Realism vs Stock

[OhioBob]

1 minute ago, Blaarkies said:

But does the kerbal's mass not count when inside a capsule? I know it counts for command seats, but i never tested it for capsules though.

The Kerbal adds mass only when in a command seat.  His/her mass is not added when in a pod.  That is, the pod's mass is the same whether crewed or not.

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

What do you think powers fuel pumps on Earth? Someone call OPEC and find out how they built their perpetual motion machine.

You're leaving out quite a few steps in your analogy

Look at it like this....  In the ISRU, Ore is converted into LFO.  This process requires energy which comes from the fuel cell.  But the fuel cell is consuming the LFO made by the ISRU, which is the reverse of the refining process.  So, the ONLY way just this subset of the whole mining/refining system could continue just running itself would be if both the refining and burning processes were 100% efficient and totally reversible.  IOW, the energy required by the ISRU to refine a given amount of Ore would be exactly the same as that released by burning the amount of LFO produced by the ISRU from that amount of Ore, without any losses along the way.

In the real world, this can never be the case thanks to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  Chemical reactions like this are never 100% reversible.  On top of this, the fuel cell can't capture all the energy released by burning the LFO, more energy would be lost to electrical resistance between the fuel cell and the ISRU, and then all the friction and whatnot going on inside the ISRU would waste even more.  Much of this lost energy would become heat and radiate away.  Therefore, in real life, the system would have an energy leak (radiated heat) and a net loss on trying to reverse the reaction.  The fuel cell would thus deliver less energy to the ISRU than was provided by burning the fuel.  Therefore, the ISRU would consume more energy refining Ore than it would get back from the fuel cell's burning that amount of Ore converted to fuel, so its production rate would fall off, meaning the fuel cell would get less fuel, so less power, so less fuel, etc., until the system stopped when then fuel cell ran dry.

But KSP totally breaks the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  Despite losing energy via radiators rated at hundreds of kW, the fuel cell not only is able to keep the ISRU running fast enough to feed itself but also run several drills and produce extra fuel to go into a rocket.  IOW, burning the fuel produces way more energy, even with all the losses in the system, than is needed to refine that fuel, despite the reactions being chemically the reverse of each other.  This means that the system is actually creating energy, so it violates that conservation law as well.

4 minutes ago, Blaarkies said:

The EVA kerbal should get his EVA fuel from the ship, but it doesn't so if you have the patience you can EVA-push your mk1 lander to Jool. But does the kerbal's mass not count when inside a capsule? I know it counts for command seats, but i never tested it for capsules though.

A capsule as the same mass whether it's occupied or not but an EVA Kerbal has mass.  Thus, when a Kerbal goes on EVA, he adds mass to the universe.  When he goes back inside, he removes mass from the universe.

4 minutes ago, Blaarkies said:

I agree with you on most of these, but I am skeptical about the ISRU. That is like saying coal miners exert more energy to mine the coal, than the amount of power the coal plant generates. ISRU is a lot different, but how much more energy is used in changing the chemical structure from ore to fuel? Is it possible that Mun ore is in a high-energy state instead of the realistic low-energy state that Moon ore is in?

No, fuelcell-powered ISRU is not at all like coalmining or even drilling for oil.  The energy in both those fuels came from living things (and thus ultimately the sun), which was then concentrated into a compact, portable form by the heat and pressure of the Earth.  And you're not trying to reverse a reaction.  All you're doing with these fuels is releasing their stored energy.  You consume some of the energy along the way in getting them out of the ground, refined as needed, and delivered to the consumers, but the fuels contain way more energy than that, and all we're doing is releasing that stored solar energy.

A better analogy for the fuelcell-powered ISRU is water.  Here you have a set of electrodes (aka ISRU) breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen.  These gases are collected and burned in a heat engine to turn a generator (aka fuelcell) that powers the electrodes.  IOW, one reaction is the reverse of the other.  Can such a system run itself indefinitely, let alone also run a water pump (aka drill) that sucks water from a river to deliver to the electrodes?  No.  2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  All sorts of losses in this system prevent the generator from delivering as much energy back to the electrodes as it got from burning the gases released by the electrodes.

