What parts do you find especially unrealistic

[cantab]

Strictly speaking one CMG cannot saturate. A set of them can saturate when they come to all point in the same direction and then can longer apply torque in a certain axis. But as far as KSP goes, a single gyro part can be assumed to be multiple gyros inside to give full control.

[Xavven]

14 minutes ago, cantab said:

Strictly speaking one CMG cannot saturate. A set of them can saturate when they come to all point in the same direction and then can longer apply torque in a certain axis. But as far as KSP goes, a single gyro part can be assumed to be multiple gyros inside to give full control.

Well, since we're getting technical, one CMG could technically still produce torque, but not in the desired axis once it's tilted enough. Here's a visual: https://youtu.be/kKIBGY2zaQg?t=316

Once the flywheel has rotated a full 90 degrees from its initial position, it will no longer produce torque in the "roll" axis (as viewed from the camera angle) but rather in the "pitch" axis. (Edit: whoops, I mean "yaw" axis)

Edited June 15, 2016 by Xavven

[Violent Jeb]

IIRC those fuel lines are pretty unrealistic.

They can move insane amounts of fuel, and even "oxidizer".

Oh, and please don't make any of the things listed here more realistic [:

[DaMachinator]

Fairings. Duplicate, triplicate, or quadruplicate your fairings. Do not shred my rocket with space confetti please.

 

And yes, I have both Procedural Fairings and a mod that makes the stock fairings clamshells to remedy this.

[KerikBalm]

umm, since 1.1, they can clamshelll in stock, no mods needed

[Corona688]

10 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, you can only twist/tilt the gyroscope so much, no? spin a gyroscope, spin it faster and faster... (not the rotor, but the housing of the gyroscope), no?

Yes and no.  Unlike reaction wheels, they don't wind-up just by maneuvering.  If the ship starts at rest, it will stop at rest in a different orientation once you stop twisting the gyro.  They will still wind-up when you use them to correct steady off-center forces but do so far more slowly than reaction wheels, because they're much more efficient.

Quote

Gyroscopes can be made very small, if they didn't saturate, why would reaction wheels ever be used?

Because gyros are notoriously unreliable over the long term.  The Hubble needs only two gyros to move, but was equipped with six in the expectation most would fail.  It was down to three "sort of" working gyros by the time its final servicing mission replaced all six.  They're just really complicated.

Reaction wheels, on the other hand, are so boneheadedly simple they very seldom fail.

So, reaction wheels are used for long-lived little satellites which must be aimed with precision, like all the tiny telescopes we're launching these days.  Gyros are still in common use for giant heavy things like the Hubble and the International Space Station.

 

Edited June 15, 2016 by Corona688

[KerikBalm]

2 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Yes and no.  Unlike reaction wheels, they don't wind-up just by maneuvering.  If the ship starts at rest, it will stop at rest in a different orientation once you stop twisting the gyro.  They will still wind-up when you use them to correct steady off-center forces but do so far more slowly than reaction wheels, because they're much more efficient.

Reaction wheels don't "wind up" (saturate?) by maneuvering either. If the ship starts at rest, it will stop at rest in a different orientation once you stop rotating the reaction wheel.

Lets not forget that when you twist a gyro to torque in one direction, it produces another torque... like when you hang a gyro, that was spun up horizontally, by one end with a string/rope. It resists the torque of gravity... but then spins about the rope/string. So I guess thats probably related to what was said earlier "A set of them can saturate when they come to all point in the same direction and then can longer apply torque in a certain axis."

If I want to rotate my ship clockwise, I spin the reaction wheel anticlockwise at X rpm, and the ship will rotate the other direction at Y rpm. When I've rotated clockwise the desired amount, I need to stop the ships rotation of Y rpm. To do that, you despin the reaction wheel that was previously spinning at X rpm.

The ship and the reaction wheel both end up at rest, both in different orientations (in theory the rxn wheel could be in the same orientation, if the amount of revolutions it needed to be spun is an integer value)

[Corona688]

Fair enough.  They both have wind up of sorts.  But a gyro is a lot stronger.

[Hevak]

On June 14, 2016 at 9:04 PM, Jeb1969 said:

Yeah that's kinda odd. As far as I know from my observations as a constant passenger aboard Jet Airliners thrust reversers are just one of many measures pilots use to bleed off excess thrust at touchdown, that and rarely used in lieu of a tug for pushback. 

