What tech belongs in KSP 2?

[mcwaffles2003]

I said yes to "Tech that is only possible if a material with certain properties exists, which may not exist - example: Warp drives using negative mass" but am against warp drives specifically for gameplay reasons. But problems with heat management requiring materials with properties we dont know exist to withstand I would not mind a tad of magic in. For the record I could give or take Met H, would rather have more nuclear engines but I will settle and be fine.

3 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

I don't care what engines or technology the devs use or make up. I only care if the physics are as similar to what you would expect to happen.

This, minus warp drives

Quote

Bad science tech, based on outdated theories -example: Aether jets and propellors

Wait.... propellers dont exist?! Or are you talking about propellers working in space? If the latter tthen this I would find the most egregious 

Edited July 22, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[Snark]

Some content has been removed.  Let's please play nice, people, and stick to having civil discussion without diving into making personal remarks, which are not only unhelpful but also against the rules (2.2.d).

Thank you for your understanding.

[Guest]

18 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

I get it, you don't want to broaden your horizons, and that's fine.

I usually don't use KSP to do actual rocket science research, I use it to play and then go elsewhere when I want to know how things works IRL.

 

18 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

However, that doesn't change the fact other people do read the "flavor text". Are you fine with them being deceived by something that doesn't affect your gameplay?

Stating that the game is set into a "near future" is enough to make clear that not everything shown is 100% realistic or possible, if someone is deceived by "The Martian" that going to Mars is super easy it's the problem is not the movie but that person that doesn't understand the differences between fiction and real life.

 

18 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

But it's still a vote, usually to let others decide in your stead. It doesn't matter what you "mean" by your voting, what people can see is the vote total. 

No, it simply states that the poll is missing options and leaves a lot of people out, I'm not the only one stating that the game should "feel realistic" regardless of the tech written in the flavor text.

 

[Guest]

Just now, Master39 said:

Stating that the game is set into a "near future" is enough to make clear that not everything shown is 100% realistic or possible, if someone is deceived by "The Martian" that going to Mars is super easy it's the problem is not the movie but that person that doesn't understand the differences between fiction and real life.

...except nobody will be deceived in that regard by "The Martian", because that's not the case in the movie. Nor the book, for that matter. Indeed, you picked the worst possible example, because the entire plot of that movie hinges on the fact that it's, in fact, very hard to go to Mars, and very hard to get back once you left it. No, "The Martian" gets its science right. What it gets wrong is how dust storms on Mars work (a flaw admitted by the author) and Martian gravity (admittedly, hard to film on Earth). The rest is pure, unadultered hard science. At present, the only obstacle to building something like the Hermes is money. That's what I want in KSP (including money being an issue, there better be a good reason to play career). 

A "near future" setting is exactly the sort of thing you say when you mean that yes, it's all 100% real science and very much possible to build. The Martian was also near future, and it shows technologies which are either being tested or already flown. In fact, a Mars researcher at my university praised the movie as showing some of the possible challenges a Mars expedition might face. This is the same thing we want from KSP. Far future is used when you want warp drives and unobtainium, usually sprinkled with technobablium. 

BTW, you're probably not the only one to cast the "I don't care" vote, but as of now, the "unobtainium" option has less than a third of the votes for "real physics" and "real tech" options (and the more far-fetched ones have even less). So it looks like community is not with you on that one. 

18 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Wait.... propellers dont exist?! Or are you talking about propellers working in space? If the latter tthen this I would find the most egregious 

The latter. He meant "aether screws", like in some early Clark Ashton Smith's pulp SF stories. It was a serious concept until Einstein's theories gained acceptance (Smith himself put rocketships in his later stories).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

No, "The Martian" gets its science right.

Most of it, I picked one of my favorite books exactly because I know that it gets most of its science right, keyword being "most", and I'm totally ok with the things it ignores or gets wrong. But yes, some uninformed watcher can get from the film that yes, "space is hard", but going to Mars is not that hard.

Nope, "near future" is not when you make something being 100% scientifically accurate and realistic, it's when you design a story or tech that feels realistic enough to be a believable near term future, even if it skimps on some detail or get some science wrong, just like "the martian".

