Realism vs Stock

[monstah]

10 hours ago, regex said:

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")

Thanks! I'm detail obsessive about my real life, no need to do the same on video games

6 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

But the original programmers included extensive support for modding.

So one could argue that they intended a modded game

Indeed, that's how I see it!

[Geschosskopf]

14 hours ago, RocketSquid said:

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).

No, you're missing a key point.  Raw Ore doesn't burn in the stock game (although it does in a few mods), whereas crude oil does burn.

The reason this is important is that crude oil is a battery.  It's full of stored, highly condensed solar energy accumulated by living things and geologic forces.  All we're doing is releasing that stored energy, and it takes very little energy input on our end to get that started.  Just the heat of a match can burn an entire train of oil tank cars, because once the 1st bit of oil ignites from the match, the energy it releases raises the adjacent bit of oil to its ignition temperature, and so on until it's all burning.  This is why we get more energy out of petroleum products than we spend on getting them to the market, even though none of the processes we use on it are even close to 100% efficient.  We got all that stored energy in it for free, over millions of years of sunshine and geologic processes.

OTOH, Ore does nothing by itself.  You have to add energy to it to split it into various burnable fuels, and the 2nd Law absolutely forbids you from ever recovering as much energy from burning that fuel as you spent making it.  That's what the 2nd Law is all about.  And this is just the ISRU and fuel cell themselves, not counting all the heat wasted going out radiators, nor running drills and refueling a ship at the same time.

[FullMetalMachinist]

15 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

No, you're missing a key point.  Raw Ore doesn't burn in the stock game (although it does in a few mods), whereas crude oil does burn.

<And then lots of other good stuff>

One key point you missed while talking about the burning crude oil example: oxygen. The chemical reaction that is "burning" is simply oxidation taking place really quickly and releasing a lot of heat. 

This reinforces your point about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because on Earth that oxygen is provided by the atmosphere, but in space in KSP the oxygen comes from the ore, which took energy for the converter to extract it. 

Edit: So in KSP, you're basically taking one step forward and one step back (separate fuel and oxidizer from ore is one step, put them together by burning is another) and you somehow get more energy out and move forward two steps. 

Edited April 8, 2016 by FullMetalMachinist

[Superfluous J]

22 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

No, you're missing a key point.  Raw Ore doesn't burn in the stock game (although it does in a few mods), whereas crude oil does burn.

The game abstracts Ore, though. "Ore" isn't one thing. It's essentially everything on the planet that you need to make fuel. There is oxygen in the rocks. There is "liquid fuel stuff" in the rocks. The processor part does all the necessary stuff to split the actual useful stuff from the ore. Ore is not "burned LOX" and you don't have to unburn it to separate the OX from the L.

Is it realistic? Not in the least. Does it violate the laws of thermodynamics? Not in the least.

[Geschosskopf]

12 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

One key point you missed while talking about the burning crude oil example: oxygen. The chemical reaction that is "burning" is simply oxidation taking place really quickly and releasing a lot of heat. 

This reinforces your point about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because on Earth that oxygen is provided by the atmosphere, but in space in KSP the oxygen comes from the ore, which took energy for the converter to extract it. 

Yes, thanks for pointing that out.  This is why I used burning the gases produced from electrolysizing water as my original analogy.

 

12 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Edit: So in KSP, you're basically taking one step forward and one step back (separate fuel and oxidizer from ore is one step, put them together by burning is another) and you somehow get more energy out and move forward two steps. 

EXACTLY!  It really surprises me that such a glaring violation of 2 pillars of our universe (2nd Law of Thermo and conservation of energy) always seem to escape notice by those who think aerodynamics and whatnot are the be-all and end-all of just-like-Earth "realism".

 

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

The game abstracts Ore, though. "Ore" isn't one thing. It's essentially everything on the planet that you need to make fuel. There is oxygen in the rocks. There is "liquid fuel stuff" in the rocks. The processor part does all the necessary stuff to split the actual useful stuff from the ore. Ore is not "burned LOX" and you don't have to unburn it to separate the OX from the L.

Is it realistic? Not in the least. Does it violate the laws of thermodynamics? Not in the least.

It absolutely violates the 2nd Law because Ore itself doesn't burn in stock.  There's no getting around that.  This makes just the ISRU and fuelcell parts of the whole system try to be a closed-loop, 100% efficient, totally reversible, "ideal" system.  Which is something the 2nd Law simply does not allow to exist, or we'd have had perpetual motion machines since at least Da Vinci's time.

