Higher time warp and hibernation instead of magic, unrealistic "warp drive o.O".

[AngelLestat]

I don't really understand the purpose of this discussion apart from trying to educate/scream at each other.

The point of any discussion is to learn, Is a win-win, even if you are right or wrong.

Some time ago I had a discussion with other youtubes folks about how real was the ISV from Avatar.

In that discussion I learn almost all that I know about rockets and interstellar ships, using formules and top studies papers about differents way of propulsion.

So when I read comments against discuccion, is becoz someone want to keep his/her idea untouchable or they dont want to learn nothing. And is ok.

But do not try to stop a discuccion only becoz you are not interested. And this response is more than anything for the other post I do not even want to quote.

Its educative value is zero

True. KSP make us learn a lot more about rockets, and when we land on the moon for first time, we had that feeling that we do it for real. No just pressing some keys in any space arcade game.

feasible propulsion like nuclear/thermonuclear pulse drives (Daedalus and so on)

Daedalus is an studie finish at 1978, and now was proved that was wrong in some details.

Nuclear pulse or fusion drives are not enoght, maybe if bussard concept were right then fusion would be a good choice, but bussard ramjet produce more drag than propulsion. But well, I prefer than KSP skip that little detail before intruduce something 1000 times more crazy like FTL.

But there is not need to get into that. Is what I am saying, beamed sail can reach really high speeds and it can add a lot of gameplay and is not a game breaker technology.

So with a special timewarp mode only for interstellar ships all solve. Becoz there is not need to calculate structure physics when we have constant acceleration (there is not rocket equation with beamedsail).

This discussion is based on the incorrect assumption that the 'FTL drive' that Squad has in mind is a magical-get-you-anywhere-instantly drive.

I know very well that old idea of harvester about a way to introduce other star systems using FTL.

And many people asume that if he mention that idea is becoz there is not any option to introduce other star systems.

First he is a very busy guy, and if you check wikipedia about interstellar travel, it said that beamed sail is the most feasible way to get into stars, but only mention one example studie made in 1982 that in numbers is very disappointment.

So if someone reads that, he/she can think that to add fantasy FTL is the only way to introduce other star systems.

But as I can prove, that is not accurate.

[Outlander4]

and if you check wikipedia about interstellar travel, it said that beamed sail is the most feasible way to get into stars, but only mention one example studie made in 1982 that in numbers is very disappointment.

So if someone reads that, he/she can think that to add fantasy FTL is the only way to introduce other star systems.

But as I can prove, that is not accurate.

Wikipedia is not an accurate source of information.

Well, let's get back to educative values, then - it's all right for a laser beam to accelerate a metal plate to certain speeds; it can be done either by the way of light pressure (not that effective) or by ablating the metal plate creating hot rapidly expanding plasma that pushes your metal plate, reflects your laser beam and is generally cool to work with.

Detonating a nuke near the same metal plate would achieve more or less the same result, though it seems that pushing metal plate with a laser beam is more efficient in the long term.

Now let's move from accelerating pieces of metal to accelerating spaceships.

Here we have some problems with both beamed sail and nuclear pulse designes.

The common problem is the size and weight of the ship. And while beamed sail escapes the tyranny of the rocket equation it still must have radiation protection and carry a tremendous amount of supplies. Nuclear pulse designs look much worse of course,nobody will deny that.

As many people told, beamed sail ship will have inevitable problems with heat management; also, it is very unclear how one will aim laser beam across interstellar distances. If you miss by hundred of meters, you won't accelerate anything, and you won't know you've missed the target for several years required for the signal to travel back to you. And nobody thinks about it but even laser beams become diffuse with distance and hence less effective. Also, you'll have to put your laser into a very-high-inclination orbit or otherwise you won't have continious beam since the star will be between your laser and your ship from time to time. And moving a lot of mass into a funny orbit is a pain. And also lasers that can continously pump thousands of megawatts simply don't exist.

Nuclear pusle propulsion, on the other hand, is something that requires mechanical solutions only; it's something we can understand and deal with. It's not very effective, for sure, but it's doable with the current level of technology.

And if you put it into the kerbal universe with much smaller distances it becomes quite viable, so it's ok for the first logical step towards interstellar flight.

[animalcross]

Why not have both? Hibernation a more primitive solution, FTL a more high tech solution!

[Kegereneku]

Some people here need to be reminded that KSP is a game thus everything must be though as a game mechanic, built around the Unity engine with its limitation.

I don't care what the so called "purist" think, FTL can be FUN and I don't think those purist would actually like to play a video-game with realistic inventory, KSP with realistic budget-cut, FPS without ammo counter and realistic health/stamina.

NOBODY, want to have to build and launch hundred of "20 tons" laser-mirror, just to send out a 2 tons probes incapable of decelerating once in the new solar system. Supposing this is a guided mission and they don't need to do the math themselves.

And as the Developer said, KSP isn't supposed to be/become a game where reaching the Mun is a feat restricted to god-like engineer. People are supposed to not only reach Jool and gaz giant further away, they have to be able to explore them with manned mission.

Why manned mission ? Because KSP is a game, the developers said they don't want Mechjeb-like computer but that Kerbonaut would be given task.

Not everybody have fun planning 7 years ahead, 30y for infrastructures, and warp another 7 year to correct a mistake.

This is what FTL is needed for : End-game shortcut, new gameplay challenge, and finally : be able to do things that can just be ruled as impossible in reality like interstellar travel.

I don't care what AngelLestat think, not everybody have the time, the determination or the computer needed to propel a 10 to 2000 tons ship for 1 week of time-accelerated 0.2G of acceleration, just to send a micro-probes. Yet, KSP is making things easy.

