Northstar1989

The Amadeus, first of all, made its planned maneuver after Minmus. Now I'll just be waiting until Asteroid-684 comes into position approximately along the prograde vector, and will make a burn to intercept: Interestingly, it looks like the Asteroid should be less than 3 times the distance from Kerbin as Minmus by the time of intercept (which will be as low-energy as possible to sze fuel for attempted capture). It's getting worryingly close... In other news, the Stock Spaceplane made its approach to Kerbin for landing, and... Well, the pictures speak for themselves- things didn't turn out quite as hoped, despite getting an excellent re-entry position a bit west of the KSC that should have made it extremely easy to perform a runway landing... The problem originated with quicksaving during stable atmospheric flight, but where quite a bit of SAS force was being used to hold the nose down (the airspeed/pressure being so low that the aerodynamic tendency to level out to the horizon was outweighed by the tendency of gravity to torque the heavy nuclear engines towards the ground...) The problem being, that after loading the quicksave due to losing control slightly later (from dialing down the thrust or pointing the nose too far above the horizon- I can't remember which...), the spaceplane would instantly lose control due to the SAS coming online a few fractions of a second later than physics- resulting in immediate loss of control before I could do anything... Well, anyways, Bill Kerman survived- but now there's radioactive waste strewn across the terrain west of the KSC that the space program will have to clean up... At least the stored experiments (and Kerbal) survived, and I got some valuable !SCIENCE! out of it. I like to think of it as data that will theoretically help my Kerbals figure out how to better isolate water-ice from Minmus' soil, even though in reality it's worthless except for the tech tree... Well, not ENTIRELY worthless- the Computer Core the Amadeus is equipped with can now be "Retrofitted" into an upgraded version with the science I collected (this is done on a part-by-part basis, and each upgrade costs over 1200 science points) into one of KSP Interstellar's more odd futuristic technologies- a sentient artificially intelligent unmanned rocket guidance system... The main benefit thereof (in practice) being that it GREATLY improves the SAS torqu that can be provided by the part. So, perhaps the sacrifice of the Stock Spaceplane's NERVA engines and the terrain west of the mountains near the KSC wasn't in vain- the data provided on SAS and guidance systems from Bill's voyage might just help provide the Amadeus with the SAS torque to save hundreds of thousands of Kerbal lives... Don't you guys just *love* the way I try and spin any event to fit into the story I'm trying to tell? Regards, Northstar

Uranium is coded as a solid fuel- the same as SRB fuel- so it can't be dumped in-flight (interesting that TAC Fuel Balancer's author thought to add such details). The only way to remove it is to Edit it out when stationary on the ground- which I personally think of as the Kerbals getting in a radiation suit and quickly pulling out the extra fuel rods before taking off again, leaving whatever strange bacteria that might be found on Duna to soak up the radiation and mutate- or at least glow green like Kerbals... So... I take it as a yes that doing that's OK? Regards, Northstar

So the Mun? Minmus? That's a VERY optimistic Minmus transfer they show there... I'm not sure something requiring that little Delta-V would be realistic most of the time... I actually installed those fixes a while back, and they didn't work for me. The SABRE engines were just as buggy/broken as ever, in particular... For the fission reactors, sure. But I REALLY wouldn't say so with the fusion and antimatter reactors... The mod is more focused on realism than balance. The result is, quite naturally, some futuristic technologies are leaps and bounds ahead of anything else in KSP... That being said, I have no problem with those features being in the mod, I play with the mod a lot myself- I only think that the future reactor types should be quite explicitly off-limits for most competitive challenges, or at least given scoring penalties... Regards, Northstar

The complex model, as seen in the OP, was neither a fun-complex system nor a simple one. In that regard, it failed to meet either of the extreme ends such a system could go to... Fun out of complexity and realism, with significant engineering challenges- like in KSP Interstellar; or simplicity and ease, like in Kethane mod... It's clear you lean towards something more similar to what the Kethane mod does, but such a system would IMHO not be fun, and be horrendously unrealistic. ISRU shouldn't be necessary to play KSP, and as such, it should be perfectly fine it it were complex. And what I was getting at before- complexity not only allows greater realism and immersion (searching for water, for instance), it adds its own fund and interesting engineering challenges simply not present in a feature more along the lines of the Kethane mod... (the greatest challenge in which, is the resource-scanning system: which is annoying to babysit) The beauty of a more complex system, more modeled along the lines of KSP-Interstellar, is not only that it adds challenge, complexity, and realism while being a lot of fun; it's also that it's open to all levels of involvement from the player. Don't want to mess with multi-step processes like turning atmospheric CO2 into Kerosene? Then just compress that CO2 into liquid form, and shoot it out the back of a Nuclear Thermal Rocket like the LV-N for propellent. Don't want to go through the steps of making Hydrazine? Then just use Hydrogen Peroxide made by combining liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which you were already carrying on your rocket for propellent... Need more LH2/LOX? Then just go electrolyze some ice on Vall (I assume Vall to be a water-ice moon...) The coolest thing about a complex/realistic system like that is that there is always a simple/easy way to get what you need, and a complex/challenging way to get what you need that yields greater rewards for the extra effort. It embraces both play-styles without forcing either one on the player... That would be pretty much the basics- though for greater rewards you would want to refine the resources (even water can be used in its raw form- as propellent for a thermal rocket- but you can do more stuff with it if you electrolyze it...) You would also want to consider having a separate craft to carry the mined resources to orbit, rather than hauling all that heavy mining equipment back and forth- but that's just another matter of logistics, and if you want to take the simple/easy path (launching the miner), or the complex/rewarding path... (building a dedicated resource-ferry) KSP is a game about space programs. That's not necessarily just about flying rockets. Some players don;t even LIKE flying rockets, and use MechJeb to do as much flying for them as possible. It's all a matter of taste... The beauty of having a resource system like I just described, is that it's scaleable. You can decide to dig into the complexities, or just take the simple/easy way. Just like with current tweakables (which would be a great way to implement new fuels without new rocket parts)- you can mess with what is defined as an airfoil and what is defined as a rudder on your spaceplanes, and the TWR-limited on your SRB's; or you can just take off with MOAR BOOSTERS! It's all a matter of taste. Regards, Northstar P.S. Don't forget the sad reality of this thread- that we're only discussing what *could have been* with a resource system. Currently, sadly, there is no resource system on the development schedule that anyone know of- so we're just discussing the lonesome ghost of a probably forever-lost concept that could have been great if done correctly- though the devs were right to scrap the resource system model they had before...

