Asteroids?

[justspace103]

Will KSP2 have asteroids? Will they be similar to what we have in the stock game with Near Kerbin Asteriods and Drestroids or will we see somethink like an asteriod belt where dres and eeloo are?

[MechBFP]

No one knows yet. 

[cubinator]

It would be cool to see larger asteroids and comets with very low but perceptible gravity orbiting the stars. Something more like a celestial body than a stone that you leech fuel out of.

[SciMan]

I'd love to see asteroids that go all the way from the smaller ones you find in KSP1, to truly huge ones the size of Gilly.

Even an E-class from KSP1 is tiny compared to what we've detected so far in the IRL asteroid belt, even after you factor in the scale differences between IRL and Kerbol system.

This could easily play into the colony system and interstellar travel as well. The best place to find raw materials to build spacecraft and bases with, without having a pesky gravity field to deal with, is in the asteroid belt. This is why there are companies launching cheap space telescopes looking to find a large metallic asteroid.

OK, so find a big metallic asteroid and you found yourself all the metal you need to make an interstellar spacecraft. That's cool, but how do you fuel it?

Easy, you find an ice asteroid. This time, you'll need to look much further out in the solar system. Out in the Kuiper belt to be specific.

So you've moved your metallic asteroid out to the Kuiper belt, and you've put it next to a suitable icy asteroid. Now what?

Attach engines to the icy asteroid, and use the icy body as a source for fuel, reaction mass, and life support supplies for the interstellar trip. However, don't just convert it all at once and store it in tanks on the ship. You can build lighter than that. Take the whole ball of ice with you, and put it at the front of the ship.

Maybe KSP2 won't simulate this, but if you do it that way the ball of ice acts as a shield against interstellar debris. Considering that something the size of a grain of sand at interstellar velocities would hit that shield with the explosive yield of several metric tons of TNT, it makes sense to have the "fuel tank" also be the debris shield. However you might have to use some composites to reinforce the ball of ice so that it doesn't just shatter when impacted.

If you find a big enough ball of ice, you can even take the metallic asteroid with you, so you can build ships at the destination instead of having to carry potentially hundreds of parts worth of landers with you. That's the real tangible benefit for it for KSP2. Even if it's much better optimized than KSP1, there will still be a part limit that exceeds the capabilities of either the game, your computer, or both.

 

Can't say it's an original idea, I stole it from the Orion's Arm world-building project, which is fiction but it's HARD Sci-Fi so they can't just go around fudging the laws of physics.