KerikBalm

What does that have to do with anything? Interplanetary travel is already easy at 1/10 scale with chemical rockets. Sure, OP rockets can make it easier, but that doesn't mean much. With the same logic, I can say a magical unicorn fart engine must be included to make interplanetary travel even easier. Also, if its thrust into on rails, burn time isnt so important ad transit time, and something like a nuclear piwered vasmir will be faster. As would a gas core ntr

Such as with a gas core NTR? Or as it already is at 1/10th scale with a poodle? Or as it would be with thrusting-on-rails nuclear powered Ion engines? Or Orion pulse drive... etc. We don't need metallic hydrogen for easy interplanetary travel... particularly with the ability to set up colonies on planets.

I am only looking forward to the atomic rockets. The metallic hydrogen engines need to die. An Isp of 1700s, with no way to contain the exhaust and stop it from melting the engine. "Cesium doping" for magnetic confinement makes no sense. Even if we were to accept MH metastable at low pressure (which I don't), 1700s Isp involves yet another layer of magic.... Meanwhile one could just mix the hot MH exhaust with normal liquid hydrogen (you could store hydrogen Ice if you want some more density), and have a non-magic solution to keep your engine from melting. The Isp in that case is still a very respectable 1100-1200s. They've shown the "atmospheric" variant mixes exhaust with water, that would provide more TWR at lower Isp (500's). That could have been a simple, non-magic way to have variants suited for different purposes, but nope, they went with magic err magnetic confinement of non-ionized hydrogen by throwing some cesium in there that wouldn't be bound to the hydrogen yet somehow enables it to be confined (if it was bound, the Isp would be terrible, and less that of the water engine). Which is what the most recent experiments observe. Not to mention that there hasn't been a theoretical prediction of low pressure metastability for more than picoseconds since the 70's I disagree, suspension of disbelief is very important, and that is related to perceived realism in many cases. In a game like this, realism is very important for certain aspects. I can accept unrealistic planets as fun engineering challenges (like Tylo... that should have an atmosphere, but whatevs... also, the moon seems unrealistically big compared to the planet). What really annoys me is that they could get MH level performance with closed cycle gas or liquid core NTRs, and that would introduce even more gameplay considerations with the radiation concerns. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#ntrliquid They could throw in a LANTR type NTR, where its a chemical/nuclear hybrid rocket, and you could maybe have your craft lift off on chemical power only before starting the reactors (and thus dramatically increasing the radiation emitted... yes, even a shutdown reactor will still emit radiation if it has been running a while) http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#lantr

Do you mean the ESA? The ESA is not part of the UN.

I feel that liquid hydrogen should be split from the generic liquid fuel, which I would be fine leaving as some kind of generic hydrocarbon (kerosene, methane, butane, doens't matter compared to lH2 NTRs, orion drives, fusion drives, etc). When going interstellar, there had better be some form of life support, even if its just requiring some closed loop life support module/X greenhouses per kerbal. Sending a kerbal to the next star system straped to a chair on the side of a rocket is too ridiculous (granted, I won't even do that in KSP to other planets)

Plus, in stock, mk2 fusalages are pretty much the worst for drag. Their L/D is terrible, you get less drag with a cylindrical fusalage and wings. Cylinders are more mass efficient too. In stock (dunno about FAR), mk2 is for looks, or surviving re-entry. Mk3 isn't great either, but its the only reasonable option for a payload bay that you can reuse (unlike fairings). It will be interesting to see if the fairing changes in 1.10 make mk3 cargo bays a thing of the past

The asteroids in orbit don't count?

No, wing sweep does not matter in KSP. A wing swept at 0 degrees or 90 degrees with the same AoA, will make the same lift and drag. But your thread title asks a different question, if they have an "actuall use in KSP", and the answer to that, is yes. You can use them to shift your center of lift forward or backward, and you can use them to make planes more compact, so that they fit in smaller fairings (in the case that you want to send a plane to space in a fairing, such as a plane intended for use on Laythe)

