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Mr. TumblingPidgeon seen in the images has a very long truss section. It should also have radiators instead of structural panels, but never mind. The interesting thing is that the circular shield is separate from the nuclear generator. Also considering past remarks about the dangers of radiation coming from fusion engines... it seems that there will be a new (maybe harmful for kerbals) radiation mechanic in the game. How do you think it will work? Will it be similar to Kerbalism LS radiation system.. with kerbals having a limit before getting sick or worse?

To start off with, I have suggested things for other games before, however, most of these are fantasy games. This is a realistic game, and thus, if my suggestions are hard to read, and you have a stroke reading this and die, then sorry for my bad "ordering" and explanations. I've also never really talked about physics much before, which is another reason this might be hard to read. Anyways, radiation. We know what it is, you get too much of it and you die. We also use it for power, which is why I think that some of the more efficient EC generators later in the tech tree should be powered on radiation, maybe not by radioactive materials, but radiation in space. Or this radiation could be used to turn a non-radioactive material into a radioactive material, which can then be used for EC generation. There could also be a toggle for kerbals to get radiation poisoning if exposed too much radiation, and if you don't get them to an area with mostly no radiation "quickly", they could die (or go MIA on easier difficulties). However, if this toggle is on, there needs to be some form of having radiation bounce off of ships, or radiate out of the ship during interstellar travel, due to what is known as "heliospheres." Basically, stars have atmospheres. Yes yes, the suns corona (which fun fact is hotter than it's surface) is an atmosphere, but it also repels radiation out of its most outermost layer of its atmosphere, which extends well past the Keiper belt. Most stars if not all have these "astrospheres" or "magnetospheres" (which the earth has its own magnetosphere), and outside of this, is an astronomical amount of cosmic ionizing radiation. Basically, if you decide you want kerbals and parts to be affected by radiation, if you dont have practically 9000 layers of 50 feet thick lead, or any other material good at stopping radiation, you will instantly be vaporized. While the astrosphere doesn't stop all of this radiation from entering it's system, it stops a large majority of it (excluding uncharged gamma rays), which means that if that setting is on, if 2 years of floating around the sun between duna and kerbin in no ship were to give a kerbal radiation sickness, being outside this heliosphere would cut that time down to a very short time. Personally, I don't know the exact specifications, but it would probably be a matter of seconds.

Hmmmmmm I need a plot device to start this off......... Year 3, day 239. Tracking station, KSC. Bob Kerman was looking over the latest astrometry read-outs on the jool system, while he was observing the orbital resonances, he noticed something anomalous between Laythe and Tylo, something defiantly out of the ordinary, disrupting the orbits of both of the planet-moons in a very regular fashion, causing a very interesting orbital resonance of both of the moons, eyes widening, he knew exactly what was happening, another planet-moon, orbiting between Laythe and Tylo, he rushed to the mission control room (during their coffee break), and they agreed to the mission, although bob personally thought that Wherner, and Gene agreed to just shut him up, so they could finish their coffee break in peace. The VAB team started work on a latest pod design, named (very colorfully) Eggshell 2, no one, AND I MEAN NO ONE, shall ever speak of Eggshell 1 since it`s last few test flights. With the rocket put together with ample amounts of superglue, duct tape, and coffee, it was rolled out to the launch pad on a Eggshell booster. After a beautiful lift-off from launchpad K-19, it began its graceful gravity turn, into Kerbin`s summer clouds After a successful launch (the first one since the cursed Eggshell-1), they proceeded to test out the crafts maneuverability in orbit, and it`s OMS engine And with much bickering about Bob`s mustache distracting bill, they prepared for re-entry Then as they felt the gees from re-entry slowly creep up, They continued bickering, but did not realize one very, very important thing..... They forgot a parachute! So, Bill being Bill, he decided to channel his inner para-trooper, and jump out <CLASSIFIED> <REMOVED FROM TEXT> <NO!> After a very long fall, both bob, and bill survived, bob being the lucky one, he survived with only a very wet mustache as a injury... Bill, on the other hand had to be carted away in a charter boat that the kerbals use for recovery. And this, was the end of the first (mainly successful) test flight of Eggshell-1

I think there should be a Liquid Hydrogen resource for them, too.

