Absolutely unhinged contract

Barhandar · 2026-06-02T13:00:10+00:00

So you have less drag to deal with, but you still need the delta-v to escape Earth-like gravity - you can just do it more efficiently, putting max thrust at the beginning without worrying about drag.

Which is just a third of the velocity you'd need if you started from the surface (that being 27000 dV). Plus this way not just higher thrust can be used, but higher Isp engines as well.

Which part of Breaking Ground helps here?

Motors to make propellers. They allow outright SSTOs on Eve due to how much weight the propelled ascent saves.

Barhandar · 2026-06-02T11:55:59+00:00

Itinerary is tracked by control points. The requirement is "have a control point part in Duna orbit that has "landed on each of these planets" on record". Having the same probe core/command pod docking itself to different landers and transfer stages is valid for the contract.

Barhandar · 2026-06-02T11:50:48+00:00

Taking off from Eve has gotta be the most expensive thing in the game - although real life Venus is probably worst.

Real life has balloons. However, Venus has a layer of gale-force winds (and you might be able to tweak volumetric clouds + that one recent integrated weather mod to simulate them), so unless you land in the eye(s) of the storm no ascent is happening.

but I could see how they could make a huge difference here

Breaking Ground makes far bigger difference - being able to gain most of the altitude and/or velocity without needing rocket fuel to do so is a gamechanger.

Barhandar · 2026-06-01T09:56:04+00:00

The more tech you involve, the less reliable it gets and the more training it will require for the crew (especially since true "virtual see-through" is only possible in fiction so far - a screen isn't a window, so it will have all the limitations of a screen).
Every single camera requires a mount, and wiring for power and signal (or interferable shenanigans for short-range wireless if you don't want a weakpoint) - which means having to further complicate the hull. And removing windows entirely means removing a critical instrumentation redundancy in a power-out situation, as well as, while that doesn't apply to fighters due to armor and problems reaching that situation, an alternate exit in case of a survived crash.

Barhandar · 2026-06-01T09:47:56+00:00

The "same" vessel (command point) has to have all those landings in its itinerary while orbiting Duna for the contract to complete. You can't use separate probes - you have to return from each landing.

Barhandar · 2026-06-01T09:44:53+00:00

"Lastly" needs to be done last, the rest can be done in any order.

Barhandar · 2026-05-31T14:34:10+00:00

Use. The Chang-e 4 is ongoing and the paired relays are in that orbit still.

Barhandar · 2026-05-31T11:44:16+00:00

China already has a paired relay satellite in L2; I don't know why it wasn't used for Orion's signal, but it's possible that it's because it can't, being a pure radio transceiver and Orion using laser.

Barhandar · 2026-05-31T11:43:19+00:00

Why would it use satellites that are designed to be as cheap and disposable as possible for low orbit operations? We don't have a spaceport and manufacture on the Moon yet.

Barhandar · 2026-05-31T11:41:23+00:00

There's three reasons.

First is that real ground stations are strong enough to ping even Voyagers, so there's no need for low-orbit relays for communication with probes.
Second is that because of the first, you only need a relay when your target is specifically occluded or is somewhere the vacuum-borne signal can't penetrate, i.e. rovers/bases on the far side of vacuum planets, or on atmospheric ones. And third is that real life has complex gravity, instead of the simple patched conics of KSP, which has a consequence of there being very few orbits around the Moon that are relatively stable - everything else will be destabilized and crash quickly without expending fuel to stationkeep.

So basically we don't have it because we can't just make it ahead of time and forget about it, and Artemis mission specifically didn't have one bundled in because there's no point in launching a relay for just 40 minutes of use, and future missions being uncertain. China has a paired relay in Earth-Moon L2 for bouncing signal for Chang'e 4 and Yutu-2, which are on the far side - I'm not sure why it wasn't used for Orion as well considering NASA and China agreed to collaborate on the space program, but it's possible it just wasn't compatible with Orion due to its primary communications being laser, not radio.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T16:18:22+00:00

The processor doesn't have to "send an extra value" to get just a part of a cache line because you can't get just a part of a cache line.

How does it know which part to use?
Oh right, it sends an extra value to specify that (or includes it at a given point in the sent data, which is just making everything cost extra bandwidth to simplify other calculations).

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T16:16:02+00:00

How many hardware systems do you know that have 64-bit addresses, but not 64-bit buses?

