Northstar1989

Stock ion engines are OP'd, but so is everything else in KSP. Remember, the solar system is only 10% scale, but you're working with semi-realistic rocket materials and ISP values. That makes for a VERY different picture than real life, where it takes a lot more Delta-V just to get to orbit... Just because one part is OP'd is not an excuse not to include another part, and appropriately balance it relative to the other parts... A VASIMR engine that consumes 20 times the electricity of the stock ion engine would basically require large solar panels to run- RTG's wouldn't be practical. This would be as intended. And as for thrust, it wouldn't produce 20 times the thrust- remember it's less efficient. An appropriately balanced thrust for the stock game might be 15/25 kN (for high/low ISP setting, respectively), with better TWR than ion engines... Regards, Northstar

To make it harder. To make it a bit more realistic at the same time. Regards, Northstar

I like the paraphrase of George Mallory in the video (watch it already if you haven't before: )"Because it's there- mountains are meant to be climbed, rules are meant to be broken" I think the same sentiment sums up the greatest reason why KSP should include a complex and realistic ISRU system- for the challenge. So it's there- another mountain to be climbed. Why visit Eeelo, why set up a colony on Laythe in KSP? Because you can. Their very existence is a challenge to the human (or Kerbal) spirit. The same applies to an ISRU system. Why should players do it, ultimately? Because they can. You think it's EASY landing multi-ton refineries on Vall or Tylo, and then finding the electricity to power them out by Jool where there's hardly any sunlight (especially if the devs properly implement the Inverse-Square rule soon, which they are looking into by all accounts...) Or developing 100% reusable launch systems to get that fuel to orbit? It's not. Not for most players (not eve for me). It's a challenge- a mountain to climb, a rule to be broken. Regards, Northstar P.S. For the same reasons, I think KSP should switch over to a larger scale, closer to reality- to make the game more of a challenge. Yes, a scale 20% or 30% instead of 10% of reality would add to launch-times and time-to-orbit, but it would also increase the Delta-V requirements, and thus the challenge, of getting to orbit...

The niche it fills would be the same one as real life- an intermediate ion engine that can provide more usable thrust levels than standard ion engines (and has better TWR), but suffers from reduced ISP as a result. I never said it should be implemented solely for realism, it does fill a niche in itself- but realism is also a draw. Being able to imitate real proposed mission plans (NASA currently has versions of the Mars "Design Reference Architecture" for future missions which include Solar-Electric Propulsion, which primarily means VASIMR: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373665main_NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf) is a bonus in itself... See this awesome YouTube video on the Constellation Mars Mission Plan, for instance- this guy/girl had a LOT of fun imitating NASA: As for the thrust, ion engine thrust is up-scaled for gameplay reasons, no doubt. What should be maintained is the *relation* between VASIMR and stock ion engines. That way if they even decide to re-balance ion engines again (like moving their thrust back down to what it was before) they would already know how to adjust the VASIMR engines too... Regards, Northstar

Didn't you see me post about the Sabatier reactor on the ISS? (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/sabatier.html) Or have you heard about NASA's construction of prototype CO2-capture equipment for use on Mars? (just one of the dozens of links on CO2 adsorber prototypes at NASA: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120015003.pdf) (this is another: http://isru.nasa.gov/CarbonDioxideOxygen.html) ISRU is becoming a thing in reality. NASA has an entire project called the MARCO POLO (Mars Atmosphere and Regolith COllector/PrOcessor for Lander Operations) project being worked on at Johnson Space Center, for instance... Anyways, it would add to the scope and fun of the game. It would draw more players to KSP, and allow more realistic missions... IF you want to up the difficulty level, you could always play with Real Solar System mod (or bug SQUAD to implement at least a slight scale-up of the stock game- I have been pushing for them to go from 10% to 20% scale for a while now...) Regards, Northstar ---------- Many features now part of the stock game were once part of mods. Docking, for example. And alpha development is precisely when new features are *supposed to* be added. Please remember this isn't a "feature-complete" game yet... There have been plenty of reasons why ISRU should be added brought up. Can you think of any reasons it should *not*? Kerbal Space Program is about what players and the devs want to make it about. Spaceplanes aren't rockets, and they're already in the game- and used to only be mod territory. Why should ISRU be as well? May I also remind you of the part of the game's title "Space Program". In-Situ Resource Utilization is purely a feature of space programs. Can you think of ANY other realistic or interesting use of a Sabatier Reactor (takes CO2 and H2 and makes methane and water- one is currently deployed on the ISS) besides life-support and making fuel off-planet? A game called **** "space program" is precisely where ISRU belongs. Regards, Northstar ---------- I like your thinking. More features = more play time. Enough said about that. Rewarding players for adding complexity to their missions, and learning a new system- also a great idea... Regards, Northstar ---------- Oh, and for those wondering what In-Situ Resource Utilization would ADD the the game, I *highly* recommend you check out this YouTube video, in which a player re-created NASA's Constellation Mission (which relied on ISRU for its Mars component), using Kethane for his ISRU system. He seemed to have a lot of fun imitating NASA's plan... Also, here is a book which further discusses NASA's plans for ISRU on Mars and the Moon (though the author does not seem to understand that the intended reason for melting down Moon regolith is *not* to obtain water-ice-, but to obtain Oxygen for life-support and ascent propellent by electrolyzing Aluminum Oxide regolith...) http://books.google.com/books?id=gfYolGeTePkC&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=Mars+Constellation+ISRU&source=bl&ots=asxWe33fgV&sig=wE43VQOV6o3UzbnSSOEvoTSCPh0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PtOHU5ipEdaeqAaIgYLYAw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Mars%20Constellation%20ISRU&f=false Regards, Northstar

