Radiation Discussion

[PlutoISaPlanet]

Seeing how radiation is going to play a big role in ksp 2, I felt it was necessary to open up a discussion post about it.

Radiation will play many factors in the game.

One way I believe it will work that I have not seen discussed is pollution via destruction. 

Im just gonna leave you guys to it!

[intelliCom]

4 hours ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

Seeing how radiation is going to play a big role in ksp 2, I felt it was necessary to open up a discussion post about it.

Radiation will play many factors in the game.

One way I believe it will work that I have not seen discussed is pollution via destruction. 

Im just gonna leave you guys to it!

Considering how they have stuff about weather conditions, I'll be surprised if radiation doesn't serve some kind of role. I was more thinking along the lines that space radiation might be a thing. That is, as a spacecraft passes through space, more delicate components will sustain damage from solar radiation, since there's no magnetic field to protect it. This would give greater purpose to service bays, as they can keep components protected in spaceflight. It's basically the reason why most space probes have that golden foil on them. 

[TLTay]

I'm all for radiation being a concern. Would be nice to have displayable magnetic fields from planets and moons once we have probed them for that info. Shielding from radiation is a major concern for manned spaceflight, and should be in KSP2 in a reasonable way.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

10 hours ago, intelliCom said:

It's basically the reason why most space probes have that golden foil on them. 

That's not what it is- that stuff is called Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI), and it's basically space-grade Mylar sheets layered (of course) over each other to thermally insulate (of course) a spacecraft.

It's quite good at keeping thermal radiation from moving around, but is abysmal at stopping heat conduction- which is why it's only used in vacuums where conduction isn't an issue.

 

Most of the time, radiation shielding for your electronics won't be needed- you just want specially designed hardware to greatly reduce the chance or impact of a cosmic ray or high-energy proton flipping a bit.

In extreme circumstances, like passing through the largest planetary magnetosphere in the solar system, what you're looking for is something like Juno's electronics vault, made of 1 cm thick Titanium, which- unfortunately- isn't very good at being lightweight, weighing about 35 kg for a square meter of shielding.

For illustration, here's a picture of the installation onto Juno. (The vault is the box thing, of course).

So a service bay wouldn't do much good- but it's still a good idea to add radiation damage to computers (probe cores), and a way to protect them from it in high-risk areas like magnetospheres or coronal mass ejections.

And BTW- computers are by far the most vulnerable to radiation. Electronics are all around any spacecraft of course, but they aren't affected much, as the damage from radiation is usually microscopic, on the level that memory is encoded onto a hard drive. Mechanical components will almost never fail because of these issues, although there is one notable case where reaction wheels kept breaking because coronal mass ejections caused static discharges through the flywheel assembly, causing the steel ball bearings to deposit little bumps of metal on their casing, hindering their movement. This has been fixed with a move towards ceramic bearings instead.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Clamp-o-Tron
Somehow used cubic meters instead of square meters

[mcwaffles2003]

I don't see radiation damage causing components to fail being part of the game. Also, it's still speculation whether or not life support for kerbals will even be in the game. The prior leads to parts of ships randomly failing in a manner reminiscent of TestLite which sounds outside the philosophy of how KSP 1 ran, but perhaps KSP 2 will be different, but I think it unlikely. As for the latter I assume if kerbals are capable of taking radiation damage then I find it likely life support would be included along side similar to how kerbalism works. The problem with adding life support being that now keeping kerbals alive will be far more complex and it eliminates the ability to fly around in space indefinitely in an exterior seat:

That said, I would welcome both changes as they would give players more things to consider like more mechanics to navigate and explore, planets having magnetic fields could be meaningful, radiation belts could be obstacles to overcome, and solar storms a disaster to be weary of all with the trade off of some minor freedoms and these mechanics could be switched off with options. Not to mention, having these mechanics in stock would probably help mod compatibility regarding the similar mechanism to build upon thus avoiding the issues we can currently see between kerbalism, TAC and USI for example. That said, I'm skeptical whether or not we would see such things enter the stock game.

[intelliCom]

1 hour ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

That's not what it is- that stuff is called Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI), and it's basically space-grade Mylar sheets layered (of course) over each other to thermally insulate (of course) a spacecraft.

It's quite good at keeping thermal radiation from moving around, but is abysmal at stopping heat conduction- which is why it's only used in vacuums where conduction isn't an issue.

 

Most of the time, radiation shielding for your electronics won't be needed- you just want specially designed hardware to greatly reduce the chance or impact of a cosmic ray or high-energy proton flipping a bit.

In extreme circumstances, like passing through the largest planetary magnetosphere in the solar system, what you're looking for is something like Juno's electronics vault, made of 1 cm thick Titanium, which- unfortunately- isn't very good at being lightweight, weighing about 35 kg for a square meter of shielding.

For illustration, here's a picture of the installation onto Juno. (The vault is the box thing, of course).

So a service bay wouldn't do much good- but it's still a good idea to add radiation damage to computers (probe cores), and a way to protect them from it in high-risk areas like magnetospheres or coronal mass ejections.

And BTW- computers are by far the most vulnerable to radiation. Electronics are all around any spacecraft of course, but they aren't affected much, as the damage from radiation is usually microscopic, on the level that memory is encoded onto a hard drive. Mechanical components will almost never fail because of these issues, although there is one notable case where reaction wheels kept breaking because coronal mass ejections caused static discharges through the flywheel assembly, causing the steel ball bearings to deposit little bumps of metal on their casing, hindering their movement. This has been fixed with a move towards ceramic bearings instead.

