KerikBalm

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

And when we're talking relatively low masses and the need to radiate into vacuum, that mass becomes considerable. I'm not sure at what point it becomes preferable to a thermocouple like on a standard RTG (after all, there is a reason RTGs use thermocouples) I don't think this is right, and would be oversimplified at any rate. The neutron flux goes up, but at a certain point, the reactor power will be the same per unit mass, as the fuel rods heat to their maximum temperature (any hotter and they melt), and their maximum output is limited by cooling. Now a reactor has to reach a sufficient neutron flux for a chain reaction, but this required flux goes down as enrichment goes up. A tiny reactor of normally enriched uranium won't be able to sustain a chain reaction. Highly enriched uranium can do it. Basically, as you scale the reactor down, the enrichment needs to go up. IIRC, the reactors used in space used very highly enriched uranium. For sure, but I'm not talking about long duration power demands. I'm talking about limited duration atmospheric flights on other worlds. Yea, I know, I should have said nuclear *reactors*. RTGs use spontaneous nuclear reactions/decay, but they aren't a reactor that causes additional nuclear reactions.

For reference, a tesla model S reportedly has a 540 kg battery, already over half a ton. It supplies a 615 kW motor. What is the power output of such a small reactor? The SNAP reactor is even smaller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A "The SNAP-10A reactor was designed for a thermal power output of 30 kW and unshielded weighs 650 lb (290 kg)" - Note, that's Thermal power, not electrical power, which would be much less. It was reported to be designed to produce 500 watts for 1 year, and reached a peak of 590 wats before shutdown. Assuming a linear scaleup, a 1 ton design would get you a 2.34 kW output. Scaling up the Tesla battery to 1 ton gets you 1.14 MW. Nearly 500x higher power output. The point of 1000 kg of ultracapacitors would not be to provide for long term energy duration, but to meet short term power demand. If you need a high electrical power output, for a short duration, then batteries recharged by a small reactor are better than a big reactor that can supply the power continuously. Capacitors are even better... KSP batteries function more like capacitors anyway. Current capacitors have a much lower specific energy (Wh/kg) than Li-Ion batteries, but future ultracapacitors may be able to exceed them. Any electrical pulsed drive (particularly, pulsed fusion drives, such as a dense plasma focus design) would use capacitors to supply the power for the pulses, not a secondary fission reactor. If we were to make an aircraft to explore mars, its would be lighter if it used batteries/ultracapacitors to supply the power during flight, with solar/RTG/nuclear to recharge between flights... Which is incidentally what I'm doing with some craft in KSP, and why I'm asking for bigger batteries. Yea, I know... sort of irrelevant though, no? Nobody was disputing that.

Long post, a bit TL:DR, but I strongly support addition of air augmented rockets to KSP. Basically, you'd have the most efficient rocket for every scenario in terms of Isp, but at the expense of added mass (poor TWR for the engine part, but it should still have a similar thrust to cross section ration)

Well, the batteries are more like ultracapacitors. They can discharge all their stored energy in a fraction of a second... as fast as you can draw from it. A nuclear reactor would be an alternative to solar panels, RTGs, fuel cells, etc, but not the batteries (more like ultracapacitors in KSP). Besides, what does the smallest nuclear reactor weigh? does that compete with 1 ton of batteries (more like ultracapacitors in KSP)? 26x of the larger batteries mass only 5.2 tons. Would you propose having a nuclear reactor that masses only 5.2 tons, and can supply >250 EC/second? I would very much like the larger alternative to RTGs to be a nuclear reactor (and it could use the heat mechanic like the ISRU convertor, and thus need radiators)

Yea, I think the two craft need a different launch ID. With this in mind though, launching 2 vessels can make it easier for the part below: Well, if your are separating your craft, which you should be, then its gets less straightforward. You should be doing orbital rendezvous... no sense in bringing everything down to duna, just to bring it back up again, ditto for Ike. A LKO to Duna intercept costs you 930+130= 1060 m/s... Call it 1100 to have some margin. A duna intercept can allow for aerobraking/aeorcapture, where you can lower your Ap to get an Ike intercept "for free". You may want to split craft here for maximum efficiency, with one craft continuing to aerobrake, while the other circularizes around Ike. Lets say 50m/s for maneuvers for the Duna ship, and 180 (call it 200 to have a margin) for your Ike lander to go into a low circular orbit. The Duna ship so far needs 1150 m/s to get into a low circular Dunar orbit, and the Ike ship needs 1300 to get into a low orbit around Ike. Now your Ike lander needs about 800 m/s to land on Ike and return to an orbit of Ike. From there it needs about 200 m/s to get into a low duna orbit... you may not want to bother with orbital rendezvous around Ike to save 200 m/s, but you could (I'd recommend just leaving a fuel tank with a docking port in orbit, no need to duplicate power, command, and control functions) So, 2300 from LKO for your Ike ship to get to Ike, land on it, and then go to Duna where it can rendezvous with your Duna ship. Meanwhile, your Duna ship needs 1150 to get into LDO. A lander would need... maybe 100 m/s for propulsive breaking, and lets say 1500 for ascent, so 1,600. So, if it was a transfer and lander stage by itself, 2750 m/s to get to the surface of duna, and back to orbit. From LDO, you need about 750 m/s to get back to Kerbin (about 570 m/s to get back from low Ike orbit, but you havea contract to redezvous in Duna orbit). So, to one of your ships, add 750 m/s. Lets say you add it to your Duna craft. Then a Direct Ascent profile for duna (with aerobraking) would need 3,500 m/s. And a direct ascent profile for Ike> Duna rendezvous would need 2300 m/s. I don't know how inclined the orbit you need at Ike is, but lets add 400 m/s for that: 3,500 for the Duna direct ascent, 2,700 for the Ike direct ascent> Duna rendezvous Your duna craft can be lighter if you do an orbital rendezvous, in which case your craft to go to LDO and back needs just 1150+750= 1900 m/s, with the first 1150 done with the Duna lander attached, and the next 750 m/s done without the duna lander. All these numbers are, of course, after reaching LKO