You can't one shot and get into a stable mun orbit. You need a capture burn. Otherwise you will leave the SOI with the same velocity relative to Mun as when you entered the SOI. As you cannot enter the SOI with a non-zero relative velocity (the mere act of crossing the SOI boundary implies a relative velocity greater than zero, even if it can be arbitrarily close to zero), you will always leave Mun's SOI without a capture burn. Umm, unless you have your Ap wayyyyy past Mun, it will be catching up to you as you near Ap. I prefer to have it catch up before I reach Ap (faster transit), but many encounters will have your craft get to Ap first, and then have the Mun catch up. Ships tend to "hang around Ap" (ie, they spend more time near Ap than Pe), so just hanging around near Ap while Mun comes along is an easy way to do it. I prefer that the Mun Soi comes along and scoops up my craft before it reaches Ap, even if my Ap is around mun orbit. For the lowest dV capture burn, you want the lowest relative velocity when crossing the SOI, so this would mean crossing the SOI right when you reach Ap, meaning your Ap shoul be right at Mun's orbit. FYI, the Mun has 0 inclination to kerbin's rotation, if you get into orbit of kerbin with no inclination, you're already aligned with Mun. Its Minmus that you need to worry about.

a 2nd physics bubble running on another core, improved SAS control, and automatic maneuver node execution... So I can push recoverable 2 stage designs even further in stock. What I most want is improved performance, but for engine optimization, it seems KSP 2 is where I'd have to look.

My re-coverable 6.4x spaceplane: Climbing on airbreathers: Rapiers to closed cycle (after the Rhino already fired) Getting the Ap up, but also getting some horizontal velocity Orbiter decouple: Almost to orbit? still 1000 m/s to go Nearly there, lets check in on the 1st stage: 124.9 km altitude, plenty of time to switch back (when I was taking a 72 ton payload, it would be approaching 30-something km at this point, and most of the time, I'd be a little too slow to switch back) Orbit, with 54 tons of leftover fuel (61 tons of fuel + un needed tank mass, and then lets say -5 tons for de-orbit). Slowing down the carrier stage: Turning back to KSC: Engine relight, high speed cruise back: Made it with plenty of fuel: maybe I can load a bit more oxidizer to increase payload. Lets say another 1000 units, maybe then I can have enough time to swithc back when the orbiter takes more payload Ok, so I overshot and had to turn back around: 27 minutes total, a lot done at 4x timewarp during the high speed cruise back to KSC. Also since i landed on the KSC flat, I spend a significant amount of time turning around and taxing back to the runway.

So, in my adventures playing with scaled up systems and the resulting low payload fractions of SSTOs, I started playing with re-usable 2 stage to orbit craft (a suborbital "carrier" and an "orbiter" that reaches orbit fast enough to switch back to the carrier before it falls too deep into the atmosphere. In such a setting, "go anywhere" craft are a bit out of the question, as you leave a large portion of your craft behind (even if it is reusable). My carrier craft have all the airbreathers, but those air breathers are all rapiers that go into closed cycle to boost the Ap higher and get the orbiter even closer to orbital speed. So it occurred to me... the unloaded carrier craft may be able to achieve orbit on its own with no orbiter. So, I started working on a new mission profile: Carrier goes suborbital, orbiter gets to orbit with good fuel reserves. Carrier lands, refuels, and goes back to orbit with basically no fuel left. Orbiter and carrier rendezvous. In this case, I get the entire craft to orbit (like an SSTO), but its more like 3 stages, and 2 things get to orbit. When the orbiter is carrying a detachable payload... this can be carried even further. 2 stage to orbit: decouple payload (Staging event?). Land orbiter and carrier. 2 stage to orbit again, Orbiter (with more fuel) redocks with payload, carrier lands and refuels. Carrier SSTOs, and redocks with orbiter plus payload. If the payload is a fuel tank, this can give the entire setup a substantial dV margin. What would you even Perhaps a reusable craft to anywhere can be done in 3x with stock parts? (granted, it won't be coming back from Eve). Has anyone done mission profiles like this? or is it simply too much work to go to orbit, leave as much up there as you can, come back down, refuel, then go up again?

Umm... they still exist, in the case of them being equally massive, you have a point orbiting the barycenter, equidistant from both.

