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

[Kegereneku]

Discussing with you is a challenge because you see your fictional ideas as more potent than other's equally fictional ideas.

To cut short about avatar : James Camerons care for scientific verisimilitude don't make anything in Avatar -starting by Unobtainum- any less fake. Avatar is a movie and KSP is a game, none of them try to be accurate for the sake of being accurate, but for the sake of being entertaining.

We are trying to make you understand that not only the idea of beamed-sail is for all practical purpose impossible (in a reasonable pre-singularity timeframe), but also that there is more to a megascale project than theoretical numbers ignoring any difficulty. Else we would be terraforming Mars right now inside rocketpunk fusion-starship. Interstellar Ramjet were also supposed to be theoretically possible until someone else did the math.

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.

You should know yourself that you can survive a 1km fall... on a near 0 gravity moon as long as you consider other point of view.

You are taking for granted that KSP will have ONLY beam-sail related 99.99999% efficient technology and won't break other technology with antimatter drive.

I am taking for granted that KSP will need short-cut and avoid 150 years time warp.

So let's come to FTL now.

Put aside that our latest model of physic is 60 years old and break depending of the scale...

...it's time you realize that we are talking of game-design. KSP is not a simulation, it does make a lot of effort to stay technologically credible, but as repeated multiple time it's ultimately geared toward entertainment.

Nice jobs depreciating any FTL-related challenge as "push-button and jump", for all we know implementing your beamed-sail idea also amount to "push-button and set sail".

The very reason FTL is on the "Do not suggest List" is that there's a thousand way to implement it.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight.php#1.0

Last : Thank you for the graphic for beam-sail deceleration, since you never talked about it before, I think you can amuse yourself recalculating everything to take account for BIGGER impossible sail which also serve as focusing mirror and for a grant finale you'll explain the developer how they are supposed to make it work with KSP design&fly model.

[MRab2]

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

Because it's one of the most trivial of question and the answer is; it's not terribly important. At the power levels we're talking about you're going to have more than one station and you're not going to base your calculations on them all running 100% of the time, so even if they pass behind the star it doesn't matter.

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.

And the task jumps three orders of magnitude on the difficulty scale - now you're talking about pushing asteroids around the system?!?

Just to stress the point - I'm not saying its not doable, but representing the task within the context of Kerbal will be completely unrealistic - which I'm FINE with. It's a game, as long as it looks roughly realistic then it's OK. But if you're willing to accept that compromise then claiming FTL shouldn't be in the game because that's not realist starts to look like silliness.

Edited August 19, 2013 by MRab2

[Sean Mirrsen]

I personally already expressed my preference for an FTL drive for KSP. While my all-time favorite drive system is the Linear Displacement System from Edge of Chaos, KSP seems like it would most benefit from a variant of the Kearny-Fuchida jumpdrive, from the Battletech franchise. KF drives are large, rare, require slow recharges using solar power, only function outside of any significant gravity wells, and can jump several times in sequence if enough fuel cells are provided. They won't break in-system travel, they will favor large interstellar carriers, and they even already begin with the letter K. They're a perfect match!

[Fox62]

I prefer the Alcuibierre drive concept. However, the way I would implement it is that the drive is basically nearly uncontrollable in it's thrust. It's basically, speed up to 20c for x number of seconds, then decelerate to what your relative speed is from what you were doing on Kerbin. You could in theory go 20c for as long as you have the energy, but once you run out, it will take a massive amount of energy to regenerate the negative "goop*", by which I mean KOSMOS SSP pack Balka panels would be almost enough. That's 200 energy units per second or more to generate 1 unit of "goop". As such, you would have something that was not only stupid expensive, but very hard to get, balancing it very nicely. And by "goop" I mean whatever it is that makes the Alcuibierre drive go. (I forget whether it's negative energy or negative matter). However, I would make it so that there were alternatives to the tech that take longer, but are ultimately cheaper, if more difficult to work out and more boring (instead of simply "point in desired direction of FTL travel, push button, go", it would be, "plot transfer burn, execute transfer burn, wait for time warp to get you to next maneuver node, yadda yadda yadda")

[Scoundrel]

I think I have a solution that would satisfy everyone, and is based on real sciencey-like thoughts.

