What parts will be available from the beginning with R&D?

[rhoark]

I'm guessing the command pod mk1, FL-T400, LV-T30, communotron 16, and science bay at the barest minimum.

[Paul Kingtiger]

Something I noticed in the PAX video was new technologies improving existing parts. Specifically a weight reduction. I was hoping for something like that and it's great to see it, so you don't need lots of new parts, but can improve existing ones. I'm hoping we'll see modifiers to ISP and thrust as well to simulate new fuel types and engine advances.

I'm guessing to start with you'll have most of the 1.25m parts with exceptions like nuclear and electric engines.

[Beeman]

The PAX thing also showed that certain tech nodes did actually unlock parts as well.

I have no idea what would be the very first list of parts. I would imagine just one engine, one or two sizes of fuel tanks and the small command module with the smallest parachute, perhaps and the simplest decoupler. Then a science part or two for doing orbital science or something. That would be a pretty okay starting point, I think. We'll probably start with a lot more than that, though...so who knows

[Rarity]

I'm all for upgrading existing parts. Maybe current engines would start out slightly less powerful/heavier than they are now, and at the end of R&D they'd be slightly more powerful/lighter than they are now. It would solve the whole "IRL rockets are way more powerful than ours!" thing. I haven't actually seen the PAX video so I don't know, but I think it'd make sense to have prop engines instead of jets for planes, but since we have rockets we'd of course have jets too. They just might not be as efficient or useful as props are in the beginning, and as we advance, our jets would get better until they're around what we have now (they certainly don't need a buff, IMO)

[Animal Mother]

Something I noticed in the PAX video was new technologies improving existing parts. Specifically a weight reduction. I was hoping for something like that and it's great to see it, so you don't need lots of new parts, but can improve existing ones. I'm hoping we'll see modifiers to ISP and thrust as well to simulate new fuel types and engine advances.

I'm guessing to start with you'll have most of the 1.25m parts with exceptions like nuclear and electric engines.

Is it possible to point me to the video, the one I came across is too low res