4 ms·
If Kerbal Space Program taught be anything about space, it's that most problems can be solved with struts.
by kahnpro 10y ago
If Kerbal Space Program taught be anything about space, it's that most problems can be solved with struts.
- JetDogRush 10y agoIf only Curiosity were as fast as the KSP rovers... top speed is somewhere around 100 meters/hour, and usually more like 40!
- TeMPOraL 10y agoShould have strapped an SRB on the rover. Reminds me; I wonder just how much ion engines are overpowered in KSP compared to their real-life equivalents. Or, put differently, if one could replicate a hovering Minmus rover I made in KSP (which used ion engines to stay afloat for a long time).
- jerf 10y agoMinmus surface gravity is 0.491 m/s^2; current ion drives thrust with a couple hundred millinewtons, so I don't think a drive could even support itself against that level of gravity let alone with power and a ship attached. However, we currently design our ion drives for power-to-thrust efficiency and long-term effectiveness. I'm not sure what we could get if we designed them for maximal thrust. Especially since in real life, right now the answer to "Do you want a 'maximal thrust' ion drive?" is pretty much "Well, have you considered using... not an ion drive?", so I'm not sure I've ever seen a treatment of that question based on current tech.
- creshal 10y ago> I'm not sure what we could get if we designed them for maximal thrust. Probably something with a worse specific impulse than a chemical engine.
- Symmetry 10y agoThe problem is less our ability to make the drives themselves have a high TWR (thrust to weight ratio) so much as that the power generation necessarily required to run them is very heavy. See here: http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/03/rockets-electric-propulsion.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/03/rockets-elec...
- skykooler 10y agoThe VASIMR engine is sort of that - an ion engine designed to be able to increase thrust when needed.
- creshal 10y agoKSP: 4200s Isp, 2000 N thrust Real life: 2000-20000s Isp, 0.01-2.5 N thrust KSP's ion engines are hilariously overpowered in terms of thrust (and thrust-to-weight ratio) and power efficiency. It's a necessary change, however, since KSP is ill-suited for transfer burns several months long.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoThe flip side is that Curiosity has never, to my knowledge, flipped over and tumbled at near-escape-velocity, shedding solar panels and scientific instruments as it goes.
- Declanomous 10y agoThat really is slow. My brain interpreted that as 100 m/s, and then 40 m/s, and I read the sentence a few times trying to figure out if you meant that rovers go that fast in KSP before I figured out it said 100 m/hour.
- marcosdumay 10y agoIt's a completely non-realistic game. It's lacking of duct tape is inexcusable.
- oconnor663 10y agoThe KSP subthread makes every space article twice as much fun :)
- jschwartzi 10y agoThat's funny. It's taught me that if you make a rocket long enough, no amount of struts will prevent it from wobbling itself completely apart within 60 seconds of blast off.
- vkou 10y agoStruts won't, but turning off automatic stability 'assistance' will!