It's cool, it's cheap(er), and it WORKS. What more could you ask for? The greatest difficult they've had so far is preventing the rocket from spinning out of control when it hits the lower atmosphere... Not something they shouldn't be able to overcome (personally, I've had the same problem with my own Space-X imitation launches when they didn't have any reaction wheels. The key to fixing it appeared to be running the engines at low power to benefit from the thrust-vectoring... Aerodynamic control surfaces might also work...) Even with current electricity costs, the electrical costs, while significant, are a LOT less than the current cost of getting things to orbit (the electricity only costs approx. $1 per kg. The system as a whole, without combination with other technologies, was optimistically estimated to cost $43 /kg- so it's a very small part of the total cost). So it's not really something that we need to wait for better methods of power generation for... And if it brought costs down of getting things to orbit low enough (especially if combined with beamed microwave power for the circularization stage- which could use the leftover water used for internal hull coolant during ascent as propellent), SpaceTram might allow for low-cost launch of solar power satellites that would beam their power back down to Earth- potentially bringing down the market price of electricity, and making the launches in turn even cheaper in a virtuous cycle... Regards, Northstar

"Earth is the cradle of the mind- but one cannot stay in the cradle forever." - Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky - The title says it all folks, I'm interested in discussing launch technologies that can be achieved with CURRENT technology (that means, all the underlying technologies have already been developed, and at least seem common use in some non-space application: they don't have to have been tested in space yet...) Ones that can get humanity to space CHEAPLY, and thus finally help mankind to grow beyond the "cradle" of Earth, and find ways to better-negotiate the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation, for which that man has become so famous... I would like to remind everybody that none of these technologies have seen full-scale use yet. That means there WILL be engineering and technical challenges to meet to implement them. That does NOT mean that they can't be done with nothing but our current understanding of physics and engineering. The Microwave Beamed Power launch system I discuss below is a perfect example- it would benefit greatly if used with a high-altitude launch site (such as in the Rocky Mountains) in order to minimize atmospheric diffraction of the microwaves as the beam's path-length through the atmosphere increases... We've never built a truly high-capacity mountain launch site before, but that certainly doesn't mean it can't be done. The engineering challenges are NOT beyond us... (Thermal rockets, like all normal chemical ones, also benefit from high-altitude launches due to reduced atmospheric compression of their exhaust column- which improves their ISP; from the higher optimal takeoff velocity- which means higher launchpad TWR designs will benefit from reduced gravity-losses without causing excessive drag-losses; from reduced total air-resistance and energy losses from drag; and slightly from the reduced total altitude they have to climb to orbit...) I'll start it off with a few great ideas that would be INCREDIBLY powerful when combined (either launch system with microwave power) First of all, magnetic launch-assist systems: because REAL drag falls off exponentially at hypersonic speeds, and there's no reason we can't launch our rockets at Mach 26 (Mach 25 is orbital velocity) out the end of basically a hyper-powered Maglev in a vacuum tube (note that the tube exits at the TOP of a mountain, where the air is thinner) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram Second, Microwaved Beamed Power Thermal Rocketry- because we've had the technology to efficiently create the super-powerful microwave beams since 2005 (when there was a breakthrough in gyrotron technology), and the technology to build receivers for those microwaves (which were previously very inefficient to generate) since at least 1964 with the invention of the "rectenna" (a technology which now sees everyday use in smart-cards and RFID tags http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectenna). The microwaves can either be turned directly into electricity, and used to run electric engines like scaled-up multi-megawatt VASIMR engines; or used to heat up a thermal receiver for lower-ISP but higher-thrust thermal rocketry comparable to Nuclear Thermal Rockets- but without the heavy/"dangerous" reactors... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion#Microwave_propulsion Third, and the most familiar/ lowest tech of these technologies, Space-X style reusable launch vehicle flight profile. It should be an all but foregone conclusion to most people by now that, unless the industry-controlling launch giants somehow manage to kill SpaceX with lawsuits or such, it will probably be a successful concept. The launch profile might get altered a little- for instance perhaps the first stage will be detached sooner in order to reduce its airspeed during descent- but it's fairly sure to work IMHO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_development_program Last, but not least, are Momentum Exchange Tethers. A "Skyhook" basically. While it would *NOT* work for objects on the ground with current materials technology, it could made to pick up rockets or aircraft flying in the atmosphere at Mach 12, and carry them the rest of the way to orbit. "Single Stage to Tether" as it's basically been called. Of course, the tether itself would be subject both to atmospheric drag (on the part entering the atmosphere) and to energy/momentum loss to the spacecraft it scooped up... The main advantage would be that a tiny high-ISP engine (such as a scaled-up VASIMR, possibly powered by beamed microwave power) on the tether could operate at very low thrust to rebuild the lost momentum between each vehicle it scooped up Combined with a magnetic launch assist system, virtually all the energy for launches could be provided from electricity (and a very small amount of propellent) from Earth or orbital power satellites, and VERY little engine mass, and a LOt less fuel mass, would need to be accelerated... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_exchange_tether#Earth_launch_assist_bolo I'd love to see other concepts, as people discuss them here. And thoughts/comments about how the technologies could be combined is always welcome- for instance perhaps the new VASIMR engine could be scaled up to the multi-megawatt range like is already being planned for the future, and combined with Microwave Beamed Power for an electric-propulsion upper stage to a Space-X style launch... Regards, Northstar

