Space Elevator for KSP2

[Klapaucius]

I am sure this won't be a thing to start off with, but I wonder if down the line this will be something that could be built in stock for KSP2.  Since there is more focus on base building and near-future tech, it would seem to be a natural option to have. Or, it would be a killer DLC.

 

The question would then be: what mechanism would we have in place to build it?  Taking a page from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, I would think a cool game solution would be to take a captured asteroid or several,  put them in geosynchronous orbit, dock a space station to them and then use the resources to build the cabling you would drop to the surface (as well building up for the counterweight).   There would need to be some part that, like the Convert-o-tron, that turns ore into carbon nanotubes.  It would be complex gamewise, but I think it would be amazing.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/472Edwards.pdf

http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/521Edwards.pdf

 

Edited December 30, 2019 by Klapaucius

[Incarnation of Chaos]

While the physics LOD system is rather encourging; it still has yet to be shown that anything on the scale of a space elevator will be any more possible in KSP2 than it is in KSP1. If it were to be added; it should be an endgame tech and require immense amounts of material and effort to build.

What people often neglect to think about is the tether earth-side, and how it would have to constantly be maintained at it's exact position or risk becoming a hypersonic whip. Because of these two things; i personally think any Space Elevator would end up having it's ground side actually in the ocean. This allows us to be perfectly equartoral, and have nothing but open ocean for hundreds of kilometers should it fail. You could also have a massive barge the size of a city; redundant hydro-jet thrusters with automated stationkeeping, redundant power and desalination equipment.

After you build it and all of this is in place; this facility should essentially become the new KSC. With the previous one decommissioned until you can afford to reopen it (Which by this point may be a laughable idea anyway)

[DStaal]

I can't find it at the moment, but there's been a decent discussion on it in one of the other threads.

Summary: You wouldn't be able to build it manually, and KSP likely couldn't model it all at once.  Which means if you put it in at all, it'd be in the form of some special part you have to get to a specific location, and then poof - you've got a teleporter to space.  While such is possible, it doesn't really add to gameplay in any meaningful way.

[Klapaucius]

2 hours ago, DStaal said:

I can't find it at the moment, but there's been a decent discussion on it in one of the other threads.

Summary: You wouldn't be able to build it manually, and KSP likely couldn't model it all at once.  Which means if you put it in at all, it'd be in the form of some special part you have to get to a specific location, and then poof - you've got a teleporter to space.  While such is possible, it doesn't really add to gameplay in any meaningful way.

Are you perhaps thinking of this thread by @HippieGold?

 

There is also SWDennis's space elevator. I have no idea how he did it, and I cannot seem to tag him on the post.

 

[mcwaffles2003]

11 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

What people often neglect to think about is the tether earth-side, and how it would have to constantly be maintained at it's exact position or risk becoming a hypersonic whip. Because of these two things; i personally think any Space Elevator would end up having it's ground side actually in the ocean. This allows us to be perfectly equartoral, and have nothing but open ocean for hundreds of kilometers should it fail. You could also have a massive barge the size of a city; redundant hydro-jet thrusters with automated stationkeeping, redundant power and desalination equipment.

Spoiler

 

There is more than 1 way to make a space elevator

[Bej Kerman]

11 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

and have nothing but open ocean for hundreds of kilometers should it fail.

What's it matter? You wouldn't be able to stop something like a massive geostationary tether from destroying the equator.

[Gargamel]

4 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

Are you perhaps thinking of this thread by @HippieGold?

While a good thread, I know we've had bigger ones before.  

Even if it's not included in the base game, I would love to see one of our genius modders come along and work something up.    Since the travel between the ground station and orbital station would be boring for gameplay reasons, I would suggest using something like EPL to warp a payload to the oribital station (and vice versa) after a given time frame. 

[DStaal]

4 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

Are you perhaps thinking of this thread by @HippieGold?

No, it was specifically about KSP2.

[OHara]

I can imagine the might just be doable, in KSP2, given the hints we have heard about expanding physics time-warp and physics simulation of complex craft.

We could have a 2.5-meter part that creates the tether out of ore.  The tether would stay attached to whatever part decouples from the top node of the tether-creator. Craft connected by a tether would have to be loaded together into the physics simulation, regardless of their distance, but probably having separate coordinate-origins when they are far apart, for the sake of numerical accuracy. 

The tether could be idealized as massless and infinitely strong, giving up wave-physics along the tether itself, but we would want KSP to compute a realistic tension along the line.  Probably the tether would need to have some stretch, maybe 10 ppm/kN, so that piloting mistakes that give a little slack in the tether do not necessarily rip apart the lander when the tether goes tight.  Maybe the tether-creator could feed the tether with some resistance, under control of a slider from 0 to 100 m/s per kN.

The orbital mechanics on the lander might be interesting in a fun way.  Rather than claw it to the ground, it might be interesting to claw some heavy barges to the lander, to make the forces involved more obvious.

Then for a climber we would need a part that connects to the tether, in the way the Claw connects, and that has a climbing mechanism that functions like electrically powered rover wheels, but with a maximum speed around 1 km/s.  Now the idealized tether has two parts, each with its own tension, and orientation.  As it climbs, it gains 1 km/s sideways velocity from the tether, so will bend the tether like a bowstring and try to lift the base off the surface.