 

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

BTW, you're probably not the only one to cast the "I don't care" vote, but as of now, the "unobtainium" option has less than a third of the votes for "real physics" and "real tech" options (and the more far-fetched ones have even less). So it looks like community is not with you on that one. 

The fact I don't vote doesn't mean you get to choose what I would have voted, I don't care about "unobtainium", the option "gameplay balance is more important than silly arguments over the realism of small and insignificant details in the flavor text" is not present so we don't know where the position of the 30 members that voted is on that.

[SOXBLOX]

On 7/22/2020 at 7:45 AM, KerikBalm said:

@Master39 Whether they play it to learn or not is, I think, beside the point. Many people will learn as a byproduct of playing, but not the goal.

The question is whether people believe that what they see in the game corresponds to reality. 

While this is a rather esoteric subject, in general I think spreading misinformation is very harmful.

[Snip]

@Master39

Alright. Let's outlaw Star Wars. It's a danger to humanity!!! 

 

Joking aside, I am fine with any technology which behaves in a manner consistent with physics, regardless of materials science or whatever. Take, for example, mH. It probably doesn't exist, but we can handwave that and still enjoy using it in the Kerbal universe. 

Also, heat radiators for the Kerbstein Drive. Those will be a little bit unobtanium, but the principle is still there. Things like that, sure, but nothing that ignores physics.

Edited July 23, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[SciMan]

I voted for both the "theoretically possible....." options, and I also voted for the "Tech that is only possible if a material with certain properties exists, which may not exist - example: Warp drives using negative mass" option.

However, I have a few caveats for that last one.

First off, I don't specifically want that kind of tech in the game, but I'll still buy and play it if it's in.

Secondly, if they DO put some form of "warp drive" in such as the "Alcubierre warp drive" in the game, it shouldn't be able to go faster than light.
That speed limit is absolute, and I'm of the belief that the only stable timeline is one where BACKWARDS time travel does not exist.

Thirdly, I think we should have more types of electric propulsion in the game. And my personal favorites are Resistojets and Arcjets. Both of these are power hungry but not to the point that you need a reactor to power them as main propulsion for a space probe. They also are unique in that they are mostly propellant omnivores, but they have higher specific impulse than chemical rockets (~4-500s for resistojets, 1000+s for arcjets).
This gives resistojets and arcjets a unique place in the game, as they could be made to run on any number of propellants, making logistics much easier when you can only get the machinery to make one or two kinds of propellant out to where you want to set up a colony.

[Lord Aurelius]

Stock KSP isn't a sci-fi game and should stay with propulsion methods that we know are physically possible, although I'm ok with extending it to things like fusion and antimatter rockets since otherwise interplanetary gameplay doesn't really work given the timescales and energy requirements.

[FreeThinker]

23 minutes ago, SciMan said:

. They also are unique in that they are mostly propellant omnivores, but they have higher specific impulse than chemical rockets (~4-500s for resistojets, 1000+s for arcjets).

This gives resistojets and arcjets a unique place in the game, as they could be made to run on any number of propellants, making logistics much easier when you can only get the machinery to make one or two kinds of propellant out to where you want to set up a colony.

Well regarding resistorest, I would think you still have the same limitation that plagues solid core nuclear engine, which if the engine has an anti-reducing or anti-oxidizing coating. which would limit the propellants

[mcwaffles2003]

7 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

The latter. He meant "aether screws", like in some early Clark Ashton Smith's pulp SF stories. It was a serious concept until Einstein's theories gained acceptance (Smith himself put rocketships in his later stories).

I thought the aether was debunked  via michelson-morley experiment.

[Bej Kerman]

56 minutes ago, SciMan said:

Secondly, if they DO put some form of "warp drive" in such as the "Alcubierre warp drive" in the game, it shouldn't be able to go faster than light.
That speed limit is absolute, and I'm of the belief that the only stable timeline is one where BACKWARDS time travel does not exist.

The entire point of the Alcubierre drive is that it moves space, not the vessel. Space can move as fast as it likes.