And about that whole feasibly of FTL in the real world, our ancestors have been using fire to melt metal looong before we started believing the universe may make sense. Where I'm going with that is that we may discovers a freakingly easy FTL technology long before we understand why it make "sense".

So I would welcome a WARP system and hope it add a new fun gameplay by itself (nobody said FTL had to be easy*).

That's all.

*The actual game "FTL" is frigging hard in fact.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Kegereneku

[AngelLestat]

Outlander4

Wikipedia is not an accurate source of information.

In science topics it is, becoz science people tends to be more rigorously to the facts and details, even if the author is wrong, it will have a lot of request to fix the info.

by the way of light pressure (not that effective) or by ablating the metal plate creating hot rapidly expanding plasma that pushes your metal plate, reflects your laser beam and is generally cool to work with.

I lost you, when you said plasma you mean beamed propulsion inside the atmosphere or sailbeam which is a lot of micro sails accelerated to 0,1c in 1sec to imprint kinectic energy in a magsail?

I am talking about the clasic method, only light pressure (Beamed Sail). This allow you very high speeds and is easy to implement and understand.

it still must have radiation protection and carry a tremendous amount of supplies

How I said, if we allow himbernation, supplies is not such a big deal. About radiation shielding, beamed sail is the most efficient in that matter, becoz you only need to protect the payload. But in case of other propulsion systems, the Ship is more than 100 times the payload, this is mean that you need a shield 100 times more big. The sail does not need shielding.

beamed sail ship will have inevitable problems with heat management

That was true in the 1982 with Robert Forward concept using aluminum. Becoz aluminum melting point is 900K and its weight is also a problem, so to get accelerations about 0,03g you need bigger sails to not melt-->more weight--> more power -->more heat

Geoffrey Landis already prove in 1997 that dielectric materials make a HUGE improve against Forward concept, and now we have carbon nanotubes that makes a HUGE improve against dielectrics.

There are 3 key parameters for a good sail: weight-strengh, melting point and reflectivity.

Carbon nanotubes are a LOT more light than alumium or dielectric (something like 4 g/m2 aluminum and 0,01g/m2 carbon nanotubes, but the most important thing is its melting point (4500K), And this is not only 5 times better. This is like 100 times better, becoz for Stefan-Boltzmann equation your heats it will radiate by the square rule.

For example, robert forward studie for a fly-by is Laser: 65 GW / Payload 1 / Acceleration: 0.036g, Sail Area 3.6 km

Using dielectric and the same parameters we get:

The laser is reduce to 448 MW (instead 65GW)

The max acceleration for this material with the same payload it will be 42G (1200 times better)

And if we use carbon nanotube instead Dielectric this values increase a LOT more.

Just to mention, the sailbeam concept, using micro sails 10cm2, they will reach 0,1c in 1 second. So I hope with this last example, clear all your concern about the heat problems.

it is very unclear how one will aim laser beam across interstellar distances

Well.. That is a real concern.. Everybody who wanna strike this propulsion method needs to star with that.

Is their only weakness for now.

There are ways to do it. But is not easy.

You need Huge lenses to focus the beam across interstellar distances. This is not a problem with a fly by probe with a 0,1c speed using microwave, but if you wanna make a 3 stage sail to go back from your destination the aim magnitude needed is many times more that we can reach right now.

For example Forward idea was a 500km frensnel lens.

Landis idea is a lot better, a string of small fresnel lens drop it in the way by the fly by mission. (fresnel lens is a 2 layer film, graphene would be nice)

My idea is to use the Sun like gravitational lens to the laser, with a mirror in the focus point attached to an asteroid. There are already ideas to use this same concept for comunications and like a giant telescope, to see the planets of alfa centauri in the same way that we have pictures of jupiter or neptune.

Of course is not easy, we need a lot of accuracy in our mechanism. But the new discoveries and advances in plasmonic, metamaterials, dielectrics, superlens, etc it will make this just a technical problem that can be fix.

Is like if someone ask how a hard drive can move so fast and write and erace only tiny bits of info at that speeds? If we imagine the problem from the begining, it seems almost imposible.

But small details and new algorimthms can improve our accuracy distance by a lot. Is only matter of time.. I will said 40 years or 80 years for a 3 stage sail.

There are already many methods to solve those problems, but I dont wanna make my post so long.

If you want, I can make a long post explaining each of this steps to solve all the accuracy problems with pictures and studies already made. How I said, is just a technical problem.

Also, you'll have to put your laser into a very-high-inclination orbit or otherwise you won't have continious beam since the star will be between your laser and your ship from time to time

That is very easy, there are many places when your laser may stay fix in the place, dont forget that you have a graphene collector that acts like a sail with the laser.

And also lasers that can continously pump thousands of megawatts simply don't exist

This problem will be fix in just 10 years. I read a lot about laser, if you do a little of research you will see how fast is this field growing, we can do things that we thoght almost impossible some years back with lasers.

This is becoz all the fields that I already mention. Plasmonic, dichonic, metamaterials, dielectric and a lot better understanding of the laser principles or quantim physics. This is not a problem. Invisibility cloak is just one of many advances in the optic field.

Where I'm going with that is that we may discovers a freakingly easy FTL technology long before we understand why it make "sense".

But people it does not understand how much advances it would take to have something like that. For me, if you can do that, then you can make your own universes. There is not imagination limit to what you can do when you reach that point.

And that's where all your landmarks crumble.

NOBODY, want to have to build and launch hundred of "20 tons" laser-mirror

Where you get that?? To make the laser and collector for the first mission, with just 2 design and 10 launch you can do it. And still will work for future missions, and it will be very easy to scale up.

Also KSP can make more easy all this.. Is just game mechanic and parameters.

And that NOBODY, sounds like NOBODY will build a space station in orbit! And as you know, everybody does.

Not everybody have fun planning 7 years ahead, 30y for infrastructures, and warp another 7 year to correct a mistake.