Fact: the planet Kerbin is impossibly dense - it is in fact 10x as dense as Earth and over 2x as dense as the densest element that exists.

Fact: you can, using chemical rockets, whip around the sun so fast that you do >1.7x the speed of light!

Fact: Alcubierre is Mexican

Fact: Squad is based in Mexico

Fact: Ewoks live on Endor

Knowing all that:

Clearly, as fans of Alcubierre, Squad has accepted that spacetime can be compressed as witnessed by how small the Kerbol system is and how tiny the planets are, yet still have massive gravitational fields and therefore ridiculously high densities.

Yet how do we reconcile real-world physics and technology with KSP?

Easy: we don't! Instead, we look to String Theory - specifically M-Theory - for our answers!

Hear me out...

Through the power of M-Theory, ∞_k (the Kerbal Universe) and ∞₁ (our universe) must have different universal constants. Thus where k is the Kerbal universe and 1 is our own, and where Chewbacca is a wookiee, we must accept C_k>C₁...which has been verified by many people who have, using just stock parts, hurtled their ships faster than light as measured in our own universe!

Also, because of the differences in densities between our universe and the Kerbal universe - which would in turn explain dark matter and dark energy - the compression of time/space of ~10x would mean that the entire Kerbal universe would have at only 1/10 the distance (d) between stars (d_k = d₁/10) and would likely be in a region of dense star clusters due to the order of magnitude greater gravity (g) created by the spacetime compression g_k = ÃÂ_k = ÃÂ₁*10.

Thus with C_k>C₁ and d_k=d₁/10 inside dense star clusters, we can safely assume that travel between stars could conceivably be done using nuclear saltwater rockets or nuclear pulse units (or any other near-speculative drive system) within a reasonable timeframe without resorting to the additional warping of spacetime (think of the struts!) or building giant space lasers to zap a giant space umbrella through space - which would be really laggy because of the high polygon count, the huge textures Bac9 and ClairaLyrae would have to make, and the fact that it would be insanely wobbly.

Therefore, armed with those provable assumptions and my meaningless physics-like math formulas, I believe I have satisfactorily demonstrated that not only is Chewbacca a wookiee who is on Endor with Ewoks, but all that would be needed would be a handful of fuel tanks full of blutonium-salted water and a scary looking rocket nozzle part and voilà: we have interstellar capability that would only take around 4 or 5 minutes at maximum timewarp.

After all, at the end of the day, don't we all want to only have to slap on a handful of reasonably massed parts onto our ships in order to go to another star system?

[Fox62]

Hmmm.... I suppose there is a reasonable chance that your Insane Troll Logic like mathematics, which I will admit are somewhat beyond my comprehension, are indeed correct. However, I will hold judgement until I see proof written out using figures confirmable from screenshots.

[AngelLestat]

Fox62: I will try, but google translate is worst than me.

Mrab2:

Don't you mean *magical* hibernation?

if by magic you refer to what many animals on earth already accomplish, then yes

Maybe Kerbals enter in a himbernation phase when their lose temperature or liquids.

No they won't.

Yes they would

http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/oct01/597Kare.pdf

Also you can launch these sails with less power, because you can make bounce the light many times with a mirror on top of the laser aperture, this will increase the efficiency by a lot.

Becoming the most energy-efficient method to reach velocities of 0,1c.

No, it's still a huge problem.

No, is not.

Because you accelerate the whole thing in a short time. So it will not be so far when your aim starts to fail.

And with all the instruments imprented in the same sail mesh, there is not G-forces problems.

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?!?

Yes, maybe 10 years was too much to ask. I dont have all the info in order right now. But I read a lot of sources about different researchs in the optic fields when I was trying to find a solid-future solution to the accuracy problem.

And I found many papers that was very encouraging. All with different applications, but they well related and can work for the same. How I said, plasmonic, metamaterials, superlens, dielectrics, new lasers design and gain medium exchanges, would make huge advances in this technology.