And Ore can only be defined as burned fuel.  This is because:

1. Ore doesn't burn.   Therefore, it must already at its lowest energy state, i.e., ashes, but OTOH....
2. Every gram of refined Ore does burn.  1 ton of Ore becomes 1 ton of whatever flavor of fuel you want (which I think is inappropriate---there should be industrial waste / byproducts, etc., but that's beside the point).

So again, we're faced with an impossible closed-loop "ideal" system, trying to split water by burning the gases released by splitting the water.

Now, all this would change if we had stock parts that burned raw Ore.  Then we could indeed say that Ore is the Kerbal version of crude oil or whatever, and we can get as much energy out of burning it as we want.compared to what we spend producing fuel from it.  But until that day comes, a mining system run by fuelcells that produces any surplus fuel at all even after losing gobs of heat via radiators is totally against the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and conservation of energy.

But that opens another can of worms.  Earth only has oil because it's had trillions of living organisms dying and having their vital juices cooked down over hundreds of millions of years.  Thus, there can be no oil on lifeless planets.  So how would we explain the presence of petroleum-like Ore on all the lifeless bodies in KSP?

Anyway, the bottom line is, as long as Ore itself doesn't burn in stock, if you define "realism" as  just-like-Earth, then you cannot justify using fuelcells to power mining/refining systems.  You would instead only use solar power in the inner system and fission reactors in the outer system.  Or you could just roll with the obviously magical physics of the KSP universe and toss the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and conservation of energy right out the window,  They'd just go on the same garbage pile as every one of our other conservation laws, plus the Earthly versions of the 4 fundamental forces and every other Earthly physical property based on them.

[monstah]

8 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

The game abstracts Ore, though. "Ore" isn't one thing. It's essentially everything on the planet that you need to make fuel. There is oxygen in the rocks. There is "liquid fuel stuff" in the rocks. The processor part does all the necessary stuff to split the actual useful stuff from the ore. Ore is not "burned LOX" and you don't have to unburn it to separate the OX from the L.

Is it realistic? Not in the least. Does it violate the laws of thermodynamics? Not in the least.

I agree with the other guys, 5th, it seems like a magical closed loop to me, too. That bolded part there is why I think you're wrong in saying it doesn't violate the second law, because that necessary stuff is where energy comes out of nowhere.

Let's turn the question upside down, then: where does the energy come from?

[Superfluous J]

4 minutes ago, monstah said:

I agree with the other guys, 5th, it seems like a magical closed loop to me, too. That bolded part there is why I think you're wrong in saying it doesn't violate the second law, because that necessary stuff is where energy comes out of nowhere.

Let's turn the question upside down, then: where does the energy come from?

I'm really trying to stay out of this topic because we're just talking in circles, and nobody's going to agree with anybody else. For what it's worth I do understand your argument even if I don't agree with it. I've explained my point, and if I did it so poorly that nobody can understand me, then I am at a loss to explain it further. But I'll try. One more time.

Essentially, I can see a situation where there is oxygen in the rocks AND stuff that can be turned into LF in the rocks, and they have not combined for some reason. So, we're not separating them from each other, but from the "other stuff" in the rocks. That is (relatively) energy-cheap, and then when we combine them in combustion (which never happened originally to them for whatever reason) we get more energy from that than it took to separate them from the rocks.

Now in reality this should mean that there is "LF-Ore" and "O2-Ore" and maybe there are different amounts of each in each area, but the game is abstracting that away as it very well should, lest we end up with hundreds of resources in a cacophony of confusion that I don't want to deal with. I'm perfectly happy just mining "ore" and being done with it.

As an aside, I'd also be perfectly happy just mining "LF" from the ground and dispensing with that whole ore middleman.

[monstah]

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I'm really trying to stay out of this topic because we're just talking in circles, and nobody's going to agree with anybody else

It's a closed loop!  Heheheh. Besides, there's two points of view here, and at least 3 people discussing. Someone is bound to agree with someone! They might do like my dad and my uncle, not realize they're agreeing and yell unrecognized agreements at each other, but that's another issue!

Anyway, seriously, now. I understand your argument, too, and I understand being tired of a discussion (but i'm just hopping in fresh!). I don't want to antagonize you, either, so feel free to skip responding to me. The thing that bugs me is, I've never said there wouldn't be Oxygen in Ore (and I'm not saying you put words in my mouth, either, I'm just clarifying). I bet there is; Oxygen is very common in our universe, and I'm pretty sure, say, Dres, could be rich in silicates and stuff. It's unbinding it from everything else that's the problem! I mean, the great thing about oxy is its reactiveness, and since it releases so much energy when it reacts with anything, you must put at least the same amount of energy into separating it from whatever else is in Ore. That part where you say its (relatively) energy-cheap, I believe that is where we're disagreeing.

