel over to the science lab. 3. Ditch the fuel-tank attached to the lander (fuel-tank has just enough fuel to de-orbit with a probe core). 4. Transfer to Minimus polar orbit. 5. Time accelerate until desired biome is in the path of the orbit (this happens more at later stage of the mission as more and more biomes are "processed"). 6. Undock lander, land, do science, and redock with lab. 7. Remove science from module and transfer them to lab. 8. Clean science modules, repeat from 5. 9. Once all biomes are covered. Transfer the whole ship back to Kerbin. 10. Once in Kerbin orbit, take stored science from lab and move them back to lander. 11. Undock lander and de-orbit back to Kerbin. Then I repeat from 1 for my Mun mission. My record is 4000+ science in the Minimus mission. In theory, if I have the patience, I can land the lab on Mun/Minimus, drive it around on rover wheel and do science (and cleaning on the spot), and send a "recovery ship" to recover all the science (and Kerbal) from it.

I would argue that m/s be the default, with a manual switch to alternative units.

I agree, once official economy system is factored in, however, it might be interesting for cost to come down over time as you use more of them. For example, a new rocket engine (just researched) may cost $5000. As you use it in more and more flights, the cost come down to say $1000. In short, the refinement goes into how to make the part cheaper.

I agree, the current ladder system is a bit... bizzare to say the least. On one hand, Kerbal seems to have trouble holding onto a ladder despite the spaceship it's attached to barely rotating when they go into EVA. On the other hand, once they're on the ladder, a 4000+m/s reentry didn't even phase them.

A possible system design that results in such a system. An assumption: Kerbal's ADC converter (analog to digital converter) are very low in resolution such that, for example with temperature, it can only distinguish temperatures in ranges of 10 degCs (for example, the converter can only recognized that a temperature reading is between 10~20 degC, and cannot distinguish between 12 degC and 18 degC). So how can an analog system do better? The design is that the temperature measurement is tied to a drawing needle that's in contact with the drum (for description purposes, assume the drum/cylinder is oriented vertically). The drum is not turning, so the temperature gauge movement just draws a solid lines vertically on the drum. When a measurement is logged, the drum turns a bit, tracing out a short horizontal line indicating the temperature at the time before stopping. Future temperature gauge movement will result in a solid vertical line at the end of the horizontal line. The end result is that the drum will look like it has a very tall 'H' drawn onto it, with the horizontal line indicating the temperature when the measurement happen. This system would explain why it would result in more "science" when the actual thermometer is observed versus transmitting the data (the ADC converter cannot covert that analog signal with maximum precision).

On one hand, I agree with this. On the other, the fact that there's some sort of Transmission Lost means that some of those data measured are physical in nature, and cannot be transferred purely by electronics (interconnection between probe and the instrument).

I think it is possible, my argument as thus. After all, photon have momentum (and by rule of conservation of energy, emitting a photon would exert force on the emitter). Of course, the amount of energy needed is simply phenomenal.

Let's get mathy! For a specific equation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon Specifically under Physical Property. Momentum of a photon: p = h/lambda h is the plank constant lambda is the wavelength of the photon. The energy of a photon: E = hc/lambda c is the speed of light: 3e8 m/s So, the amount of momentum that you can impart on our spaceship (p) is this: p = E/c where c = 3e8 m/s E = joule p = kg * m/s (1 p can accelerate 1 kg to 1 m/s). So what does this mean? It means that if you have, say, a 1 kg spaceship (wow, you're really, REALLY efficient), to accelerate it to just 1 m/s (give it a deltaV of 1 m/s), you need 3e8 joules. Or, in another word. if you have a 1kg spaceship, and you want to keep accelerating it at 1 m/s^2, you need 3e8 watt (3e8 joules per second), or 300 megawatts. The Apollo command and service module has the mass of 30 tons. If you want to accelerate it at just a little over 1 earth gravity (9.8 m/s^2, but let's use 10 m/s^2 so you can "push" that service module away from earth). You'll need: 300 megawatts * 30,000 * 10 = 90,000,000 megawatt = 90 terrawatts To put this in perspective, a typical nuclear powerplant in US (http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=104&t=3) ranges from 500~1,300 megawatts per reactor. Let's use a nice round number of 1,000 megawatts per reactor, this means that to accelerate the Apollo 11's command and service module enough for it to slowly lift off from earth with just pure photon emission, and assuming 100% efficiency (typical diode laser hovers around 50%), you'll need 90,000 reactor somehow pumping ALL their power into the Apollo 11 CSM. The resulting laser output is probably enough to vaporize the very ground from which it launches from (and blind about everyone in the vicinity).

