New planets?

[shhhilent1]

The real problem is that there is no point adding another plannet (at least not one with an atmosphere), because you would never be able to leave it. There are two problems.

First, you can\'t get a stock rocket into orbit that has the power to take off, perform the transit, land, takeoff again, and make another long distance transit journey. And even if you could get suck a rocket to take off and make the trip, you still can\'t land it.

Picture your normal take off rocket, and picture beeming it up into orbit (or use a launching mod to get it up there). The first problem landing, once its fully implimented will be heat. If you use the engines to slow your descent, your going to use up nearly as much as you would to take off, so you will never have enough fuel left over to launch again. So you\'ll need some sort of heat shield part to go bellow the engines to keep your rocket from vaporizing while it waits for friction and fluid dynamics (air can only get out of the way so fast) to slow it down. Your also going to need something to keep it upright. If you fire bottom mounted engines, your rocket will immediately invert itself, if it hasn\'t done so already. So you need either need a parachute or rigging for a top mounted engine to keep your speed under control, and to keep you upright, keeping in mind that either solution when deployed during landing without a lot of support connections to lower parts of your rocket will promptly transform your magnificent vessel into its own fleet, and none of your new, much smaller, ships are going to be in any shape to land.

And if you think you need to land slowly on the Mun, wait until your landing a full sized rocket on another, possibly bigger, Kerbin, and your rocket turns into a pancake. We will probably need stronger landing gear that sticks down further, and has some flexibility, to help the rocket come to a stop over half a second instead of all at once, or its going to break.

Realistically, you need two things. Aside from a array of giant parachutes, or a top mounting array for some seriously heat tolerant engines, you need the ability to refuel a rocket with other rockets, and ideally, you want to be able to assemble a ship in space much like a space station. While you could always build a ship on the ground and refuel it in orbit, possibly on arrival, and after landing (which will require many other vessels to act as tankers, and require the first ship to be carrying a crew support module to carry the tanker crews home in), a ship that is going to handle well during landing is going to handle like garbage during takeoff (if it is even capable to doing so).

So yeah, as cool as it would be, there are some parts and features missing that would make this a lot more awesome.

IRL yeah maybe but this is KERBAL space program, have you seen the big landers that people have made? even ive made landers that could do it.

[illectro]

Going Kerbin -> Mun -> Kerbin -> Mun -> Kerbin is not the same as going from Kerbin to Mars and back. To do this, go from Kerbin to Kerbol orbit, return, launch again, and return again.

In terms of new planets, what we need is an angle read-out. We click on the object, and the game draws a line between that body and the body it orbits, and another line between you and the same body, and then gives that angle, so you can accurately time return burns.

I would also think the devs would represent Jupiter/Saturn as one planet, and the ice giants the same. Illectro, if the Devs added a Hadean world, would you be able to get an object to orbit it? Or a Hermean world?

As soon as the planets are added I\'m going to be able to take a stock rocket there, With aerospikes my heavy lifter is looking at greater than 12km/s delta vee which will comfortably manage a kerbin analogue practically anywhere in the kerbin system (will really need the atosphere for aerobraking if it\'s too close to the sun though).

The closer in you get to a star the less likely you are to see moons, but, yes you can have \'stable\' orbits as long as it\'s inside the hill\'s sphere of the planet

Hills Sphere Radius = DistancefromSun x cuberoot( planetMass / (3 *sunMass))

better to make it less than 1/3 of this, minmus is at 33% of the kerbin system hills radius and it\'s orbit is not a static elipse by any measure.

[kyle 911]

i can solve the planertery travel a retern missions for but when docking is avalable it will work heres the consept you launch a rocket carrying two rockets one will take you to a planet or moon and back and one to land and take off

[vexx32]

Sorry, the poor English is bugging me, so I\'ll just kindly correct it, okay?

not 'habitate'; 'habitat'

not 'Disent'; 'Descent'

not 'assent'; 'Ascent' (btw, assent is actually a word, but it means \'agreement\')

not 'retern'; 'Return'

not 'planertary'; 'Planetary'

Sorry. A few little things can annoy me from time to time.

Anyway, on-topic. If there\'re gonna be new planets anytime soon... we\'ll need some sort of orbital construction to be able to build the monster ships it\'s going to require.

[Cthulufaic]

It would be rather challenging if there was a planet at a slightly tilted orbit, like Minmus, and that the only way to get to it in a reasonable timeframe is to build an interplanary ship(One that can change orbital planes very easily).

