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KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread


FreeThinker

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7 hours ago, DGerry said:

Is it possible to have radiators consume a resource via just editing a config?  If not, how difficult would it be to make that possible?  I'm thinking about the possibility of "active" radiators that require IntakeAtm to run - very effective, but will only work on planets with an atmosphere(and won't work well with thin atmospheres or high altitudes, etc), or "evaporative" radiators that require water(mostly make-up water, as in real life, so small-ish amounts) again for atmospheric use.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Well I have some plans to allow radiator to make use of cryogentic resources to lose wasteheat by convection at an increased rate. The cryogenic fluid would be turned into a gas which would be stored if there is sufficient storage capacity for that gas. Its main purpose would be to prevent overheating or to maximize electrical performance. Of course you would need a lot of room if you intend not to lose any resource, but even if you let it escape, it might be usefull in some scenarios, like when land on a moon or at takeoff using electric engines

Edited by FreeThinker
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I wonder, how about make some small size Resistance engine? It can be unlock at early tech and have both chemistry mode and power.  I found a Perfect parts that is stock like .

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/24-77_"Twitch"_Liquid_Fuel_Engine

All need to do just change it to blue one, and add some cfg.:wink:

 

 

And how about some chemical combustion, like CO +O2, N2H4+O2 or H2O2 ? I know that not so powerful, but a lest that easily available.

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OK, please excuse the delays, my toddler became quite sick and gave us a good scare.

Ground Stations

So, one place to start building a wireless power system is to build a series of base stations. We choose the Ka microwave band on atmospheric planets because it has the lowest absorption. I have placed 6 stations around the equator and put one on each pole for a total of 8 stations at 40MW each.  These base stations will need relays in orbit to provide electric charge throughout the entire planet. That will be the next phase. There is more detailed info on the Imgur album.

Spoiler

IFfG3FP.png

q0ZEfRC.png

BTW: I hate posting pics to this forum. It is about as unintuitive and convoluted as it can possibly be. I want my BB code standards.

Edited by Aaron Also
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On 2017/4/19 at 9:52 PM, DGerry said:

Is it possible to have radiators consume a resource via just editing a config?  If not, how difficult would it be to make that possible?  I'm thinking about the possibility of "active" radiators that require IntakeAtm to run - very effective, but will only work on planets with an atmosphere(and won't work well with thin atmospheres or high altitudes, etc), or "evaporative" radiators that require water(mostly make-up water, as in real life, so small-ish amounts) again for atmospheric use.

 

18 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Well I have some plans to allow radiator to make use of cryogentic resources to lose wasteheat by convection at an increased rate. The cryogenic fluid would be turned into a gas which would be stored if there is sufficient storage capacity for that gas. Its main purpose would be to prevent overheating or to maximize electrical performance.

I have a idea to make both toger, here are simple pic I was made, to show how it work (In what I think) 

nXNANNS.png

That engine will have both high(energy) efficiency and high trust, and should consume waste heat .

The heat it will take base on mass flow and waste heat level. very useful for landing.

If no waste heat left, it will function like normal resistance engine 

 

PS: that "waste heat pool"  should be name as heat exchanger

Edited by Sweetie bot
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11 hours ago, Sweetie bot said:

 

I have a idea to make both toger, here are simple pic I was made, to show how it work (In what I think) 

nXNANNS.png

That engine will have both high(energy) efficiency and high trust, and should consume waste heat .

The heat it will take base on mass flow and waste heat level. very useful for landing.

If no waste heat left, it will function like normal resistance engine 

 

PS: that "waste heat pool"  should be name as heat exchanger

 
 

Using the "waste" gas for propusion is actualy a godd idea, but it would create a problem that tools like JEB or KER would not be able to make any usefull prediction of DeltaV. To solve it, we could make the electric engie for help from a cryogenic convection radiator to use wasteheat to pre heat  the gas, effectivly reducting the amount of wasteheat by a large margin or even absorbe wasteheat, causing the who system to perform better. This would make highly cryogenic cooled propellant like Helium suddenly a lot more attractive as a electric propellant

Edited by FreeThinker
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2 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

Can we also turn wasteheat to electricity in wasteheat recovery unit?