I've had the same trouble many times myself- sometimes, when the command pod was out of ElectricCharge at the moment, and could not re-orient itself, causing the Kerbal to die as I could not get him back in the cabin (such as when on EVA on a sub-orbital trajectory), forcing me to load a quicksave before the EVA... I've never been particularly good at EVA- but I haven't found setting the camera to "free" mode helps anything- when orienting the camera north or south relative to the galactic plane, the Kerbal still refuses to pitch himself accordingly... I also don't understand this bit about setting EVA_ROTATE_ON_MOVE to false- is that a config for the game, and where can I find it? Regards, Northstar

So, does anybody know if there are any plans for KSP to switch to Unity 5? Also... it would be nice if the devs could directly respond to this issue. Performance is one of the biggest problems for KSP- I shouldn't get the kind of lag I do with a 3 year old dual-core laptop... KSP's not even using one of the cores just annoys me, considering how many much older games do... Regards, Northstar

Just another day, another dollar... A routine fuel tanker transfer to Muna orbit, and scrapping of the resultant emptied tanker shell for RocketParts... And- DOH! Recycling that tanker didn't give me anything! I did some research, and it looks like one of the updates to Extraplanetary Launchpads made it so recycling ships no longer gives RocketParts- it gives Metal (which can be processed into RocketParts at a loss of some mass). And since I had no Metal tanks on my salvaging ship, the tanker simply disappeared into nothing! While I appreciate the realism of not being able to re-use literally every ton of ships you recycle, especially with the limited resources and tools available in space, this does kind of throw a kink in my plans... I had no plans to include metal tanks on my original Duna colonization armada, for instance, nor workshops to turn that metal back into RocektParts either (which said workshops I've no experience having used before...) This is going to make my colonization efforts a LOT more interesting... Regards, Northstar

Sure thing- you're allowed to launch your plane from Kebin on the back of a rocket, with drop-tanks as a spaceplane, or whatever else you want to try (note that it has to be built on Kerbin), but you can't use those parts to help you complete the actual flying around on Duna... That is, the plane has to be capable of independent operation separate from its transfer vehicle. Regards, Northstar

