Poll: What Human Year Equivalent is Career Year 0?

[The Optimist]

I think the research is partially just adjusting existing technologies for the space age. I mean, look at the description for the electrical engineering research node.

[tater]

True, but even then, there are 2 separate questions. Wecould all think it's 1950-60, but the majority might think it should eb for some other date.

[mcirish3]

Yes there should have been two separate polls which as I pointed out above the OP could have had as it is an option to have more than one question.  Though at this point I am not sure how well a reboot would work out.

1 hour ago, regex said:

It is implied in the OP that this is for modding.  Maybe it belongs in the modding forums.

I am going to go out on  a limb and say inigma's  purpose was to gather info for CCF.  which is not exactly a mod.

Edited January 23, 2016 by mcirish3

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, mcirish3 said:

I am going to go out on  a limb and say inigma's  purpose was to gather info for CCF.  which is not exactly a mod.

It informs and concerns mods, and modders.

Really doesn't matter anyway, let the moderators decide.

Edited January 23, 2016 by regex

[Just Jim]

Purely hypothetical sci-fi purposes, I would say mid-late 40's.  If you need an exact date, call it Jan. 01, 1946.  Right after the end of the war. 
With V2 technology, rockets are more or less almost big enough to start hauling people up into space.  Again, more or less... definitely within the early career years of putting a Kerbal in a capsule on the end of a booster and hoping for the best...  ahhhh, good times... good timessss.....  

Anyway, jet technology, same thing.  Jets were just starting to appear at the end of the war, and really took off... no pun intended... after the war ended. 
And if depending on how you fill out your tech tree, you can get infant jet tech in the first few days of a career game.

So for a hypothetical date, I'll vote January 1, 1946.

[inigma]

2 hours ago, tater said:

The poll is also useless, as you ask what it is, OR what it should be. How do you tell what vote is for which question?

I clarified the poll. The question was still relevant though: what should it be - based on the tech given so far. Not what one would like it to be. But since that last bit was not clear, I removed it since most votes are for the current state, not what people want it to be.

14 minutes ago, regex said:

It informs and concerns mods, and modders.

Really doesn't matter anyway, let the moderators decide.

not necessarily. it does inform modders, but it is asked in General since it applies equally to stock and really has nothing to do with modding as a pure and basic question.

[Commander Zoom]

It seems to me, OP, that you have an answer already in mind.  (And are unhappy with aspects of the stock game which do not conform to that - parts missing which "should" exist at the implied general state of technology.)

But this is Kerbal Space Program, and it follows Squad's progression, whether you find that "logical" or not.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Commander Zoom

[inigma]

20 minutes ago, Commander Zoom said:

It seems to me, OP, that you have an answer already in mind.  (And are unhappy with aspects of the stock game which do not conform to that - parts missing which "should" exist at the implied general state of technology.)

But this is Kerbal Space Program, and it follows Squad's progression, whether you find that "logical" or not.

That's about the silliest trolling post I've seen on these forums in a long while. I'm not even going to respond. Oh wait, I already have. doh. i've been baited.

Please refrain from making these kinds of comments of yours in this thread. I'm not implying anything than asking a simple question, voicing what i think the answer is, and asking for others to input their theories. 

[NathanKell]

Who says kerbals haven't discovered airplanes or cars yet? They haven't discovered wings and wheels that work on any planet in the solar system, after a trip through deep space.And that can survive 1-2000 K of heating. That's a whole different kettle of fish from "kerbals don't know about airplanes or cars."

[razark]

13 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

Who says kerbals haven't discovered airplanes or cars yet? They haven't discovered wings and wheels that work on any planet in the solar system, after a trip through deep space.And that can survive 1-2000 K of heating. That's a whole different kettle of fish from "kerbals don't know about airplanes or cars."

And the ladders?

[NathanKell]

Same story: they have to survive reentry, interplanetary space, 20 K to 2000K temperatures, etc.

[razark]

Well, that's just silly, if they can build the structure and skin of the craft to survive that, why not just fashion that material into ladders?  Face it, the tech tree is ridiculous, with no sane reason for parts being where they are besides artificial gameplay reasons.

Edited January 23, 2016 by razark

[cantab]

To pick a nice round number, 1950.

But there wasn't manned spaceflight in 1950!

No, because spaceflight for us is expensive and we're cautious about human life. Spaceflight for Kerbals is cheap thanks to the small planet and they are very gung-ho about it, brave to the point of foolishness. They get on the rockets at the stage of development that we were strictly unmanned flights.

But why not 1940 then? The V-2 prototypes had flown!