Really? what is this topic about? And what has unity engine has to do with the option of a different time-warp mechanic for interstellar travel?

I don't care what AngelLestat think, not everybody have the time, the determination or the computer needed to propel a 10 to 2000 tons ship for 1 week of time-accelerated 0.2G of acceleration, just to send a micro-probes.

Haha, well that said a lot, you are not reading..

And no matter what I said or other folks said, how much evidence or logic we use, you will keep your idea intact. Good for you. Thanks for your opinion.

[Seelenamt]

Edited November 9, 2019 by Seelenamt

[Outlander4]

You're an optimist. They told us that we'll have flying cars by 2000... Writers have no sense of scale; scientists better do what they are paid for, and right now nobody is interested in paying for developing any of this. Advances on the small scale do not translate well onto the large-scale applications, safe to say into applying them on the miles-long scales, anyway. And your points have some problems again, mostly with how new materials will actually behave.

I am not saying that beamed sail concept is physically incorrect or impossible to implement - I am just saying that it requires technologies that are currently beyond our reach and we don't know how feasible they are anyway. Nuclear pulse propulsion was developed as a concept using mostly existing technology and as such it remains firmly within our grasp and requires only huge amount of money and hard labour and cooperation on the Earth-wide scale which nobody wants to do anyway.

And as I stated before, I am against FTL in the game, so both methods of propulsion are fine but I'd prefer nuclear pulse purely because I think it to be more in-line with current kerbal technology and because riding explosions is fun.

Regarding the beam-plasma thing - it was developed as a method of de-orbiting satellites and deflecting asteroids; it uses high-power laser beam to vaporise parts of the target; high-temperature expanding plasma it makes physically pushes the target away. And it's much more effective than pure light pressure (and it has light pressure as a component).

Anyway, we either should return back on-topic or move to Science section, as some people told already.

[Mr. Scruffy]

I must say: the prospect of having the kerbal pinnacle of space technology be the ability to ride nuke-explosions has a lot going for it... I mean, you´d work yourself through all these increasingly sophisticated and sort of rational parts to end up with this sort of hellride - very kerbal. I dunno, to me, it makes a lot of sense, that this would be, what they were dreaming of all along - the getting to places being more of a neat side-effect.

[rkman]

Wikipedia is not an accurate source of information.

Wikipedia is not a source to begin with, sources and references are listed at the end of each article, and wiki's standards for sources are pretty high.

Among the sources for the wiki article on interstellar travel are publications by NASA, ESO and JBIS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Independent_sources

Besides, with current technology any kind of interstellar travel is not realistic anyway, but we're still going to get it in KSP.

[Kegereneku]

But people it does not understand how much advances it would take to have something like that. For me, if you can do that, then you can make your own universes. There is not imagination limit to what you can do when you reach that point.

And that's where all your landmarks crumble.

As far I know we are already making our own KSP-universe to play with, "the technological singularity already happened and we missed it".

You don't grasp the scale of your own megascale laser-pumped-sail project. (Avatar is 50% bull**** and it used antimatter drive to slowdown)

If you want to convince me, start describing it as part with stats, the typical deployment and use, then tell me how does those exponentially scaling-up sail will slowdown at their destination.

And better do it before accusing me of not reading you, because I don't think you can balance a gameplay so that "only" 10 launch of an unknown weight with an unknown efficiency to Moho (note : Lagrange point don't work in KSP) will "easily" propel a solar sail of unknown design with a barely-known acceleration without breaking half of the game with super-tech worst than FTL.

In short your notion of "fun" is odd.

People do have fun designing and putting together a space station. for starter because nearly-nobody complain seriously about "unrealistic thruster", "100% throttlable rocket", "magnet dock"...etc. I know no definition of fun which cope with endless repetition, hair-tearing precision requirement, near meaningless payload.

And I'm trying myself to make it work : it would be "mission driven", you wouldn't have to do all 100 launch, wouldn't need to aim the lasers, you'd have auto-scaled sails, a laser-proof shield part, little guidance to do, no equation to solve yourselves, no 180-degree turn difficulty and no throttling problem.

Basically it would one huge black-box which teleport you from the home system to your destination.

Note : the same argument goes for relativist Torchships.

Personal assumption here : some are against the idea of FTL because they like pretending to do "real" rocket science but as said numerous time, the gameplay would need to simplify it so much that the developer may as well be creating a balanced, constrained, thus interesting FTL gameplay.

You're an optimist. They told us that we'll have flying cars by 2000...Writers have no sense of scale

At least the technology do exist.

But remember than most flying car in fiction had magical propulsion in the first place. 2001 : Space Odyssey did portrayed correctly Smartphone and videogame.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Kegereneku

[technicalfool]

We're all playing a game where a valid method of returning to Kerbin can be to float your kerbal behind a bloody big orbiting Mainsail, engage a blast of full thrust to fire our kerbal in a retrograde direction, and just make sure the poor green chappie lands on his helmet AFTER surviving the fiery atmospheric plunge.

We're all playing a game where a high powered rocket can be landed gently onto the ocean and engines fired toward the sky in order to become a submarine.

We're all playing a game where reaction wheels are like a magic infinite rotation-mode RCS that never reaches fully-soaked and never needs to be damped back down with thrusters.

We're all playing a game where you can orbit and EVA with no shielding, less than 100,000m from the surface of the sun.

We're all playing a game where "oh my god that's so Kerbal" is a compliment meaning "holy hell, just how did that bucket of bolts even take off?"

We're all playing a game where an ion engine or two and a crapton of solar panels can lift an aircraft.

There's quite a lot more examples I can think of that suggest that a little handwavium in order to get to other star systems is really not going to be much of a game-breaker. Certainly more "realistic" than plonking star systems right next door to each other.