I don't want Squad to move on to "their next big thing" anytime soon, do you? The biggest reason I came to KSP is because I've always been a space-junkie. Simply fascinated by space. Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut for the longest time... Later, I simply couldn't get enough of Star Wars (I love the scope of the universe). But a REALISTIC space game- that's a masterpiece that's never been done on this scale before, and maybe never will again in the future... Well, true, it needs better aerodynamics- but after that, is there anything else that it needs that you can realistically think they might add? (I can virtually guarantee they're not going to add axial tilt or N-body physics, for example, unless one of those becomes an explosively popular mod first... Believe it or not, there actually is a modder working on implementing N-body physics, but he estimates it'll take at least the better part of a year before he'll be done, given how much he is having to teach himself as he goes along...) I would argue that In-Situ Resource Utilization *IS* an absolute necessity for any realistic space program. How many manned interplanetary missions have there been in real-life? None as far as I know- and mainly because of the terrible expense of launching, from Earth (it takes an enormous amount of effort to get a kg of a\*anything* to orbit using current launch technologies), not only all the fuel you need to get to another planet, and equipment you'll need when there, but also all the fuel you'll need to get *back* from another planet. In-Situ Resouce Utilization is the only realistic way we can ever hope to put a man on Mars in the next two decades, for instance, and NASA seems to realize this- which is why they've included some version of In-Situ Resource Utilization in every manned interplanetary "reference mission plan" since 1998 or so... (it's also part of why they recently put a Sabatier Reactor on the ISS- not only to save on life-support costs, but also to test ISRU technologies in a space-environment...) In real life, it's simply too expensive to do an interplanetary manned mission any other way. Here's a link to the document for the Mars "5.0 Design Reference Architecture" released in 2009, if you're interested, by the way: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373665main_NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf Regards, Northstar P.S. NASA also similarly recently released a document suggesting the use of ISRU as a necessary component to get to and back from Jupiter's moon Callisto, by the way: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030063128.pdf

Indeed, dev time is a finite resource- determined mainly by how long KSP continues to attract new players and game purchases. Adding ISRU might attract a few players (I'm sure SOMEONE would make an awesome YouTube video showing it off), and it certainly isn't going to drive any away in and of itself... Regards, Northstar

Total. Agreement. You're right- maybe we should spend a bit more time discussing why and not how first... Does anyone have an argument to put forward about why an ISRU system would *not* be a good idea? Keep in mind that nothing would force a player to use it if they didn't want to... (although they might miss out on some minor benefits/rewards for doing so through the Contracts system or such) Regards, Northstar

KSP-Interstellar does indeed strike a nice balance. Most players would be well off to try it. I also like that the resources aren't limited- if you play with Kethane, you can mine out an entire moon, and only get one or two Rockomax-Jumbo tanks of LFO out of it... Uhhh, what advanced reactions? Unless you're talking about the Sabatier Reaction- which is actually simpler than producing Monopropellent (simply combine hydrogen, as LiquidFuel, and CO2 in the atmosphere- get methane and water, both potential propellents for thermal rockets. Electrolyze the water, and you've got some Oxidizer to burn a portion of the methane with and hydrogen to feed back into the cycle. Repeat, until done), there aren't really any "advanced" ISRU reactions that I'm aware of. You can't even produced Xenon yet- from isolation from Munar/Ike regolith (some regolith on Luna contains Xenon bubbles in real life). Of course, it's still a really awesome, and surprisingly intuitive, mod nonetheless... Indeed. ISRU couldn't possibly make KSP worse, even if they messed it up, because it's only a means to an end- and can safely be ignored if desired. Definitely! I agree 100% and wholeheartedly! The scalability of ISRU, and its accessibility to new players (all you need to know is that water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom- who doesn't know that?) would make it a valuable addition to the game. And, as suggested in another post, it might attract new types of players to KSP- which is rarely a bad thing... Regards, Northstar

How did I miss replying to this post before? It's AWESOME! But seriously, I'm in total agreement. The advantage of a *properly* done ISRU system (not the one on the chart in the OP that the devs were originally considering) is that it is scalable in terms of difficulty and complexity. It allows players to pick it up just a little bit at a time. The fact that the easiest way to do this is to follow the path of realism (simply mining water and electrolyzing it to ice gives you O2 and water for life-support, and combustible rations of H2 and O2, for instance) is just a bonus... I didn't like the idea posted in the chart because it was complex for complexity's sake. A complex system based on real resources and reactions would have been (a) easier to understand and more intuitive and ( more scalable in terms of difficult- players wouldn't have needed to learn a complex chart, just how to mine ice... Regards, Northstar

The ISS main solar arrays aren't inline. They're mast-based, much like the stock Gigantor XL panels... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_system_of_the_International_Space_Station I don't understand the suggestion of "inline panels". Do you mean panels that are built into a fuselage as a combined fuselage-panel part? (that would qualify as "Combining Parts", a banned suggestion, by the way) Regards, Northstar