There's evidence in the game that the rocket engines and other parts being used are not the first ones - several of the part descriptions refer to them being improvements on previous, not seen in game, parts. So I don't feel the space program is using the very early experimental rocket engines. The game's components are in fact very rugged and reliable, which I regard as an approach the Kerbals can adopt because they don't need to squeeze every ounce of performance from their rockets just to make orbit. Also 1940 is too early for composite solid rocket motors which I think is what the game's ones are meant to be.

But Kerbals don't have wheels!

I'm pretty sure you see them driving the ground support vehicles around even in the tier 1 VAB. As NathanKell said, making space-grade wheels is another matter.

But what about planes?

At the moment my best excuse is that Kerbals have indeed invented planes, but the space program knows them to be total deathtraps and is therefore unwilling to pursue them much. If you disagree, I challenge you to design an aeroplane from scratch in stock KSP and fly it to the island and land, first time, no crashing, no killed kerbals

But NASA wasn't founded until 1958!

No Politics.

Edited January 23, 2016 by cantab

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Before 1900.  Kerbals just spend more on rocket development than humans, and were able to invent simple rockets well before electric wheels and light-weight retractable ladders.

[Kerbart]

10,000 BC. The wheel is only introduced in... what, Tier 3? Tier 4?

[obi_juan]

We start with SRB, that was developed in our planet in 1928 (for a plane)...

But for several things I usually think that the game starts between 1935-1945. 

[razark]

1 hour ago, cantab said:

I'm pretty sure you see them driving the ground support vehicles around even in the tier 1 VAB. As NathanKell said, making space-grade wheels is another matter.

This is utter bullcrap.  We're supposed to believe that a race of beings that builds spacecraft out of junkyard scraps and parts found by the side of the road wouldn't send whatever wheels they had into space? 

 

There's no sense to the tech tree.  We're supposed to accept that Kerbals are completely ass-backwards and will build a reliable manned spacecraft out of junk in a barn but can't figure out how to make a ladder and won't try sending wheels into space attached to a craft with a parachute described as "little more than a random stitching together of the surplus parts it is"?

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, razark said:

This is utter bullcrap.  We're supposed to believe that a race of beings that builds spacecraft out of junkyard scraps and parts found by the side of the road wouldn't send whatever wheels they had into space? 

 

There's no sense to the tech tree.  We're supposed to accept that Kerbals are completely ass-backwards and will build a reliable manned spacecraft out of junk in a barn but can't figure out how to make a ladder and won't try sending wheels into space attached to a craft with a parachute described as "little more than a random stitching together of the surplus parts it is"?

This.

Whole.

Post.

Every single glorious word in it comprising the most magnificent whole.

[mcirish3]

OK Guys take it down a notch or three, before someone leaves in a huff.  Regex and Razark are absolutely correct.  NathanNell and Cantab are all so absolutely correct. (except the whole 1950's thing but only because the kerbal teck is scattered all over the bloody space development continuum)  Why because it is a game about little green men who live on a ridiculously small planet and happen to have a space program with no other signs of life except random easter eggs scattered across the planet and solar system.  None of it is supposed to make any sense.   They are little green men who like to do crazy things with rockets.  We as humans like...no LOVE... to bring order out of chaos, if we can not make order, as the universe's best known pattern recognition machine we will find order even if it is not there.    So yes the the tech tree makes no sense, outside of contrive ones for game play, but there really is no back story except the ones we make up in our heads when we try and rationalize why things are the way they are. In short, I say, it is ok that things are a little wonky in the tech tree, could it be that that is part the draw?  We have to make up a little story in our head to rationalize the irrational order  and part of us really really likes doing that.  IF you want Rational play RP-0 or RSS or CCF or perhaps that is why I made The Mod Docket.  Just try not to strangle each other over it ...please

  I happen to think ignima was really hoping for some honest answers to what he intended as a straightforward question.( I really was serious about 1784)  So why don't we bring this back to that and leave the argument over state of disarray of the techtree or career mode to a more appropriate thread.

Just my two cents for what it is worth.

[Vanamonde]

What is even happening in this thread? Sometimes I am astounded at the way the most innocent of topics can turn into arguments and insults on the internet. 

People, either discuss the topic, or if it doesn't interest you, skip to the next thread. Nobody benefits from people trying to find hidden intentions behind the things other forum members find interesting enough to talk about, and there's certainly no need to insult each other over it. 

Watch the language and watch the tempers, please. 

[kcs123]

There is too large gap in parts (stock and moded) to cover properly from 1900s to 1960 or so. Like majority of votes in pool, suitable era is somewhere between 1950 and 1970. Early jet engines along with early rockets. First balistic rockets were developed trough WWII.