Also don't forget that the Novikov self consistency principle can keep a timeline with backwards time travel "stable", whatever stable means.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Bej Kerman

[Guest]

On 7/23/2020 at 1:12 PM, mcwaffles2003 said:

I thought the aether was debunked  via michelson-morley experiment.

Now we can see that, and some people certainly thought it moved aether drives from "unobtainium" to "bad science" even at the time, but this view was far from universal. It was what first made people think that something's wrong with the idea, or even that it's complete humbug, but aether remained widely accepted until well after Einstein got his Nobel prize. It certainly should have been aether's nail in the coffin, but unfortunately experimental evidence it doesn't quite work like that, [snip]

Gameplay balance is completely independent of "flavor text". It can be a balanced game without miracle technologies. Since you're not interested in science (or lack thereof) behind the parts you're using, you won't notice the difference. At least in this you're right, given that, you don't need to vote on this.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Guest
typo

[DunaManiac]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

The entire point of the Alcubierre drive is that it moves space, not the vessel. Space can move as fast as it likes.

Also don't forget that the Novikov self consistency principle can keep a timeline with backwards time travel "stable", whatever stable means.

Not necessarily, due to various restrictions. According to the wikipedia article (now, I'm not a theoretical physicist and I suspect whoever wrote that section of the article probably wasn't either, so take Wikipedia with a grain of salt), the thickness of the wall at 10 times light speed would get dangerously close to the plank limit, 10^-32 meters, as well as requiring enough exotic matter to outway the observable universe.

It is an interesting concept, but I doubt that the Warp Drive could really take us to speeds that would allow us to travel to other stars in a realistic timeframe.

[Soda Popinski]

55 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

Not necessarily, due to various restrictions. According to the wikipedia article (now, I'm not a theoretical physicist and I suspect whoever wrote that section of the article probably wasn't either, so take Wikipedia with a grain of salt), the thickness of the wall at 10 times light speed would get dangerously close to the plank limit, 10^-32 meters, as well as requiring enough exotic matter to outway the observable universe.

 

I believe that was the estimate from the original Alcubierre paper.  Subsequent refinements got the amount to merely the mass of Jupiter, then to about 700 kg.  Though, I believe those newer numbers came from NASA's Harold White, who was also studying the "EM Drive" seriously.

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

Not necessarily, due to various restrictions. According to the wikipedia article (now, I'm not a theoretical physicist and I suspect whoever wrote that section of the article probably wasn't either, so take Wikipedia with a grain of salt), the thickness of the wall at 10 times light speed would get dangerously close to the plank limit, 10^-32 meters, as well as requiring enough exotic matter to outway the observable universe.

It is an interesting concept, but I doubt that the Warp Drive could really take us to speeds that would allow us to travel to other stars in a realistic timeframe.

Even if it could, due to special relativity you can only use it for one leg of the journey. This means you still have to accelerate conventionally to either get there or to come back. So it's much less useful - unless you can use it to warp at high fractions of c and maybe even alter the relative flow of time in the bubble. Then a 99.99% c ship would be possible. The question is how difficult would such a drive be.

[shdwlrd]

On 7/22/2020 at 1:18 PM, mcwaffles2003 said:

This, minus warp drives

I figured this was a given since Nate said they wouldn't included FTL drives in the game anyway. 

[Incarnation of Chaos]

Hey; iv'e been seeing a lot of discussion about "Warp drives" and the like here. And i'm not sure if it's alright to drop here, but i'll do it anyway.

Spoiler

 

In the Spoiler is a interview between the guy who runs the channel and Dr. Miguel Alcubierre who's the author of the famous paper that proposed our much-talked about IRL warp drive. It's nearly an hour long, but i'd consider it worth a listen. He breaks it down, addresses the FTL/Time Travel issues (There's geometries that don't allow Time Travel, but do allow FTL that can be solved for. He also does admit that the same math can be used to solve for ones that make it into a time machine). They also go into the issues with Negative Energy, creating it, mass etc.

But once you parse thru it; i think that some opinions may change (Or be revised; i'd love to see rebuttals all the same).

