aristurtle

more explanation: Stubber here has what I think is the correct behavior. 1) engine unstaged, reactor off, throttle at zero, no heat generation: https://imgur.com/rfAJUAZ 2) hit the spacebar to activate the engine, it's generating only 75kw of waste heat because the reactor is at minimum power, throttle still zero: https://imgur.com/hG9dFeo 3) throttle up, we have more power but also exhaust cooling, power scales with throttle level (here 66%) https://imgur.com/CjWpuzk However, Neptune (and any other nuclear engine that also does electric generation): 1) engine unstaged, reactor off, throttle zero, same as before: https://imgur.com/ouGAscs 2) stage engine, it generates 2000kw of heat! because the reactor is at full power https://imgur.com/Ow2Oh2Shttps://imgur.com/Ow2Oh2Shttps://imgur.com/Ow2Oh2S 3) throttle to 66%, exhaust cooling is 1280kw, but reactor still generating 2000kw because it's at full power https://imgur.com/8JXKyT7

Sorry, I mean the nuclear thermal engines that generate electricity, from Kerbal Atomics. An engine that doesn't generate electricity (stock LV-N, or the Stubber, for example): when activated, the reactor is set to the minimum setting, and the reactor power level then scales with propellant flow (i.e. throttle) However, for one of the trimodal engines that also do electricity generation, when activated they are set to 100%, regardless of the fact that the throttle is at 0 and the electricity generation maxes out at 5% reactor power, so they overheat very quickly (unless I use manual reactor control, which works but is awkward for multi-engine clusters)

Hey I just noticed that the automatic reactor throttling doesn't work for engines that generate electricity (it should be throttling them to the maximum amount that they generate electricity at, but instead just pins it to 100%). I suspect the bug is in this function but I can't quite follow where it is exactly: https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/SystemHeat/blob/f0cc2ab84c9c033421a9758db54a6109f264eea9/SystemHeat/SystemHeat/Modules/ModuleSystemHeatFissionEngine.cs#L237

alternatively you can use the nuclear engine for big burns and then have an auxillary propulsion system for smaller correction burns

I mean, I didn't write the mod; I'm just working from the description and behavior here, but I think this is as intended? heat flow through a heat loop, including heat sources (e.g. nuclear reactors) and sinks (e.g. radiators) and stuff like coolant tanks The built-in power reactor tops out on power production at a pretty low reactor percentage (around 5% if I recall correctly?), so if you want to use it as a power generating reactor, you'd leave it at that percentage and carry enough radiators to radiate 5% of the reactor heat, then crank it up to 98% or 100% when doing a burn I couldn't tell you, I've only used these with manual control. Maybe adding coolant tanks to increase loop volume would help it not overheat so much? The reactor still has a lot of residual heat that needs to go somewhere when you turn it off. as far as I can tell, it turns off the reactor when you're not focused on the ship, to save on reactor fuel, then turns it back on when you jump back to the ship. I think this would be good for probes and bad if you have a life support mod enabled and your reactor is the only power source keeping your crew alive? This is all recent as of the last update to SystemHeat, yes; prior to that a nuclear engine would require the same amount of radiators regardless of how much propellant was flowing. Nertea, I'm sorry if my propellant flow heat request made this a usability nightmare for everyone else!

With the current thermal model, you will need to keep propellant flowing through the engine in order to keep it from overheating (unless you use a truly very large amount of radiators.) The engine gets ridiculously hot, and is cooled by a flow of ridiculously cold liquid hydrogen. So, turn the reactor down to 5% (or lower) while the throttle is still on, then ease off the throttle slowly. You should see the reactor cool down, and specific impulse slowly decrease as the reactor cools down. (This is the way nuclear thermal engines work in real life, it's one of the challenges in building a mission around them). If you're doing your burns with Mechjeb or whatever, try turning the reactor off a second or two before the burn is supposed to finish, this will usually get you pretty close. If you're very careful about this, you can even fly one without any radiators at all, by managing heat through reactor control and propellant flow. But it's easier if you have enough radiators to manage the heat generated by the reactor at its lowest setting, so you can "idle" it there to warm it up before the burn, and shed the last bit of waste heat after the burn without wasting a lot of propellant.

I like the exhaust cooling! You can underspec the radiators on the nuclear engines quite a bit, but then one wrong move and the engine overheats, and shuts down, and this causes the propellant flow to stop so it heats up more and immediately melts down completely. It's a neat mechanic for those gas-core engines, I'm quite enjoying it. One problem I'm having is that the heat simulation in the VAB doesn't seem to work for vacuum anymore; it displays NaN everywhere. Do I have something set up wrong?

