Which ksp 2 drive will be most powerful and effiecient

[An Amongus Sussy Player]

Put your thoughts below

[Dientus]

I'm not sure what is even in KSP 2... as far as I know no one does (besides whats been shown visually like orion drive) But if I have to guess, and assuming they are all in there. Antimatter hands down.

[Jack Mcslay]

The idea is that you can have an engine that's efficient or one that's powerful, you can't have both. In KSP all engines are minimally powerful such that you might only need a more powerful, less efficient engine if you need to land - all engines in the first game are powerful enough to transfer and capture orbits save maybe for ion engines in very dV-demanding capture burns. So I suspect most of the new engines aren't going to be particularly powerful.

[PlutoISaPlanet]

I do not know. Maybe the orion?

[Kerminator K-100]

NERV engine

Just add a few hundred

[Bej Kerman]

Torch drive option is redundant, it's just an umbrella term for any engine that burns for long periods of times - half of this list. That being said, probably Daedalus, ignoring the antimatter option.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Bej Kerman

[An Amongus Sussy Player]

On 4/16/2021 at 10:59 PM, Kerminator K-100 said:

NERV engine

Restock copied textures   (slim and trimmed like restock)
 

 

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Torch drive option is redundant

Very true 
I think the daedalus is just not known to how it works, its basically an orion but fusion version because it is Inertial confinement fusion.
Antimatter is balanced soooo

On 4/16/2021 at 6:14 PM, Dientus said:

Antimatter hands down

Not really, i meant the antimatter won't be like in FFT mod. just a boring balanced antimatter drive  

[Dientus]

1 hour ago, Weak Player said:

Not really, i meant the antimatter won't be like in FFT mod. just a boring balanced antimatter drive  

Not basing it on a mod, or Star Trek, or even popular misconceptions.

 

The thing iisan antimatter drive can be anything we wanted it to be ingame since one does not exist and cannot exist with current technology. Basing it on what we do know that one antimatter collision releases about 2 billion electric volts of energy, which is more than any nuclear fission or fusion or chemical reaction could ever get near, especially if you are using the same mass of each 'fuel' type, no comparison.

 

 

[Bej Kerman]

14 hours ago, Weak Player said:

just a boring balanced antimatter drive  

And that would be...? You can't make 100% matter to energy conversion balanced whatsoever.

[mcwaffles2003]

The definition of a torch drive is a drive that is both very powerful and very efficient.... 

This question is silly

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php

Quote

What rocket designers really want is an engine with both high thrust and high specific impulse. Such engines don't have to use weak Hohmanns, they can use fantastically expensive (but rapid) Brachistochrone trajectories.

Such engines are called "Torch Drives"

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by mcwaffles2003

[Dientus]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

And that would be...? You can't make 100% matter to energy conversion balanced whatsoever.

When I see "balanced" used in this context, I see it as referring to game balancing, after all if we were to have tech to properly contain antimatter safely and for extended periods, as well as use its 100% conversion rate it would be game breaking.

*Added - just adding the same idea that using a fully functional Alcubierre Warp Drive drive does not destroy the destination when you come out of warp.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Dientus
added for comparison

[Starhelperdude]

it's not orion, orion is not near as efficient as an even low tech ICF engine

the nerv (or any other NTR) doesn't have that much ISP when compared to other fission and fusion engines

Metallic Hydrogen seems also way less than most fission and fusion engines

it also depends on what you mean with exotic fission, as such stuff as NSWRs (which I personally count as exotic fission) don't have that high ISP (when compared to stuff like a ICF) or stuff like FFREs which have a really high ISP

also I'm no expert, sry if I'm wrong

[Wubslin]

13 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

it's not orion, orion is not near as efficient as an even low tech ICF engine

the nerv (or any other NTR) doesn't have that much ISP when compared to other fission and fusion engines

