nyrath

@DDE: but what astonished me was this bit I found here: Now, DDE, you are probably aware of all this, but this was a wake-up call for me, and I am also speaking to others on this forum. Solid fuel rods, such as are using in the old NERVA solid-core NTR, become clogged with nuclear reaction products (neutron poisons) when 15% of the fuel has been burnt (undergoing nuclear fission). A clogged rod will not support nuclear fission. The rod has to be removed and taken to a reprocessing plant. For this reason NASA's reusable nuclear shuttle has an engine life of only 10 Terra-Luna round trips before disposal, even though the rods still contain 85% of the expensive uranium-235 unburnt. Extracting the rods for reprocessing is too dangerous in NASA's eyes, they just send the nuclear shuttle into a graveyard orbit. This wastes a lot of expensive U235. The same limit applies to a nuclear power plant. Ground based plants periodically halt operations when the solid fuel rods become clogged. They then spend a few months carefully opening the reactor, removing the clogged rods, replacing them with fresh rods, then carefully reassembling the reactor. The clogged rods are sent to a reprocessing plant to extract the unburnt U235 and using it to fabricate fresh rods. The rest of the rod goes to a long term nuclear waste disposal site. If I am reading the above sentence correctly; they are implying that the fuel gas, after one pass through the MHD generator, can be passed through an on-board refinery. The product is already gaseous, as opposed to solid fuel rods, which simplifies refining. In the refinery the nuclear reaction products clogging the gas can be filtered out, and the unburnt U235 can be sent on another pass through the MHD generator. The alternative is removing the gas "from the circuit to the external environment", i.e., wastefully jettisoning the gas into deep space along with all its expensive unburnt U235. Now that my nose has been rubbed in the fact, I realize that a nuclear lightbulb gas core engine should also require an on-board reprocessing plant. But in all the nuclear lightbulb documents I've read, a re-processor is conspicuous by its absence. I'm going to have to review the documents.

DDE, I am so sorry I missed this, so many years ago. This it fascinating information! Thank you so much!

I'm trying to get a fixed package together for this week. The nodes have to be flipped, temperature hook changed, needs a place in the tech tree, and the new source code added to the package. Sorry I'm taking so long.

Rats, bombs won't go off in v1.0. Am looking into it.

Scott Lowther is asking around as well. Not good, not good at all. http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=28354

Lord_Chappington, when you right-click on a magazine, does the pop-up menu say it is "feeding?" Did you try firing off bombs by both using the Z key and using the throttle? Neither worked?

It is looking mighty fine, TiktaalikDreaming! You are doing a good job recreating the original Orion exploration craft. I am impressed.

I was thinking about doing the same thing: making the internal bomb supply something the size of a matchbox that you attach. Keeping in mind that the magic bomb management code changes a bomb magazine's mass dynamically, as bombs are taken out. So that matchbox will have a mass of tons. Be cure you mount it on the thrust axis of the engine units, or the ship may be unbalanced.

gmiezis, that is stunning artwork! but you'll have to pardon me, I've got something in my eye. Dusty in here.

Good work TiktaalikDreaming! Adding internal storage pulse units will be a pain. The module code will have be be altered, and unfortunately I do not have time to do it (the source code is supplied with the mod, of course). The trouble is the tricky coding used so that the mod magically found any attached pulse unit magazines and set the engine up to consume their pulse units. And keep the different sizes of pulse units separate.

Porkjet! Your mods are beautiful pieces of work! I am most impressed. I placed your mods in the Atomic Rocket Seal of Approval section: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval.php#id--Computer_Simulation--Porkjet's_Nuclear_Lightbulb_KSP_Mod

I'm sorry I'm to busy to help right now, but there are some notes and diagrams about the 10-meter USAF Orion that the mod is based on here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php#id--Project_Orion--USAF_10_Meter_Orion Using Blender: [1] The rule is: One hand on the mouse, the other on the keyboard [2] This means you have to memorize lots of hot keys [3] Print out a list of important hot keys http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/blender-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html http://blendertips.com/hotkeys.html [4] Tape them to the wall next to the computer monitor [5] Start doing some tutorials http://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/ while frequently referring to the cheat sheet. One hand on the mouse, the other on the keyboard. [6] For about a week you will feel like you are pounding your head on the wall. Then one fine day you'll try Blender again, and suddenly it will be childishly easy

My life is still in total chaos, so I have not had a chance to work on things. Alistair Young alerted me to the fact that the mod will not work in .90 He has temporarily fixed it for me. There is a drop-in replacement for the dll here: https://github.com/cerebrate/USAFOrion/releases the code is here https://github.com/cerebrate/USAFOrion I'll try to merge this into the main release Real Soon Now