[John FX]

17 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

A capsule as the same mass whether it's occupied or not but an EVA Kerbal has mass.  Thus, when a Kerbal goes on EVA, he adds mass to the universe.  When he goes back inside, he removes mass from the universe.

Not in my game, I have the mod that adds the mass of your kerbals to any pod they are in. If you notice stuff like that you may want to install it yourself.

Same with persistent rotation during warp and also saturatable reaction wheels and quite a few other differences between reality and KSP.

[Superfluous J]

4 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

<snip>

You know what? You win. You're right. The KSP universe is magical unicorns and bears less resemblance to our universe than an old tire at the bottom of the ocean does to Thursday. Squad's efforts in crafting this totally unique universe with its own wholly arbitrary laws that don't actually correspond to anything in the real world have been nothing short of amazing, considering how difficult it is to create a whole new working set of universal constants that mesh together in such a way to create a universe that - as you insist an I now agree - works on 100% totally different terms than our own in spite of looking like it in so many compellingly tangible ways.

I'll never launch another rocket again. I'll just Hyperedit my stuff around because that's the law of the Universe. Whee!

Edited March 30, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Frozen_Heart]

I prefer stock, but there are certain realistic things a would like to see added. (nerfed reaction wheels, single resources life support, engineer readout in VAB)

[NathanKell]

Yep, we bend the physical laws of the universe to taste because it rustles your jimmies. And we don't have bugs, only unappreciated features. Please carry on.

[Red Iron Crown]

40 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

Yep, we bend the physical laws of the universe to taste because it rustles your jimmies. And we don't have bugs, only unappreciated features. Please carry on.

But are the jimmies rustled realistically? Or is it arcadey jimmy rustling?

[C1DEAN]

Wow. I didn't, realize that you all has been debating about KSP's "laws of physics" for so long. As for my say on the matter, I believe that Sqaud did a wonderful job of creating KSP's own "laws of physics". That Being said, KSP does follow some real physical laws vaguely. 

[NathanKell]

KSP follows real physics as much as it can (i.e. is practical on both a gameplay and computation-time level), but that is always in flux and has been trending upwards. Especially as bugs get fixed.

(It is, or was, literally part of the game's sales pitch so it's not a new ideal either.)

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

(It is, or was, literally part of the game's sales pitch so it's not a new ideal either.)

Still is, on the KSP site at least.

[Curveball Anders]

3 hours ago, NathanKell said:

unappreciated features

That's a new one that I'll add to my little book.

Only heard of (and often used) 'undocumented' or 'unexpected' features

 

[Geschosskopf]

 

Quote

The KSP universe is magical unicorns and bears less resemblance to our universe than an old tire at the bottom of the ocean does to Thursday. Squad's efforts in crafting this totally unique universe with its own wholly arbitrary laws that don't actually correspond to anything in the real world have been nothing short of amazing, considering how difficult it is to create a whole new working set of universal constants that mesh together in such a way to create a universe that - as you insist an I now agree - works on 100% totally different terms than our own in spite of looking like it in so many compellingly tangible ways.

Yes, this is exactly what I've been saying.  All demands for applying "just like Earth"  physics to the stock KSP universe are based solely on illogical, emotional commitment to Squad's deliberate parodies of certain purely cosmetic aspects of our own reality, rather than the objective scientific observation of that parody which the game itself encourages players to do.  Any informed, objective view of the many fundamental, universe-shaping, basic-laws-of-physics-making differences between KSP's reality and our own would immediately conclude that there is no way in Hell that any law of physics we're familiar with has any basis in KSP reality.  Ockham's Razor thus supports going with the KSP flow rather than trying to imposing objectively untenable Earthly physical laws in a place they most certainly don't belong.

6 hours ago, NathanKell said:

Yep, we bend the physical laws of the universe to taste because it rustles your jimmies. And we don't have bugs, only unappreciated features. Please carry on.

It doesn't jostle my jimmies because I accept KSP for what it is.  I'm totally OK with it having totally different laws of physics because it's intuitively obvious that it obeys completely different physical laws than our own universe.  Which is fine.  LIke I said, if Kerbals weren't humanoid in the least, and if Kerbin's graphics didn't look at all like what we can see around us, this discussion wouldn't even be happening.