I would like to keep tossing this out. 1. Don't reduce thrust of new part. 2. Tweak the Isp profile of new part for what they're designed for, which is lifting heavy stuffs off Kerbin. In that vein, keep the current thrust and Isp profile for atmospheric flight, but heavily nerf the vacuum Isp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine_nozzle Rocket engines, specifically those with a bell-shaped nozzle, are designed with a specific atmospheric pressure in mind. Leave that specific atmospheric pressure, efficiency starts to go down. Our new SLS engine can be balanced by making its Isp in vacuum fairly horrible (say, 180 or 210). You still get quite a lot of benefit for SLS (that initial kick into LKO), but it would not be feasible to keep using it for the majority of your mission. Come to think about, I remember hearing something from the KSP dev that the new SLS rockets are supposed to do just that, a distinct Isp profile that makes them fairly bad at vacuum but phenomenal as 1st stage kicking.

ISP doesn't have to be balanced purely against TWR. In real-life, rockets are designed to operate at certain altitude. For example, a large bell rocket designed to "catch" most of the expanding gas in the exhaust works best in vacuum but will have serious issue if you fire it at low altitude (best case scenario, the bell adds too much drag, worst case, the bell collapses). A rocket designed to operate at sea level will may work best at operate in atmosphere by be horribly inefficient in vacuum. So base on this, we have 3 different possible Isp curves to balance each rockets. High sea-level Isp, Low vacuum Isp - Currently no engine, I believe, operates like that. But lifter engines (such as Mainsail and the SLS engine) are candidates to have Isp curves like that. Consistent Isp - Aerospike Low sea-level Isp, High vacuum Isp - Most non-Mainsail engines, nukes. The balance between Mainsail and SLS could be that both engine have similar sea-level Isp, but SLS lifter engine have much worse vacuum Isp than Mainsail.

As you stated, variable thrust can be a bit too complicated, we can focus on fuel consumption behavior. Since it's based off fuel consumption, we can still have engine that has high ISP and sea level and low ISP at vaccum. Basically have engine "consume" more fuel as the air gets thinner. Think of it as the Kerbal engines are designed to have controller that maintains a constant thrust, but will consume more and more fuel to "reach" that thrust.

As stated by other, it was NASA who approached KSP team first with a project in mind (basically, working with KSP team to get asteroid redirection in). If CSA and/or Roscosmos approaches KSP with interesting project/mission, I can see KSP team working with them. CSA/ESA is most likely, I don't know if anyone on KSP team is fluent in Russian. Can anyone list some of the more interesting missions CSA/ESA/Roscosmos are planning? It's also possible that the modding frameworks allows for those missions without KSP needing to do anything on their part.

That's an interesting idea. Occasionally spawn an asteroid/comet in a very long elliptical orbit around Kerbol that's has some "bonus" science (greater than the current 60 science per asteroid). Obviously, capturing it would be hard.

This might be a good suggestion for something like a science material storage container.

That's an interesting idea. A battery that have a much higher electric charge density than the current battery (more electric charge per mass) but cannot recharge. Good for moderately long missions where: A. You don't want to/can't pay for the mass of RTG. B. You don't want to/can't pay for the mass of the current battery + solar panels.

Technically, beside science experiments, KSP don't have much that astronaut skill would technically matter. However, here's some possibility for astronaut experience. 1. Science - An obvious one. Astronaut can receive science experience. Improved science experience provides bonuses to science recovery to transmission and lab processing. 2. Physical Fitness - As current, may allow Kerbalnaut to run/climb faster or hold on to ladders better (can resist more changes in acceleration). In future, if Kerbalnaut can "blackout" due to excessive Gs, can improve the amount of Gs a Kerbalnaut can withstand (so you can go for a faster re-entry into atmosphere without worrying about your Kerbalnaut passing out and you losing control of the spacecraft).