See, I don't question that 'Ore' is an abstraction for everything chemical you need to make fuel. But like I asked, where does the energy come from? Ours comes from the sun, and is stored via photosynthesis. On Dres, however?

For what it's worth, too, I'm perfectly comfortable with it the way it is as a game mechanic! It's a game, and it plays just fine. I just like these discussions for the sake of argument  

(oh, and I downloaded All Y'All yesterday. BEAUTIFUL  )

[suicidejunkie]

Consider the case of asteroid mining.

You dig up some ore, process it into LFO, and 20% of that to power the whole process with fuel cells.

At the end of the operation, you have gone from 100 tons of resources in the asteroid to 80 tons of fuel and 20 tons of "lost" mass which was converted to energy in the fuel plus waste heat.

 

The only difference when on a planet is that the planet doesn't lose mass because it isn't worth tracking such small fractions.

[pandaman]

For me, the simplification and abstraction of the ISRU system is the right solution from a gameplay perspective, which is exactly what it's there for. And really what matters.

It may well bend or defy a few laws of physics a little, but it's not a - land, hit refuel button, all tanks instantly full - type mechanism.  It still takes planning and time to do, and as a way of representing the idea in a way that's accessible to all skill levels and interest levels of players it doesn't do a bad job IMO.

[John FX]

32 minutes ago, pandaman said:

For me, the simplification and abstraction of the ISRU system is the right solution from a gameplay perspective, which is exactly what it's there for. And really what matters.

It may well bend or defy a few laws of physics a little, but it's not a - land, hit refuel button, all tanks instantly full - type mechanism.  It still takes planning and time to do, and as a way of representing the idea in a way that's accessible to all skill levels and interest levels of players it doesn't do a bad job IMO.

Unlike the stock scanning process for discovering said ore. That is just get in a polar orbit, hit scan and you have scanned the entire planet (unless it was changed at some point, I use Scansat for more realism)

[FullMetalMachinist]

4 hours ago, pandaman said:

For me, the simplification and abstraction of the ISRU system is the right solution from a gameplay perspective, which is exactly what it's there for. And really what matters.

I quite agree, however, it's not realistic at all. 

Do I use it in a stock game? Sure, no problem, because there's plenty other unrealistic things in stock that adding this to the list doesn't really matter. 

But do I use it in a RO/RSS game? Not a chance. 

[Geschosskopf]

10 hours ago, John FX said:

Unlike the stock scanning process for discovering said ore. That is just get in a polar orbit, hit scan and you have scanned the entire planet (unless it was changed at some point, I use Scansat for more realism)

Actually, SCANsat is arguably less real than the stock system (which hasn't ever changed AFAIK).  The stock system does not in any way tell you from orbit where the best ore is, it just tells you that areas the size of continents contain more biomes with relatively high ore values for that planet than low values..  Given the size of these areas, however, even that information is often misleading because small biome areas of high-value ore get drowned out amidst large biome areas of low-value ore.  Thus, to really find where the good ore is, you have to explore on the surface and low orbit with the surface scanner and NBS.;  Only the surface scanner will tell you which biome has what ore, and only the NBS can lead you to local hotspots within any biome.

With SCANsat OTOH, if you disable stock scanning, then you can get precise information from orbit and all it costs you is the time it takes to map the whole planet (1 week to 1 month depending on the planet).  Thus, no need to actually verify results on the ground.

6 hours ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

I quite agree, however, it's not realistic at all. 

Do I use it in a stock game? Sure, no problem, because there's plenty other unrealistic things in stock that adding this to the list doesn't really matter. 

But do I use it in a RO/RSS game? Not a chance. 

Bravo, sir!  There is no such thing as a pan-universal physical law.  Each universe is free to have its own values for any and all laws-of-physics variables and those values can be inferred from scientific observations in those other universes just as they can be in our own.  So, RSS should have values approximating what we see around us, but stock KSP cannot possibly have the same laws as our universe or it simply would not exist as we see it.  Res ipsa loquatur.

[Sepehr]

I prefer RO or RSS

I have real life rockets and Spacecrafts and it's nice to see RSS