Now back to the topic at hand; i voted for the bottom two and the one that includes warp. Why? Because while I'm a staunch believer in the idea that we should view the possibilities in the lens of what's possible with current science and understanding; there's also the fact that KSP2 will allow us to achieve scales much larger than current human civilization. Generating large amounts of Antimatter or Negative Energy even via inefficient processes looks very different as a Type II civilization than it does now. And on many occasions as we got access to more and better industry, and practical applications of science were used it turned out that our predictions needed to be revised.

This doesn't mean that we should throw all current understanding to the wind, but that these current obstacles could simply transition from a gray area to a engineering challenge. And their application could very well reveal new physics that would further assist in developing these technologies. And while i wouldn't say KSP2 should speculate too much on "New Physics", i think transitioning these into essentially late-game manhattian project esque endeavors could be a worthy compromise. 

[mcwaffles2003]

 

1 hour ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Hey; iv'e been seeing a lot of discussion about "Warp drives" and the like here. And i'm not sure if it's alright to drop here, but i'll do it anyway.

  Hide contents

 

In the Spoiler is a interview between the guy who runs the channel and Dr. Miguel Alcubierre who's the author of the famous paper that proposed our much-talked about IRL warp drive. It's nearly an hour long, but i'd consider it worth a listen. He breaks it down, addresses the FTL/Time Travel issues (There's geometries that don't allow Time Travel, but do allow FTL that can be solved for. He also does admit that the same math can be used to solve for ones that make it into a time machine). They also go into the issues with Negative Energy, creating it, mass etc.

But once you parse thru it; i think that some opinions may change (Or be revised; i'd love to see rebuttals all the same).

Now back to the topic at hand; i voted for the bottom two and the one that includes warp. Why? Because while I'm a staunch believer in the idea that we should view the possibilities in the lens of what's possible with current science and understanding; there's also the fact that KSP2 will allow us to achieve scales much larger than current human civilization. Generating large amounts of Antimatter or Negative Energy even via inefficient processes looks very different as a Type II civilization than it does now. And on many occasions as we got access to more and better industry, and practical applications of science were used it turned out that our predictions needed to be revised.

This doesn't mean that we should throw all current understanding to the wind, but that these current obstacles could simply transition from a gray area to a engineering challenge. And their application could very well reveal new physics that would further assist in developing these technologies. And while i wouldn't say KSP2 should speculate too much on "New Physics", i think transitioning these into essentially late-game manhattian project esque endeavors could be a worthy compromise. 

 

If the tech tree is sufficiently long that to get to the final tech would require full science completion of half of the in-game universe... than I wouldn't mind adding a form of FTL travel simply for gameplay reasons if many long distance flights becomes too cumbersome for good gameplay. My main objection to its inclusion is once achieved it overturns and subverts the core newtonian mechanics that the game teaches us and allows us to avoid learning and flexibly utilizing them. If it can be assured that tech like this won't prevent that struggle and come long after then I wouldn't object to its inclusion

[KerikBalm]

On 7/22/2020 at 11:18 AM, mcwaffles2003 said:

Wait.... propellers dont exist?! Or are you talking about propellers working in space? If the latter tthen this I would find the most egregious 

I was referring to Aether Jets, and Aether propellors

On 7/23/2020 at 5:06 AM, Master39 said:

Stating that the game is set into a "near future" is enough to make clear that not everything shown is 100% realistic or possible,

 

On 7/23/2020 at 7:45 AM, Master39 said:

Nope, "near future" is not when you make something being 100% scientifically accurate and realistic, it's when you design a story or tech that feels realistic enough to be a believable near term future, even if it skimps on some detail or get some science wrong

You and I (and I suspect @Dragon01 ) do not agree on the definition of near-future. To me near-future explicitly means something that we know can be done, but hasn't been done, or at least something that, to the best of our knowledge, can be done. I would put forth Wehner Von Braun's "Man will conquor space soon" as a standard of what I would consider a "near-future" (for its time):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Will_Conquer_Space_Soon!

and to push a bit farther, I'd still consider the fictional "The Mars project" (again, von Braun) to be "hard sci-fi", near-future

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

Now, that proposal has some things that won't work (he was using bad estimates for the properties of Mars, and the expedition would have been a failure), and the scale of what he proposed is ridiculous, but to the best of the information known at the time, it was feasible. 

