"End-Game" R&D Projects

[Blacksmith]

So if any of you like to read about advanced physics or even just rocketry in the real world, you'll probably hear about propulsion technologies that we know are possible, just don't have the ability to produce yet. I'm not talking about anything crazy, like Space-time warping or hyperspace, just some of the more exotic forms we don't have yet.

Fusion - Fusion is a step up from the kind of fission rockets that we see in NERVA, it achieves a high level thrust with a similar level of efficency.

Ramjet - If you can build an intake big enough, it's possible to power nuclear rockets with the interstellar exosphere. That so very thin level of hydrogen that permeates through all of space. Through this, you would be able to fire your engines indefinitely.

Solar Sails - The idea of a solar sail is that you can build a surface to get pushed by the light waves from the sun as a means of propulsion. This, obviously, requires a very large sail, about the size of Texas, to get reasonable thrust, because the impact caused by photons is almost negligible.

Antimatter - This is kind of the penultimate thruster. Neutrons, Protons, and other hadrons are made up of smaller particles called quarks. Quarks are elementary particles, like photons and electrons, which means they are not made up of smaller parts. There are many different kinds of quarks, and for every one, there is an antimatter version. Most atoms are actually made up partly of antimatter. When an antimatter particle is separated from the rest, it will annihilate with whatever regular matter it comes into contact with. This vaporizes them both into pure energy in the form of two highly charged photons. This produces massive amounts of thrust with literally atoms of fuel. NASA calculates that, should we be able to create and store antimatter, their antimatter engines could fuel an expedition to Mars with 10 milligrams of fuel. In addition, it's possible to assemble the opposite version of regular atoms. Anti-Hydrogen, albeit briefly, has been created. Another form of storing it is in positronium. Basically getting an electron to enter binary orbit with its antimatter equivalent, a positron in a kind of pseudoatom. Its very hard to assemble a stable pair, but if you do, it's much easier to store than pure antimatter. You simply destabilize it to get it to annihilate, the regular matter would be self contained.

I know there are other propulsion types that I don't know enough about to write down here, and also ones that aren't mainstream that we already have in real life, such as magnetoplasma and SABRE. Do you guys think adding these kind of endgame technologies would harm the game? Or maybe just don't fit the overall theme? Tell me what you think.

[JMBuilder]

What about VASIMRs?

[Fox62]

I think that having SABRE engines wouldn't be a terrible idea. However, they should be very endgame, as they make SSTO much easier.

[Ghost13]

Well I guess building an interstellar ship would be nice way for the endgame. After you visited allmost planets in the game and research all related technology and mined resourses you will be able to research first exoplanets and then research and build the He3 thermonuclear propulsion engine. Then you can assemble the starship in the LKO or other place in space. Then you will fill it fuel that you have to mine at Mun Minmus or someplace other than Kerbin. As soon as the ship is assembled and it's tanks are full with fuel "Launch interstellar mission button" will unlock and as soon as you press it, the end cinematics will begin with the ship reaching the sun escape velosity and then game fade to the titles. After the title the game can offer you continue in the sandbox mode or finish the game.

Every part of the starship have to be researched, buld delivered to LKO and docked together. Each part of the starship will have special docking ports so it can only be assembled in one predesigned way. As soon as you get all parts together and fully fuel the ship. The game will unlock the engamebutton. This way you can have the interstellar spaceflight without much change to the existing game mechanics.

[DaRocketCat]

SCRAM!

(10 ÑÂhar)

[Stargate525]

How about an Alcubierre Drive? Super late-game, requires a metric ton of energy....

[Beeman]

The endgame will be exploring distant(and additionally procedural) solar systems...unless they've changed their minds about that, of course. So...we'll probably have to do LOTS of science in the kerbol system 'till we can research FTL drives. Not even sure what else would be up that high in the tech tree, but I'm sure they've got somethin' in mind. Maybe not, I guess I wouldn't know >.>

[jwenting]

Well I guess building an interstellar ship would be nice way for the endgame. After you visited allmost planets in the game and research all related technology and mined resourses you will be able to research first exoplanets and then research and build the He3 thermonuclear propulsion engine. Then you can assemble the starship in the LKO or other place in space. Then you will fill it fuel that you have to mine at Mun Minmus or someplace other than Kerbin. As soon as the ship is assembled and it's tanks are full with fuel "Launch interstellar mission button" will unlock and as soon as you press it, the end cinematics will begin with the ship reaching the sun escape velosity and then game fade to the titles. After the title the game can offer you continue in the sandbox mode or finish the game.