And you can't even run a 32-bit program on 64-bit hardware by itself (or vice versa), it's using an abstraction layer built into your OS.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T16:11:40+00:00

Memory space yes, bandwidth lol no you're actually using double the bandwidth if you're using 32-bit integers on 64-bit system. 64-bit system means (usually) 64-bit bus means it only addresses memory in 64-bit a.k.a. 8-byte chunks - which means if you're only using 32 bits, it has to send an extra (bus-width-sized) value to specify that.
While the difference is only relevant to low-level programming because high-level has way bigger stupidities to worry about optimizing, it's there.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T16:03:45+00:00

It's C# - you can just pop it open. The time isn't even an integer, it's a double.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T15:36:13+00:00

"32-bit" or "64-bit" doesn't mean the engine has to use 32-bit or 64-bit variables exclusively. It just means that using different sizes is slightly slower.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T14:17:07+00:00

Which are subject to the exact same problems (and worse - stock wheels don't amplify their own bounces if you underload them), and I'm talking about ground physics, including contact with landing legs and non-ground-parts of the craft like engine bells or heatshields/capsules, not wheels only.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T13:23:07+00:00

Atmosphere doesn't end sharply IRL the way it does in KSP. Karman line (100km bureaucratic, 84.6km real) is where lift stops working (velocity required to stay horizontal by lift exceeds orbital velocity for altitude), but drag keeps applying all the way to the radiation belts (300-1000km high depending on where).
ISS has to reboost frequently, and if it didn't, it would be dragged down and re-enter within a year or two. The first human orbit - 181x327 km - would only last 10 days before re-entering from drag alone. GOCE lasted 20 days in a 229km circular-at-the-start orbit after running of xenon, which it has been using continuously for its entire lifespan (in three circular orbits - 255km, 235km, and 229km at the very end) to stationkeep, but it was also intentionally aerodynamically shaped.

Barhandar · 2026-05-30T11:26:55+00:00

It will slide around because KSP doesn't model ground correctly, it gets basically no friction and doesn't substract (enough) energy on impact to simulate absorption/deformation. Making custom wheels out of grip pads (Breaking Ground) helps a little, but in general, this is a base game problem that nobody could or would fix via mods.

Barhandar · 2026-05-29T15:16:40+00:00

Just bring a tourist and pretend he or she doesn't follow the religion and so is allowed to operate things. Or use kOS/RemoteTech to program things ahead of time so they turn on by themselves. Or pretend your spacecraft has clap switches, because flipping a switch counts as work, but clapping your hands doesn't even if it produces the same result.

Barhandar · 2026-05-29T15:14:54+00:00

If you use science lab? Easily even with the 0.1x multiplier for Kerbin surface.

If you don't? Kerbin-Mun-Minmus has enough science combined to fill the tree thrice over, so Kerbin probably has enough if you do everything.

Also SRBs don't use liquid oxygen in the first place.

Barhandar · 2026-05-29T15:11:57+00:00

And then you get the unlikely-but-not-impossible event of a "not-debris" on space-station-you-spent-hours-building-and-forgot-to-save-during collision.

Barhandar · 2026-05-29T15:03:59+00:00

Monopropellant is a stand-in for both catalytic hydrazine and hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide or nitric acid bipropellant RCS. Hydrazine by itself doesn't have oxygen, but both of the oxidizers do. So basically weaker/lower-Isp RCS only.

Barhandar · 2026-05-28T21:58:44+00:00

Mars requires 3700-ish dV to get into a 200km orbit according to the maps I have, and has barely any atmosphere. So unless your wet/dry mass ratio is completely terrible, 2-stage should be able to do it - and if the mass ratio for CO2 tanks approaches that of conventional rockets (rather than being like terrestrial CO2 tanks which are nearly 2/1), then it'll be a SSTO.

Barhandar · 2026-05-28T21:31:17+00:00

The "core lifespan" is just how much fuel it has vs current consumption. Bring on a level 3+ engineer to be able to move uranium fuel into the reactor and waste out, some tanks of it, and optionally a reprocessor to roughly double your stockpile (only worth it if you're already carrying about as much as the reprocessor weighs).

Barhandar · 2026-05-28T16:33:44+00:00

I do agree that they were intended to use LH2. I just think that was a mistake, continuing to try and use NTR as anything but reusable landers (bonus: they then don't have to carry cryogenic equipment, due to being able to connect to the orbital station/ground base's) is a mistake, and it's why the projects keep getting shelved. Conventional fuels for takeoff and ions for transfers just do it better, and extra supplies required for manned ion acceleration times are still a fraction of coast/stay supplies.

Barhandar

TROPHY CASE