nyrath

The way it is supposed to work is to prevent the "killed" bomb types from being used. But I had some reports of bugs with that. If you start of with 3.5MN magazines and 0.88MN magazines, each bomb detonation will alternate between the types. First a 3.5, then a 0.88, then a 3.5 and so on. If you "kill" a feed, that bomb type will not be detonated until further notice. If you kill the 0.88, the detonations will be 3.5, 3.5, 3.5, and so on. When you right click on the engine you will see UKAF Nuclear Pulse Engine 0.88MN feeding (Kill->) [] 3.5MN feeding (Kill->) [] Show Xfer Menu [] In order to kill the 0.88MN feed, you click on the button next to (Kill->) When you do, the menu will change to UKAF Nuclear Pulse Engine 0.88MN feeding (Start->) [] 3.5MN feeding (Kill->) [] Show Xfer Menu [] That means only the 3.5 is feeding. If you want the 0.88 to feed, you click on the button next to the (Start->)

I had not planned on it. Number of bombs in magazine are globally tweakable in the parts.cfg file, I'm not sure how to change the loadout in the VAB, or deactivate. Well, as I stated in the first post, the details come from this document. The mod is modeled after the 1950's vintage USAF Orion design. Using the instructions in the readme file one can easily make new magazines with masses and yields of whatever you want. If the charge unit is using shaped charge technology, about 80% of the blast should hit the pusher plate. If it does not use shaped charge technology, it will probably be closer to 10%. I'm pretty sure the USAF design uses shaped charges.

Anton P. Nym, holy moly! That's gorgeous! Action groups, eh? I'll have to look into that.

Kiwiak, phooey, you are right. Apparently it broke in the new version and I didn't notice. Sorry about that. I'll try to fix it but it might take a while.

Kiwiak, it can be confusing. When you right click on the drive and the list of bomb types shows up, any bomb type with "Kill" next to it is currently enabled. Any bomb type with "Start" next to it is currently disabled. The marker says "Kill->". The hypen and greater-than-sign is a crude arrow pointing at the kill button. Click on the buttton, not the "kill" label" When the drive is operating, it will take one bomb from each Active bomb type. So if you turn off all bomb types except one, only that type will be detonated. As you kill or start various bomb types, the "Nuke:nnnn" display will change. It will only show the total number of bombs available of the active types. So if it drops to zero, check to see if you have any bomb types deactivated.

Thank you for your kind words! When I started playing KSP, I decided it wasn't atomic rockety enough. So I wrote a mod with one of the most atomic of all rockets.

hmmm, that's odd. You downloaded the zip file from here? http://ubuntuone.com/3NRDLNXaX1HmoiXIRlKNzt I just downloaded it and unpacked it, everything seemed to be there. The size of USAFOrionMod_v18.zip was about 9.26 megs.

I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to work on the mod in some months, due to the total chaos in my life right now. I'm not sure if it works in the latest version of KSP or not.

It seems to work in .22 (with a few annoying bugs), but I have not yet gotten it into the career mode tech tree yet (things are a bit hectic in my life right now). Any suggestions on where it should go?

You are using Python, correct? If so, there is a Python library that can parse JSON strings for you. JSON parser documentation http://docs.python.org/2/library/json.html Example http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8220748/parsing-json-python

I think this is similar to what you want to do. This is a tutorial for interfacing a rotary encoder to a Trinket Arduino to create a volume knob http://learn.adafruit.com/trinket-usb-volume-knob?view=all The example has it emitting text strings for "volume up" or "volume down" through the serial port. Like Camacha says, you can replace that with ">" or "<" This is an example of reading a set of momentary-contact switches with a single Arduino analog input pin by using different resistors on each button http://tronixstuff.com/2011/01/11/tutorial-using-analog-input-for-multiple-buttons/ This is similar to what Camacha was talking about with resistors on a rotary switch.