You know what else is cool? Microwave beamed power- seriously, couple this with a air-evacuated magnetic launch-assist tube up the side of a mountain, and you're talking like $2 a kg to orbit ($10-20 with the microwave power, and then assuming a further 10x reduction in cost from the launch-assist, which could reduce costs more than 200x on its own...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram But, OK, that's a tangent. What is actually really cool about ISRU is that it can easily be based off current technology (a Sabatier Reactor already operates onboard the ISS, for instance. The underlying chemistry has been known for over 100 years... And a Sabatier Reactor is sure so see use on Mars if NASA sticks with its current Reference Mission Architecture...) And being able to imitate real future space mission profiles- THAT is cool... It's for precisely that reason that I really respect the devs for taking up that opportunity to work with NASA on the Asteroid Redirect Mission. Regards, Northstar P.S. Cool signature you've got there.

Good ideas- but remember that you can ALWAYS spend more Delta-V on the transfer, to make it faster. It's never a bad idea to expose your crew to less interstellar and Kerbol radiation... 3x living space isn't exactly unrealistic either... Regards, Northstar

If you REALLY wanted to get minimalist, you'd use the same engine for the transfer (via multiple periapsis kicks) and the lander. But sometimes it's about building something plausible and realistic, rather than minimalist. I can't recommend cutting out the extra living space (i.e. Hitchikers) for the Kerbals, for instance. The structure, on the other hand, could be improved. Finding a way to cut out the Hubmax, and minimize RCS tankage, would of course be useful without in any serious way impairing the realism of the mission... Regards, Northstar

The more I read about all the things we could do if we gave our spacecraft/missions more power/electricity, the more I think we really need to actually start making use of Microwave Phased Beam Power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion http://www.cnet.com/news/rocket-scientist-aims-to-relaunch-propulsion-technology/ The fact is, we've had the technology for 9 years to efficiently create the powerful microwave beams necessary for this technology (after the breakthroughs in gyrotrons circa 2005). And the necessary receivers have been around for over 50 years according to Wikipedia: In 1964 William C. Brown demonstrated a miniature helicopter equipped with a combination antenna and rectifier device called a rectenna. The rectenna converted microwave power into electricity, allowing the helicopter to fly.[15] So, why generate all the energy for a rocket on the ground? Why not beam a rocket all the necessary energy- ideally to power Thermal Turbojets run off beamed microwave power (rather then nuclear reactors) in the launch vehicle, which then switch over to internal fuel (anything from LH2 to NH3 or H2O would work) as the launch vehicle enters the upper atmosphere. Such beamed-power systems could easily get a rocket all the way to LEO and through an ejection burn to Mars for VERY LITTLE fuel mass (the lack of a need for heavy combustion chambers, combined with the very high ISP of the system- comparable to nuclear thermal rockets, but without the heavy reactors) without any danger of radiation from nuclear reactors. And, the transmission losses would be low enough that you could probably use a large solar farm in Earth orbit (launched with microwaved beamed power from Earth- at a fraction of the cost of current chemical launches) to beam all the power you could need to Mars for a return mission... It would also open up the door to powering cities with microwaved power beamed from solar farms in space, a la SimCity 3000. With the MUCH lower launch costs to orbit beamed microwave power would open up (especially with combined with a Space-X style reusable launch vehicle, though SSTO's could also easily work off the technology with a lower payload fraction... Launch costs of $10-20 a kg or less could be expected...), this might actually become economic for major cities... (greater potential power-density than nuclear power, with none of the radiation issues...) Regards, Northstar P.S. I know $10-20 a launch seems crazy optimistic, but these are the actual conservative cost estimates in reports on the concept. Using the NTR-like ISP's and TWR's better than chemical rockets, you would be able to build 100% reusable launch vehicles with almost no moving parts, no combustion chambers, and in fact nothing to maintain but fuel tanks, guidance systems, a relatively simple antenna/rectifier in the thermal receiver/ heat exchanger, and decouplers for a Space-X (reusable Falcon-9) style launch profile...

