Are kerbals more or less advanced than humans?

[storm_soldier2377]

It seems that Kerbalkind's greatest technological achievements achievements lies in jet engines and harvesting energy. Whilst their rocket technology is almost up to par with ours they have jet engines with enough thrust to get into a suborbital trajectory by themselves. They also have highly efficient solar panels and RTGs with unlimited lifespans which is a little ahead of our level of power generation tech.

Edited July 7, 2016 by storm_soldier2377
Grammar correction and expansion of sentence

[Tyko]

5 hours ago, Vaporized Steel said:

Meanwhile on Kerbin, there is a 5 million mile tunnelsystem with several dozen large underground cities home to 700 million Kerbals. Their lack of sunlight may be the cause for their green skin. The only reason they have anything build above ground level is because rockets do not go well through a crusty surface.

This totally makes sense. Furthermore they descended from burrowing hibernating creatures. While modern Kerbals don't need to hibernate anymore, KASA scientists were able to tap into those latent genes and develop a medical means for Kerbals to go into a semi-hibernation state in which their bodies use very little food/water/oxygen, yet they are still aware enough to be able to respond to stimulus, wake up and enter flight commands when necessary. This state allows them to pass weeks, months, even years in some cases with minimal supplies and without going crazy from lack of stimuli.

[MDZhB]

I think that Kerbals exist only for space travel, nothing else. They only build the necessary facilities to do so. So, while they are more advanced on a space exploration level, their technology over all is probably significantly lacking. Therefore, I would say that humans are actually more advanced in everything except rocketry and space exploration. We probably even have more advanced cultures and societies as well.

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, storm_soldier2377 said:

It seems that Kerbalkind's greatest technological achievements achievements lies in jet engines and harvesting energy. Whilst their rocket technology is almost up to par with ours they have jet engines with enough thrust to get into a suborbital trajectory by themselves. They also have highly efficient solar panels and RTGs with unlimited lifespans which is a little ahead of our level of power generation tech.

Actually the jet engines are only a little more advance than our own (the Isp might be bit too high, but real jets are sufficiently efficient not to care so much).  The big issue is the unobtanium that makes up Kerbol gives it a delta-v to orbit of ~3km/s vs. Earth's 9km/s.  Kerbals have much weaker rockets and embarrassingly poor fuel tanks.  Their saving grace is their asparagus tech.  That would allow them to build 9km/s rockets with just 1.25m parts (similar to Vostok/Mercury, but vastly more complicated).

Not sure about solar panels (I suppose Kerbol has to get a similar amount of light/m**2 from Kerbin as Earth does from the Sun), but the RTGs are impressive.  Don't ask about the magic of reaction wheels.

[storm_soldier2377]

30 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Actually the jet engines are only a little more advance than our own (the Isp might be bit too high, but real jets are sufficiently efficient not to care so much).  The big issue is the unobtanium that makes up Kerbol gives it a delta-v to orbit of ~3km/s vs. Earth's 9km/s.  Kerbals have much weaker rockets and embarrassingly poor fuel tanks.  Their saving grace is their asparagus tech.  That would allow them to build 9km/s rockets with just 1.25m parts (similar to Vostok/Mercury, but vastly more complicated).

Not sure about solar panels (I suppose Kerbol has to get a similar amount of light/m**2 from Kerbin as Earth does from the Sun), but the RTGs are impressive.  Don't ask about the magic of reaction wheels.

The ease of making a craft with a positive twr does make the jet engines feel a bit overpowered. I am pretty sure though that ramjets don't work at low speed though.

[wumpus]

22 minutes ago, storm_soldier2377 said:

The ease of making a craft with a positive twr does make the jet engines feel a bit overpowered. I am pretty sure though that ramjets don't work at low speed though.

I'm not sure how much of the "ease" is due to simply being able to spam engines onto a wing.  I'm sure no Boeing engineer would last if tried to build a plane that way.

The blackbird's engines were capable of launching the wing from standstill and eventually reaching full ramjet mode at mach 3.  No idea if kerbal "ramjets" are supposed to be those engines (and how they managed to use stock fuel.  Even the fuel the blackbird used was "unobtanium" and said to cost as much as a "fine scotch").  I've heard normal ramjets start working around mach .9, but hardly go to orbital velocity (the X-43 can go full orbital >3.00km/s on Kerbol, assuming somebody supplies circularization.  I'm also pretty sure it was accelerated by rocket over mach 4).