No, but it would improve efficiency and therefore virtual allow you to create additional electricty, which you would not be able without.

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Quick question for @FreeThinker. I'm updating my mod slightly so it reads and works with KSPI does KSPI override stock reactor logic entirely? or alternatively is there a module i can reference so it recognizes KSPI isn't there and ignores a CFG file?
I'd also like to get my midsize EM drive/VASIMR to ignore loading the cfg since it's already in your mod, don't really need duplicates. :D

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4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

@SpaceMouse stock reactor logic? what do you mean? I suggest you simply use a MM script which does something you want when WarpPlugin is installed

*edit* NVM. Fixed it.

However I'm having a issue getting waste heat to give a realistic number, it seems it ignores the values and generates one itself when a generator is added. Without it I'm having a issue getting it to balance and not overheat.

Edited by SpaceMouse
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Alright, so anyone interested in compressed air, I finally made it work...

wCQFDjE.jpg

 

that's 20 2.5m gas tanks set to Air mode, with the compressedair <-> intakeAtm slider set to full left (-100), 4 ATILLA thrusters scaled to 1.875m, several resistojet RCS thrusters.  Cargo bay contains 2x 2.5m charged particle generators and 2x antimatter reactors and a tank of antimatter.  organized as gen-reactor-gen-reactor-tank.
Requires TCA to fly this thing (balanced thrust), but it can operate indefinitely in atmosphere with the secondary radiators (not pictured on this screenshot) extended.  ie, it can generate compressedAir faster than the atilla and RCS can burn through it.  Intakes are 8 B9 SABRE-M intakes (default 2.5m scale) - there's 4 on the back that you can't see, but those are the biggest intakes I have access to, so they get used.

Works well on Kerbin, likely Laythe as well due to similar gravity and atmospheric density.  Weighs about 94t or so and has plenty of thrust and control authority.

Edited by ss8913
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So what would cause a magnetized target fusion reactor to put out only ~5% of its total power output?  Embrittlement is basically zero, it's running the Deuterium-Tritium fuel cycle, and has plenty of both.  Reactor control window shows max power of ~1000MW and Thermal power at 53MW/53MW when the reactor is at 100% - VAB showed this reactor as having ~1000MW as well, it's a 1.875M reactor and I have all the fusion power upgrades.  I found out with MSR's that actinide poisoning is an issue...but I can't figure out what could be the problem with this reactor?  Not sure if it's a bug or again another mechanic I've not accounted for.

 

Edit:  Solved it.  If Lithium 6 is present, whether Lithium Breeding is on or not, the reactor's output drops to nearly nothing.  If this is a bug, it's super easy to reproduce - just launch a magnetized target fusion reactor with lithium-6 and you'll see the output is super low.  Remove the Lithium-6(dump it via TAC or just re-launch with no Lithium-6) and the output is where it should be.  If this is NOT a bug, what's the reason for this?  The reactor is running on D-T fusion mode either way.

Edited by DGerry
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3 hours ago, DGerry said:

So what would cause a magnetized target fusion reactor to put out only ~5% of its total power output?  Embrittlement is basically zero, it's running the Deuterium-Tritium fuel cycle, and has plenty of both.  Reactor control window shows max power of ~1000MW and Thermal power at 53MW/53MW when the reactor is at 100% - VAB showed this reactor as having ~1000MW as well, it's a 1.875M reactor and I have all the fusion power upgrades.  I found out with MSR's that actinide poisoning is an issue...but I can't figure out what could be the problem with this reactor?  Not sure if it's a bug or again another mechanic I've not accounted for.