This was my thought process exactly. This is why I miss "Resources" (even if the originally proposed implementation would have been horrible- and I'm glad to see they re-thought that structure), and would still hope to maybe, someday, still see ISRU in at least an early/simple form before version 1.0... (or as a free update soon thereafter) Refueling missions (as they currently stand) are BORING. So it would be hard to go wrong with a feature that lets players circumvent them. Even the previously-proposed Resources chart I saw in the OP, while horrible compared to what ISRU *could* be, would have been preferable to having to carry out constant refueling missions like I do now... I play with KSP-Interstellar, but the problem with mods like that is that they're incomplete, sometimes buggy, and I have to re-install them every time I reinstall KSP (which I will probably do with 0.24) In short, they suffer from all the problems of not being an official part of the stock game. KSP could and should be a vast-scope game in the end. I appreciate the dev's taking their time with each step, and hope they don't rush things; but I also don't want the devs to just throw in the towel with 1.0 and say "We're done!" and only release relatively minor updates/features after that... OR, rather, I hope they'll put off declaring 1.0 to be reached until they've truly included all these major features which can only add to the game, and can't possibly hurt it, like In Situ Resource Utilization- which players who don't like it could safely and easily ignore... Regards, Northstar

Alternative fuels would simply be a tweakable- the default could by LH2/LOX or Methane/LOX or Kerosene/LOX or whatever seemed most appropriate for the rocket or fuel tank, and then players would have the option of utilizing a different one if they preferred... This would also add the option of a little more complexity/difficulty with the fuels, by making LH2 require continuous cyrogenic cooling to keep it stored... (a real life problem that Methane, for instance, doesn't require nearly as much of- and has less issues with boil-off: which is why NASA is looking at using Methane/LOX for a propellent depot at Earth-Moon Lagrange Point L1...) http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/exploration-gateway-platform-hosting-reusable-lunar-lander-proposed/ The default fuel, I think, should be Kerosene/LOX- which would be the easiest and simplest for most players to use as it wouldn't require any cryogenic cooling (this is an over-simplification, as LOX requires cooling in real life, but for the purpose of balance and FUN it could require none... Or perhaps the Oxidizer could be a different oxidizing agent stable at STP, such as N2O4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_tetroxide...) To simulate cooling, you could simply have an EC/s drain for fuel tanks storing LH2 (or to a much lesser degree, Methane) and if the electricity were not provided, fuel would start to slowly disappear. By making Kerosene/LOX the default fuel, most players wouldn't have to worry about cooling or boil-off. But for those wanting to work with the additional engineering challenges of boil-off and lower fuel-density (and thus the requirement for more tanks for the same propellent mass), in exchange for higher ISP, LH2/LOX or Methane/LOX (which would require MUCH less cooling) could be an option... Ok, maybe it sounds like I've gotten carried away. But the point is to expand the fuels system to make ISRU more interesting. Perhaps cryogenic cooling could be left out entirely, and the fuels could just vary in density and ISP. And the default fuels could be Kerosene/LOX (or Hydrazine/N2O4)- which though renamed, and possibly slightly re-balanced in terms of density and ISP, would essentially act identically to the stock fuels players know and love... Regards, Northstar

NTR's get better ISP with LH2 as a propellent. But they get better THRUST with denser fuels like water or ammonia... The main reason we don't see many proposals to use anything but LH2 in the real world is because, if you're going to go through all the effort and danger of using a nuclear reactor, why would you turn around and then just use it with a fuel that gives it an ISP not much better than chemical rocketry? One of the foremost advantages of NTR's, that hasn't actually seen much use yet, is fuel-flexibility. For instance, NASA's Mars Mission Design Reference Mission/ Mission Reference Architecture could probably benefit a lot if they made use of their nuclear thermal rockets with simple liquified CO2 for propellent (which is stable at much higher temperatures than LH2 or LOX- requiring much less cryogenic cooling) from Mar's atmosphere instead of producing LOX and possibly Methane for chemical rocketry out of the Martian atmosphere using IRSU powered by a nuclear reactor... (for one, simply compressing the CO2 would greatly reduce their power consumption- and allow them to probably easily get by with solar panels and their new "accelerated" RTG's instead of a nuclear reactor at the surface base...) http://www.wired.com/2014/01/nasas-mars-design-reference-mission-goes-nuclear-2001/ http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373665main_NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars105.html http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/01/sls-exploration-roadmap-pointing-dual-mars-approach/ Oh, and yeah... Read the links. ISRU will become a very real thing for actual space programs if NASA launches a manned mission to the surface of Mars... Regards, Northstar

Exactly my thought process! You read my mind! Nuclear Thermal Rockets, such as the LV-N, would provide a way to VASTLY simplify ISRU for players who want to make use of it if a more complex system with real resources (such as water-ice, methane-ice, hydrogen gas on gas giants, etc.) were introduced. Simply load up propellent, and pass it through the thermal rocket- and VOILA, thrust! If LV-N's were made to use multiple fuels, instead of merely being coded as a re-skinned/re-balanced LFO engine, it would also open up the way to implementing other technologies- like Microwave Thermal Receivers (a technology that is already fully-implemented in KSP-Interstellar) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion#Microwave_propulsion You could add one more resource to the list of local resources to keep track of that way- solar radiation. It would become extremely worthwhile (especially if a proper inverse-square law for Kerbol's light intensity with distance were added) to deploy large solar power satellites around planets like Eve and Moho, and beam this power to rockets operating in those systems to reduce their weight and improve their ISP (Microwave Beamed Power has similar ISP to nuclear thermal rocketry, but without any of the messy radioactive engines or heavy reactors on the rocket- also enabling TWR on a level with chemical rockets). It would add a further potential challenge/reward for players looking to make use of their environment to its fullest... A game like KSP eventually runs out of fundamentally new challenges, like any Sandbox game. But what keeps it interesting is the ability to try new combinations of things, or new variations on existing mechanics. For instance, ISRU makes it much more feasible to set up independent off-world "colonies" and scientific outposts if players wanted to roleplay that by dropping a few Hitchikers, maybe some greenhouses (with life-support's implementation), and some ISRU facilities on a planet... And for that purpose, if not other, it is highly worthwhile... Regards, Northstar