[SyberSmoke]

We're all playing a game where a valid method of returning to Kerbin can be to float your kerbal behind a bloody big orbiting Mainsail, engage a blast of full thrust to fire our kerbal in a retrograde direction, and just make sure the poor green chappie lands on his helmet AFTER surviving the fiery atmospheric plunge.

We're all playing a game where a high powered rocket can be landed gently onto the ocean and engines fired toward the sky in order to become a submarine.

We're all playing a game where reaction wheels are like a magic infinite rotation-mode RCS that never reaches fully-soaked and never needs to be damped back down with thrusters.

We're all playing a game where you can orbit and EVA with no shielding, less than 100,000m from the surface of the sun.

We're all playing a game where "oh my god that's so Kerbal" is a compliment meaning "holy hell, just how did that bucket of bolts even take off?"

We're all playing a game where an ion engine or two and a crapton of solar panels can lift an aircraft.

There's quite a lot more examples I can think of that suggest that a little handwavium in order to get to other star systems is really not going to be much of a game-breaker. Certainly more "realistic" than plonking star systems right next door to each other.

I have read this thread and I agree with this post. This is a game, not reality. Reality is dull, boring, and more then likely I will not live to see humans reach even the asteroid belt with the way the US fed keeps cutting Nasa's budget. Yeah...that is depressing.

I want to play a game because it is intriguing and does things I can not as a lowly mortal. So if that means I get to build an infinite improbability engine to blink to another star system as a ball of yarn, then god damn it, get out the hard stuff and a gold brick because i am going to.

For those that want reality, go buy a rocket kit or start building your V1 in the backyard. But please keep it out of the game because it is not a simulator.

[Outlander4]

It's abusing the game for fun and profit. It's not a gameplay element to begin with - i.e. landing a kerbal on his head is not a standard method of returning kerbals from orbit. FTL is such an element.

And the argument about putting star systems very close to each other is not valid since it uses the same kind of strange logic we use to argue against FTL (untealistic!).

Just a quick example - there is a star called Tau Ceti. It has a dust disk and may or may not have planets. The closest star to it is just 1.1 light year away; it's considered very close for our part of the galaxy. We can have the same distances in KSP, and that'd be perfectly fine.

[AngelLestat]

Outlander4:

I am not saying that beamed sail concept is physically incorrect or impossible to implement - I am just saying that it requires technologies that are currently beyond our reach and we don't know how feasible they are anyway. Nuclear pulse propulsion was developed as a concept using mostly existing technology and as such it remains firmly within our grasp and requires only huge amount of money and hard labour and cooperation on the Earth-wide scale which nobody wants to do anyway.

Nuclear pulse is good for interplanerary travel, if you wanna go interstellar... the fuel ratio becomes imposible, even using graphene. Becoz the fuel is still almost the total mass of the ship. And you need mining helium 3 in jupiter or uranos, and the strong gravity field of these planets will discourage anyone.

Beamed Sail is the best candidate for interstellar travel, and is not me who said that. Is NASA. They already launch 3 or 4 solar sails and they have more to come.

Beamed Sail competes with antimatter in terms of speed missions without the main problems of antimatter.

but I'd prefer nuclear pulse purely because I think it to be more in-line with current kerbal technology

I am agree, it should be in the technology tree like first options, it will be enought to travel between a binary system or no more than 0,3 ly.

it uses high-power laser beam to vaporise parts of the target; high-temperature expanding plasma it makes physically pushes the target away. And it's much more effective than pure light pressure (and it has light pressure as a component).

The problem that you still need a reaction mass, so it become like a nerva engine with a little extra of ISP.

Anyway, we either should return back on-topic or move to Science section, as some people told already.

This guy drop a suggestion to change the time warp in interstellar travel so we dont need to add "unrealistic systems". So we are giving examples how this can be done or what kind of realistic systems would be and how can be included in a fun way in the game mechanic.

So we are not out of topic.

Kegereneku

(Avatar is 50% bull**** and it used antimatter drive to slowdown)

List me the 50% bull part please. For me, there are only 2 crazy things about avatar, 1-navi are are really similar to us, 2-the fact that is economically feasible get 400T of antimmater for 200 T of superconductor. That even breaks the theoretical limit of energy used to get antimatter.

start describing it as part with stats, the typical deployment and use, then tell me how does those exponentially scaling-up sail will slowdown at their destination.

I already explain that in my previous post, maybe not with all the detail, but I will, wait for it.

And I'm trying myself to make it work : it would be "mission driven", you wouldn't have to do all 100 launch, wouldn't need to aim the lasers, you'd have auto-scaled sails, a laser-proof shield part, little guidance to do, no equation to solve yourselves, no 180-degree turn difficulty and no throttling problem.

Basically it would one huge black-box which teleport you from the home system to your destination.

Really? you aim your solar panels to the sun?

And that black box which teleport sound so fun.... well not really.. I'm being sarcastic

technicalfool

We're all playing a game where a valid method of returning to Kerbin can be to float your kerbal behind a bloody big orbiting Mainsail, engage a blast of full thrust to fire our kerbal in a retrograde direction, and just make sure the poor green chappie lands on his helmet AFTER surviving the fiery atmospheric plunge.

We're all playing a game where a high powered rocket can be landed gently onto the ocean and engines fired toward the sky in order to become a submarine.

We're all playing a game where reaction wheels are like a magic infinite rotation-mode RCS that never reaches fully-soaked and never needs to be damped back down with thrusters.

We're all playing a game ...

There's quite a lot more examples I can think of that suggest that a little handwavium in order to get to other star systems is really not going to be much of a game-breaker. Certainly more "realistic" than plonking star systems right next door to each other.

This excuse is so old and wrong, when someone will understand what makes a game fun or boring??