Also you need to have into account that at vaccum and with the new materials (graphene) with almost not heat problems, it will increase the efficience of lasers by a lot.

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.

I am not sure if I follow you.. Maybe if you install a maser in the collector besides the laser, you can use it to some in-system transfer, but it needs to be just behind your destination, so if you need to move the whole solar collector just to launch an small craft to the next planet is more energy waste that the one you gain.

You can use normal solar sails without the laser beam. But it would not be easy.

And you cant land with sails.

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

I know.. You think that I only made a reaserch about beamed propulsion? I try to find any posibility to see if FTL can be possible. Even for a small particle.. or just a weird case in the quantum world. I find nothing.

And even if we develop a new physic to allow this in 50 or 100 years. To make something like that practical it would take 500 years more; being positive.

For you can be boring maybe, but you can find FTL in any game or movie. But here is a real challenge.. try to cross the interstellar sea with real proyected technology, all inside the frame of physic and real resources.

We are in the edge of the sea, and like centurys ago, we have the chance to face it, again with "sails".

Outlander4:

and getting anything to this floating things will be ridiculous. Nae, I'd say even FTL is easier than stationary floating thing in space.

If you have a computer and autopilot is too easy, if you need to do it manually then not so much.

This all depends on how you implement this in the game design. But you know that is toltally possible if nasa do it. So I dont see the problem.

this way you won't have Kerbol/Sun obstructing your field-of-view.

Even at middle distance between sun and mercury, you know how much angle of degrees the sun will take up in the sky? only 4 from 360.

So even if you place your laser there, and your destiny star is in the same inclination that our sun, you will have only 0,01 of the laser time push obstructed.

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

So sailboats travel in the same direction as the wind?

http://wiki.solarsails.info/index.php/Tacking_Solar_Sails

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.

I dint pretend to put my bet like an evidence. Is just an opinion. But now we know phosphorus can be remplaced by arsenic in the DNA, and that opens a whole of places where life can be found.

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.

I know that are just words and the ideas about how to implement this in the game sound very confuse taking the real deal. But I will try.

Mrab2:

At the power levels we're talking about you're going to have more than one station and you're not going to base your calculations on them all running 100% of the time, so even if they pass behind the star it doesn't matter.

Yes is what I thought, but if I want to suggest other kinds of interstellar propulsion systems, then I need to know.

ow you're talking about pushing asteroids around the system?!?

Just to stress the point - I'm not saying its not doable, but representing the task within the context of Kerbal will be completely unrealistic - which I'm FINE with. It's a game, as long as it looks roughly realistic then it's OK. But if you're willing to accept that compromise then claiming FTL shouldn't be in the game because that's not realist starts to look like silliness.

This was just to avoid the huge frensnel lens to focus the beam, and is not difficult find an asteroid close to the sun-alfacentauri focus point 600AU, and you have the laser to fire it and burn a little of mass from the asteroid and then use that propellant to counter the laser push. Well maybe in KSP is not so easy But well, we can discard all the accuracy problem from the game and that would be all.

Kegereneku

We are trying to make you understand that not only the idea of beamed-sail is for all practical purpose impossible (in a reasonable pre-singularity timeframe)

In my opinion you are not doing a good job, first because this is the most feasible idea from all, it has its technical challenges, of course. But is the best in cost-benefic and all using knowing physics.

I am taking for granted that KSP will need short-cut and avoid 150 years time warp.

I dont want 150 yeas of time warp.. but 6 years in relativistic time at 0,6c to reach one star 4 ly away seems quite good for me. With a special timewarp to do that in few minutes.

The very reason FTL is on the "Do not suggest List" is that there's a thousand way to implement it.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...rlight.php#1.0

Haha, this last link that you share was very funny. I guess you dint read the top quote about FTL in that same page...

First: Is a list of just names that all can be resumed to wurmholes and alcubierre drive, no more details about that.

Second: This is the fun part, the webpage author quote said that he dint want to public that. But is a must taking into account how many star trek fans love it.