Screenshots would help a lot in identifying where there's room for improvement. For reference, here's an all-stock spaceplane that I built explicitly to demonstrate building technqiues to a new player earlier. It's capable of getting to Minmus, landing, and returning on a single tank of fuel: As for your Center of Mass, ideally it will be in the center of the spaceplane- but there is a LOT of room for flexibility. The more important factor is where your Center of Lift is relative to your Center of Mass- ideally it should be behind your Center of Mass, so your spaceplane will stabilize towards the horizon in powered flight. Regards, Northstar

What counts as outside of Kerbin's SOI? Does that mean it can refuel in Kerbol orbit? Around the Mun/Minmus? Also, why is Minmus worth less points than the Mun to orbit? It takes more Delta-V to get to Minmus and circularize due to the weaker gravity well and higher/inclined orbit. Further, what's this about the B9 Aerospace 0.23.5 update? I haven't updated B9 in a while, so it's probably still on the last version before that. Was it somehow re-balanced with the update? Would my entry be DQ'd for using the older version on B9? Finally, you *might* want to consider limiting KSP-Interstellar to Molten-Sodium and Solid Bed fission reactors only. Otherwise, the modded scoreboard is going to be wiped with antimatter-reactor entries... Regards, Northstar

Then I guess they'll have to come up with an alternative mission plan- perhaps one with MOAR FUEL TANKS! (Seriously, though, since radiation exposure is such a big concern, if they brought up more fuel they could make use of a faster transfer orbit. Alternatively, more living space on the cramped transfer vehicle, more science equipment for the Mars mission, more spare equipment and parts for repairs, more radiation shielding for the interplanetary transfer, or a million other things...) Regards, Northstar

Hydrogen Peroxide is indeed used as a low-efficiency RCS propellent in the real world. It could be in the game as well... A big part of what I was trying to get at is that some resources could be a lot easier to make with ISRU than others, thus putting a premium on those that are difficult to manufacture, and rewarding players who go through the extra effort to make the harder-to-get stuff... This would be fun *AND* realistic. For instance, Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) is rather easy to make- but Hydrazine (N2H4) is a more efficient RCS propellent. However, Hydrazine requires an extra step- combining Hydrogen Peroxide with Ammonia- making it a 3rd level product made out of two 2nd-level products (Ammonia, like Hydrogen Peroxide, isn't exactly likely to be found lying around many places- except Eve...) Thus, players could get as in-depth or simple as they wanted with ISRU. If they just wanted to find ice and electrolyze it for LH2-LOX rocket fuel, for instance, then fine. But if they wanted to go through the complex steps of making Hydrazine or Kerosene on-site, then there could be benefits to match. One thing that would also be useful, of course, to really make ISRU shine, would be a greater variety of fuels and propellents- so you can have "premium" fuels that are more difficult to make, like Kerosene, but have benefits (Kerosene, for instance, is much denser than LH2- so you can pack a lot more propellent mass, and thus Delta-V, into a given sized/mass fuel can... but it gets less ISP than LH2 when burned wit LOX.) Rather than needing to introduce entirely new parts for the different fuels and such, most of these could be handled with tweakables- much like RealFuels mod currently does with selecting a fuel can to carry Kerosene/LOX vs. LH2/LOX... There I go mentioning another mod though... It's no coincidence that modders have chosen some of the best ideas to implement, however- otherwise why would they have bothered with the effort? If you wanted to make use of ISRU (rather than ignore it), but wanted a more hands-off approach, there would be a solution for that too... Spend a lot of time/effort scouting out a location with multiple useful resources, and build a single integrated (with docking ports in stock, or KAS with mods) ground base that can process all these different resources in one place. If you can find such an ideal location, of course- one might not exist in your save. If not, you could always build a single orbital station somewhere like the Jool system, with all the needed refineries, and just transport various raw materials to it (from the different moons) to make what you need. And, like I said, part of the fun/complexity would be that there would usually be an "easy solution" and an "efficient/best solution"- with the latter requiring a lot more effort on the player's part, but getting you more useful fuels, or higher production rates. In ISRU, there's always a simple way to brute-force it, and a complex way to be efficient. Need lots of fuel for propellent, and O2 for life support and Oxidizer, on Duna, for instance? You *could* set up a simple brute-force station with a lot of power to simply mine lots of water-ice, and simply electrolyze it to get all the H2 and O2 you could ever want, for low-density, high-ISP chemical propellent (though you might have to cryogenically store it in real life, I doubt this would ever be added in-game, even though it would just be a matter of costing EC/s...) *OR* you could take the same H2 and O2, and combine it with CO2 harvested from the atmosphere in the Sabatier Reaction to make methane (CH4- which can pack more densely into fuel cans than H2) and more water (H2O- which you can electrolyze for more H2 and O2). *OR* if you're REALLY ambitious, you could combine the H2 with CO2 in the Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction to get H2O and CO, and then combine the CO with H2 in the Fischer-Tropsch Reaction to make Kerosene (6-12 Carbon hydrocarbon mixture), which can be packed even more densely into fuel cans for even more Delta-V, but lower ISP... The sky and your imagination (and your available equipment/storage space) is the limit with In Situ Resource Utilization! It's an end-game feature that could be expanded as long and as far as the devs want (all the way to making plastics with the Fischer-Tropsch Reaction for a very different type of resource harvesting: greenhouses for life-support...) Of course, it would have to start simple. But it's one of those features that could be expanded and expanded and expanded upon whenever the devs got bored with other stuff, if ISRU turned out to be a hit with players... And if not, it could always be a nice supplemental feature that nobody would really have to use if they didn't want to... I've said quite enough for a while, so let me wind up by saying I truly hope the devs re-consider adding "Resources" (ISRU) some day soon... I just hope it'll get a chance to shine someday- though of course not until other "more important" things are improved (like improved aerodynamics, Career Mode, and at the least diversifying the fuels a bit more- so you can choose to use Kerosene/LOX vs. CH4/LOX vs. LH2/LOX with tweakables at the very least...) Regards, Northstar