If you will have a kerbal that it needs to be inside an special capsule to re-entry, and then when your parachutes open you realize that there is a storm who push you to land and cut one parachute, then your capsule fall over a cow and you break a leg from that cow, then someone needs to come to take care of the cow..

That level of realism it will be boring for you???

You think that all the things that you mention are made on purpose?

The only thing made on purpose is the planet scale, becoz if you will have the same size than earth, then you will take like 30 min to get orbit each time. And you cant use timewarp in that.

And the argument about putting star systems very close to each other is not valid since it uses the same kind of strange logic we use to argue against FTL (untealistic!).

What? In a star cluster the average distance between stars is 1 ly or less.

Alfa centauri, our closer star is a binary system, their distance is 36 AU, and they have a third star proxima centauri to 0,2 ly.

So I dont understand your connection with FTL.

-------------------------------------------

What if I promise that it can be a way to introduce other star systems with real propulsion concepts in a fun and simple way without any game breaker thing or silly rulz excuses like "you cant use FTL inside kerbol system becoz the wiz of OZ forbids" to remains the game balance with normal rockets.

[Outlander4]

AngelLestat, I beg you to be more accurate when responding to several posters at once. It's the second time you've mixed words of several people together, and it makes it hard to get the idea across.

Also, please write 'becoz' as 'because', ¿vale?

Now, answering your words directed to me:

I believe it was JAXA who had anything to do with solar sails. I don't remember NASA doing any large-scale experiments with it. And as I told before - beamed sail technology does not exist so we cannot evaluate how it behaves (yet). And basic rules of conservation of energy still apply - while your laser-propelled ship may be extremely light, the amount of effort you need to put into infrastracture is just as immense as for building nuclear pulse-driven ship. Rules of orbital mechanics prevent object from staying in the same place, so you'll have to put your solar collector-laser thing into POLAR solar orbit so it would be possible for laser to fire continuously in normal or antinormal directions. Now, start KSP and try to put a small probe into polar orbit around the sun. I did it using gravity assists from Jool and Eve, so it's perfectly possible even though it still requires a tremendous amount of delta-V. And KSP is free of many real-life concerns so moving huge things using gravity assists is as easy as small probes. Delta-V requirements would still be big enough to think twice about it. And you'll have only part of the sky covered, so to send your ships to all stars around you'll have to do some funny things again. That's just the most obvious thing. And if you do focusing mirrors, it becomes even more interesting delta-V-wise and you'll have troubles making the system to fire the beam continuously.

So, all-in-all, I'd think twice about it. Of course, once the infrastructure is there it can be re-used again and again, it's a plus side.

Regarding the plasma thing again - it would require a layer of ablative material. It increases the mass quite a bit, but it also allows high initial acceleration which may be a nice as it reduces the time you need to fire continously. And it's estimated to be much, much more effecient than NERVA. With beam powerful enough one can change orbits of asteroids, and it's not something your average NERVA might do.

And finally, about putting stars close together - I told that the fact that it's unrealistic can't be used as an argument to have an even more unrealistic FTL drive. However, we really cannot assume VERY close distances between stars (as we see in star clusters) because we don't know how being in a star cluster may affect formation of planets and general conditions favourable for life as we know it; it's just not a good realistic explanation for in-game mechanics. So 0.8 ly is a minimum I'd say.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Outlander4

[TouhouTorpedo]

I think that KSP is a physics simulator, so we should be able to timewarp more (only the timewarp mechanics should be fixed to don't magically pass ships through the atmospheres at high warps and to stop at maneuver nodes) instead of SciFi magic "warp engines" (o.O).

Kerbals should be able to hibernate (the ship should be out of control during that process unless somebody attached probe core to it). That would be better than magic warp drives (I think hibernation is less unrealistic than "warp drive").

It would be nice if we'll have bigger time warp and realistic engine (huge nuclear one, bigger ion engine, electric sail or Alcubierre drive).

Alcubierre drive is warp drive, which still takes time to travel to a destination anyway. So if this was to mean "shouldn't appear magically at your destination" isn't that what hibernation would essentially be?

Pretty sure the OP is bait.

[Kegereneku]

List me the 50% bull part please. For me, there are only 2 crazy things about avatar, 1-navi are are really similar to us, 2-the fact that is economically feasible get 400T of antimmater for 200 T of superconductor. That even breaks the theoretical limit of energy used to get antimatter.

I will suppose you are not an idiot and won't list "floating mountain" or "number of limbs", the first fictional liberty was in fact the absurd megascale beamed-sail system needed to accelerate "350 tons" up to 0.7C even assuming absurdly high efficiency.

And yes the second one was to be the quantity of antimatter needed for at least one deceleration and accelerating again. Oh and there's several ship like that doing the trip.

We are speaking of the Hollywood-logic which inverted (accidentally?) the original name of Pellegrino's design (the Valkyrie) and the SSTO shuttle (X-33 Venture Star).

Then there's the unexpected low tech-level (barely justified by unobtainum), and it end with details (unjammed brain-link) motivated by Artistic License for which nobody complain because normal people understand Avatar is a FICTIONAL MOVIE (and Pocahontas IN SPACE).

Which bring be to tell you again that KSP is a FICTIONAL GAME.

Remember when I said "avoid absurd part which would break the gameplay" ? Magic beamed-sail tech would fit the bill just like antimatter drive. So what is the point of avoiding one "magic" FTL solution if you spread several "magic" part around ?

By the way, you still haven't told me how to decelerate at your destination with no laser there. (or please link me where you will talk about it, I can't know which message you edited)

Really? you aim your solar panels to the sun? And that black box which teleport sound so fun.... well not really.. I'm being sarcastic

Hard to understand what the hell you misunderstood in my post, you are not being sarcastic you are being evasive.

