shynung

Whatever it is you did, that did the trick. Nice job, dude. Have some coffee.

@tomf Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks aplenty.

I'd like to ask something along the lines of this thread, but from a different approach. Suppose I have a ship in orbit around a certain planet (or landed, which is an easier way of saying 'synchronous low orbit`). I want to move my ship to orbit another planet, which happens to orbit the same star as the planet my ship is currently orbiting. I also plan to do all maneuvering by my ship's engines alone, so no tricks like gravity assists and aerobraking. How do I know how much deltaV I am going to need, without ever looking at a deltaV map?

Eh, no biggie. I'll disable it in the NFE-KA patches, and babysit the reactor as usual.

I'll try with a fresh install with only NFE and Kerbal atomics installed. I'll get back to you with the results later.

Nevertheless, the integrated reactor's power in the Kerbal Atomics NTR still follows throttle settings despite the engine being inactive (i.e. not thrusting). I didn't get the error message that says to use KSP 1.3 regarding NFE, so I'm pretty sure I got the newer version.

If this is regarding the NFE-Kerbal Atomics nuclear thermal rockets, auto-adjustment still happens when engine is inactive. The configs for this particular behavior is in the Kerbal Atomics mod.

Is there a way to get metallic hydrogen (MetalH) resource anywhere other than from the pad? I don't see any of the ISRU processors listing it.

@Nertea Good to know. Waiting for the next version it is, I suppose. Meanwhile, I go babysit reactor.

@Nertea So I found a line in the NearFutureElectricalNTRs config files that looks like this: MODULE { name = FissionReactor StartActionName = #LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor_Action_StartActionName StopActionName = #LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor_Action_StopActionName ToggleActionName = #LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor_Action_ToggleActionName FollowThrottle = true //snipped the rest of the code } I'm sure it has something to do with the throttle following function. I think changing it to false means I have to babysit the reactor every burn, or something like that.

Reactor still does this even after the engine itself was shut down - i.e. not producing thrust. In this case, I'm using a trimodal nuclear engine (NV-500 Poseidon) as a power generator to run a bunch of ion thrusters. Even if I set the reactor power at 5%, it'll go up when I power up the throttle (controlling ion engines), promptly hit its auto-shutdown temperature, and leaving the ship out cold. Not sure if intended or not, but there you go.

Suppose that you have a reusable rocket stage in orbit with a known engine ISP and remaining deltaV in its tanks, calculated from its previous payload of known mass. You want to attach a new payload of a given mass to this stage without refueling it. How do you calculate the combined stack's deltaV capacity?

So is Mars'. The same process that makes methane out of CO2 is also applicable there.

@regex If propellant packaging and loading is an issue, it's possible to build a MIF motor like a firearm, and load the lithium as prepackaged magazines. When empty, the magazine can be detached from the motor, and a filled one swapped in, much like a firearm operator changing magazines.

The lithium liner on an MIF motor doubles as the propellant, and it's denser than stuff like liquid hydrogen. Combined with the high specific impulse of the motor itself, it might yield a favourable mass ratio compared to fission thermal motors.

The benefit of an Aldrin cycler station is reducing the propellant requirements of both the incoming and outgoing transfer burns from both planets. DeltaV requirements are still the same - catching up to the station means doing a transfer burn - but instead of imparting that deltaV to long-term hab module, one would impart it into a much smaller ship, on both ends of the transfer burn. The cycler station only need enough deltaV for mid-course corrections to ensure its next flyby, and this can be much less than that needed for an orbital insertion/escape burn. The drawback is that a cycler station that is optimized for quick trip time of the Earth-Mars leg would take much more time for the return trip, and vice versa for the Mars-Earth leg. That means for reasonable trip times in both directions, one would need a bunch of them operating at any moment.

@Green Baron Well, that's going to be tricky... What I'm going towards is this: space is vast, and traveling through it takes a lot of time. The travelers are going to be stuck in their pods without much to do. Is it possible to alleviate their boredom by altering their perception of time so that, to their minds, 1000 seconds felt like 1 second?

Would altering a human's body metabolism rate affect their perception of time? If so, by how much?

Without sacrificing performance? LH2-LOX and kerosene-LOX are hard to beat in launch situations. In theory, a beamed-power thermal rocket with LH2 propellant can be much cleaner, but it needs to be fed power from the ground via lasers/microwaves. A variation on this concept is the lightcraft, which are essentially beamed-power thermal ramjets. This design does not need propellant (LH2), but only works in an atmosphere. Unlike regular jet engines, it doesn't care about the atmosphere's composition - it'd work in oxygen-less atmospheres.

Edited my response, misread.

Did you mean less dangerous (=corrosive/poisonous) to the fuel handlers, or less damaging to the environment?

Depends. Methane is comparatively easy to make in-situ, but delivers chemical-grade (300-400 s) ISP. MetalH theoretically has a nuclear-grade (800-1000 s) ISP, but we haven't an idea how to make it yet AFAIK.

I know. But their substantial energy density compared to fossil fuels more than makes up for it.

@monophonic I'm aware of that, thanks. But I question the feasibility of using wood gasifier setups for mass-market automobiles. It's not very convenient to operate in comparison to standard gasoline/diesel engines or battery-electric setups, what with the long warm-up (and post-shutdown cool-down) times, and the bulky gas generator system.

This is actually the simplest caveat to work around - have them commute to work in company-owned electric/wood-fired buses.