Yeah... I can't imagine an idea being further from the truth. I know the main things that drew me to KSP in the first place just over 10 months ago were the realistic/complex orbital mechanics (would you believe I taught myself orbital mechanics in a couple afternoons, right down to the high-level stuff like the Oberth Effect, before launching my first rocket? And ENJOYED doing it when I actually saw a purpose for it... I am a bit of a nerd, and a genius, but still...) and just the overall scope of the game. I imagine the same holds true for many other players... Exactly. Assuming new players start with Career Mode (which indeed seems to be the pattern, from all the help posts I've seen from newbies), they wouldn't even see ISRU until the late-game when they should already be looking for a new challenge... I wholeheartedly agree. And there is nothing on Earth quite as much like a puzzle as actual chemical engineering- which is what ISRU really boils down to. Saying "I have Nitrogen, and I have methane-ice, and I have CO2, and I want to make Kerosene-LOX rocket fuel and Monopropellant. How do I do it? And what's the most efficient way?" (That's actually a pretty challenging set-up, perhaps worse than you'd ever see in-game, but it can be done- hint, you need to pyrolyze some of the methane into raw Carbon and H2 gas, and CO2 into CO and O2 gas, and work from there...) Logistics systems can also be fun/interesting for some players- after all there are whole standalone games devoted to the concept. I imagine some players (myself included) would spend just as much time trying to figure out the most efficient supply-chains to get their raw resources to refineries and refined resources to where they're needed as they would designing a new heavy-lifter rocket... And I would enjoy doing it too... Regards, Northstar (Haha, reading all this, maybe I should have been a Systems Engineer instead of a Biologist...)

Ack, yeah. But that's a coding issue. If that could only work over high time-warp, then you'd only have to turn the speed up to say 1000x, and it would be done it no time... So, yeah, making things take time isn't a problem- you can always time-warp. But you might have a contract expire, or life-support ticking down while that's going on, so finding the fastest and most efficient way to do things is still important... Hmmm, interesting. I didn't even think about how the complexity could tie in to some sort of a probe-control system (like in RemoteTech), but since most of this would probably be done unmanned after the addition of life-support, you're right... That would make it even more interesting/complex. The thing is, I don't know if the stock game will ever have a RT-like control system either... (all theoretical- since resources might never get added in any form, even a good revised one like I'm pondering...) The thing is, I can't think of any way to involve the player in it- much like the process of actually fabricating the components you click together in your rocket, I can only imagine it being appropriate to leave the actual resource-harvesting behind-the-scenes... I would think the main challenge once you had harvested the resource would be finding a use for it, and refining it, like I mentioned earlier; transporting it to where it's needed cost-effectively; and getting the electricity/resources in place to run the harvesting/refining/transport systems in the first place... If you could think of a good (non-repetitive/boring) way to do that, I think a lot of players would adore you... But I think it can still be very fun even without it if done right. It would add to realism/balance, and give us a REASON to lift a heavy payload though. Other than awesomeness. I didn't mean a "random spawn every tick" sort of system. I meant one where when you start a new save, it randomly generates static resources that are hidden and you have to go out and find (inexhaustible- because otherwise there'd have to be some way to make more deposits, and honestly it's not realistic for something on the tiny scale of a couple drills or ice-scrapers or whatnot to exhaust resources on the scale you would find them anyways... It's also not FUN to constantly track down new deposits.) So, in one player's save, there might be a couple ice-deposits on the north pole of Moho (like real-life Mercury's suspected ice in polar craters). In another, only on the south pole. In another, deep inside the Moholes, now fixed to not explode your ship. I wasn't thinking along the lines of particular parts requiring particular resources- and in fact I strongly discourage that idea, because it's not fun, unrealistic, and would force the ISRU system down players' throats by penalizing those who want to simply ignore it... Rather, there should be rewards (like Reputation, maybe even Contract goals) for finding particular resources, rewards for recovering samples, rewards for setting up a working ISRU system (Reputation, Science, and Contracts again...), and then the rewards of the fun trying to figure out how to turn these different raw materials into useful resources, and the best way to use them (methane, for instance, could either be passed through a thermal rocket like the LV-N, or burned as a tweakable alternative methane-burning version of the LFO engines that has to be selected instead at construction in the VAB... Which is best for your needs and playstyle? Figuring that out from trial/error could be interesting...) Regards, Northstar