Seeing as Squad has already followed in NASA's footsteps (and worked alongside NASA) in developing the Asteroid Redirect Mission, I was wondering if it would not be conceivable they might do so again, in implementing the VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket NASA is currently planning to install a VASIMR engine on the International Space Station in 2015 (next year!) It would be interesting to see Squad implement it as well. VASIMR differs from other ion engines in the following ways: (1) The ability to adjust specific impulse (ISP)- lower ISP for higher thrust, or higher ISP for lower thrust; both utilizing roughly the same amount of power (in-game the ISP setting could be set by a right-click menu or Action Group...) (2) Scalability- the VASIMR engine can easily be scaled to consume larger amounts of power and generate greater amounts of thrust (useful if Squad implements larger solar panels, or ever adds nuclear reactors). The current line of VASIMR engine being added to the ISS consumes TWENTY times the electricity of the largest Hall effect thrusters, at 200 kw energy-consumption instead of 10 kw energy consumption... Models have been proposed scaling to 2, 20, and even 200 megawatts... (in-game, nothing larger than 200 kW would really be practical without nuclear reactors, however) (3) Improved Thrust-Weight-Ratio (TWR) compared to conventional ion engines- due to the greatly simplified internals and reduced number of moving parts compared to other ion engines (this comes at the expense of slightly lower ISP and slightly lower efficiency). (4) Reliance on Argon rather than Xenon propellent. This is a disadvantage, as Argon's lower density requires larger (volume-wise) fuel tanks than for Xenon. Thus, the specific part I would suggest is a VASIM based on the real-life 200 kw model. Assuming the stock ion thruster is a 10 kw model (As this is the largest conventional ion engines get), it should consume 20 times the the ElectricCharge, be configurable to operate at similar ISP for around 20 times the thrust, or 3/5th the ISP for a 66% greater thrust; and weigh less than 20 times the stock ion thrusters. It should consume Argon as a propellent, unique from Xenon. Regards, Northstar

It's not as if they couldn't sell expansions to the game if they *really needed to*... The game is nowhere near market saturation. So many people still haven't even heard of the game. The player-base continues to grow vibrantly, and there are always more kids coming of age into mature gamers capable of playing something like KSP... The best thing Squad could do would be to increase the number of developers. They have a small team now, and it seems like many of them are working on supplemental things like Google+ spreadsheets (to take a recent example) and running the forums rather than the actual code. I'm not criticizing- those functions need to be filled. But they could easily double the number of developers working on code by hiring just a few programmers, since the vast majority of the devs currently aren't actually working on coding... Regards, Northstar

I couldn't find any rules against making *specific* part suggestions that haven't been made before, only general suggestions, so I hope this will be allowed. I know it's probably been suggested many times, but then again maybe it hasn't. I suggest upscaled versions of the Gigantor Solar Array and the OX-STAT solar array be added to the stock game. Larger solar arrays have already become a popular subject of many mods. It would be nice to see them in stock gameplay as well. The main use of these would be, I think, to power craft sporting many ion engines in the Inner Kerbol System (Eve and Moho), and possibly to power any future power-hungry parts introduced to the stock game. It would also, dare I say, be useful for players running mods with more power-hungry parts, such as upscaled ion engines, or ion engine "array" parts... It might also, perhaps, open the door to someday including Solar Electric Propulsion of larger scale and thrust than ion engines in the stock game, such as VASIMR, if Squad ever became interested in implementing that propulsion system... (in fact, I made another thread suggesting VASIMR engines) The specific parts: A "Mega" deployable solar array of larger size than the Gigantor XL, and producing more EC/s. I would suggest a panel with at least 4 times the surface area and 2-3 times (or more) the ElectricCharge production. A static solar panel of significantly larger size than the OX-STAT, and producing more EC/s, with better mass/EC production ratios than the deployable panels, for when players are willing to orient their entire craft towards Kerbol to save on mass, but can't afford the lag from part-count of spamming OX-STAT panels... Regards, Northstar

Really? I always took the part descriptions at their word- if they said it weighed 0.005 tons, I always assumed it actually *DID* weight 0.005 tons. I guess that means the MegaPanels mod I've been pushing people to use all this time in order to reduce part-count without changing mass/EC ration would have actually made their planes a LOT heavier- as they are scaled up version of the OX-STAT with scaled weight (up to 0.5 tons) and they DON'T have PhysicsSignificance=1... It makes me wonder now why anybody (including me) would actually use the mod... http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/multipanels-1-0/ Regards, Northstar