Every part of the starship have to be researched, buld delivered to LKO and docked together. Each part of the starship will have special docking ports so it can only be assembled in one predesigned way. As soon as you get all parts together and fully fuel the ship. The game will unlock the engamebutton. This way you can have the interstellar spaceflight without much change to the existing game mechanics.

Been playing Civilization II again?

[Kegereneku]

Some people will frown and constructively assault me, but we will need some FTL if we want "end-game" manned mission and keep coherent scale, allow interstellar travel, or avoid overpowered engine.

No Higher Warp time will suffice, here is why :

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 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 anyway 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 another thread that even an Alcubierre-drive tested by Developer led to calculation problems.

[JakeGrey]

Terraforming technology, maybe?

[KOCOUR]

End game? why? this game is fine as sandbox building game. I actualy almost dont leave kerbins atmosphere. Just building Airplanes and rovers and testing them on kerbin, with occasional satelite, or spacestation.

For me the game is just better lego.

[DJEN]

Wormholes all teh way.

I mean, they're awesome.

[DJEN]

End game? why? this game is fine as sandbox building game. I actualy almost dont leave kerbins atmosphere. Just building Airplanes and rovers and testing them on kerbin, with occasional satelite, or spacestation.

For me the game is just better lego.

Indeed.

But, there are people who have different views upon this game, you know.

So, we'll need to respect them.

[Whirligig Girl]

I think there should be an end of the game. Much like Minecraft has a boss, I think there should be a certain technological level where you can not progress, in which you are awarded with a cutscene of Kerbals inspiring the little green men trope on Earth, with them conquering space (most of it).

[Blue]

Doesn't Ramjet technology require moving at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light in order to work?

[Mr Shifty]

Antimatter - This is kind of the penultimate thruster.

So what kind of thruster is the ultimate one?

[jwenting]

Doesn't Ramjet technology require moving at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light in order to work?

hmm, I think the engineers at Lockheed Martin and the SR-71 pilots of the US Air Force would be very surprised to hear that.

[Corovaneer]

Warp-\hyperspace-\star-gates, that you assemble in orbit from pieces. There even was a mod with pretty ring segments for this purpose somewhere.

[Mr Shifty]

hmm, I think the engineers at Lockheed Martin and the SR-71 pilots of the US Air Force would be very surprised to hear that.

The OP was specifically talking about deep-space ramjets, not air-breathing ones.

[Beeman]

Indeed.

But, there are people who have different views upon this game, you know.

So, we'll need to respect them.

People like the developers, perhaps ;P

Harvester wanted this game to play like a tycoon game, a space program simulator, not just a goalless sandbox. Not that sandbox is bad or sucks, just that a lot of us would rather play career mode with in-game progression and what-not. Some of us are even waiting for career mode to really sink our teeth into the game.

[Elemental]

Warp-\hyperspace-\star-gates, that you assemble in orbit from pieces. There even was a mod with pretty ring segments for this purpose somewhere.

This is what I am looking for.

Requires knowing how to dock in order to assemble it. Put it outside the SOI of the star so that you have to know what you are doing to assemble it. Then it is just a matter of flying out to it and BAMF!

[Specialist290]

So what kind of thruster is the ultimate one?

A reactionless drive, more than likely.

Not that I'm asking for one or anything.

[ouion]

Generations Ships are ships that have a environment like the home planet. So if the very very Late game has this kind of ship it would be Kerbin in a Smaller Scale that can fit 5,000 Kerbals or more and most of them are civilians and probably take long time to built probably 5 years or so take enough parts to build it and it would be slow so Kerbals have families in there and they reproduce until the final generation reach the Planet its targeted. When arrived you can Scrap the ship and use the parts to build a New City or a kerbal civilization on that Planet.

Edited August 23, 2013 by ouion