Complexity is the fun! That's part of my point. Rather than hunting down some generic "Zenonium" (that was ACTUALLY one of the resources on the chart on the OP), actually looking for water-ice or Xenon-containing regolith (there are Xenon bubbles in some Lunar rocks...) would be more interesting. Especially if finding it had a reward entirely separate from actually harvesting it... Having to learn how to refine those raw materials through multiple (sometimes complex) steps would make it all the more interesting. For instance, a real-life example to make Hydrazine (Monopropellent) from nothing but Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen gas... N2 + 3 H2 --> 3 NH3 H2 + O2 --> H2O2 2 NH3 + H2O2 --> N2H4 + 2 H2O Made all the more interesting when you consider that H2 and O2 gas aren't just going to be floating around anywhere- for instance you might have to source H2 and O2 from water-ice in a crater of a rocky moon, but get the N2 from an entirely different planet... Regards, Northstar

Almost anything can be stable in a straight-up trajectory. Launch the thing straight up with MOAR AND BIGGER FUEL TANKS and MOAR BOOSTERS and start the gravity turn significantly later (perhaps even after you're already out of the atmosphere). On top of that, where's the launch vehicle? All I see are some radially-attached SRB's (and some strange-looking fuel tanks connecting them like spokes). Need it not be said that you could lift a lot more to orbit with an SLS underneath? You can ALWAYS use more Delta-V. If you have extra, more than you need for the mission, just use it to get a faster transfer to Duna- which is great for roleplaying purposes (wait a bit past the Hohmann window, so the distance is shorter, and then launch with a radial outward as well as prograde ejection angle relative to Kerbin's movement around the Sun... You can also launch an intercept orbit than would have an apoapsis further past Duna, but still intersects its SOI, for a faster transfer...) Regards, Northstar EDIT: Oooo. Looks Like I posted too late to be helpful...

Do explain what you mean by this... You realize the architecture for the launch of the payloads was somewhat arbitrary, and already involved in-orbit docking of multi-part ships? It could easily be changed for a lighter (or heavier) launch vehicle- and in fact if you look carefully, you'll see up to an 11-part version for if they had to rely on chemical rockets to get to Mars (lower ISP meant a higher fuel fraction and thus more mass to orbit, which meant more launches...) I'm not immediately aware, is SLS a heavier or lighter launch vehicle than Constellation? (not that it really matters- if it's lighter, they already have shown they can do it in more launches. If heavier, they don't have to scrub as much mass as they were planning- and can go heavier on things like radiation shielding...) The 5.0 plan explicitly lists a version for Solar Electric Propulsion... Though, to be honest, the standard way of doing it (lots of solar panels on each craft) is horribly inefficient- I can't help but think they would be better off establishing a huge solar-power station in LEO and transmitting the electricity to the ships for their ejection burn via Microwave Phased Beam Power (to heat a thermal receiver, or power the new VASIMR engines currently under final development with an antenna/rectifier), or even from a large nuclear power plant on the ground... For the return burn, they could have ONE of the craft carry a large detachable section with a lot of solar panels, or a nuclear reactor in an unmanned craft, and deploy a solar or nuclear power satellite around Mars for the same purpose (*IF* they would get more power that way despite the weaker sunlight than deploying the same panels or reactor around Earth, or on Earth's surface, and transmitting to Mars...) The advantage of this system is that you can use the same panel mass for all the burns, with only a small mass on the other ships for Microwave Wireless Electricity or Microwave Thermal Receivers... Microwave Power Transmission is not just a technology in KSP Interstellar, you know... It can be done in real life too- and actually in *exactly* the same ways as in KSP-Interstellar... (see the entry about the helicopter with an antenna/rectifier- that technology, scaled up, could provide electricity for a VASIMR engine instead...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion#Microwave_propulsion Regards, Northstar P.S. VASIMR engine are, I assume, the system they were proposing for Solar Electric Propulsion? The multi-megawatt variants are the only human-rated electric engines currently anywhere close to being fully developed... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

All this about how a Resources system *SHOULD* be done. I just hope I don't incite the devs to come down with the ban-hammer or close-thread scissors. I'm just talking theoreticals here, and I'll still respect the devs even if they miss the amazing opportunity to follow in the footsteps NASA will (someday) be setting and develop ISRU systems in the game... Regards, Northstar P.S. Don't believe NASA is serious about ISRU? Look at their Design Reference Architecture for a Mars mission: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373665main_NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf

