Gazpachian

Yeah, one target per second detonates, ablates a little under 1kg of solid propellant lining the engine bell per detonation and shoots the re-mass out at ~130km/s. The original paper 404:s but Wayback Machine came to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20070306065248/http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/Papers/ICAN.pdf

Fantastic work on this mod, the attention to detail is incredible. One small nitpick, however: for the Apollo CM I believe the +P RCS thrusters are wrongly angled almost directly through the center of mass, the net effect of which is that while the RCS can exert almost 1kNm of torque in all other directions it is almost impossible to pitch up using built-in thrusters only. I tried reorienting them myself using my very limited modding experience and did get them to work properly, but not without either mucking up the textures of the pod or unintentionally removing the ability to EVA. It should be a really simple fix if you know what to do and how to do it, but I only ever got to step one. =P

Yeah, that seemed suspicious to me as well, but reading the brief on astronautix seems to indicate that all four nozzles would be fed from the same reactor. I have a hard time imagining how the piping arrangement would've actually looked in such a case. What I may opt for instead is to size up the reactor housing and have them attach to it directly, somehow, which means the entire reactor will be part of the gimbaling arrangement (which will look super neat, but probably isn't very realistic). As for the nozzles, I did try to make them de Laval-ish, 12 degrees expansion and all that jazz. I'll retouch them slightly, but I think they're looking odd also partially because of perspective. As for the control rod actuators, I know what they are yet I misplaced them completely, thinking that *hey, maybe you could actuate them radially instead*. But that wouldn't make much sense now, would it? I may have been quite tired while doing most of the work, but better to get it out there early and reiterate often than to just correct the errors I detect on my own.

As far as I know there were no test firings or anything of the OKB nuclear family and no engine was ever built. The project was allegedly in development for about two years, so I think they had plenty of time to write it off on grounds of being unfeasible rather than just very unsafe as was the case. Still way behind the 0410 when it comes to level of realisation obviously, but at it's core the technology was individually studied by both Glusko, Korolev and others. Funnily enough, a very large portion of articles on the soviet nuclear programme are written in Spanish, so at least I finally get some use out of seven years of Spanish classes: Link 1 Link 2. I'm guessing you've already read most of the articles I'm finding, but I've obviously missed them since they include lots of info I only speculated on (such as the question of gimbal vs. vernier). So, in short: a well studied 60's powerpoint, shot down in favor of hypergolic fuels since they were more well studied and the main initial application of the tech was to be ICBMs, which you don't want to blow up needlessly in your own territory. You can switch to isometric viewpoints in blender, use images or other models as reference and lock your transforms to one axis for revolution forms, that's more or less how I redid the topology of your model. But if parametric editing is your thing, go for that! There are more guides out there for manual manipulation editing of course, but I'm sure you'll get by either way! Well, there's the proposed N-1 Nuclear variants (A, V-B, A-F and V) each with different stats. These would be deployed in clusters of 20-40 engines, depending on the launch vessel (because more boosters is EXACTLY how Korolev built rockets). Again, from what I can tell these are early studies mostly based on mass estimates and the earlier works on the ICBM nuclear engines so information on them will be scarce. In fact, holding anything realted to nuclear propulsion up to the standards of viability testing of the 0410 is sort of impossible! Other than those I'm sure there were some other projects considered, maybe a liquid core engine or something akin to that which never got close to leaving the drawing board. We could go looking, but between the two RD-041x variants, the OKB line and the N-1 upper stages there are eight engines/engine clusters already. Just sign me on as a collaborator for now, that's fine by me! It's your mod, I just want to see it happen! EDIT: I've done some initial work on the OKB-456, just to figure out if visual coherency with the RD-0410 is attainable. Early WIP below, thoughts and ideas welcome:

Still, an hour of operation would probably be enough for most moon missions at the stated thrust and efficiency. Imagine a manned moon mission with a launch mass of less than one kiloton! The planned soviet ICBM variants were high thrust, low specific impulse ammonia+alcohol engines and so would probably be considered way less advanced than the Timberwind series, since their atmospheric isp wasn't even close to the 780s wikipedia gives for the 250 version. Without knowing what else occupies the other solid core nodes I imagine the OKB-456/OKB-700 would be near node 2 (more exotic than the NERVA but still an early 60's tech) and the RD-0410/RD-0411 are probably node 3 and 4, respectively (higher operating temp -> more stringent engineering requirements/higher tech, 0411 having overall better theoretical performance than it's sibling even if it was never actually built like the 0410 was). this would of course be at your discretion I imagine!