Those two parts, plus the supporting physics simulation, would enable a lot of crazy construction.  There is some suspension of disbelief about mining enough material for 3000-km of lightweight super-strong cable, but the enabled gameplay might be worth it. 

I think a big part of the appeal of KSP is that it tries to be as realistic as practical about the physics, while indulging in a complete fantasy of a 0.1-scale 1-g planet and immortal green astronauts who don't need to eat.  The suspension of disbelief is only where needed to lower barriers to playing an interesting game.  Magical cable might meet that criterion.

[Rejected Spawn]

Allow me to interject a relevant question into this debate: Are we all specifically talking about Kerbin being the site for a space elevator?

As far as I can tell it would be a preposterous undertaking to make one work for our real life home world, both when it comes to its creation and long term stability. Earth is essentially in the grey zone where it's hard to tell if a space elevator is even possible or not, however if we did live on a tiny diameter ball that has a 6 hour long day/night cycle it would move a space elevator far towards the "looks entirely possible" end of the spectrum. The question in that case is how do we as a community want to treat Kerbin; do we want to highlight its "playground" characteristics or do we want to keep it toned down to lend a bit more feeling of realism to the game? Normally I lean more towards freedom than realism but I have to vote against blatantly showcasing the unrealistic properties of Kerbin this way.

What I'd entirely support would be any number of much smaller space elevators being possible to construct from colonies that sit on lower gravity bodies that have a reasonably high rotational speed, personally I'd prefer to draw a hard line at the point where the whole thing can be built entirely using materials that CAN be mass produced with the tech of today as opposed to somehow shoving a rock through a magical grinder and getting 1km of perfectly knitted atoms neatly lined up to a level that the best labs in the world can barely replicate at the scale of a needle.

Aside from the "it looks cool" argument the only reason for a space elevator to exist is to shuttle small quantities of materials and crew at a time between the surface of a planet/moon/whatever and a point at least at the height of a stable orbit, in real life as a way to cut costs and in games simply for convenience. Given that some manner of yet unnamed Craft Building Thing for space is already in the game and needs to be supplied with loads and loads of materials to actually produce anything it would be reasonable to provide players an elevator as an option other than doing a huge number of supply runs for every large construction project.

At the end of the day though I'd be surprised if space elevators appear in KSP2 in any form at all, they'd have to be a bit of a nightmare to make without completely disregarding any of several realism points and I shudder to think how powerful Kraken bait they'd be...

[Incarnation of Chaos]

14 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

What's it matter? You wouldn't be able to stop something like a massive geostationary tether from destroying the equator.

And that's why it becomes especially important to limit the potential damage; should it ever happen to come undocked.

[DStaal]

2 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

And that's why it becomes especially important to limit the potential damage; should it ever happen to come undocked.

Doesn't truly matter - if something happens, it's likely to wrap around the Earth entirely.  Might as well build on Mt. Kenya or the Ecuadorian Andes and save yourself several thousand feet of cable.  (And if it came lose and didn't fall, it wouldn't have anything at it's same height to hit.)

Though as I've noted in another thread: There are actually cheaper on a per-tonne-to-orbit basis Earth-to-orbit solutions around.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

+1 to the space elevator.

Why bother with silly rockets, when can just sit and go!

Also interplanetary railway would be nice.

 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

11 hours ago, DStaal said:

Doesn't truly matter - if something happens, it's likely to wrap around the Earth entirely.  Might as well build on Mt. Kenya or the Ecuadorian Andes and save yourself several thousand feet of cable.  (And if it came lose and didn't fall, it wouldn't have anything at it's same height to hit.)

Though as I've noted in another thread: There are actually cheaper on a per-tonne-to-orbit basis Earth-to-orbit solutions around.

It does; since it still has to fall back down. If there's several thousand KM between it and anything resembling civilization then those downstream could potentially be evacuated given preperations and planning already in place.

Also while that is very true (I'm a big fan of launch loops myself); this thread is specifically about space elevators in KSP2. So i didn't really think that was worth mentioning.

Also i do like the thought of building the tether on a rather tall mountain just because of how awesome it'd look xD

[mcwaffles2003]

16 hours ago, DStaal said:

Doesn't truly matter - if something happens, it's likely to wrap around the Earth entirely.  Might as well build on Mt. Kenya or the Ecuadorian Andes and save yourself several thousand feet of cable.  (And if it came lose and didn't fall, it wouldn't have anything at it's same height to hit.)

Though as I've noted in another thread: There are actually cheaper on a per-tonne-to-orbit basis Earth-to-orbit solutions around.

Any material the tether would be built with would probably not be very dense, so its terminal velocity would probably be low... if it survived reentry. So damage would probably be minimal.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Any material the tether would be built with would probably not be very dense, so its terminal velocity would probably be low... if it survived reentry. So damage would probably be minimal.

The biggest potential for any damage comes with the portions closest to the earth; since upon release they'd be going hypersonic. Though you are correct that the terminal velocity of any tether would be extremely low, but i'm unsure if it would have enough surface area to decelerate enough.