DStaal
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Posts posted by DStaal
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11 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:
Having the hatch swing outwards (as it was redesigned to after the accident) makes it more challenging to seal, as the internal pressure tries to blow the hatch open. I suppose if it sank they could just crank up the internal pressure.
You could also put in an emergency depressurization valve someplace - something easier to open and seal than a full door.
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1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:
Maybe (though all previous plans were cut at the funding phase).
But even in this case you don't need a spacesuit already put on. They can be packed and used on demand.
Though, anyway unlikely rescue ships will ever have place before the orbital infrastructure gets really populated, so the need in rescue missions becomes daily.Depends on your definition of 'slow', and what *else* they have to deal with. If you're assuming they can be packed and used on demand, you also assume that in the case they need them they have the time, room, and ability to get out of their seats, put on the suits, and get back to whatever they were doing (like trying to fix the ship...). That may not be the case - a moderately slow leak (in the range of 'depressurize in a few minutes) may need immediate action during ascent, and the astronauts may have to deal with it while still under launch acceleration. Best to have the backup in place first.
Also, from what I understand the seats are designed to fit the suits - so you'd have to have a seat that works with or without the suit, and then switch it between modes. Which introduces more complexity where it isn't needed, when you can just wear the suit and have only one in-use layout.
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21 hours ago, KerikBalm said:
[snip]
The point is that it seems like they just slung some buzzwords together, and I have yet to see any explanation as to how "cesium doping" is supposed to allow for magnetic confinement of ~6000k hydrogen.
It seems to me to make as much sense as saying they use a flux capacitor that modifies the phase variance to contain the exhaust.
If someone can explain how cesium doping is supposed to work, or provide the science behind it, I will withdraw my complaint.
Right now it seems to be prima facie techno-babble
My guess would be that it's really entrainment more than anything else - the cesium can be forced to move in the direction required, and the smaller, lighter hydrogen atoms will tend to follow the same paths. (As they bump off of the cesium atoms or other hydrogen atoms that have bumped off of the cesium atoms.) There would be some losses, but you design to balance the losses vs. reduction in ISP, and find a balance.
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NASA did develop procedures after STS-107 for theoretical rescue-in-orbit for missions where the shuttle was too damaged to return to Earth, but was stable in orbit. You could do the same with a slow leak that developed during launch if necessary, and I'll bet SpaceX would be more likely to be able to get a rescue craft ready in time.
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23 hours ago, SkiRich said:
@Snark @Tonka Crash Thank you for the direction indicators. Very handy.
Where it would be better served is if you can add them to the MKS construction docking ports which use directionalality extensively for welding two ports together.
While I havent seen this in action yet (just updated the mod) from the picture on the RegDocking port and the Sr Docking port above I'm guessing up or zero is the single green light while down or 180 is the three green lights.
On the MKS ports that would be opposite. You may want to adjust that so there is consistency in all the ports.
There was already a patch in this collection for the MKS construction ports, with directionality. Does it no longer work?
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7 minutes ago, TBenz said:
You still need a pretty big battery, but much smaller than you would need without the capacitors. As an example, if you had a battery that holds 9000 ec (enough for 5 minutes) and a capacitor that holds 9000 ec, you could burn through the battery, then dump the ec from the capacitor into the battery. This would weigh a good deal less than a battery with 18000 ec. You can optimize things even more by balancing battery, power use, and capacitors.
Yep. Worth remembering also is that you can charge one capacitor while discharging another as well - So if you have a capacitor discharging at 40 EC/s, and an engine using 30 EC/s, you can in theory route 10 EC/s to a different capacitor. (Dependent on their charge rate, of course.) So you could do multiple small capacitors here, and feed them from one to the other, and then re-discharging a capacitor you've filled or partly filled during the burn...
Here's an example craft I built recently:
You'll notice that it has three different sizes of capacitors, and only modest battery for the three ion engines. A burn requires careful juggling of activating different capacitors at different points in the burn (sometimes letting the batteries run down first, sometimes keeping them full, etc.), but it stores a *lot* more EC for the same mass than you'd get with just batteries.
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2 hours ago, dlrk said:
I'm looking for some help understanding the use of ion engines and capacitors. Capacitors discharge so much so quickly, I'm not sure how to use them, and ion engines seem to use so much electricity, that they'd either require excessively heavy batteries, solar panels or reactors. I'm pretty sure I'm missing a concept here.