 

Edit:  Solved it.  If Lithium 6 is present, whether Lithium Breeding is on or not, the reactor's output drops to nearly nothing.  If this is a bug, it's super easy to reproduce - just launch a magnetized target fusion reactor with lithium-6 and you'll see the output is super low.  Remove the Lithium-6(dump it via TAC or just re-launch with no Lithium-6) and the output is where it should be.  If this is NOT a bug, what's the reason for this?  The reactor is running on D-T fusion mode either way.

Lithium-6 is the blood of Neutron Rich Fusion engines, it cannot properly function without it. D-T runs on Deuterium + Lithium-6, not Deuterium + Tritium. Tritium is made from Lithium6 neutron bombardment, the tritium is merely a reservoir.  Thanks for reporting the exploit, I will have it fixed next release

Edited by FreeThinker
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1 minute ago, FreeThinker said:

Lithium-6 is the blood of Neutron Rich Fusion engines, it cannot properly function without it. D-T runs on Deuterium + Lithium-6, not Deuterium + Tritium. Tritium is made from Lithium6 neutron bombardment, the tritium is merely a reservoir.  Thanks for reporting the exploit, I will have it fixed next release

Right, but what's the exploit?  It's still using up the small tritium reservoir it starts with, but if you actually provide it with lithium-6 it becomes useless.  Not a very useful exploit?  Are you saying that in the next release it will make the proper amount of power when stocked with lithium-6 for breeding into tritium?

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8 minutes ago, DGerry said:

Right, but what's the exploit?  It's still using up the small tritium reservoir it starts with, but if you actually provide it with lithium-6 it becomes useless.  Not a very useful exploit?  Are you saying that in the next release it will make the proper amount of power when stocked with lithium-6 for breeding into tritium?

The lithium has to be in the reactor, outside lithium doesn't count. A bigger mistake was the fact it still had a LqdTritium reservoir, which wasn't properly refiled. will have it fixed next release

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@FreeThinker something seems to have been broken recently with the Graphene Umbrella Radiators.  These things default to Automation=ON, and that's been fine for several iterations.  However, now, they never deploy on their own, where they used to deploy automatically at a certain dynamic pressure.  It's not like they shouldn't see a *need to*, I've got several antimatter reactors and a QSR putting severe thermal demands on the craft...

Deploying them manually... I think they're working?  This also seems to be a bug.  If I deploy them manually, I get a value for "power radiated" .. about 96GW each... but it also says "Cooling; Idle" whereas the fixed radiators (such as the graphene radiator winged edge units) show a % value for Coolilng:

I can't tell if they're actually working or if they're just dead weight on the craft.  I'll tell you one thing though, even at 10% power, QSRs produce some serious heat...

 

One other thing I noticed, WasteHeat dissipation seems to happen at 1x (real time), no matter what your time warp value is.  ie, you will lose X heat per second (relative to real seconds), no matter what your time warp is.  This is somewhat of a problem.

 

aand, just now a third thing... I'm using a gas core fission reactor + QSR to drive a 7.50m heavy alcubierre drive at 250c.  I also have antimatter reactors onboard for the sublight engines which are currently idle.

 

My antimatter quantity is going *up*.  how is that a thing?  I don't have any antimatter scoops on board, but the stock resource usage window is showing a -0.09 consumption rate with the sublight engines idle.. where's that coming from??

Edited by ss8913
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19 minutes ago, raxo2222 said:

You can make anything fly if you put enough boosters under it ;^)

 

Sure, but flying an umbrella in atmosphere would easily be the less efficient rocket launches not just IRL but in KSP too :D

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4 hours ago, Nansuchao said:

Sure, but flying an umbrella in atmosphere would easily be the less efficient rocket launches not just IRL but in KSP too :D

also it would break.  Anyone else having the same problems in recent builds with the existing umbrella radiators that I am?  See a few posts up...

Edited by ss8913
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