 

Edited March 31, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[micr0wave]

i think there's a small misconception about the involvement of thermodynamics, the consumed/wasted energy comes from the ore (call it chemically bound), and none of the processes are revertable (can't make ore from fuel).

Like ... i go out with an empty bucket (the drill) and come back and have it filled with TNT (the ore), i bet igniting it will set free a bit more energy than i spent walking around with a bucket in my hand.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, micr0wave said:

i think there's a small misconception about the involvement of thermodynamics, the consumed/wasted energy comes from the ore (call it chemically bound), and none of the processes are revertable (can't make ore from fuel).

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh...  Just roll with it...

[Tourist]

Sheesh! Can we have at least one argument on the internet that doesn't end with somebody bringing up the laws of thermodynamics. (Shakes head in resignation)

Edited March 31, 2016 by Tourist

[Superfluous J]

46 minutes ago, Tourist said:

Sheesh! Can we have at least one argument on the internet that doesn't end with somebody bringing up the laws of thermodynamics. (Shakes head in resignation)

Not until the heat-death of the Universe.

(see what I did there)

[RocketSquid]

Actually, for the ISRU thing, a good analogy would be running an oil mining operation off of a gasoline generator. The gasoline contains more energy that it took to extract it from the oil (33 kWh/Gallon vs 6 kWh/gallon).

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

As a computer programmer, I try not to ever use mods. I want to play a game the way the original programmers intended. So Stock.

[monstah]

I don't know what's sarcasm and what's not, but this thread is at the same time thought-provoking and hilarious.

I, for one, would love to play on real-sized Earth, and haven't yet because: (1) RO is overkill for my idea of fun in the game, (2) the stock parts are not designed for building realistic-sized rockets at early game and (3) I had some problem playing ROmini in the past, and have been too lazy to try to sort it and play it again... 

Anyway, if the game was designed around a real-sized planet, with larger and lighter fuel tanks and nerfed reaction wheels... I'd love it.

So far, I agree with @5thHorseman and @regex here: the whole framework is based on our physics, the only thing holding it back in terms of realism is the universe design.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, monstah said:

Anyway, if the game was designed around a real-sized planet, with larger and lighter fuel tanks and nerfed reaction wheels... I'd love it.

Check out a mod called "SMURFF", I think, more stock sort of paradigm.  RO is for the detail-oriented (E: and when I say that I really mean the "detail obssessive")

Edited April 7, 2016 by regex

[Kerbart]

On 3/31/2016 at 11:21 PM, Tourist said:

Sheesh! Can we have at least one argument on the internet that doesn't end with somebody bringing up the laws of thermodynamics. (Shakes head in resignation)

No no no, what you're thinking about is Godwin's law.

[swjr-swis]

5 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

I want to play a game the way the original programmers intended.

And when that very first all-bugfree game comes out, the world will rejoice.

[Curveball Anders]

6 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

As a computer programmer, I try not to ever use mods. I want to play a game the way the original programmers intended. So Stock.

But the original programmers included extensive support for modding.

So one could argue that they intended a modded game

 

[klgraham1013]

8 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

As a computer programmer, I try not to ever use mods. I want to play a game the way the original programmers intended. So Stock.

I want to play a good game.

You're allowed to have a different opinion than me on what is good. - Obligatory PC advisory.

Edited April 7, 2016 by klgraham1013

[OhioBob]

9 hours ago, monstah said:

I, for one, would love to play on real-sized Earth, and haven't yet because: (1) RO is overkill for my idea of fun in the game, (2) the stock parts are not designed for building realistic-sized rockets at early game and (3) I had some problem playing ROmini in the past, and have been too lazy to try to sort it and play it again... 

Anyway, if the game was designed around a real-sized planet, with larger and lighter fuel tanks and nerfed reaction wheels... I'd love it.

My experience is similar.  I installed Real Solar System and gradually started to turn up the realism with the addition of mods.  I eventually reached a point where it stopped being fun because there were too many details to pay attention to, so I ended up backing it down to the previous level.  I never made it to full-blown RO.