Blocking radiation is something that typically done with very dense and heavy materials. So when you using a nuclear thermal rocket, while it would be safest to encapsulate the engine or even construct the engine out of dense radiation blocking materials It isn't practical as it adds a ridiculous amount of mass. The low mass option is to place a disk (or bowl) of said material between said radiation source (NTR) and the rest of your ship. This disk would cast a cone shaped shadow of safety. Img source : http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/radiation.php "From NUCLEAR SPACE PROPULSION by Holmes F. Crouch." This is not something modeled in KSP or even in most KSP mods that add NTR's, and so what, after all it wouldn't be very fun to throw a ship together with a Nerv engine only to throttle up and find you gave your kerbals suden death syndrome. However because of this cone shaped safe region It could give NTR propelled spacecraft a signature look with propellant tanks or radiators tapering off toward the engines. examples: Both images grabbed from same link as above. Left is artwork by TauCeti Deichmann shows propellant tanks a little better. Right is part of atomic rockets realistic fusion designs. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesignsfusion.php#asteroidcrewtransport <= some cool stuff here too. Interested In how I could accurately make a realistically shaped nuclear rocket myself in blender I followed the steps here : http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/advdesign.php under Radiation Backscatter. However rather than given in steps its more of a narrative of how one guy figured out how to do it so I decided to make a little tutorial. (vid is very brief like 4:30) I've come to like this more pointy look to nuclear rockets and if anyone else is interested in hard scienceifying their models this should come in handy.

"In Our system we have Kerbol Radiation Not Cosmic Radiation" -Crazy Kerbal Scientist No.1947 Im Back here with another great suggestion: Presenting........... The Suggestion that would take years for me to figure out: COSMIC RADIATION , And More oh well , What do i even say , This game doesn't have any sort of Cosmic radiation , so i came up with this , Going to explain Breifly: 1- Lets say for example i reached space in a Manned Vehicle and my spacecraft has a MK1 Cockpit which has weak radiation sheilding so basically the Mk1 Pilot is going to get exposed to radiation alot and if that goes on for a long time. Like for example 100 Kerbal days . The Pilot is going to die . Also Side Note: The Radiation mode only triggers in Normal , Hard , Extreme Difficulity's . so for any new people in the game they can just go on easy mode or on custom. 2- If i had a Mk3 for example it would keep its crew alive MORE than the Mk1 , For example MK1: 100 Days MK3: 300 Days . And if the Cockpit is surrounded or covered by something it would stand more for example a normal MK1 would stand 100 days but a MK1 which is covered by a shield stands for 150 Days. 3- Space EVA's: If any Kerbal went for EVA his suit would protect him from radiation for atleast 30 days. Continuesly 4- Planetary EVA's : If a Kerbal went for EVA on Kerbin his suit would protect him for a infinite amount of time since Kerbin is habitable , but if a Kerbal went for EVA on Duna his Suit would Protect him from radiation for 200 Days , Continuesly 5- Recovering : If a Kerbal went into space for a long time and came back to kerbin , he would recover / Or if a kerbal went into a Hab Module He would recover too +Another Idea SOLAR FLARES So basically ingame Solar flares would have the same effect as radiation. Except for : 1- it would distrupt communications 2- the closer a spacecraft is to the sun ,a solar flare. the more vunerable is it to overheating. 3- Kerbals Doing EVA inside Moho's orbit to the sun are facing a serious death sentence if any of the solar flares appear 4- 1 Major Solar flare would appear every year 5- Every atmospheric Planetery body that has a magnetosphere is Safe and That's all folks Please make this true Thanks for reading -Taco Kerman Year 201.6

I was explaining the Van Allen belts to a co-worker and thought "That would be a neat challenge to add to KSP".