The "Black Box" is a metaphor for your lack of understanding of the unrealism of your solution in KSP. You are basically expecting it to be so well implemented that it make it no different than if the developer really made a FTL drive called "problem-nullifying-beamed-sail-system".

I don't mind keeping KSP's verisimilitude, but if you need a constrained FTL drive to keep the gameplay interesting. Then "Let there be FTL".

It would be very realist if the developer made us build a 1tons beamed-sail-probe for a 50y flyby (or 150y transfer) then have research discover FTL right as it arrive.

[MRab2]

Stuff

Firstly, the iron –

An Iron will radiate, conduct and convect away every joule of energy that’s put into it that takes it above ambient temperatures – the *important* question is; what’s the equilibrium temperature? Now, you solar collector is NOT just going to be a graphene panel. There will be different materials involved and all (though there might not be many, but one is enough to this to be valid) these materials will have different coefficients of thermal expansion which is why passive cooling over a huge area ain’t an option in a *hot* environment, and making it in NEO and then shipping it to NSO is problematical. Not saying impossible, but why make a rod for your back when you’ve got another million-and-one problems to solve and only 50 years to do it in J Their orbital position is a very minor concern though but I maintain moving them closer to the sun is a bigger technical challenge than bigger collectors.

No I didn’t forget about the unlimited budget, but having spent 20 years in product development of one kind or another I can you the single most important resource is people. Throwing money at projects only gets you so far – you can get nine women pregnant but that doesn’t mean you’ll get a baby in a month (as the saying goes).

There simply aren’t enough skilled warm bodies to complete this project within the 50 year time-frame without getting silly. I really don’t think you’re fully appreciating the scope of the project. It took 16 years to develop the Airbus a380 at a cost of 11 billion Euroes. Doubling the budget wouldn’t drop the time to 9 years. Ten times the budget wouldn’t equal an 18 month development phase. It just doesn’t work that. That’s ONE aircraft (yes, I realise a lot of development was the assembly line – but the same applies to the fleet of spacecraft you’re going to need to loft the phase 1 equipment into orbit).

Now, typically when someone says in X years time it’ll technically possible to build Z I would normally interpret that as meaning that by X date we’ll have Y technology which we can put together to build Z and not – If we sequester a not inconsequential percentage of the scientific and engineering resource on Earth for the next 5 decades we could do this.

Hell, think of the technical challenge of the targeting system alone!?! Trying to shine a laser onto a target a few kilometres across at a range of 3 light months could absorb thousands of man years of development time. Developing something like a continuous 10gigawatt laser could run into millions, if not 10s of millions of man years. Actually building one that can run for months at time is just the FIRST step – then you’ve got to figure out how to build it in such a way that it can either be built in nice neat modules and assembled by people wearing spacesuits. If these figures sound outlandish I would point to the truck project going on around me at the moment – which is principally driven by the new European emission regulations. In the department I work in it’s taken approximately 300 man years of work. That one department in one company (numerous external suppliers have been effected as well) and doesn’t include the work that’s gone out sourcing new suppliers and outfitting the assembly line for the new truck model. So I could confidently double that figure – and that’s just to meet a new regulation and make some incremental developments to a well-established product that is, essentially 75% unchanged from the previous version.

The bottom line is this, I’m not objecting to the idea as such but the 50 year time-frame is silly – talking about unlimited budgets and huge manpower, you might as well talk about magic wands. We *might* be able to start in 50 years. I’ll be surprised if asteroid mining isn’t in its early stages by then. So the very start of the infrastructure for this kind of project will be in place and resources in space will be starting to become more accessible.

Whilst NASA may indeed state that this is the most realistic method of intersteller travel with conceivable technology that doesn’t mean it’s the most practical in game terms, and frankly, gameplay is FAR more important than physics. The scale of the task in-game is too big to go for something that’s vaguely realistic and so something considerably scaled down would be implemented. Physics would be fudged – just as almost every other aspect of the game goes. The planets are far too dense and too close together. Kerbol is too small to ignite into a star. Laythe has liquid water on its surface! All these are VERY unrealistic and yet NONE of them wreck the same and therefor prove you can take considerable liberties with physics and still wind up with something that *feels* realistic.

Intersteller travel taking years is going to break the game as the travel times won’t fit with the in-system game. Remember, we’re not talking about getting to just the next system, but the one after that and then the one after that – and people calling for just a higher warp clearly don’t understand that you’re unlikely to be able to just “park†your whole space program for years at a time – it will likely need constant management. So you could be looking at dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay before your very first probe arrives in the next system and begin its actual mission – and in intersteller terms this is like launching your first satellite into orbit around Kerbin.

So, sorry, I see and FTL system, with travel time in weeks or months, that doesn’t work in-system (or just doesn’t allow you to target planets – only stars) as being the only practical solution to taking fun and interesting gameplay beyond the Kerbol system.

Realism be damned.

And that's pretty much my last word on this particular sub-topic. Really don't have the time go this in-depth any more.

[AngelLestat]

Outlander4:

It's the second time you've mixed words of several people together, and it makes it hard to get the idea across.

Well I dint notice, but taking into account my english level and how sleep I was, yes probably.

Rules of orbital mechanics prevent object from staying in the same place,

The good about solar sail or solar presure into light materials is that you get a push. So you can float a sail (graphene solar colector) over the sun without any orbital speed. Or use this pressure to get other orbites that would be impossible in normal circustances.

That push is almost equal to the laser push over the sail. But we need to add the laser weight and the laser recoil (not 100% sure about this) that is 1/2 of the force over the sail.

E=2PC when photons bounce in the sail or E=PC Laser Recoil.

The fact that I read hundred of papers about this and nobody mention were to locate the laser or a string of lasers.