Also, I think that because docking will obviously come before most planets, we could probably get people who make a Minmus base, have a ship go there, refuel, and then since Minmus needs so much less Delta-V to escape, you could maybe get to a nearby planet.

[Tim_Barrett]

All I can say is getting there won\'t be as much harder as getting to Kerbin\'s moons, but getting back will probably be a different story...

[LukeTim]

I thought the dev team already conquered the Kraken.

Sorry to bring this up after two pages but, from what I have read, it didn\'t really get cleared up properly...

As far as I am aware, the Kraken is still around. It is a problem with the PhysX engine, which doesn\'t work well with objects travelling at speeds over 9000m/s... I believe these speeds cause serious rounding errors, or something, which is what we know as the Kraken.

So, I am pretty sure that Squad hasn\'t dealt with the Kraken entirely yet, and it will probably be a pretty big task to do so.

That\'s my understanding of the Kraken situation, anyway... and it will probably have to be cleared up before planets are added, otherwise getting to them is going to be a nightmare.

[Markus Reese]

Saw comments on stock parts not being able to probably do it. That is a challenge I am working on right now and have pretty much succeeded. The only difficulty with stock parts is the size of the vessels makes alot of the flight a laggy mess. This is done with a de-orbit from kerbin, than a capture again. Atmospheric planets will be nice. In my current kerbin to kerbin crafts, Massive space plane gets vertical launch off kerbin, then lands again. A massive booster stage gets a return space capsule back into space.

[lowietje22]

they should add a very far, but awsome big planet, like jupiter, with the rings

[Max Grant]

I know this: telling me \'it can\'t be done\' just makes me want to do it all the more.

I suspect most Kerbal players are cut from the same cloth -- look at how insanely detailed and difficult this game is! It is entirely about the challenge of \'I bet you can\'t do it!\'

[PakledHostage]

It is entirely about the challenge of \'I bet you can\'t do it!\'

I couldn\'t agree more. Just imagine if some of your favourite games of the past were designed so that everybody could achieve all of the objectives within the first couple of times that they played? How many times would you have played Super Mario if you successfully rescued the princess the third time you tried?

A new planet would be a nice progression to the game\'s challenge... You start by trying to make orbit, get better at that then fly to the Mun. Minmus is a little bit harder to get to because of the orbital inclination but you soon master that too. Getting to orbit around another planet is the next challenge. Landing on the new planet and returning to Kerbin is an even greater challenge than that, but the progression keeps you hooked.

And finally, I do get a bit frustrated to constantly read that it would be impossible to get to a new planet because of the Kraken or using only the current stock parts. Tim Barret is right. You will be able to get into orbit around any moderate sized new planet using a comparable rocket to what you currently use to get to the Mun. Add a LFT to that and you\'ll be able to get back to Kerbin too.

For example, the stack in the image below is enough to get from low Kerbin orbit, down to a 7 million km circular orbit about Kerbol, and back to Kerbin. The same stack could reach orbit around a planet located at 7 million km from Kerbol and get back to Kerbin. In fact, if there was a Kerbin sized planet located at 7 million km, the round trip into orbit around that planet and back to Kerbin could be done with 1/2 a tank less fuel. Sure landing on the surface and returning to Kerbin will take a much larger rocket than just getting to orbit, but someone will be able to pull it off.

Check out BoolyBooly\'s Shoot for the Sun challenge and Togfox\'s Recording solar flares challenge for examples of rockets that people have managed to return to Kerbin from Kerbol orbit. It is possible.

[vexx32]

I also recall one fellow who managed to get into a polar orbit around Kerbol, and then return to Kerbin again. Needless to say, it is impressive.

[SunJumper]

To practise this, the devs can give us a version, with two more instances of the Mun in a 5bX5b and 20bX20b orbit. It should really take a few minutes, but I wouldn\'t know.

[kerbinoid]

And finally, I do get a bit frustrated to constantly read that it would be impossible to get to a new planet because of the Kraken or using only the current stock parts. Tim Barret is right. You will be able to get into orbit around any moderate sized new planet using a comparable rocket to what you currently use to get to the Mun. Add a LFT to that and you\'ll be able to get back to Kerbin too.

Agreed. If you have enough delta v to escape kerbin gravity you\'re golden. With the implementation of mission planning (not sure when that\'s coming), getting to any planned planet is just going to be a matter of time.

[Jebby Kerman]

Well, I\'m pretty sure that docking will already be implemented by the time we get any new planets orbiting Kerbol... so we would need to put a thruster module in orbit around that planet and then dock with it after we land...