But he recomend read this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light

thank you all, this discucion helped me correct some concepts that I had wrong and learn some new ones.

I will try to make a more accurate suggestion of how to include some more feasible populsion systems into ksp. Even if FTL remains, I will prefer to see this enter like final tier.

And explain in a more orderly way this methods in the science section.

[Outlander4]

I am not sure if I follow you.. Maybe if you install a maser in the collector besides the laser, you can use it to some in-system transfer, but it needs to be just behind your destination, so if you need to move the whole solar collector just to launch an small craft to the next planet is more energy waste that the one you gain.

You can use normal solar sails without the laser beam. But it would not be easy.

And you cant land with sails.

You can easily use sailed beam for in-system travel,it would be a waste of resources but space in general is a waste of resources. We do it because we can, really.

We are in the edge of the sea, and like centurys ago, we have the chance to face it, again with "sails".

Space is not a ocean.

If you have a computer and autopilot is too easy, if you need to do it manually then not so much.

This all depends on how you implement this in the game design. But you know that is toltally possible if nasa do it. So I dont see the problem.

You're not thinking here. With computers or without, orbital mechanics remains the same - you'll need to assemble the damn thing (solar collector) somewhere in orbit, and then slow down its velocity relative to the Sun to ZERO to allow it to fall down towards the Sun until the point where light pressure and solar wind balances it against the pull of gravity. I don't know if it's possible in the first place (calculations are needed), and in real life changes in Sun's luminosity and solar wind due to solar flares will knock it off-position in no time. KSP is free of such concerns, though.

Even at middle distance between sun and mercury, you know how much angle of degrees the sun will take up in the sky? only 4 from 360.

Slightly less than that, actually. But all the time when Sun is somewhere between you and your target you'll have quite a lot of trouble aiming at it. It's not physical, it's engineering challenge.

So sailboats travel in the same direction as the wind?

Space is not an ocean. You can bring your orbit down and thus get closer to the Sun; it is not the same as cancelling your orbital velocity entirely and just hanging somewhere motionless.

I dint pretend to put my bet like an evidence. Is just an opinion. But now we know phosphorus can be remplaced by arsenic in the DNA, and that opens a whole of places where life can be found.

It can't, and it doesn't. One questionable discovery of one strange strand is not enough to imply that RNA and DNA can be built fully with arsenates instead of phosphates.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Outlander4
Correcting other people's mistakes

[Fox62]

Ummm, I never said anything about what you are saying he replied to me with. As such, what are you smoking.

[Outlander4]

I personally already expressed my preference for an FTL drive for KSP. While my all-time favorite drive system is the Linear Displacement System from Edge of Chaos, KSP seems like it would most benefit from a variant of the Kearny-Fuchida jumpdrive, from the Battletech franchise. KF drives are large, rare, require slow recharges using solar power, only function outside of any significant gravity wells, and can jump several times in sequence if enough fuel cells are provided. They won't break in-system travel, they will favor large interstellar carriers, and they even already begin with the letter K. They're a perfect match!

Then there are no chance since NovaSilisko is allergic to the letter K

Seriously, though - KSP makes use of generally accepted principles of physics exaggerating them slightly for gameplay reasons. Like, planets behave mostly like real planets apart from being ridiculously small and dense. Solar panels behave like real solar panels apart from not following the inverse square rule when decreasing efficiency with distance from the sun. Magnetic docking ports are physically possible and even act more or less as docking ports apart from magnetic forces following inverse square rule instead of inverse cube of the distance, just to make our life easier. Ion engines work as real ion engines do, but they have more thrust to make our lives less miserable, and so on.

FTL, on the other hand, is a totally fictional concept bearing no resemblance to the real life, violating laws of physics and even in case of Alcubierre drive being a mathematical concept only. Of course, KSP is a game and it's for entertainment, but its appeal comes greatly from having valid general principles of physics and working with them.