I ask to Geoffrey Landis (NASA NIAC) about this and sunlensing using a mirror and how to keep it there, and he told me that the real problem was the accuracy, that is not something easy and he explain me why, but it can be done, and about the laser or mirror position he said that there is not problem in that. But he dint give me any details. How I dint want to steal more time from him, I start to think and I realize that the mirror needs to be in a small asteroid to burn a little of mass to keep it in place, and laser is simple, find the exact point doing some math.

so you'll have to put your solar collector-laser thing into POLAR solar orbit so it would be possible for laser to fire continuously in normal or antinormal directions.

That is correct in the case that you had orbital speed and your star destination is in the same inclination that kerbin. But why the star destination cant be in a different inclination?

Now, start KSP and try to put a small probe into polar orbit around the sun. I did it using gravity assists from Jool and Eve, so it's perfectly possible even though it still requires a tremendous amount of delta-V

You can build the whole thing in kerbin orbit then you send it to the right orbit without spend any fuel.

You use the colector area like sail (only 1/2 of power because it absorbs), there is a solar sail mod, you can test it, is not so acurate but it will give you and idea how good are sails for some maneuvers.

And you'll have only part of the sky covered, so to send your ships to all stars around you'll have to do some funny things again.

That is the good part, you can not use this system to remplace all your normal rockets and interplanetary missions. The balance remains.

In FTL case, you need to invent some weird conditions to deny the use inside kerbol soi.

And one time that you have all the system setup, you will need keep sending stuff to that star, Is the only way to maintain a base there.

It increases the mass quite a bit, but it also allows high initial acceleration which may be a nice as it reduces the time you need to fire continously

That would be the first nasa attempts using beamed sail, with microwaves instead laser and a coated paint that would be vaporize and give extra delta v and high accelerations.

But only work for close distances, for example, get 50 g for 1 day is not much against 0,3g for 3 years.

But I understand what are you saying.

because we don't know how being in a star cluster may affect formation of planets and general conditions favourable for life as we know it

We already now. 1 ly of distance is a lot! it will be the same than 4 LY. If you mean in the case of asteroid colission, i am not so sure.

But one thing that we know right now, is that life can develope in millons of cases different than us.

I will bet 5 to 1 that there is life in our solar system besides earth.

Kegereneku

I will suppose you are not an idiot and won't list "floating mountain" or "number of limbs"

haha, I am not an idiot.. But I dint see nothing wrong about floating mountains and number of limbs

Floating mountains.. you know that the whole movie round about a supposed room-temperature superconductor?

Well any magnetic field will trap a superconductor between their fields (these can not pass through), so it will float. (you had to have seen some video of this)

And the thing here, is that those montains had a lot of it, of course humans in the movie dont mining that because is like a park reservation, something unique. They are not a totally assholes, also they think about turism.

But how this mountains float? where these fields comes? Well Pandora has a very stronger magnetic field, they discover this planet measuring this kind of field, this is produce by the amount of superconductor that the planet has. But it has a high magnetic flux from pandora to the gas giant, and pandora is like moon, always gives the same face to the gas giant. And this magnetic flux its what it keeps the mountains floating.

About number of limbs, I know that 6 legs or 4 legs and 2 arms is not the best from the energy efficient perspective.

But all depends from the different evolutions paths that they come. Maybe a common ancestor was benefic to have that amount of limbs and now in pandora is a vestige from that path.

Now we discover different species with weird abilities or limbs that we are not sure why they have it, until we discover some more and we realize why is usefull or not for that creature.

You can find a lot of info in the pandorapedia. But take into account that James Cameron was advised for many evolutionists.

the first fictional liberty was in fact the absurd megascale beamed-sail system needed to accelerate "350 tons" up to 0.7C even assuming absurdly high efficiency

You need to take the difference between 500 or 600 t and 350, that is the difference between when you accelerate the ship with antimatter fuel and when you dessaccelerate without fuel.

So if your avarage is 400 or 450 then your power needed is 1 Petawatt. But they are in the year 2154, so if you make a graphic that measure how our energy consuption grows from 1900 until now and you proyect that grow until the year 2150, there are nothing wrong about that.

About the efficiency, if the ships reach 0,7c, then the efficiency has to be 0,7c or greater. And already we have papers of photon rockets of antimatter that can convert the 100% of the energy into propulsion. Of course, the problem is always how you get the antimatter and how you storage it.

By the way, you still haven't told me how to decelerate at your destination with no laser there.

Better a graphic:

http://www.transorbital.net/Library/D001FA02.GIF

You decouple 1 outer ring sail, then the laser bounce into the big sail, push this one forward and the light bounce and push the small sail (deceleration).

Then you can have 1 extra stage to go back. The main problem of that is the accuracy, but is just a technical problem.

It would be very realist if the developer made us build a 1tons beamed-sail-probe for a 50y flyby (or 150y transfer) then have research discover FTL right as it arrive.

This is where you are totally wrong. totally.

I dont wanna explain this again in this topic.

But I wanna understand your logic. First there is a big difference in realism between fall 8 meters and survive and fall 1000m (at vaccum) and survive.

But for you there is not difference...

You ask me with full details the design, values, and all the calculations and systems from a beamed sail, but you do not care the values, design, calculations, physics and values about FTL.

First you need dark matter. That we dont have any clue if exist or not. second you need a lot. also a lot of matter. You need to put this matter in tiny fractions of space.. so black holes!, but all this tiny black holes needs to be in a perfect arrange without touch.

How you make this tiny blackholes and you make a weird system to confind them...

How you make this ship move or stop??

How you survive inside of the buuble??

and 100000000 more questions that i dont have the time to write.

But to avoid more confusion, I will tell you what we can do..

I will make a new topic about how can be implemented a game mechanic with real tiers and ways of propulsions to get other stars, that has to be fun, easy and challege it.