Well, we have plenty of relativisitic collisions from subatomic particles that have no problem interacting... I don't see how some events not being simultaneous from certain reference frames would allow it to pass through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle

BOTE? The ladder paradox isn't really relevant here. In the ladder paradox, the only relevant length contraction is along the direction of motion, so if that was the case, we'd still have a very very thin, but 5m wide disk hitting the earth... or a 0.2nm thick disk-Earth hitting the sphere

Isn't the lenght contraction only along the axis of motion? So you'd have a 5m diameter very flat disk (very flat = proton thickness)... and likewise the Earth would appear to still be the sam idameter, but 0.8 nm thick, no? That should still register as a collision, I would think

@MechBFP yea, but I don't understand why people think anything would have changed. Nate was and still is the creative director or whatever his title is. If T2 wasn't making him put in microtransactions before, why would they now? If anything, they have set themselves back and gutted the team to half of what it was, and are more vulnerable to someone refusing to go along with their bad ideas. To add new microtransaction bs would just prolong the development further. Besides, KSP isn't a game that lends itself to that, other than stupid cosmetic skins, which I would find annoying but irrelevant. And his statement doesn't rule out a bunch of small overpriced DLCs like one finds on the sims or City skylines

I think its meant to be used with the turbofans, and thus isn't intended for high speed designs. The high speed alternatives are the ram air intakes and the shock cone intakes.

I get the feeling that @Nate Simpson's post was an attempt at damage control due to the bloomberg article, but given that he just made one post, and hasn't responded with any follow up, I don't think its been particularly effective. I suspect those that are satisfied with what he said already weren't concerned by the bloomberg article, and no minds have been changed.

Wait, so KSP does computer wingspan, and it does matter for aerodynamic drag or L/D? Higher wingspan = better in KSP?

Its not that hard... I count 26 hitchhikers (13 on one side) , 2 cockpits, and 1 crew cabin. 26x4+2x1+1x3= 109 Kerbals

Why the interest in 1.2.2 specifically though?

Working more on my Rald world with an unoffical kopernicus recompile... for some reason the recompile doesn't work in combination with sigma dimensions: 1x, the ground is where the ground appears 3x, the ground is not where it appears, and often does not properly update the level of detail, making water the only safe landing place: But once kopernicus is officially out, I think things will be looking pretty nice: But I'm not super happy with the "sand dunes" texture appearing so high up, especially at 3x, one doesn't really get the appropriate sense of scale.

Well, As warned, I was using a recompile, and it seemed to work at 1x, but it does not work with Sigma's Dimension rescale mod... So just a warning to those that think a simple recompile is all that's needed. works at 1x: Not 3x:

Well, later in career, with the tech tree maxed, I go full Science->funds conversion, and start doing what I want and not what contracts say. I may set it as my own mission I suppose, it would take a bit more electrical power that way, and at the moment I'm not sure if I cover more distance climbing at 10-15 degrees (varies with altitude) to 11km, or at 60 degrees to Apoapsis (I suppose I could od the math, but while the initial ascent is at 60, it does decrease as I get higher, and curvature starts to become significant). The margins are enough that I think I could replace the 26 batteries (each 0,2 tons) for 14-16 fuel cells (0.24 tons each, + fuel) -at max consumption, 1 fuel cell can't feel 1 heavy rotor... but I should still have some batteries to meet peak demand, and to allow for moderate lenght flights without using fuel. Well, I didn't look closely at astrobonds service bay trick... are the blades entirely within the bay, or just enoughto get shielded? In the latter case, I'd compare it more to a folding prop. For your form fitting rationalization, I would also go with that. If you see my motor units, they are clipped in fairings. I offset the motors, build the fairing at 1.25 meter diameter, then move the motors (with blades) back down in line. The result is the motor is shielded, the blades are not. I just feather the blades to 90 degrees for the rocket portion. I rationalize this similarly. Its not like the contra rotating props on a Tu-95 have 2 motors with blunt ends seperate from the nacelles. This image (already posted) should illustrate what I did: On the 1st design (the single kerbal shuttle), this makes a lot of aerodynamic surfaces up front, and it becomes difficult to handle... basically impossible without thrust vectoring. It does help get the carrier to high AoA on reentry, and get it to slow down without burning up (I put deployment to 0, not 90, for reentry, maximum drag). The 2nd design I have the rotors farther back (dry CoM moved forward by not having the orbiter attached + by having some engines at hte front the the craft), so that it is much more aerodynamically stable when the blades are set to 90, an dits under rocket power It also affects heating, if I'm not mistaken. It also affects lever arms, and can make craft sturdier by having forces torque attachments less. It also makes craft more compact to avoid breaking things on landing. There was also this one: Which he says he uses part clipping in fairings: "As drag is a major issue with getting up to Eve orbit, several measures have been taken to minimize drag: ... many fuel tanks have been clipped inside a fairing."