The soviets absolutely considered nuclear engines as ICBM engines, the only thing stopping them from doing a test flight was to my understanding worries about range safety (which led to the abolishment of that particular program in favor of others). As for the temperatures, you are absolutely right. The RD-0410 was rated for something like 3200K operating temperature over 10 minutes compared to the NERVA at 2361K (oddly specific since it's converted to Kelvin from Rankine). This would, all other things equal, mean about 16% better specific impulse (which the data sheets seem to agree with, more or less).

I was actually talking about it working as an electric generator, but I should have been clearer about that I guess! I think I remember reading about the 0411 being slated for bimodal operation for a planned 90s soviet mars mission, with estimated readouts for power generation, required radiator area and everything. Of course this thread is now the third result when searching for the RD-4011 so sources are pretty scarce, but I'll see about finding that quote if necessary. With the 0410 allegedly being a functional prototype of the 0411 I can imagine bimodal ops as a considered possible extension to the former engine. Oh, tell me about it. The only picture I've found is the line art on This site right here. What that allowed me was to figure out the relative placement of the engine bells to the reactor chamber, from there it's a matter of combining visual elements from the RD-0410 for the nuclear feel and the RD-170 for the four-nozzle piping arrangement. What confuses me a bit is the apparent side boosters in that line diagram, although the given initial thrust values seem to indicate that only the nuke engine would be active. It may be something like vernier thrusters, especially if the engine lacks gimbal (another detail lost in history, perhaps). For now I'll assume that the engine does gimbal moderately (maybe 1.2 degrees or so) since we have no information on the accuracy of the line diagram! Alright, we'll stick to domain driven design decisions! If the config file wants data in a certain format, we'll use that format. Well, is there a need to define a third pressure point? As far as I am aware specific impulse varies linearly as a function of pressure, so we just need two points to define the isp "curve". Sure, in real life you could have severe under-expansion happening that results in all manners of nastiness, but I'm not even sure solverengines/realfuels models this. In either case, I think two config points for pressure are fine as is. I'm not sure I always follow best practices and I'm painfully aware I'm not as experienced in blender as I should be (especially in regards to low poly modeling and unity asset creation), so if you want to improve your skills there are way better places to learn from! Anyways, if you want to split the work load you can absolutely keep on creating the assets in catia and export them to blender and I'll tidy them up for you!

That's something already in progress. The trick now is to fill in the blanks as to the performance difference between the RD-0410 and the NERVA.

Yeah, I saw that more complex design as well while looking for reference photos. I think those add-ons may be for making the engine bi-modal, perhaps? In that case we have four models to consider, both the RD-0410 and RD-0411 in simple and bi-modal configurations. Shouldn't be too much work to get all that done, then we can throw in the OKB-456/OKB-670 nuclear ammonia rocket family for fun!

Alright, I don't know how far you've gotten on the untextured model in the past six hours, but I took the liberty of making a slightly more optimized version of the engine. Your CAD program doesn't like edge loops it seems! Anyways, I got it down to 4400 triangles while keeping the original appearance, it could probably be slimmed down even further for adding more pipes and doodads! EDIT: Pull request is up on github!

So I sent out Nightingale on a wild bug hunt over his Strategia thread over this negative advance issue, since I didn't verify the display values that capcom gave me for advance amounts with the values presented inside mission control. Damn you DMagic for making mods I've come to so unquestioningly rely on! Again, the slot machine strategy triggers the bug and the bug appeared after upgrading Strategia from 0.3 to 1.1.1, so nothing new and exciting to report there. I linked my savefile over in that thread, I may as well post it here for reference. With it being apparently only a visual bug you're free to ignore it by my reckoning, since you've probably got more pressing matters with 1.1 coming up!