Another point that everybody ignores - when the rest of the Kerbol system gets added, it would take a lot of time at maximum time warp waiting for planets to align, and quite possible hours at high time warp to travel to the outermost planets and icy bodies of the Kerbal analogue of the Kuiper belt. For some reason, it doesn't scare anyone off, but when we start talking about spending similar amount of time waiting for interstellar travel using some plausible slower-then-light methods of propulsion people suddenly start saying that we need an FTL. I can't understand this, honestly.

Kerbal clock plug-in made playing KSP much easier - I basically sent off a mission to Jool, put the timer on, and spent the transfer time doing LKO/Munar stuff, designing and launching ships and modules for the next mission. And we all know that some sort of timers and mission planning are going to be implemented anyway, so waiting won't be a problem - we'll have things to occupy our time.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Outlander4

[Outlander4]

Ummm, I never said anything about what you are saying he replied to me with. As such, what are you smoking.

Aye, AngelLestat messed up his quoting again, and it went directly into my quote. Corrected it. I don't smoke, but I like good Scottish whisky. It never made me fail at quoting the right people, though.

[Sean Mirrsen]

For some reason, it doesn't scare anyone off, but when we start talking about spending similar amount of time waiting for interstellar travel using some plausible slower-then-light methods of propulsion people suddenly start saying that we need an FTL. I can't understand this, honestly.

Refer back to my first post here. Any drive system for STL travel between stars is bound to be so efficient as to break the challenge of interplanetary transfers. I would rather have a "magic" FTL drive, if it lets me keep the exploration of the new starsystems challenging.

Besides, in most cases the real problem is spending time accelerating, not waiting. Oh, and toss the "magic is just technology we do not yet understand" thing into the pile too.

[Outlander4]

Refer back to my first post here. Any drive system for STL travel between stars is bound to be so efficient as to break the challenge of interplanetary transfers. I would rather have a "magic" FTL drive, if it lets me keep the exploration of the new starsystems challenging.

Besides, in most cases the real problem is spending time accelerating, not waiting. Oh, and toss the "magic is just technology we do not yet understand" thing into the pile too.

I did. Well, acceleration (unless it's about ion engines) is usually quite high so most of the time we indeed just coast along our trajectory. It's true that it'll be a bit different for interstellar missions (longer, that is), but it's still mostly about waiting in high warp.

And in career mode it'll be possible to balance everything (especially the nuclear pulse-type things) by insane costs, need to assemble the damn thing in space far away from Kerbin (possibly using resources extracted from several planets/dwarf planets/asteroids). You won't be able to launch it from Kerbin (forbidden by environmental protection law - kerbals are crazy but not THAT crazy)...you won't be able even to research it while on kerbin - just test-firing the engine needs to be done somewhere far away in deep space. Actually, the same could be applied to sandbox mode minus the cost of the project, I think

Basically, make building it so hard that it'd be much easier to use NERVAs for going to Jool and beyond. I can't think of any good explanation why FTL can't be used for moving from solar orbit somewhere between Eve and Kerbin to solar orbit somewhere between Jool and the next gas giant. It's far enough from gravity wells; it totally should work.

By the way, the mantra is 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic', though I prefer 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device'.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Outlander4

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'm not talking about Kerbin, or the Sol system. I'm talking about everywhere else. Sure, you may have had a challenge developing your interstellar STL drive, and you may have a challenge building enough of it to go anywhere. But you can build it, and go anywhere. Once you're in a different system, with the kind of power and efficiency that interstellar flight necessitates, you will just relocate your carrier into position around whichever planet you need, and you will do it again and again because the delta-V requirements for interplanetary transfers are nothing compared to those of interstellar flight - even if your tanks are empty, you'd be able to Grand Tour any planetary system on fumes. The interstellar travel system of KSP, once/if one does become necessary, must be simultaneously flexible enough to make smart design matter, and restrictive enough to disallow its use for anything but interstellar travel or extreme cases of in-system translocations, not to mention sane enough in regards to logistics that interstellar travel is not limited to elite players with massive amounts of free time and/or Alienware gaming rigs.

Going to a different star must be a challenge, but not a challenge to end all challenges. The fun of KSP will die if the challenge of exploration is taken out of it.