Metallic Hydrogen seems also way less than most fission and fusion engines

it also depends on what you mean with exotic fission, as such stuff as NSWRs (which I personally count as exotic fission) don't have that high ISP (when compared to stuff like a ICF) or stuff like FFREs which have a really high ISP

also I'm no expert, sry if I'm wrong

It's already basically confirmed we'll have NSWRs, and the way I'm envisioning it, that's going to be a technology for flying mere planet-to-moon constant acceleration trajectories. And on interplanetary paths there will also be lots of acceleration. But not constant. I would expect a NSWR to burn for much less than half the total trip time. Finally you could Salt Water Rocket to other stars but it would take an extremely long time and be almost entirely coasting.

That's why fancy high Isp options are there. Something like inertial confinement will permit constant or near-constant thrust on interstellar voyages. It'll be faster than NSWR because of the total acceleration able to be applied but it'll have really paltry thrust by those other engines' standards. So avoiding gravity losses becomes a much bigger issue when flying on ICF.

Edited April 23, 2021 by Wubslin

[Bej Kerman]

21 hours ago, Dientus said:

as well as use its 100% conversion rate it would be game breaking.

Isn't the whole fuss over antimatter the fact that not much energy is lost when reacting with matter?

[Wubslin]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Isn't the whole fuss over antimatter the fact that not much energy is lost when reacting with matter?

There won't be direct antimatter drives in KSP 2.

The deal with antimatter is that ~100% of the mass is converted into radiation of some kind at low energy annihilation and so there's excellent utilization of getting energy from your fuel. Compare to burning methane for instance, where you basically click two atomic legos together to impart some kinetic energy into the new combined lego set as heat. Then once you pull the heat out of the legos you need to find someplace to throw them away.

The products of antimatter annihilation are electrically neutral, so utilizing it as a power source or method of propulsion boils down (literally) to how efficiently you can pull work from that heat. Whether that's via a high temperature rankine plant or via a direct photon rocket is up to you. But since antimatter is extremely hard to synthesize and store in any real quantity, it's really only best used as a shortcut to initiate nuclear reactions in a more compact way. 

That's really the crux of why in any true hard science fiction, you never see bulk amounts of antimatter "burned in a furnace" against matter to simply directly generate power. Antimatter isn't really an energy source, per se. It's a method of energy storage. That's because there's seemingly none already sitting around out there. So you have to make it yourself.

With Uranium for example, God or Multivac or the Easter Bunny or whoever has already slung the neutron stars together to make the stuff a zillion years ago. Which means that all you, the intrepid astronaut, has to do is spend the energy to dig it up and pull off the nasty bits. Why dig up an exajoule's worth of U-235, fission it for power, and then use that power to make 0.4 exajoule's worth of antimatter? Surely with the wasted energy you could have a thousand  heavy fission ships  on the way to that star over there than just two lightweight antimatter ships.

Edited April 23, 2021 by Wubslin

[Dientus]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Isn't the whole fuss over antimatter the fact that not much energy is lost when reacting with matter?

The few nanograms of anti-protons that mankind has ever produced was immediately annihilated when any came in contact with normal matter. That I am aware of with our ability to measure, this reaction, of the antiproton and the proton coming in contact with each other, resulted in 100% of the mass involved converting to pure energy. Nuclear fusion only reaches about a 40% conversion rate to pure energy.

 

That I am aware of, antimatter is the only known thing currently in physics that will result in all of its matter being converted to pure energy. Of course we still need more study and better technology to study it with as well as a way to store it for more than a few seconds. But if we ever learn how to use energy released from an antimatter reaction the implications are astounding.

[wpetula]

On 4/22/2021 at 1:03 PM, mcwaffles2003 said:

The definition of a torch drive is a drive that is both very powerful and very efficient

"Screaming, white death".

[PlutoISaPlanet]

37 minutes ago, wpetula said:

"Screaming, white death".

SCREAMING WHITE DEATH!

....

That sounds pleasant!