Hey, I added SystemHeat to an existing game and I'm trying to get the hang of it (love the UI, by the way). I had a couple questions: So I've got this ship that I was using before: https://imgur.com/r7yq4Kf It has the gas core nuclear engine at the back and a power reactor in the middle. I separated the power reactor and the engine into two separate cooling loops: https://imgur.com/tmtZHin But I have some problems: 1) On the engine loop - I used to be able to provision way fewer radiators than the nuclear engine's thermal output would imply, by using the propellant to handle most of the thermal flux. By carefully starting the engine's reactor after the burn started and shutting it down before the burn ended, I'd only need those tiny radiators on the back there (at the cost of some wasted propellant at the start and end of the burn, and of course playing russian roulette with the main engine). I can't seem to do this anymore -- is this no longer a valid conops? 2) On the power reactor loop - that's the MX-1 reactor with four stock "Thermal Control System Medium" radiators. Used to be, those radiators would be sufficient for that reactor but now they're only rejecting 40kW each. The XR-500 from Heat Control weighs about the same and rejects 500kW. Am I missing something important? What is the stock radiator good for, now?

Awesome, I've been looking forward to this!

Hey, just wanted to say these parts are great! Landed a base on Duna today:

[quote name='DrGonzo94']Hi guys. Love this mod, it's my favourite engine mod. Is it safe to use with 1.0.5? Thanks to mod author for all the good work. Kind regards,[/QUOTE] It seems to work if you install the 1.0.5 version of Interstellar Fuel Switch after installing the mod. Get it here: [url]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117932-1-0-5-Interstellar-Fuel-Switch-1-18-%28updated-10-11-2015%29[/url] There's still a warning message on startup, and there may be some bugs that I haven't found. But it seems to work okay when I tried it. Please don't post bug reports in this thread until Nertea posts an official update.

I think it just has too large a range for most craft by default. SAS likes to go to full lock easily, which results in crazy oscillation. I've had good results by setting the maximum range down to 2 or 3 degrees instead of 15. Here's my current use case:

Hey, I just noticed that the included patch for fuel tanks doesn't seem to work right with some of the tanks from Ven's Stock Revamp. Specifically, all of the tanks it specifies in ExtraTanks.cfg (e.g. the Oscar-D and Oscar-E stretched 625mm tanks) end up with the wrong fuel amounts, even in the LFO configuration. I think it's because Ven uses +PART to create new tanks that are based off of existing ones, so if Ven's loads after CryoEngines, then the Oscar-B has already had its LFO replaced with the InterstellarFuelSwitch module, and the new tanks just copy that module. If I add "AFTER[VenStockRevamp]" to CryoEnginesFuelTanks.cfg it seems to fix it, but I feel like there has to be a better way to do this, because other mods might use +PART for fuel tanks too. edit: Also it has issues with parts that have LFO and IntakeAir (e.g. the MK2 intake adaptor from QuiztechAero), they no longer function as intakes.

Sure, go for it. I love having an early-game two person pod, and I've been using this one (with the unofficial patch, until this morning) instead of the Radish because it fits with the stock heat shields.

I love this thing! RealChutes patch: @PART[Corvus_Nose]:AFTER[RealChute]:NEEDS[RealChute] { !MODULE[ModuleParachute]{} MODULE { name = RealChuteModule caseMass = 0.1 timer = 0 mustGoDown = false cutSpeed = 0.5 spareChutes = 5 PARACHUTE { material = Nylon preDeployedDiameter = 1 deployedDiameter = 25 minIsPressure = true minPressure = 0.01 deploymentAlt = 700 cutAlt = -1 preDeploymentSpeed = 2 deploymentSpeed = 6 preDeploymentAnimation = SemiDeploy deploymentAnimation = FullyDeploy parachuteName = Canopy capName = Cap } } MODULE { name = ProceduralChute textureLibrary = StockReplacement currentCanopies = Main chute } EFFECTS { rcpredeploy { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_parachute_open volume = 1 } } rcdeploy { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_parachute_single volume = 1 } } rccut { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = RealChute/Sounds/sound_parachute_cut volume = 1 } } rcrepack { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = RealChute/Sounds/sound_parachute_repack volume = 1 } } } }