And I'm not using that mantra. My expression is a corollary to it and its derivative. If any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and any technology that's distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced, then any technology, no matter how primitive, will be magic to those who don't understand it enough to distinguish it from such.

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff300/fv00255.gif

Edited August 20, 2013 by Sean Mirrsen

[Kegereneku]

I'm done answering to you AngelLestat, you keep ignoring valid point, you want 6years travel with 0.6C beamed-sail which somehow doesn't apply to interplanetary travel and require 99.999% efficient technology making antimatter-drive look easy. So either you put ridiculous amount of low-efficient laser-sat "for the challenge" (talk about boring) or you increase the travel time to at least 50 years for a lousy probe.

The website I linked you to "Projectrho" is a better reference than wikipedia for fictional story/game building so you may want to read it entirely, it will teach you that FTL can be easier to balance than magic-sail, and why your beam-sail project amount to magic inside a game which is rocketpunk to start with.

[...]

FTL, on the other hand, is a totally fictional concept bearing no resemblance to the real life, violating laws of physics and even in case of Alcubierre drive being a mathematical concept only. Of course, KSP is a game and it's for entertainment, but its appeal comes greatly from having valid general principles of physics and working with them.

Another point that everybody ignores - when the rest of the Kerbol system gets added, it would take a lot of time at maximum time warp waiting for planets to align, and quite possible hours at high time warp to travel to the outermost planets and icy bodies of the Kerbal analogue of the Kuiper belt. For some reason, it doesn't scare anyone off, but when we start talking about spending similar amount of time waiting for interstellar travel using some plausible slower-then-light methods of propulsion people suddenly start saying that we need an FTL. I can't understand this, honestly.

Kerbal clock plug-in made playing KSP much easier - I basically sent off a mission to Jool, put the timer on, and spent the transfer time doing LKO/Munar stuff, designing and launching ships and modules for the next mission. And we all know that some sort of timers and mission planning are going to be implemented anyway, so waiting won't be a problem - we'll have things to occupy our time.

That was constructive.

My personal interest with FTL drive in KSP is mostly to answer your 3rd paragraph. At some point in KSP you'll either have to plan mission 30 years ahead and let time-clock remind you of the Kerbonaut you sent to their death +7 years ago because of a missing bolt or to research better-engine to make the timescale workable at the cost of less challenging orbital-maneuver and absurd DeltaV budget.

This solution will probably work out very well as long as we don't go further away than Eeloo, but once we go further away from the Kerbal Space Center the model will break even if we build spaceship locally as it won't solve the problem of absurd time scale for launch window between Jool and further away Gaz Giant.

This lead us to the idea of FTL. Be it something Kerbal-made, or magical-easter-eggs like the Mun Arch leading somewhere else like a stargate, FTL would serve as a shortcut allowing to explore further planet without breaking the gameplay on interplanetary/orbital scale with ridiculously high thrust/ISP and DeltaV budget.

It also answer to the problem of "Times Marches On" and the inevitability that after 150 years of time-warp your scientist may invent FTL and the only solution to this problem is to make sure everything happen in a shorter time scale.

The last problem FTL give us a solution for is that KSP's game engine cannot cope with long continuous acceleration I think it was said earlier in the thread that even an Alcubierre-drive tested by Developer led to calculation problems.

[Outlander4]

Oh, I see now. Sorry for not getting it earlier.

Actually, I'll be able to tour any planetary system even with FTL - I'd just put myself into elliptic orbit after arriving. With little patience and good planning I'll visit everything dropping probes and landers everywhere, with some corrective burns and some gravity assists helping me to move around.

[Person012345]

Then there are no chance since NovaSilisko is allergic to the letter K

Seriously, though - KSP makes use of generally accepted principles of physics exaggerating them slightly for gameplay reasons. Like, planets behave mostly like real planets apart from being ridiculously small and dense. Solar panels behave like real solar panels apart from not following the inverse square rule when decreasing efficiency with distance from the sun. Magnetic docking ports are physically possible and even act more or less as docking ports apart from magnetic forces following inverse square rule instead of inverse cube of the distance, just to make our life easier. Ion engines work as real ion engines do, but they have more thrust to make our lives less miserable, and so on.

