KSP's "Unobtanium"

[GigaG]

We know that KSP generalizes its fuel and resources. What lore do you attach to them?

Liquid Fuel - A filtered version of an abundant hydrocarbon on Kerbin, Liquid Fuel is a moderately efficient fuel. However, through heating the fuel heavily, or clever engine design, Liquid Fuel can approach the efficiency of hydrogen-based fuel. It burns quite readily and cleanly, allowing re-ignition of engines without any regard for residue. It also ignites at low temperature, allowing rather simple ignition systems.

Oxidizer - Koxygen - a dense compound of oxygen with some other chemicals (that happen not to affect the burn much, or they affect it positively.) (5kg/unit (liters?) compared to 1.141kg/l for real LOX.) It is moderately croygenic, but less so than pure liquid oxygen, allowing it to be stored with negligible boiloff.

Solid Fuel - Kerbals have not learned the art of making efficient solid fuel. Thus, Solid Fuel on Kerbin is simply advanced black powder. It burns powerfully and agressively, but inefficiently.

[regex]

LiquidFuel - Basically Aerozine 50 with a density closer to RP-1.

Oxidizer - Basically dinitrogen tetroxide.

Monopropellant - Probably just simple hydrazine.

SolidFuel - Probably PBAN in a mixture similar to what the Space Shuttle boosters used.

[sal_vager]

KSP's unobtainium? Default settings everyone will accept....

[Starhawk]

KSP's unobtainium? Default settings everyone will accept....

I laughed and laughed.

Happy landings!

[windows_x_seven]

Kerbals' skeletons and suits are made out of unobtanium.

[KSK]

KSP's unobtainium? Default settings everyone will accept....

I don't really attach any lore to the resources. In-game they're sufficiently generalised that my rationalisations start to get kinda contrived and I gloss over the finer details (or indeed many details at all ) of propellant combinations in my KSP fiction. I've done some reading up on engines so hopefully my fictional versions of KSP engines make some kind of sense, rather than just being technobabble but fuels - not so much. Which is a bit odd coming from a chemist.

[Rolanvorxariat]

Oh, yes! Kerbal table of elements! Out of order!

Propellium, Oxium, Peelium, Titragen, Toriold, Silivar, Kopper, Tien, Goliathium, Batterium, Limannium, Xenon, Greon, Potatassium, Smellfur, Notobtainablium, Nonononobtainablium, Nonabtainablium, Plocknium, Blutonium, Urlumium, Neidonium, Keomaneteonium, Newkonium, Einsteenium, Karbon, Sillycon, Callisium, and others.

try to match them with their real life counterparts. Trust me, Xenon was just a coincidence.

[undercoveryankee]

1.0 adds the wrinkle of "Ore" that can be found on any planet in the solar system and converted into LFO with zero waste. If I had to describe the abstractions in terms of RL chemistry, I'd put LF as some kind of metal-containing compound that's too expensive to use as a fuel in real life but on Kerbin is as common as fossil fuels on Earth, and Oxidizer as something like perchloryl fluoride that's storable but performs better with the available fuel than N2O4 or IRFNA.