And then in the science forum section, I will put all the real reaserchs and explains about the real technology. but the game mechanic will have their differences.

And it will be a system that increase the possibilities and gameplay.. not reduce or jump like FTL.

Because go to other stars needs to be part of the game, part of the challenge, if you have FTL, is just get an extra ecenary.

[Fox62]

AngelLestat, PLEASE get an English reading/speaking proofreader for you posts. It's very hard to work out what you are trying to say, and you've made a lot of errors in you spelling and grammar. If it helps, use google translate to translate from your native language to English and use that as a guide.

[Sean Mirrsen]

STL interstellar travel will break the regular interplanetary travel. Any conventional drivesystem powerful and efficient enough to make a journey between the stars possible will make travel between planets trivial. Making traveling between the stars a challenge is not worth killing the challenge of planetary exploration.

[MRab2]

How I said, if we allow himbernation, supplies is not such a big deal.

Don't you mean *magical* hibernation?

Just to mention, the sailbeam concept, using micro sails 10cm2, they will reach 0,1c in 1 second.

No they won't.

.

You need Huge lenses to focus the beam across interstellar distances. This is not a problem with a fly by probe with a 0,1c speed using microwave,

No, it's still a huge problem.

This problem will be fix in just 10 years.

Drivel. In the 50 years since the laser was invented the closest analogue to what's being talked about here puts out about 100kw and it's "continuous" cycle is measured in minutes. You think we'll a laser that's 5 orders of magnitude more powerful and run for months at a time?!?

Where you get that?? To make the laser and collector for the first mission, with just 2 design and 10 launch you can do it. And still will work for future missions, and it will be very easy to scale up.

And that laser will almost be every bit as magical as the warp drive you're so against.

But people it does not understand how much advances it would take to have something like that.

And neither do you, or anyone else. Our understanding of physics is still developing. We're more likely to have a working theory for FTL in the next 50 years than to have the in-space assets needed for a beamed sail.

But, this all boils down to this - pinnacle of space exploration being beam sail = b-o-o-o-r-i-n-g

BTW I lied about my previous post being my last.

[MRab2]

As far as coping with the extreme speeds that unity can (apparently) not handle, maybe when moving between star systems, it's like map view but on a larger scale, timewarp has a higher maximum speed, and as far as the coding is concerned you're moving at a normal speed, but in all the menus/HUDs, all distances and speeds have an added X*10^Y

There's a video on Youtube in 0.17 (I think) where they got a ship up to 1.7 X the speed of light. With a *shrunken* universe this would be fast enough.

[Outlander4]

The good about solar sail or solar presure into light materials is that you get a push. So you can float a sail (graphene solar colector) over the sun without any orbital speed. Or use this pressure to get other orbites that would be impossible in normal circustances.

Yeah, I know about it. Not sure it'll work though. Need to calculate stuff first... and getting anything to this floating things will be ridiculous. Nae, I'd say even FTL is easier than stationary floating thing in space.

That is correct in the case that you had orbital speed and your star destination is in the same inclination that kerbin. But why the star destination cant be in a different inclination?

In case it would be impossible to just float solar sail above the star, polar orbit is the way to go - this way you won't have Kerbol/Sun obstructing your field-of-view. You'll have to put another collector-laser assembly into equatorial orbit to reach stars above and below Kerbol/Sun, and another collector-laser assembly into polar orbit at 90 degrees to the first one. This way you'll cover all directions. That sounds like a lot of work.

You can build the whole thing in kerbin orbit then you send it to the right orbit without spend any fuel.

You use the colector area like sail (only 1/2 of power because it absorbs), there is a solar sail mod, you can test it, is not so acurate but it will give you and idea how good are sails for some maneuvers.

I know something about solar sail technology; the thing is that it works so much better at moving things away from the star.

That is the good part, you can not use this system to remplace all your normal rockets and interplanetary missions. The balance remains.

It has nothing to do with balance, and it works perfectly well for in-system transfer. In fact, with ablative beam sail it would be perfect for it.

But one thing that we know right now, is that life can develope in millons of cases different than us.

I will bet 5 to 1 that there is life in our solar system besides earth.

I'm actually a scientist (medical sciences, and I'm moving towards biology and environmental sciences (and maybe astrobiology if I'll get rich somehow). Life can do a lot of amazing things, but science does not bet on those things. Science operates with facts and evidence, and right now there is no evidence about life's existence anywhere in the solar system except on Earth. We talk about conditions favourable for life, it's something entirely different.

This discussion goes downhill, really, since you are way too keen on defending your beamed sail at all costs; I suggest learning a bit more about orbital mechanics and moving stuff around in space just to understand the amount of work required; maybe even constructing something using beams and girders and solar panels in KSP (if you'll do it, show us your pictures! it'd be awesome!) to get the first-hand experience. Otherwise you'll be just dismissing problems with fancy words instead of working out solutions.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Outlander4

[Outlander4]

STL interstellar travel will break the regular interplanetary travel. Any conventional drivesystem powerful and efficient enough to make a journey between the stars possible will make travel between planets trivial. Making traveling between the stars a challenge is not worth killing the challenge of planetary exploration.

Hi, I remember you well from before the forum wipe. Good old times coming back again

I guess we'll need something like nuclear pulse drive to get our brave idiots cosmonauts to the planets beyond Jool's orbit that are going to be added at some point in a reasonable amount of time... I see no problem of this in career mode where money (and possibly other things) will balance everything; the problem is that we use sandbox for some sort of career mode right now making self-imposed challenges; of course the moment any highly efficient drive becomes stock sandbox will become something else entirely...I see no reason why FTL drive shouldn't work inside the solar system unless it's some sort of jumpgate/wormhole thingie which I abhor.

To be honest, I'd like to have current physics-limited freedom more than other solar systems or fancy technology or anything.