Indeed. It can be done though... More on how in a second. The problem with Kethane mod isn't the "waiting" part (which *can* be done when vessels are on rails, by the game keeping track of how long since the vessel was last loaded, and updating accordingly- as KSP Interstellar currently does with ISRU), it's that it's simple and relatively uninspired... In-Situ Resource Utilization isn't, and shouldn't, ever be an "active" activity. It's not like you're going to have a Kerbal get out with a shovel and physically start digging through the ground (while that might actually be fun, it would completely break immersion- and be very hard to code the terrain being alterable...) What makes a Resource-gathering system (ISRU- to use the abbreviation used by NASA) fun and interesting is the engineering challenges you build into it. It should be an engineering challenge- not some sort of piloting challenge... It's much like building a rocket that gets into orbit- it's not easy, and a lot of thought goes into it- therefore making it challenging... The same needs to be part of any ISRU system... How? Well, let's say that you find ice deposits on some planet or moon (for starters, they need to make it so you have to FIND randomly-generated resources. That should be the FIRST challenge. They shouldn't be in the same place every game, or everywhere. Kethane's scanning system, while tedious as it doesn't play well with higher time-warps, is the best idea of that mod...) And yes, *ICE*, not "Zenonium" or some silly thing like that. Immersion adds to the fun and suspension of disbelief... The second challenge should be that the parts to harvest resources in the first place are HEAVY. And specialized. Meaning that it's a challenge just to get the right drill and electrolyzer to that moon with ice in the first place- creating incentive to build heavier lifters (not easy) and whatnot... The third challenge needs to be operating the equipment in the first place. For instance, ice should mainly only be found on planets and moons that are far from the Sun (the closest locations to Kerbol might be a few craters on the Mun's poles, or at low concentrations on Minmus- much like in KSP Interstellar), though even that should not be an absolute- NASA recently found evidence of ice in permanently dark polar craters on MERCURY. So there should always be a chance of finding it somewhere unusual- which unpredictability would add to the fun and create a REAL feeling of exploration... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/media/PressConf20121129.html Anyways, back to the ice. Solar panels don't work well when you get far away from the Sun (a proper inverse-square rule should probably be implemented before ISRU- making solar panels even weaker further from Kerbol...) So you would need a LOT of them to melt+electrolyze large amounts of water-ice on an icy moon of Jool or Gas Giant #2 (whenever it's released), for instance. An alternative could be a fission nuclear power (NASA is looking at using them on Callisto and Mars for ISRU, why can't KSP?), but that could pose its own engineering challenged such as a heat radiation system (like in KSP Interstellar). So far, it probably sounds like I'm talking about a KSP Interstellar clone, with a detection system from Kethane, but I'm NOT (though both mods have good ideas to lend). Here's where things get a bit more interesting... Resources would need to have real relevance to the Science/Reputation system to be fun. I don't just mean it takes a certain amount of Science to get the parts. Resources should be a SOURCE of Science. That is, the Science Points costs should all be increased (effectively nerfing the existing sources- but actually nerfing them would require a lot more effort I suspect...), and there should be BIG rewards in Science and Reputation Points for discovering a resource in the first place- especially any form of water or ice (after all, the search for water has been a big part of NASA's exploration missions over the past decade- and we've found a surprisingly large amount of it in an awful lot of places we didn't expect...) That would make the Science system feel a little more relevant and interesting, and allow the player to relate KSP to REAL space programs if they were searching for REAL resources... (such as water-ice, methane/CO2-ice, rocks containing bubbles of Xenon like on the Moon, oxygen in atmospheres, and alumina in regoliths...) There should be specific parts to detect the resources, of course, and the first tier of rewards should be achievable using probes (like the probes that have discovered all water-ice in the solar system so far in real life). but the biggest rewards should come from taking ACTUAL SAMPLES of a resource- whether through soil/water samples (currently implemented) or through atmospheric samples for atmospheric resources (new action/feature). Early on, the most interesting thing about resources should be simply finding them, as it should yield big Science and Reputation rewards... The next interesting thing about resources should be figuring out ways to use them. There would need to be some diversification of engines, for instance, to include at the least some type of solid-liquid hybrid rocket with intermediate performance characteristics (there are several resources in the real solar system that can be burned in solid powders, Alumina from the Moon only being the most prominent...), and some resources that are only really useful in their raw form as reactant mass for thermal rockets (like ammonia- though it could also be useful to make Hydrazine) or in alternative ion engines (Argon, CO2, and N2), but can be refined into other resources (like CO2 into Kerosene in combination with H2 via the Fischer-Tropsch Cycle, or into methane via the Sabatier reaction). Here, they could take a page out of the book of KSP-Interstellar, with its diverse resources and ways of using them... The key is, though, not every resource should be useful for everything, but every resource should have multiple uses... I know it sounds like I'm describing a huge encyclopedia of resources- but that should be half the fun. Complexity and (limited) realism should be one of the draws of the system- players should feel a bit like a chemical engineer trying to figure out how to make useful rocket fuel out of local resources, rather than just a Kethane-style "land and refine" system... This would make ISRU a whole complex part of ISRU that players would have to set aside some considerable time to learn to do properly if they wanted to make use of it, much like spaceplanes (most players start with rockets, and learn spaceplanes much later) or learning how to build modular bases off-planet (something *I* still haven't learned, even with a huge fleet currently en-route to Duna to do precisely that...) So, have the player go through a phase of locating water and other resources in the solar system as an important source of science. Make visiting and obtaining samples of the resources the second step. Make the third step (perhaps only unlockable after a sample of a given resource has been returned to Kerbin- though perhaps probes could somehow be allowed to gather and return samples- though this would make Kerbals even more useless...) actually figuring out how to use the resources. Make this challenging and complex (and not as mundane as processing "Dirt"- make players work with real substrates, like CO2, ammonia, water, methane, hydrogen, and nitrogen), and give rewards in Science and Reputation for developing successful ISRU systems, and you'll have a system that's sure to engage interested players for days of gameplay... And if you don't like the system? Find it too complex or boring? The beauty is that you don't have to use it- it would be completely optional; as there are plenty of other ways to obtain Science (and will be for Reputation, I'm sure), and you can always just keep relying of fuel tankers or mammoth vessels with staging, like you would have had to do otherwise if you hadn't had the system as an option to play around with... I think this post has been long enough, so I'm just going to end it here, instead of addressing the rest of your post, allmhuran Regards, Northstar