You don't have to deal with building very first plane, but trough plane building contracts you should learn to build proper airplanes that can do a job for specific contract. Should that be for transport purposes (passengers/cargo) or have ability for vertical take off/ land. Player will need to figure out on his own how to create such craft, put there limit in part count and max weight allowed and you already have a chalange for yourself.

[Temstar]

4 hours ago, razark said:

This is utter bullcrap.  We're supposed to believe that a race of beings that builds spacecraft out of junkyard scraps and parts found by the side of the road wouldn't send whatever wheels they had into space? 

 

There's no sense to the tech tree.  We're supposed to accept that Kerbals are completely ass-backwards and will build a reliable manned spacecraft out of junk in a barn but can't figure out how to make a ladder and won't try sending wheels into space attached to a craft with a parachute described as "little more than a random stitching together of the surplus parts it is"?

No it's legit. Do you see us humans send rovers out with every day rubber tires?

The wheels on the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle took many many years to develop because they had to work in a very unusual and hostile environment. There were all sorts of designs like the metal conical wheels and even archimedean screws that were designed and tested before it settled on a wheel made out of woven piano wire.

Similarly with ladders, for the longest time no one thought to put hand holds on the outside of the spacecraft, not even after Ed White's space walk. Everyone thought White's little pressure gas gun or the later more advanced Astronaut Propulsion Unit was perfectly adequate for moving around on the outside of the spacecraft. We didn't know until Gemini 9A how hard EVA actually was if you needed to do work in space instead of just floating around and it wasn't until Gemini 12 (after neutral buoyancy tank was introduced so EVA procedure and equipment could be tested on Earth) that proper hand holds were added to the outside of spacecrafts.

To me, rover wheels and space grade ladders and hand holds not being available at the start makes perfect sense.

Here's a video where the GM people talk about the difficulties of designing the rover wheels:
https://youtu.be/5aDSYTMqyQw?t=2m33s

Here's detail on the specific wheel design that was chosen:
https://youtu.be/5aDSYTMqyQw?t=20m26s
 

Here's a video on the difficulties with EVA encountered during Gemini and how it was overcome:
https://youtu.be/ytxcYLCf0nA?t=41m46s

Here is Curiosity's wheel after 3 years on mars, just to show that even today rover wheel design is still not a solved problem.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Temstar

[r_rolo1]

Well, and while being in full support of what regex and razark said ( and adding the glorious and glaring omission of internal combustion engines ( rather strange given the obvious love kerbals have for exploding things ) and propellers ( atleast outside jet engines bodies )), if I had to put a date in the KSP start ... I would say the late 30s. We have radio and minimally reliable solid rocket engines, but no direct signs of electronics ( in spite of the liquid crystal velocity display on the MK1 capsule ) and no jet engines. So basically we are pretty much at the point von Braun picked things up IMHO ...

[kcs123]

It is true that proper rover wheels and ladders for space exploration should be higher in tech tree. But there is also lack of proper parts for Kerbin contract purposes (Field research for science on different biomes, for example). There is no need for ladders that have high temperature tolerance, but there is need for simple ladders, so kerbonauts can go otside of cockpit and collect some samples on kerbin surface.

Similar is for wheels. There is no need for high quality wheels early in game, but there is need to have some wheels for ground vehicle construction.
So you can have ability to combine airplane/rocket and ground vehicle of some kind for Kerbin surface researches. Just enough for some new player to figure out how science mechanic work in game and option to be creative in craft designs to overcome early career limitation.

Until we got some new wheel parts (hopefully we will get some because there is so much talking about wheel overhaul) it is good to have some wheel parts and ladders earlier in game. Some of moded tech tree do just that. Puting some of those parts much earlier in tech tree.

Someone might also want to try to use those early wheels and ladders for space exploration, but he will need to carefully design craft and pilot it, so wheels and ladders are still in one piece on other celestial body. It might even be destroyed on re-entry, but it could serve a purpose on Mun or Minimus.

That way players might learn that simple wheels and ladders is not so good for space exploration and might need to put some effort to unlock better ones higher in tech tree.

[wumpus]

16 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Who says kerbals haven't discovered airplanes or cars yet? They haven't discovered wings and wheels that work on any planet in the solar system, after a trip through deep space.And that can survive 1-2000 K of heating. That's a whole different kettle of fish from "kerbals don't know about airplanes or cars."

Oddly enough, I think this was only added in 1.0.5 (or 1.0.4) when Squad added "basic fins" to tech level 0.  These parts *aren't* mil-spec/NASA-spec grade, they are good enough for "launch anything" and "wheezy jets" missions (ok, I like to use them on real missions.  But if something explodes I don't have to look to see what it was).