FTL, on the other hand, is a totally fictional concept bearing no resemblance to the real life, violating laws of physics and even in case of Alcubierre drive being a mathematical concept only. Of course, KSP is a game and it's for entertainment, but its appeal comes greatly from having valid general principles of physics and working with them.

Another point that everybody ignores - when the rest of the Kerbol system gets added, it would take a lot of time at maximum time warp waiting for planets to align, and quite possible hours at high time warp to travel to the outermost planets and icy bodies of the Kerbal analogue of the Kuiper belt. For some reason, it doesn't scare anyone off, but when we start talking about spending similar amount of time waiting for interstellar travel using some plausible slower-then-light methods of propulsion people suddenly start saying that we need an FTL. I can't understand this, honestly.

Kerbal clock plug-in made playing KSP much easier - I basically sent off a mission to Jool, put the timer on, and spent the transfer time doing LKO/Munar stuff, designing and launching ships and modules for the next mission. And we all know that some sort of timers and mission planning are going to be implemented anyway, so waiting won't be a problem - we'll have things to occupy our time.

Imagine jool. Ok, now imagine 5 - 6 times that. Now we have a pluto analogue. Would anyone realistically want to do this? Eh, maybe, as you say we'll have a timer in the future, we could do other stuff whilst it's happening. Now imagine 50,593 times as far as to jool. Now we have our alpha centauri analogue. We're not talking about "waiting a similar amount of time". Interstellar spaces are -vast-. Yes they'll be scaled down for the kerbals, but they're still ridiculously vast if we want any semblance of authenticity and not to make it a glorified, shiny outer planet with a bunch of large moons.

[Person012345]

And yes I think putting the nearest star at a couple of hundred KU (kerbonomical units) or whatever from the sun (as opposed to closer to 253,000) would be more of a crime than a warp drive.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Oh, I see now. Sorry for not getting it earlier.

Actually, I'll be able to tour any planetary system even with FTL - I'd just put myself into elliptic orbit after arriving. With little patience and good planning I'll visit everything dropping probes and landers everywhere, with some corrective burns and some gravity assists helping me to move around.

Well of course you can. But you'll do it exactly how you were doing it in the first place - as in, you'll actually watch your delta-V budget, you'll time burns and slingshot around planets - i.e. do the things that make KSP what it is. With a delta-V budget that could as well be limitless, those maneuvers would be simply boring.

[MRab2]

Oh, I see now. Sorry for not getting it earlier.

Actually, I'll be able to tour any planetary system even with FTL - I'd just put myself into elliptic orbit after arriving. With little patience and good planning I'll visit everything dropping probes and landers everywhere, with some corrective burns and some gravity assists helping me to move around.

No you won't. Sorry but your answer is based solely on ONE idea of how an ftl system would work. There is no reason to presume it would work how you are imagining it.

[MRab2]

No you won't. Sorry but your answer is based solely on ONE idea of how an ftl system would work. There is no reason to presume it would work how you are imagining it.

Sorry i misunderstood. Please see Sean's reply. It is essentially what i would have said if i hadn't been having a blonde moment.

[Lheim]

There're a number of 'warp' type technologies in sci-fi that wouldn't be terribly game-breaking for in-system exploration.

Notably, say.. the system from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's 'Mote' series, where a sort of teleportation is possible between specific stars at specific points where they mutually gravitationally etc-etc-etc-mumblo-jumbo. So in-system travel has to be done the same old way, but once you hit that particular point in space you fire up your 'warp' drive, instantly reappear in another star system, then have to drive as per usual to other planets or to another transfer point in that system.

There's also another in Larry Niven's works, where magic warp drive of the usual sort only works far off from any significant gravity well.. IE, you have to get well beyond the orbit of pluto to fire it up.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Lheim

[Outlander4]

Well of course you can. But you'll do it exactly how you were doing it in the first place - as in, you'll actually watch your delta-V budget, you'll time burns and slingshot around planets - i.e. do the things that make KSP what it is. With a delta-V budget that could as well be limitless, those maneuvers would be simply boring.