Ah, my bad. Although, thermal radiation from the sun and magnetic fields can increase heat, so that golden foil is still useful in that regard, but radioactive radiation (or whatever that was called, how could this be differentiated from) is shielded by other means. I was almost right in that radiation can damage fragile and more sensitive instruments. Although, adding on to what you said about computers/probe cores being the primary victims of radiation, I can imagine KSP representing this in the way that certain functions will stop working due to radiation exposure, such as the inability to align the ship to the "Radial In" direction specifically, or having a glitchier KerbNet.

[mcwaffles2003]

58 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

but radioactive radiation (or whatever that was called, how could this be differentiated from)

A simple way to distinguish radiation harmful to electronics from other forms would be to just call it "high energy radiation" or "ionizing radiation". This would include things like cosmic rays, nuclear reactor generated gamma rays, stray x-rays or neutrons, etc... which can cause physical damage to electrical components over time

[Pthigrivi]

Good info, guys. I think on the health front both as it relates to radiation and possible life support having kerbals die is probably too grim and potentially frustrating as a default setting. Id rather see an overall heath or happiness rating for a given vessel or colony that would effect things like science outputs and mining efficiency, the idea being sick and hungry kerbals can’t do their jobs as well. There could be multiple factors to this rating—radiation exposure, sufficient food, adequate habitation space, luxuries like centrifuges and recreation modules, etc. It could also be that different modules had higher radiation shielding ratings and you’d average them and multiply that by the vessel’s cumulative exposure passing through different zones with varying levels of danger. This would make it a bit of a spatial puzzle as well.  

[jimmymcgoochie]

Sounds a lot like Kerbalism to me- high radiation causes parts to wear out and potentially fail, also causes some problems for Kerbals when exposed to radiation, either high doses over short time periods like going through radiation belts or long term low level radiation like you'd get in an interplanetary spacecraft. Kerbalism also models radiation emitted from RTGs, nuclear engines and nuclear reactors and it seems KSP2 might do the same in some way.

There's a delicate balance between "radiation will cause stuff to break and harm Kerbals during a two year round trip to Duna" and "radiation will utterly destroy an interstellar ship on a century-long trip to the next solar system" though...

[The Physics Engineer]

I don't think radiation damage will apply to spacecraft. Maybe we get a difficulty option to make it interfere with comms (like in KSP 1 with the re-entry plasma blackout).

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Good info, guys. I think on the health front both as it relates to radiation and possible life support having kerbals die is probably too grim and potentially frustrating as a default setting. Id rather see an overall heath or happiness rating for a given vessel or colony that would effect things like science outputs and mining efficiency, the idea being sick and hungry kerbals can’t do their jobs as well. There could be multiple factors to this rating—radiation exposure, sufficient food, adequate habitation space, luxuries like centrifuges and recreation modules, etc. It could also be that different modules had higher radiation shielding ratings and you’d average them and multiply that by the vessel’s cumulative exposure passing through different zones with varying levels of danger. This would make it a bit of a spatial puzzle as well.  

I'm also thinking they will lean towards something like this. They have confirmed Kerbals won't die if you abandon them in a colony somewhere so that the game does not become a colony micromanagement sim, if I recall correctly, they will indeed underperform when not properly attended.

[Guest]

On 6/26/2021 at 6:14 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Sounds a lot like Kerbalism to me- high radiation causes parts to wear out and potentially fail, also causes some problems for Kerbals when exposed to radiation, either high doses over short time periods like going through radiation belts or long term low level radiation like you'd get in an interplanetary spacecraft. Kerbalism also models radiation emitted from RTGs, nuclear engines and nuclear reactors and it seems KSP2 might do the same in some way.

There's a delicate balance between "radiation will cause stuff to break and harm Kerbals during a two year round trip to Duna" and "radiation will utterly destroy an interstellar ship on a century-long trip to the next solar system" though...

I'd opt for something way less "random failure due to radiation exposure", like some malus to an "habitability" value if you put your unshielded crew living quarters in the radius of the radioactive effect and then use that value to make Kerbals stop doing any work if it goes too low.

Zero effects on parts, random failures are confirmed not to be in the game and "random failure due to radiation" is hardly different.

[Pthigrivi]

On 6/27/2021 at 1:35 PM, Master39 said:

I'd opt for something way less "random failure due to radiation exposure", like some malus to an "habitability" value if you put your unshielded crew living quarters in the radius of the radioactive effect and then use that value to make Kerbals stop doing any work if it goes too low.

Zero effects on parts, random failures are confirmed not to be in the game and "random failure due to radiation" is hardly different.

I don’t mind the idea that some probe cores would temporarily go into safe mode in high radiation areas so long as it didn’t permanently brick the probe. It would make for a bit of a spatial planning puzzle without causing too much frustration. And maybe heavier probes are shielded for safe moho missions. There’s some evidence of a mission planner tool that might give warnings about things like this and transmission ranges and solar energy drop-off depending on where you were planning to go. 
 

But yes I think random failures have wisely been ruled out in vanilla. 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[starcaptain]

"Thermal" and i think "Radiation" are both going to be things that appear in the engineering dialogue in the vehicle editor.  If you watch closely you can notice them in some of the more recent teaser videos, beside existing highlighters (CoM, CoLift, ect.)

I imagine they behave a bit like volumetric light,  with different parts having different "transparency"/absorption amounts.