Revere thrust is a bit of a misnomer really..  They don't actually "reverse" anything.. They simply redirect the airflow through a series of like louvers  in the engine housing which in essence creates drag to help slow them down, while at the same time reducing the amount of forward thrust being applied.  There is no actual reverse thrust.  I did not explain this very well. But many pilots have explained this.  

So while yes in a way some thrust is being directed forwards but it is not truly a " reverse thrust" of the engines. Meaning they aren't reversing the way the engine is operating in any way..

Note: I'm not saying anything is wrong with what you said Jeb1969, so while I quoted you I'm not directing it towards you in any way.. I just know quite a few people who think of reverse thrust have this idea like a plane goes in reverse like a car.  So I'm not in any way being personal toward you.

and im going to have to agree with those saying all parts.  Every part here is unrealistic. Some may be a bit close to it than others.  But even with as little as I understand I know that much of what goes on is just not possible at all. I do think that sqaud has done a pretty good job though on balancing between realistic and fun game. While some tweaks mentioned here may be nice. I don't think much really should be as far as the game goes.

it would be kind of nice to get maybe an official pack of realistic type parts that work in the kerbal system, but I think this may be a bit better handled by modders. But I would mind a pack sort like the asteroid day one. But I think it would just require to many more parts.  Maybe if they had optional configs and people could choose in options to go more kerbal, or more realistic and then all the parts change their configs depending what is chosen. Not sure how feasible that 2nd idea is though.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Hevak

[Ser]

Answering to the OP: I think the most unrealistic part is EVA

[cantab]

With a proper thrust reverser, the net thrust will indeed be in reverse - clue's in the name. However often only some of the jet exhaust is redirected.

[Znath]

The mining one is a little.....eh...

Apparently the kerb system is full of minerals that readily convert to either fuel or oxidizer without flaws.   Is it "game breaking" I guess it's arguable.  It does mean that you could technically have a giant ship that lands and refuels on every planetary body and visit every world.  I haven't really seen a ton of those ships though since they'd require a lot of meticulous design work.

Still, it's a nice module to have.

[Reaper_Works]

xenon gas. it is a noble gas and therefore unable to be ionized. however the engine works by "emitting ionized xenon gas through an exhaust port"

[Bill Phil]

Nozzle shapes. Seriously. The Merlin Vacuum's nozzle is huge, but the Merlin atmosphere version is smaller. So why is the 909 small?

51 minutes ago, Reaper_Works said:

xenon gas. it is a noble gas and therefore unable to be ionized. however the engine works by "emitting ionized xenon gas through an exhaust port"

That's how it works IRL. You see, it can be ionized, and even Helium can be oxidized by Flourine.

Using various processes you can strip electrons from atoms, without using atoms to react. That's what they do for ion engines. After the ions are accelerated, they shoot the electrons back to the ions. This makes them neutrally charged.

They can be ionized. Ionizing radiation...

[Snark]

56 minutes ago, Reaper_Works said:

xenon gas. it is a noble gas and therefore unable to be ionized. however the engine works by "emitting ionized xenon gas through an exhaust port"

What do you mean?  You can ionize a noble gas just fine, how do you think neon lights work?

And the Dawn spacecraft does, in fact, use xenon as its propellant.

[Bill Phil]

On June 14, 2016 at 4:15 AM, mk1980 said:

ISRU seems a bit over the top. i'm not really sure if it's *unrealistic* since i have no clue how real ISRU is supposed to work, but i guess the converters would be a lot less efficient and heavier? (i may be totally wrong here).

also, the nuke engines seem a bit unrealistic to me. as far as i know, they were never actually used in real life, so having working nuke engines in the game seems a bit weird, especially since they are placed on a fairly cheap research node. i could see them as some sort of "near future" tech similar to the rapier engines, but then they'd have to be on a 1000 tech node and require the fully upgraded R&D to unlock.

but maybe that's just me.

We had the NERVA tech in the early 60s. If anything it should be low tier. They had plans for a Saturn-N.