Hard to say, so much of this is still classified. There was a design for a 4,000 ton GLOW Orion using 5 kiloton bombs (included in my mod as 80 megaNewton charges), they figured it would deltaV 1,600 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 200 tons of payload to 30 km/sec. The "advanced interplanetary ship" had 10,000 tons GLOW (and a pusher plate diameter of 40 meters!) using 15 kiloton bombs (400 megaNewtons). They figure it would deltaV 6,100 tons of payload to 10 km/sec or 1,300 tons of payload to 100 km/sec. A 20,000 tons GLOW Orion would use 29 kiloton bombs, no details on the rest. The "Super Orion" had a GLOW of 8,000,000 tons (and a pusher plate diameter of 400 meters!!). It doesn't say what the yield of the bombs were, but probably a couple of megatons. All it said was that each bomb had a mass of 3,000 tons. By way of comparison, the 5 kiloton bombs had a mass of about 1.2 tons. The Tsar Bomba was only 27 metric tons, but it did not have any Orion propellant mass included.

Yes, they are accurate. I did quite a lot of research. A 400 meganewton explosion only needs a nuclear device with a yield of 15 kilotons, or about the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was about 20 kt. The warheads on ICBMs are from 100 to 500 kt. The most powerful warhead still in active service has a yield of about 1,200 kt.

I'm going to have to figure out how to insert the Orion mod into the tech tree. Somewhere after "atomic engine" I think.

Ah, do you mean this module? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53664-New-Landing-Legs/page9

Arrgh, that bug is back again! I thought I had killed it. When the ship with the Orion drive abruptly stopped working, did you have other Orion drive ships in the same saved game? I'm sorry you are having trouble with my mod.

Yikes, that's not good. Neither the "Z" key nor setting the throttle do anything?

I'm sorry you are having trouble. Do you mean that after you installed the mod, in the vertical assembly building the parts tabs were totally empty (except for the Orion engine and the magazines)? If that is the case, it sounds like the something happened to the Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Squad folder. What version of KSP are you running? The Orion mod requires KSP version 0.20 or latter.

Great stuff Nutt007!

Nice ship! I find that the ship tends to walk on the pad if you do not use either TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancers or LT-2 Landing Struts that have been extended by pressing the G key. Can you please go into more detail how the Orion self-destructs when you resume from launch? I made an Orion ship and launched it into orbit. I used the ESC key to exit to the launch center, then quit the program. I re-ran the program, entered the tracking station, selected the Orion in orbit and hit the "fly" button. I was transferred to the Orion, and it did not blow up. I need to have a sequence of steps to reproduce the bug before I can fix it. I'm sorry you are having trouble. Arrrgh, I have no idea. I'm on Steam, so it auto-updates me to the latest version of KSP.

SufficientAnonymity, lordy look at the size of that thing! Nice engineering.

Excellent! That's a monster! Interesting about the rocket holders. I had good results with putting about 16 or more LT-2 Landing Struts at the base of the pusher plate, and frantically deploying them with the G key when the physics kicks in on the launch pad. The thing about TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancers is that you can only use them when launching from Kerbin. If you land on another planet or moon, things might fall off when you lift off. The bug Markarian421 notices was as I thought, the plug-in figured the bomb path intersected a collider called "Kerbin". I'm mulling over my options.

That is because if there is an obstacle, the plug in does not bother doing the bomb-in-motion animation. Ordinarily the bomb-in-motion animation means about a third of a second delay until the blast. Without the animation the explosion is almost instant.

Yes, I noticed that myself. I'm looking into it. What is happening is that the plug-in thinks it is detecting an obstacle in the bomb path. I'll have to see what it thinks is in the way. I suspect that it is some sort of virtual object, like an invisible barrier between atmosphere and space, or the barrier between planet & orbit view or something like that. When an obstacle is detected, the bomb explosion site is altered to be 1 meter in front of the obstacle. It appears that somehow the obstacle's edge is inside of the vessel. I'll do my best to fix it. But at least the Orion is no longer blowing up on the launch pad.

New Version Up at first post Hopefully this will fix the "blowing up on the launch pad" problem. This fix might break other things so be on alert for strange behavior. Please read the bug fix notes as there is still a way to explode it on the pad