To expand a bit on what Nertea said above:
Capacitors give you burst power. For your ion-powered ship, most of the time you are sipping EC, just coasting between burns. You only need drive's full EC requirements during the burn.
So break it down: You need enough generation to power the ship when you're *not* doing a burn, plus a bit extra to charge the capacitors. You need enough battery for normal use and to dump your capacitors into (if they dump faster than you need for your engines). And then you need enough battery+capacitors to handle your longest burn. So you save weight in power generation and/or batteries by using capacitors instead - but you'll have to plan how you do your burns, to make sure you have enough storage. (And that they aren't to close together.)
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1 hour ago, K^2 said:
Do you have a citation on this? Main limiting factor on thermal rockets is temperature at the point of heat exchange. I'd be curious how one works around that with a liquid core.
Even with an open cycle gas core, there are questions of what to do about nozzle bell. At some point, it really has to be some variant of magnetic confinement, because there are no materials that can withstand contact with propellant at these temperatures. But at least, that's a solution.
Which really isn't a problem gameplay wise, as they were already doing magnetic confinement nozzles in the first trailer.
A better question than 'what has similar ISP and thrust' is really 'what could take a similar role in the game'. The exact performance doesn't really matter - what you need is a set of engines that can perform the roles they had designed engines using MH to do. Yes that requires a 'torchship' drive to take over the apparent role of late-game interplanetary and atmospheric engines, but there's a wide range of theoretically possible torchdrives which could fill the role.
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A set of modular parts for large ring stations. (Should be able to fit 3.5 fuel tanks into the ring, for instance.)
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I could also see multi-monitor helping some streamers - if the focus of the stream is telling some story or showing the flight, it might be useful for the streamer to be able to move flight control elements to a different screen that's not being streamed.
It depends on exactly what can be sent to each monitor, how it's done, and the purpose of the stream if it matters to the stream.
Overall, I could see some very good uses for it in KSP (being able to see both the ship and the map view, for instance), but I'm unlikely to ever be able to use it personally.
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Probably a better solution is to add :NEEDS[!Restock] to the core IL patches. Then this whole ordering thing can be sidestepped - and the lights aren't in the correct places on the Restock models anyway.
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Skimming the patch, it looks like in some cases the patch correctly removes the IndicatorLights patch first, and in some cases it just adds it's own lights.
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On 7/18/2020 at 11:07 PM, TLTay said:
I was thinking of this more as a way to incentivize exploration, create new engineering challenges, and add to the science system. Everybody plays KSP differently, so getting a scientific/engineering benefit from a unique sample or from experience doing a new task might not fit well with your playstyle. I always thought it was weird that with all the times my Kerbals built and launched X part, they never got better at making it lighter or stronger or more efficient, like they managed to make it perfect on the first go. Then, I tend to play a heavily modded, grindy kind of career mode that most people may not like.
I'm quite curious as to how the team will utilize the (apparent) new surface item collection mechanic to create interesting exploration and gameplay experiences.
Sometimes they do - and sometimes they design a new part.
If anything like this were implemented, it would have to be somewhat realistic and related to what you did. So: Collect and analyze a sample of an unusual rock for a boost to drill efficiency in that biome, etc.
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15 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:
Yes, but Liquid Fuel is Handwavium. I don't understand how it would be any different from Handwavium. It is in essence, a "made up fuel", it doesn't quite match any Lf-Ox mix in real life. As long as it has the same stats as Metallic Hydrogen, it would please everyone to rename it to some kind of handwavium.
It's not Handwavium because it's an abstraction - it's stats are similar to multiple existing fuels, if not quite the same as any one of them. Therefore instead of having the two dozen or so existing fuels (and associated engines, tanks, etc) in KSP, we have one that is roughly the same as all of them. It's stats are realistic, just not real. No problems are being handwaved away, they're just being simplified for gameplay.
MH is explicitly trying to be real, and there's no real-world counterpart. All the problems with it are being handwaved away.
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6 hours ago, DefenderX1 said:
So I've just reinstalled MKS in hopes of starting a new sandbox save to colonize a few planets but KSP won't load, it hung loading the small lightglobe.
Any thoughts?I'm running the latest version of KSP and JUST downloaded MKS and it's requirements via CKAN.
