ZERO-G / Atmospheric Test Lab

[SickSix]

I have been really wanting an easy an *story/career based* way to test low gravity vehicles. I think at a certain point in career mode you should be able to unlock a gravity test chamber. Basically a VAB with a gravity slider. Or You could unlock lower gravity and atmospheric settings in stages.

The US Air Force employs atmospheric test hangars and to me this just makes sense. I get annoyed having to basically test everything on mission in space.

I understand F12 allows gravity hack, but i don't think any player should have to use F12 just to test designs.

[Greenfire32]

The only problem is that there is no real-world analogue for a Gravity Chamber. Sure, we've got vacuum chambers, but we've not yet figured out how to suck gravity out of any given space-only air.

Seeing as how KSP is firmly rooted in the "real-world" when it comes to technology (mods excluded!) I cant see this becoming a thing. At least not officially.

[SickSix]

I just find as a *game* it is very frustrating to have to abuse quick-load or the dang debug panel just to test your new design that seems more immersion breaking than a gravity test lab in a video game with little green men.

[sumghai]

I just find as a *game* it is very frustrating to have to abuse quick-load or the dang debug panel just to test your new design that seems more immersion breaking than a gravity test lab in a video game with little green men.

As Greenfire32 explained, in real life there is no ground-based facility or device to manipulate gravity in a way that generates a psuedo-weightless environment.

Reduced gravity aircraft such as the infamous Vomit Comet make approximately parabolic flight paths that create the sensation of weightlessness for short durations, but said aircraft only have enough room for a handful of astronauts/researchers and very small pieces of scientific instrument - there's no way you can fit an entire space probe for zero-g testing in the Vomit Comet.

While KSP is a game about little green men and their spaceflight adventures, the logic of any game's canonical universe must be internally consistent. In other words, no amount of handwavium or "lolitsmagic" would be able to justify the creation of an anti-gravity chamber - if they did have such a chamber or the technology to nullify gravity, why would they even need rockets to fly to space in the first place?

What I tend to do is to test my designs in a separate sandbox savegame with Hyperedit, and then move the craft file to my official science/career savegame once I'm happy it would perform as intended.

[tseitsei]

I just find as a *game* it is very frustrating to have to abuse quick-load or the dang debug panel just to test your new design that seems more immersion breaking than a gravity test lab in a video game with little green men.

We don't have "gravity chambers" IRL either. You'll just have to fly it to orbit to test it (I recommend planning it properly in advance to not have to do this so many times) like NASA also has to if they want to do zero gravity tests...

Other option is to just play KSP as a "game" as you say. For that you already have a way to essentially use "zero-G chamber" it's called F12-button. So just use it as a gravity chamber or do "real" tests on LKO... Why is debug panel so bad for you? If you want to use it's features (zero-G or anything else) just do so. If you don't want to then don't. Simple. It's a single player game and you make your own rules...

[Whirligig Girl]

The only problem is that there is no real-world analogue for a Gravity Chamber. Sure, we've got vacuum chambers, but we've not yet figured out how to suck gravity out of any given space-only air.

Seeing as how KSP is firmly rooted in the "real-world" when it comes to technology (mods excluded!) I cant see this becoming a thing. At least not officially.

In Lunar research programs, they hooked various parts of rovers to bungee cables that simulated lunar gravity. They did this for astronauts as well. So I guess gravity changing isn't that unreasonable, as long as you have cables hanging from the ceiling.

[Wjolcz]

Looks similar to something I proposed a while ago.

Maybe not magical zero-G test rooms, but instead your craft youre desiring to test would appear in an aircraft-like scenery, and you would have only a few minutes to test you design. Like the one that NASA (or whatever space company rich enough) has:

E: Basically what sumghai said, but with a plane big enough to pack small spacecrafts (or their mockups) in

Edited March 25, 2015 by Veeltch

[tntristan12]

I think it would be hilariously delightful if Kerbals had the ability to manipulate gravity in local areas, but for some reason haven't applied the idea to propulsion. It would explain why all the IVAs have such a heavy up-down bias. They have artificial gravity!

[QuantumInc]

Of course technically one can already build a "vomit comet" in KSP, though it would be nice to have it provide extra XP, since that is one of the particular ways astronauts are trained IRL.

Maybe they could have a EVA tutorial mission that limited to the inside of a Mk3 based Vomit Comet.

I don't think you could ever build a vomit comet large enough to have a craft fly around inside. However technically any time you have a craft that is in free fall, but moving slow enough or high that air drag isn't significant, you get a limited time to practice your "Zero G" maneuvers.

[prophet_01]

I would like to see more data and info for my vessels + the option to determine the twr for different bodies/gravity values. But I don't rly like a whole test chamber. I like the moment of surprise and the whole experience of adventure/exploration. Real space agencies had/have no idea what the exact characteristics of an enviroment are before they send a mission over there and determine why certain parts behave unexpected.

examples: nobody knew if a heavy craft might sink in the dust on the moon. That was a concern during the apollo aera. They were pretty sure that nothing bad was going to happen though.

Venus is another example. The thick atmosphere made it rly hard to get a clear idea of what the lower atmosphere and surface would actually be like.

aside crom that, I usually test my landers right on the launch pad to find out if they fly straight and the laders deploy. The rest is guestimation and the use of a delta-v map. Testing is an Import part of mission preparation, but after a certain amount of tests I just have to go fof it and hope for the best. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. That's part of the game's charm to me

Edited March 27, 2015 by prophet_01