KSP needs more monopropellant engines...

[rnyboy]

I've been playing KSP1 for thousands of hours now and over and over again I bump up against what many may consider a silly issue and that issue is we need more monopropellant (MP) engines.    The reason being nearly all ships are boosted to orbit and often inserted into a proper transfer by LF/OX or LH/OX engines.  But within about 24 hours or so everything transitions over to hypergolic engines because of their high reliability and no need for heavy/expensive cooling/insulation.  The closest KSP has to a hypergolic fuel is MP.   LCH4 is also a decent fuel for longer duration missions because LCH4 doesn't require Herculean efforts for longer term storage but LCH4/Ox engines are still not as reliable, Musk may disagree , as those using hypergolic fuels.

I know, I know, it's just a game but I make as many service-modules and lander builds as I can using nothing but the few monopropellant engines generally meant for the space shuttle type builds from a few mods and sometimes a bit of LF/Ox when using fuel cells.   Even for the Artemis Construction Kit, I've substituted the LF/Ox engines on the ESM with scaled monopropellant orbital insertion engines and buried a MP tank and a few of the spherical Space X 400 unit MP tanks to get about the same total Dv.

One particular application for suitable MP engines would be for Blue Dog Bureau's Apollo style lunar lander instead of the two provided LF/OX engines.  The descent and ascent stages can have their fuels switched to MP with a fuel switcher mod.

[DeadJohn]

Here are a few mods I strongly recommend that happen to include monoprop engines, as well as a whole lot more.

• You already mentioned BDB. It has several small monoprop engines. Some have integral tanks for building satellites, others can be surface attached to create clusters.
• Near Future Spacecraft adds monoprop engines in the standard 0.625, 1.25, 2.5, and 3.75 stack profiles.
• Knes has a few monoprop service modules for upper stages. Some of the engines have 375 ISP and are arguably too efficient but it's still a fun mod.

[rnyboy]

Thanks DeadJohn.   As mentioned I have BDB and I have NFS but I didn't have Knes.  I've added that mod to both my v1.12.5 and v1.11.2 KSPs.

I just recently upgraded from v1.11.2 over to v1.12.5 in part because all the mods I used in v1.11.2 were now available for v1.12.5.  I was surprised during this latest version upgrade that CKAN upgraded all the necessary mods properly and KSP v1.12.5 loaded and worked on the first try.  As usual, for most of the major version upgrades many of my v1.11.2 builds have "missing or invalid parts" and now won't load so I've rebuilt the Starship from the Starship Expansion Project and the Space Shuttle (still loaded but redid it a bit) from the Shuttle Orbital Construction Kit and in the process of redoing Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury from BDB and Artemis from the Artimis Construction Kit.  I "cheated" and Hyperedited up Benjee10's HabTech ISS build (usually I do a full rebuild of any included craft) along with the Tantare's Russian bits by Beale now slightly changed by me to be a bit more realistic looking.  There's something like 650 parts now floating around up there with the ISS-plus build but the physics only slows from 1s being 1s to 1s now being about 1.5 - 2 s.

Beale, Benjee10, Cobalt Wolf, and Kari, along with their various associates, have done super super jobs at what they have provided for KSP players.

In hindsight, I think Squad should have used "HG" for any hypergolic fueled RCS/engines instead of MP.  That would have been more "realistic" with no added burden on the developers.

Too bad about KSP2 being essentially terminated.  I didn't purchase it because I didn't feel like dealing with all the frustration from all the constant bugs, bug fixes, and the bug fixes creating new bugs.  That's the rest of the story as to why I waited so long to upgrade to v1.12.5.  Sadly, a lot of mod developer's efforts related to KSP2 will have been waste if it truly dies.

 

Edited July 4, 2024 by rnyboy

[DeadJohn]

51 minutes ago, rnyboy said:

In hindsight, I think Squad should have used "HG" for any hypergolic fueled RCS/engines instead of MP.  That would have been more "realistic" with no added burden on the developers.

If you want to try more realistic fuels without too many changes to gameplay, consider the Skyhawk Science System tech tree mod. It's designed around BDB parts but works with other mods too.