Is there a problem with the Recycling Bin currently? I've had this scrapping ship in orbit for quite a while, and for the longest time it's effectively recycled debris back into useful RocketParts using the Extraplanetary Launchpads Large Recycling Bin on the front. But lately, when I use it on debris (or emptied fuel tankers, like the one shown above), I don't get anything from the debris- sometimes not even whatever fuel was left in it; making it about as useful as a cheesecake table stocked by an expert pastry chef at a Fat Camp... Any idea what might be going on? Regards, Northstar

Haha, apparently you haven't been playing with the mods I have, or doing much roleplaying... Parts that randomly fail- CHECK (these engines both had enough electricity to keep running for a bit longer- but one suddenly cut out without warning...) Random funding-cuts- well that's a matter of roleplaying, but, see my mission report thread- where I decided to arbitrarily cancel all funding to (recover) my mountaintop alternative launchpad (as well as several other space stations, missions, and ideas at various times) for roleplaying reasons, as well as because I had too many vessel in flight... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57509-Kerbin-and-Beyond-a-Maturing-Space-Program Regards, Northstar

@Geschosskopf Just a thought, but, looking at the list of "massless parts", WOW there are a lot more of them now in 0.23.5 than I thought... http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Massless_part Kind of gives a huge advantage to newer, 0.23.5 designs (which can just spam as many OX-STAT panels as they need for their electricity production, without thought of weighing down the plane). This gives me some insidious exploitative ideas, just to demonstrate how OP'd that is... Regards, Northstar

I forgot that OX-STAT panels and some other light parts have temporarily been given no physics significance (until they can be re-balanced, I assume?) It used to be that having 200 OX-STAT panels would add up to quite a bit of weight and drag- as in for most of the earlier solar-electric designs on this thread... Yeah, I guess technically it is a supersonic in the upper atmosphere of Duna... I was more loosely defining the term as aircraft that could reach Mach in the denser air of the lower atmosphere... Regards, Northstar

Everything's a learning curve apparently. Like, for instance, getting used to microwave beamed power systems using KSP Interstellar. At first, I tried to maneuver using the power that was available from pointing prograde- which was mostly power from the Minmus Solar Power Transmitter. But then that proved to be providing a completely unusable amount of thrust, so I was forced to rely on maneuvering solely when overhead the KSC- which proved to be extremely easy, as the plasma thrusters were able to achieve over 100 kN of thrust that way... In the future, I'll have to remember to send up a Microwave Relay to synchronous orbit with the KSC, so I can extend the operating range provided by the KSC (and future solar power satellites I set up, if any- solar beamed power at 1 AU distances doesn't really seem to be very worthwhile for the amount of mass it takes, and the amount of additional lag it places on my game) to include more of the area around Kerbin, and further out into interplanetary space... Regardless, here are the images: I also leaned some interesting lessons about receiver area and atmospheric diffraction of microwave power (I'm guessing it's short-wavelength microwaves, because longer-wavelength beams wouldn't be very affected by the atmosphere, but would require much large receivers and transmitters...) which explained why the beamed-power reusable launch vehicle's power reception fell off so quickly with altitude (it requires and extremely tight beam- as the thermal receiver has relatively little surface area), but the payload stage was actually receiving nearly as much power from over 100 km up in orbit as the launch vehicle did stationary on the launchpad... I expect, due to the thinner atmosphere, that microwave beamed-power launch vehicles will work MUCH better for high-altitude launch sites and my eventual colonies on Duna than near the KSC... (it also tells me that I should aim to build my launchpad at as high an altitude as possible, in order to minimize atmospheric diffraction of the microwave beams...) Regards, Northstar

First of all, where did you get the figure "7 km high"? It doesn't say that on the article, I never said that, etc. The mountain would "only" need to be 6 km high for the standard design- and could be made to extend past the peak of a shorter mountain, such as some slopes in the Rockies that were deemed suitable... 30G for a 130 km track. That won't "soupify" all space probes. The design might have to be reinforced, but it's easily within the bounds of normal engineering... Did you actually read the thread before commenting? Or the Wikipedia articles? All these concerns have been thoroughly addressed- including the ability to use shorter mountains with extensions past the peak (in fact, the 2nd-generation design extends 22 km up in the air- using electromagnetic forces to hold the end up), and the balance of track-length vs. acceleration... Regards, Northstar