[Mlg Dank Meme lord]

I think that jet engines are unrealistic because they have unrealistically high thrust also i dob't really like how planets are so small i would not mind them a bit bigger but i would mind if they were as big as RSS or RO 

[Brownhair2]

1. What do the Mk1 Command Pod, the Mk 1-2 Command pod and the Mk 2 Cockpit all have in common? Non-Euclidean IVAs! Wouldn't even be that hard to fix, they're not that much larger on the inside

2. You can take an engine nacelle, put a thrust-reversed Wheesley on the front and the jet engine of your choice on the back and it flies

Edited July 6, 2016 by Brownhair2

[Corona688]

On 6/16/2016 at 5:04 PM, Znath said:

The mining one is a little.....eh...

Apparently the kerb system is full of minerals that readily convert to either fuel or oxidizer without flaws.   Is it "game breaking" I guess it's arguable.

You could say that "mineral" is one of the most common in the universe -- water.  Nothing but pure fuel and pure oxidizer in perfect proportions.

Of course, it's already burned, and would take at least an equivalent amount of energy to separate into its parts.  Which isn't how the game handles mining.

[Firemetal]

Rapier engines don't yet exist. There real life counterpart is the Sabre engine which is still in development for the Skylon but those bad boys are as expensive as hell. So basically the Rapier is the concept of the Sabre which could change in the future so this is potentially unrealistic? Idk. I like the rapier engines just like the rest of the SSTO building community does.

[Tyko]

Kerbals are aliens on an alien world. I tend to write off any "unrealism" as examples of how their world and technology differs from our own.

They live on a world made of fantastically dense material and they are clearly much more advanced in their magnetics sciences. Their magnetic docking rings are a great example. I accept that what they call "reaction wheels" are also likely just beyond us. Maybe using their magnetic technology and their super dense materials they're able to solve a problem we haven't yet. 

Think about how many things that were considered "impossible" a few hundred years ago are commonplace now.

[Guest]

On 17/06/2016 at 1:14 AM, Bill Phil said:

We had the NERVA tech in the early 60s. If anything it should be low tier. They had plans for a Saturn-N.

Much of the late tech in KSP is 60-70s in reality though, no? All the Apollo style missions I've seen done in KSP use the 3.75m rocket parts for the Saturn V, and SSME on every stage. And given their placement in the tree I was surprised to learn that the Voyagers carry RTGs.

Edited July 6, 2016 by Guest

[XB-70A]

10 minutes ago, String Witch said:

And given their placement in the tree I was surprised to learn that the Voyagers carry RTGs.

 

Much more true when we think about the US-A family launched from the late 60s.

[Vaporized Steel]

Well, besides the fact that they aren't available as a "part" in the VAB/SPH the "part" im referring to is in all other ways considerd to be a "part"

It is seen as a part and/or vessel in the cfg files, KSP handles it as a part, it has impact tolerance, it interacts with physics.

So if you include the "Kerbal" part as a part then yes, I find Kerbals the most unrealistic part in the game.

They're supposed to be living creatures, yet can survive extreme G tolerances, smash into the ground under certain angles without dying, that said without damaging the artificial atmosphere of there EVA suits, or even break them completely.

Have 600 Hundred meters per second of DELTA VEEE in a spacesuit container way to compact. And part of that propellant cannot be part of the rest of the spacesuit which seems to completely fit over the full height, width, length dimensions of their bodies, yet somewhere in the suit there is room for infinite oxygen supply. What is there compact monopropellant made off? It doesn't seem to be nitrous oxide (except perhaps in Jebediahs case since hes always laughing his ass off) Whatever this monopropellant substitute is, why do their rockets not have it

Not only has it enormous amount of Delta V, the EVA thrust have ridiculous thrust, because of this, Kerbals can takeoff from small moons and planets into orbit without needing a vessel.
Ironically though, whenever they need something that their suits can't handle, they oftenly need something 10 times as heavy at the least. The reason for this is probably because the EVA propellant is one of the most exclusive compounds in the cosmos and is exclusively used for EVA thrusters.

The upwards (shift key) and downwards (ctrl key) for EVA suit maneuvering shows the EVA exhaust fumes not correlating to the allignment of what I visually refer to be the Center of mass of the Kerbals body + suit. Nor is the exhaust fumes angled to correct for that misalignment. The Kerbals also have infinite Electric charge, if not, tell me when those headlights go out, because they haven't failed yet.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I find the command pods holding an infinite number of EVA propellant refuels to be unrealistic.

The refill should be drawn off the ships monoprop reserves in my opinion.

For example; if you just dropped a ring of Mk 1 command pods around the Mun a Kerbal could circumnavigate it indefinitely with his jetpack.