Alright, I'm onto something here... Just to be on the safe side, this time around I decided to check in with the actual mission control building rather than looking at the contracts through CapCom. In mission control they appear fine, out in capcom I still get the negative glitch. Looking inside mission control does not fix the CapCom display, and it does appear that it's just a visual glitch in DMagic's mod upon further examination. I'll head over into the CapCom thread and stir up hell there instead while you may demote this to a minor visual interoperability bug.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/860g2sngtba7uzl/persistent.sfs?dl=0 the above link should have the slot machine strategy turned off, see if turning it on (after the gazillion warnings about craft deletions subside) results in the same issues. I fully expect this to be some strange conflict with Custom Barn Kit, SETI rebalance or any number of other mods I have installed. I also peeked at your source and couldn't find any obvious sign flipping, so this could be a "fun" bug to track down. You could have a go at it, but if it's just me experiencing it you're free to let it go and focus on making the 1.1 release a smooth one!

I just recently updated from 0.3 to 1.1.1 with the contract slot machine II strategy active in my saved game, and after updating my contracts were giving negative advance funding. Cancelling the strategy correctly restored the advance to be positive again, but re-enabling the strategy made the issue return. It's seemingly only messing with the advance amounts. The issue is present both for stock and contract pack contracts. WRONG: RIGHT: As I said before, these issues were not present in version 0.3, which may or may not help you track down the bug. Best of luck and thanks for a great mod!

Put your current work up on github and you may get some collaboration, there's clearly some interest in getting this show off the road! I mean, biological processes during decomposition would turn a lot of the elephant into methane and other gaseous bi-products, so assuming you let the decomposition happen in the tank you'd end up with water in a pressurized environment automatically! They are of course also viable for ISRU in certain biomes.

So this just made the rounds on reddit. While the elephants per second is way off I think they may be on to something... No idea on how to implement elephants flying out the rear easily, either you'd heavily tweak the plume config or make it a part mod for a medusa/orion drive. As a simpler to implement solution I guess decomposed elephants would work fine as fuel, sort of like burning an ethanol/oxygen mix. Not fantastic specific impulse, but knowing you rid the world of 24 african elephant bulls on your first stage would be totally worth it! One fuel unit would weigh in at about 3500kg and take up plenty of space! Also, ivory fuel tanks while we're at it, would be a shame to let any part of the animal go to waste. Also, the fuel would of course be crazy expensive with elephants being an endangered species. Also, I actually like elephants, but it would still be a fun addition to the mod!

For now the fix provided is very sufficient, thank you! It seems you forgot to bump the version number in the .version file though, so AVC thinks there is an unapplied update available upstream. That's easy to patch for me or anyone else so I wouldn't worry about fixing it with all haste, but at least now it is documented!

The following is in regards to Unmanned Contracts, but it may be an issue present in other packs as well. One thing I think should be reviewed for next release is the deadlines for some contracts, such as impactor probes to the outer planets. Take for example the FirstEelooImpact contract from Eeloo_unmanned.cfg, lines 134-268. I'd be hard pressed getting a probe to Eeloo in the 100 days the contract is up for offer plus the 100 days I have after accepting it before the deadline. Add Kerbal Construction Time, 64K and other mods I do/may use into the mix and I've got a real challenge on my hands! I like the idea of deadlines as it motivates me to get the contract done rather than just sit in my log, but it has to be balanced to some extent. Sending a probe in advance and looking for the contract offering as it approaches the SOI of the body shouldn't be the only way to complete the contract. Other than that minor grievance it's a great pack of contracts that I've enjoyed for several months across multiple installs.

A small suggestion for next release is to ditch the "agent =" specifier for the contracts in the Routine.cfg file, because to me it makes little sense that a world-firsts society would ask me to send a number of kerbals on a routine mission to orbit or to plant a flag on some celestial body I've already been to. No, it doesn't break the game, only my precious immersion.

So I got a neat surprise when entering Moho's SOI on a flyby mission, I was instantly in space near Moho. "Great, 6 biomes worth of near space science! This mission got way more profitable than I'd have thought!" Anyways, the issue is that the space altitude threshold for Moho is set to the radius of the sun, not Moho itself. Line 28 of 64K_Kopernicus_Stock_Planets.cfg should read: %spaceAltitudeThreshold = 1600000 Instead of: %spaceAltitudeThreshold = 584227280 Moho is the only celestial body with this issue. Thanks for an excellent mod, by the way!