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KSP Interstellar is a plugin for Kerbal Space Program, designed to encourage bootstrapping toward ever more advanced levels of technology as well as utilising In Situ resources to expand the reach of Kerbal civilisation.

Players begin with relatively standard technologies like nuclear reactors and electrical generators but have the potential to build up to using fusion and antimatter power for their vessels.

All the technologies included are reasonably realistic, if rather speculative. Antimatter is perfectly real and really is as powerful as the mod suggests, but nobody's ever managed to store even one milligram of antiprotons in one place, let alone whole grams.

At the other extreme, the warp drive is based on a mathematically sound idea of how to build a drive that warps the fabric of space-time to move around really fast. Of course, the math requires us to assume the existence of matter that has negative mass (generally called 'exotic' matter) which has never been observed.

However, because the warp drive is based on a mathematically-sound idea, it turns out that it isn't over-powered. Because the drive warps the fabric of space-time, but doesn't actually change your momentum, you'll find that navigating with the warp drive is quite a challenge. Just as learning how to deal with orbital mechanics required learning an unintuitive set of rules, so to does the warp drive.

It also includes an upgrade mechanism. Collect Science by crewing Science Labs and sending them to distant parts of the solar system, then spend it to upgrade any of the parts included in this mod, improving their performance. Naturally this will be folded into the research and tech-tree aspects of the game, once they become available.

Resources

• UF6 - Uranium Hexafloride, for powering nuclear reactors
• DUF6 - Eventually your reactors will deplete their fuel, but it takes years (literally)
• Antimatter - Don't get any of this on you. Not suitable for small children.
• ThermalPower - All reactors produce heat, which you can then use in several ways
• MegaJoules - Electrical generators consume ThermalPower to produce electricity. This resource represents large amounts of power produced by large power plants; the mod will freely convert between the standard ElectricCharge and MegaJoules at no extra charge. (This unit is odd, but it's actually a technical way of hooking into the game engine to improve the way some components consume energy, allowing very thirsty items like the Alcubierre Drive to consume as much energy as you want to feed it, but without starving other components.)
• WasteHeat - Nothing is 100% efficient; most of the heat used by a reactor is simply wasted. Currently WasteHeat has no particular effect, but future versions of the mod will simulate in some fashion the debilitating effects of overheating.
• Exotic Matter - produced by the Alcubierre Drive and consumed on every jump
• and others - Aluminum, Argon, Tritium and possibly others that I've forgotten for the moment
• Science - almost forgot the most important one. Science is gathered, nay, created by your Kerbals in distant parts of the solar system.

Parts

• Warp Drive

  • Alcubierre Drive

• Energy Production

  • Nuclear and Antimatter Reactors
  • Electrical Generators

• "Conventional" Propulsion

  • Thermal Rocket Nozzle / Thermal Turbojet
  • Plasma Engine
  • DT Vista Inertial Fusion Engine

• Resource Gathering

  • Antimatter Collectors
  • Atmospheric Scoop
  • Magnetowhatsit
  • Microwave Power Transmitter
  • Microwave Power Recievers
  • Science Lab

• Thermal Management

  • Radiators

• Upgrades

  • Computer Core
  • Science Lab