If we already know something indicates that its not possible, it doesn't belong in a near-future setting. If something we don't know renders it impossible at a later point, I can forgive that (like von Braun wanting to land planes on mars, before realizing the atmosphere was 10x thinner than anticipated).

On 7/23/2020 at 1:12 PM, mcwaffles2003 said:

I thought the aether was debunked  via michelson-morley experiment.

Yea, me too, but the important part is that its thoroughly debunked now.

[snip]

On 7/22/2020 at 8:39 AM, Soda Popinski said:

It's KerikBalm code for Metallic Hydrogen.

Actually, its sort of a red- herring, knowing people would see that I used the same term. I consider that mmH belongs in the "Bad science tech, based on outdated theories" category, which is getting very few votes.

The distinction between an unobtanium rocket, and a mmH rocket, is IMO, that mmH implies bad science, whereas unobtanium does not, but I can kind of see mmH being somewhere between these categories, or falling under either one. That's why I said its a discussion for another thread.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Vanamonde

[Incarnation of Chaos]

3 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

If the tech tree is sufficiently long that to get to the final tech would require full science completion of half of the in-game universe... than I wouldn't mind adding a form of FTL travel simply for gameplay reasons if many long distance flights becomes too cumbersome for good gameplay. My main objection to its inclusion is once achieved it overturns and subverts the core newtonian mechanics that the game teaches us and allows us to avoid learning and flexibly utilizing them. If it can be assured that tech like this won't prevent that struggle and come long after then I wouldn't object to its inclusion

And i guess that's the key; it should be almost a "Halo Tech". It should only be there for the 1% of players that would play long enough and hard enough to require it, and essentially be their reward.

That's how iv'e always thought about it anyway, but i think the fact that KSP mods exist that add it in more or less as a cheat (Some are much more realistic implementations mind you.) Does kinda poison the well of discussion around it, and that was one of my main reasons for posting that. Because KSP2 allows us to put Scale as a obstacle in front of things like this, and deal with their implications.

[Space Nerd]

Anything that sound sfuturistic is ok

(I didn't vote the bad science option only because aether doesn't sound futuristic, so do other old theories)

Edited July 24, 2020 by Space Nerd

[Guest]

[snip]

On 7/24/2020 at 1:07 AM, KerikBalm said:

Actually, its sort of a red- herring, knowing people would see that I used the same term. I consider that mmH belongs in the "Bad science tech, based on outdated theories" category, which is getting very few votes.

I noticed, and I have to say found this utterly hilarious.  Though I think it'd work just as well with Avatar reference. That, or magic pony dust, but you'd have to be around as long as I to come up with that  (ponies were a thing on these forums way back when @NovaSilisko was making his stock revamp as a mod).

[snip]

Edited July 26, 2020 by Guest

[Guest]

On 7/24/2020 at 1:07 AM, KerikBalm said:

You and I (and I suspect @Dragon01 ) do not agree on the definition of near-future. To me near-future explicitly means something that we know can be done, but hasn't been done, or at least something that, to the best of our knowledge, can be done.

The point is where you draw the line, my line is at "I don't care what of the very speculative potential future technologies you use if the result feels realistic".

[snip]

But, based on where you draw the line that could be a deal breaker.

[snip]

Keep in mind that RTGs are so innocuous that we used to put them inside people bodies with the famous "nuclear pacemakers", surely not something that needs to be kept 7 km away, underground and with a big skull and bones flag on top of it.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by Vanamonde

[KerikBalm]

[snip]

 

As to the term "Near-future" - we cannot know for sure what the future holds, but predictions in the near future are almost invariably more accurate than predictions of the distant future. So I would interpret near-future to mean a future that we can predict with some degree of accuracy, and thus a setting with a high degree of realism.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Vanamonde

[KerikBalm]

On another note, can anyone provide an argument against "using cesium doping to magnetically confine metallic hydrogen exhaust" being techno-babble?

Lets grant the mmH for that one, just how is adding some cesium supposed to make the exhaust be able to be magnetically confined, keeping in mind this additional cesium has to be small enough that just mixing mmH with lH isn't more attractive?