L1-3 are also unstable Indeed, but since L1,2, and 3 aren't stable, but are still usefull, then L4 and L5 should still be usefull as well According to wikipedia, the ratio between the primary mass (such as the Sun) and the secondary mass (such as the Earth) needs to be greater than 25:1. If we have yet another massive body (call it the tertiary mass) at the L4/5 point, then the secondary to tertirary body needs a mass ratio of >10:1, from what I read on the Theia impact hypothesis. Here is a diagram tht helps to explain where the L4 and L5 points are: That its pulled to the barycenter (Earth+Moon mass tugging on it), and not the Earth, is what allows it to be farther from the Earth than the Moon is, and still have the same orbital period as the moon around the Earth. With the bodies on rails, you just need to have them on rails aroun the barycenter, and it will work out again. Stock bodies don't have this behavior, but they could.

Yes you can, but they have to orbit the barycenter, which isn't the stock way. You could put them on rails orbiting a barycenter

I'm pretty sure I'm just paraphrasing some quote from somewhere else. I take no credit for inventing it. Feel free to substitute a grain of sand on a beach, or whatever

This analogy and reasoning, IMO, are terrible. First, I would say neither are virtuous. They both just need to do what they need to do. Second, you are not powerless. Your power is miniscule, more like a worker bee. Alone, a nuisance, but in a swarm, powerful. Just look at the protests in the US against the police. More police reform has already happened due to them, htan in the last decades without them. Police that would not have been charged with crimes are now going to trial, there is a collective power. Until robots replace us, the power lies in the collective behaviour of the people. Your analogy, correctly interpreted and ignoring the flaws that I see in what constitutes "virtue" would be: "YOU CAN NOT BE VIRTUOUS IF YOU ARE POWERLESS" Your modified version leads to, IMO, what is wrong with the world today. "I'm powerless to stop climate change, I might as well drive an SUV instead of a hybrid, or taking a bike; and there's no point in conserving energy" "I'm powerless to stop overpopulation, I might as well have 3 or more kids" "I'm powerless to stop polution, I might as well use a bunch of plastic and not bother to recycle things" etc.... You may be a drop of water in the ocean, but what is the ocean if not a collection of such drops? On the other hand, the ethics of video game developers is an issue of very little importance when compared to climate change, overpopulation, pollution, etc... so I can forgive apathy in this particular case.

Tried my hand at a 6.4x rescale after seeing some comments from @Northstar1989 (the atmosphere was only rescaled1.25x), but everything else was stock (no changes to part performance, no FAR). Took my 3x 2 stage recoverable design, filled up the tanks and added a little more fuel capacity, and was able to get 72 tons to orbit, but it seems like I would lose the 1st stage 9 times out if 10 as the 1st stage gets deleted just abut the same time that the orbiter gets to orbit, only once did I switch in time. Scaled the payload back to 54 tons, and with a ~650 ton starting mass, I got to orbit and recovered the launcher. Im thinking about doing 4x from now on, then the rotation period should change by the nice and even number of 2, instead of some irrational sqrt(3) or sqrt(6.4)

@Bej Kerman well the mammoth is not a single engine either, its basically 4 vectors with less vectoring, and a bit lower mass. If they gave us a similar 5m engine cluster that was 1 part, that would be great

Are you sure? I don't think anything will collide during time warp.... In fact I know separate craft will pass through each other during even 5x time warp, and have strategically used this in the past for deploying payloads.

FYI, these are the 5 points, in this case from just 2 massas, the sun and Earth

L1-5 come from only 2 bodies. You can't get one without the others, unless they are doing something really weird, and they don't truly even get one. They said they would have pull from multiple bodies, and their statement about landings being different depending on where the other planet is, implies that the effects are not limited to some pseudo SOI between the planets. If they had ships simply orbiting a barycenter with a covered/non-naked singularity, it would be stable, not unstable like they say. My guess is that they will mostly use patched conics, but within certain SOIs the ships trajectories will be subject to 2 to n body gravitation, while the planets themselves stay on "conic section rails"

Well, they only mention one point which seems like it would be L1, but the way they describe it, there should be all 5.

La grange points, really? This interests me

I mean, I would love a trimodal LV-N variant. -Lf only, 800 isp -Lf+ox, 180 Kn of thrust, around 500 Isp -No thrust, generates EC, requires radiators And of course, similar parts without any nozzle, just for EC generation. But I feel like this is getting off topic. I just want larger/composite versions of parts that are often used in fairly high numbers A nuclear reactor is an obvious choice for a part corresponding to a larger RTG/ an alternative to multiple RTGs But I also really want the quad blades, larger/procedural wings, larger air breathers, etc