KSP & Player logs:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gE-QAWTz5Hyy20wDGytBYwCeiU6N6DwD/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jzPjEZ6GiAaJhgtBQwEi3CynhBRI4qrC/view?usp=sharingOther option besides deleting the part, is to stick to KSP 1.9 until MKS is updated...
3 hours ago, SkiRich said:They happen to fit really nice on a KAS docking pallet.
Problem is getting it off.
With enough kerbals and an empty Kontainer its doable but forget when its loaded. The kerbal wont grab it to undock it. I wish there was a rt click menu for that on the pallet.
Oh well, konstruction docking ports it is.
I've always liked how the Near Future Construction octo-girder docking ports look on them.
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Probes Plus is low part count in comparison to Bluedog Design Bureau, though it's still not a very small mod.
Janitor's Closet can help with part list over-expansion:
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Not using Breaking Ground cargo that I know of.
KIS enables it using it's own cargo system.
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I haven't played with that mod in particular - but Ship Manifest will likely allow you to transfer them using it's interface if they're docked.
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I've found I like using SAS - used correctly. First, switch all reactions wheels to SAS-only, *then* use SAS - the reaction wheels then are set to just hold orientation.
Note that you'll likely have to switch them back to activating via the pilot if you do roll over and want to use them to roll back.
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6 minutes ago, SkiRich said:
Oh I get it , A biologist working in a module that boosts biologyskill would get points towards the next star.
So that also means if not a biologist you get nothing.
A bit different than the stock boosters but workable.
No, it's exactly the same as the stock skill traits - you get the next star the same way as always.
Just that if they have this trait, they have the ability to boost the relevant equipment.
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5 hours ago, Kindpie1994 said:
Well... the whole point people play Kerbal Space Program is the thrill of learning! Using Mods for aesthetic purposes or additional parts that don’t exist in vanilla STOCK KSP makes it all the more better BUT... to use a mod that auto balances thrust and COM/COG/COL. The maths to it is pretty simple haha.. so you don’t really have a leg to stand on in ur argument haha. I’ve offered more authentic help on the thread and given a few links to get the ball rolling despite the question being different.... what the original thread user inevitably wishes to achieve is making a stable VTOL. They asked for mods coz they don’t know how to balance the thrust as compensation for inflight transition etc.
happy engineering
And if you'd said anything like that you'd at least have been on topic. Instead you just showed pictures of a fighter jet in KSP, and told us how well it performs as a fighter.
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Looks neat. Personal opinion is that the PAW looks just a touch too flat - the buttons at least should have a bit more depth to them.
Also, the altimeter should be either skeuomorphic or flat, not both. I don't really see the rolling off of the numbers making sense to me if it's flat. The navball however is nice, in that it's got just enough depth to look like it's actually a ball.
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I'll admit I’m using modded parts, but there are three stable VTOLs in this picture:
https://magehandbook.com/owncloud/index.php/s/mK66F8Zf9botcwx/download
Making a stable VTOL wasn't even the question - the question was about auto-balancing thrust. Which we've pointed them towards. Just pointing at pictures of a VTOL you've made doesn't answer the question. (I don't *care* if the VTOL in the picture is legit.)
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3 minutes ago, Kindpie1994 said:
How so?
It's just a few shots of a single plane that presumably has VTOL capabilities. It doesn't answer what was done to balance the thrust on it, or any other design. All it really shows is that it is possible to make a VTOL - which was never in question.
And I'm certain it doesn't deal with dynamically balancing that thrust as the CoM/CoG moves during flight, which was the question asked.
happy engineering
[1.12.x] Kerbal Atomics: fancy nuclear engines! (January 22, 2022)
in KSP1 Mod Releases
Posted
In general, with newly released versions of KSP it takes a while for mods to update. You'll see the last confirmed worked version in the title of the thread - in this case, 1.9.x. Anything past that is a question mark.
Pure part mods typically work between KSP versions - though 1.10 was an exception for a lot of mods, as they messed with a couple of things in parts, apparently. (Notably, no modded fairings worked.)
However, this isn't a pure parts mod - there's some compiled code as well. Those are more restrictive, and while they often work between versions, they may not.
So, all that said: I haven't tried this mod in 1.10.1, and it may work - but I wouldn't count on it. Feel free to try it yourself and report if it does, but if it doesn't don't bug the mod-maker about it.