While Kron 6 mission is underway, Wernher von Kerman came to an excellent idea to get some actual data on the van Kallen belts that surround Kerbin and possibly, probe the other belts of other planetary bodies. It's something that was supposed to be done a lot earlier, but nobody thought about it. Except maybe for Linus Kerman, but nobody listens to him, anyway. Thus, OGRE program was born. OGRE stands for Orbital Global Radiation Evaluation. The probes will be equipped with a Geiger-Müller counter and will be carried into orbit by a two stage rocket (SRB and liquid bipropellant engine). Optionally, third stage will be either liquid bipropellant, or xenon when more distant bodies become the next target. Aditionally, currently travelling Kron 6 will determine those properties at Plock system, and flung out Kaos 3 will measure the radiation doses at and beyond the magnetosphere after quite a few years. The probe is being built at the moment.

This http://www.nature.com/articles/srep29901 might influence decisions on future long term stays in spacey conditions. Health seems to be in danger when leaving earth's magnetosphere. Of course, the database is thin. From the Abstract: " The results demonstrate that space-relevant irradiation induces a sustained vascular endothelial cell dysfunction. Such impairment is known to lead to occlusive artery disease, and may be an important risk factor for CVD among astronauts exposed to deep space radiation."

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2016/jul/18/nearby-supernovae-could-have-affected-life-on-earth I'm not sure this would be a widespread risk but it might cause problems for life at higher elevations. For people living in houses or even caves, the radiation would only be a factor when they are outside and outside is facing the nova.

The other day I was reheating some food in the microwave for dinner, and I noticed (yet again) that my beans were still not very warm. I started thinking about how they don't absorb the heat energy from the microwaves as much as other food does, and they have a lot of starch, and then I wondered: Could starch be a good material for radiation shielding? Today I googled it, and the second result was from NASA! Here it is: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120006695.pdf So a starch-based material would be a very potent radiation shield, and it could be grown in space! I thought it was pretty interesting. What else do you know on the topic?

Deadly Space Environment Realism Tired of things being Semi-Realistic, or Life Support isn't enough or to easy? Well I have a heck of an idea! Space is deadly, beyond the protection of our spherical home we face a variety of dangers. Not just the complete lack of oxygen, heat, food, water, and not being able to scream to your fellow kerbalnaut when that space plane you launched last week went out of control in mid orbit and is unexpectedly flying towards him and knocks him out of the sky without warning! No, we face an even greater threat in reality. What if that never to return home suicide mission to Duna with 3 or more kerbals destined to colonize the deserted planet you were planning, had to consider ionizing radiation threats once leaving the comfort of home's magnetic field?! Having to plan for Solar Radiation (Solar Wind), Cosmic Radiation (Gamma Rays and X-Rays), Electromagnetic Radiation (Ultraviolet Light, UV Rays) could change the way you leave the comfort of home forever. I know I wouldn't want to be cooked with enough Radiation Equivalent to having a Full Body CT Scan ever 5 or 6 days and have a raging sunburn just for looking out the window for 30 seconds to a few minutes, or going on a EVA to fix a couple parts Jeb broke before leaving. Bringing this into play could push KSP even further towards near realism. Say your sending a station to orbit the Sun ( Kerbol ), but you had to out fit your ship with 5 or 6 Solar radiation panels so you don't become BBQ'ed and served to Bob cause he's starving. Or, maybe your just headed to Laythe, Slapping on some Solar, Cosmic, and EM panels to shield your precious Kerbals from kicking the bucket before you even reach your destination would be the right way to go. This is an idea I came up with after watching over the Orion project for quite some time now. If someone thinks it's worth a shot I encourage you to go for it, heck maybe even add something in that I haven't even thought of