The same with sub-light propulsion methods! With limited fuel reserves on your interstellar ship you'll have to do the same thing (if you want to get your astronauts back home). Of course nothing prevents you from over-engineering your ship and carrying extra fuel, but it's between you and the rocket equation. FTL (as many people see it) also has a lot of potential for abuse - if it's energy-dependent you'll just hop from system to system a-la Star Trek, recharging batteries and boldly going and exploring the galaxy with just one ship, mining asteroids for fuel as you go along. Nuclear pulse drive would require setting up production facilities first, thus more time and more challenge.

Actually, the more we discuss stuff, the more it starts looking as if difference between FTL and STL is in the name and travel time:

FTL - you get into position (far away from gravity wells in some strange point of space; it may get a while to get there), you activate FTL, magic happens, and after some (little) time you're near another planetary system where you have to use conventional engines to do stuff.

STL - nuclear pulse, Z-pinch, whatever - you get into position (anywhere in space, essentially), you activate the engine, advanced physics happens, and after the initial burn you wait (quite a while), and then you're near the other planetary system, where you decelerate and do stuff. Because of really long acceleration/deceleration times it might have to be scripted/pre-calculated/whatever - it'd be just pushing the button and waiting doing other stuff, unless anybody fancies sitting in front of their PC for 3 months waiting their ship to accelerate to 25% of c at 1 g.

Realistic constraints can be made for both of them, it's just that people like me ideologically abhor the mere idea of having such a huge hole in the body of physics.

Besides, developing FTL without developing some form of advanced propulsion (say, thermonuclear) first is a bit like developing an aeroplane in order to get to the town 20 miles away because it would take you so long to walk there.

Of course, it's a game and logic does not need to be applied, but still.

[Outlander4]

Imagine jool. Ok, now imagine 5 - 6 times that. Now we have a pluto analogue. Would anyone realistically want to do this? Eh, maybe, as you say we'll have a timer in the future, we could do other stuff whilst it's happening. Now imagine 50,593 times as far as to jool.

At higher speeds it would take less, and it's higher speeds we're talking about. Nobody asks for travelling to the nearest stars at 11 meters per second; more like 0.1-0.5 c. Acceleration would be a problem; actually, everything about interstellar travel is a problem, no matter if it's conventional ways or magic.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Outlander4

[Sean Mirrsen]

Realistic constraints can be made for both of them, it's just that people like me ideologically abhor the mere idea of having such a huge hole in the body of physics.

Besides, developing FTL without developing some form of advanced propulsion (say, thermonuclear) first is a bit like developing an aeroplane in order to get to the town 20 miles away because it would take you so long to walk there.

Well, there's already that hole the size of... roughly the universe, considering it's space-compressed.

Bahaha... "space decompression drive"... like the warp drive, but instead of doing the push-and-pull, it just decompressed the space behind itself. Pretty much a booster rocket powered by space itself. Jeb would approve.

Anyways.

The thing about FTL is that it's... eh, "sort of" unconventional. By which I mean it more or less goes against everything physicists stand for (which just goes to show how little they actually stand for, but I digress). In turn, this "being unconventional" brings with itself a curious property of not being linked in any way to conventional progress. So STL travel is to FTL travel like the Burj Dubai is to a Japanese tapdancing robot - both are achievements in engineering, but areas of engineering so different that there are fewer links between them than between humans and cuttlefish, and either could be built without all or most developments required by the other.

In other words, FTL development isn't going to wait for STL travel to develop to any given point. It can happen at any time, exactly because we don't understand half the physics involved in its workings. I'm not saying it should come early, IRL or in-game, but making the assumption that we'd have superadvanced STL drives before we have FTL drives is foolish. No offense.

((P.S.: Unrelatedly, it seems the scientific community is lately becoming its own barrier to progress. At this rate, the first person to discover FTL travel will rather flee into the stars rather than make his discovery known, for fear of being burned at the stake. >_> ))