Captain Sierra

Pretty much exactly that, yeah. Terrible handling of heat during warp means you have to wait many IRL minutes for a vessel to cool down or else initiating warp may result in unexpected kabooms since it averages part temperature, and does so with no respect to relative heat temperature tolerances or thermal mass. Also it's worth noting there's only one FFRE in old-FFT and it's not afterburning, in case you were hoping for that. Honestly, I loved old-FFT and originally planned to stay on it when Nertea steadfastly declared that antimatter was not in scope for nu-FFT, but well ... we see what happened there. There is no resisting the power of beam-core antimatter torches.

The last release of old-FFT was version 0.3.1 back for KSP version 1.5 and can be found digging through historical github releases. As a general note for anyone reading this, KSP version 1.8 is a breaking update both forward and backward for any mod with plugin components. As a general rule, try to keep your mods to the version of the game you're running. The person I quoted appears to be an advanced user when it comes to legacy version operation. AFAIK the fix will retroactively fix crafts using the combined D-He3 tanks in-editor (though not sure if the tank contents will adjust accordingly for in-flight). The biggest victims would be those that manually match the 2:3 ratio, and 1:4 is easier to remember anyway. I'll vote go for it.

I didn't. I took a guess based on the information you had a stable 1.8.1 modded install that you had a decently sized mod load (due to old version) and that if you had the experience to have that kind of a mod load, you've probably played a good bit. Nope that's pretty much what happens. We get jumbo 5 meter tanks for good reason.

In a word, yes. Because of hydrogen's low density, you will need a lot of tank volume in order to store sufficient propellant. However, if you pay careful attention to your vehicle's mass, you will see that it is very low for how large it is. The challenge is the size rather than the mass. As for whether or not to go with monolithic single vehicles or perform orbital rendezvous & assembly, that's ultimately up to you to decide based on whatever your mission needs are. At a certain point, monolithic launches become hideously impractical unless you have access to orbital construction mods. And for version I'm still on 1.9 due to my install being precariously balanced atop Kopernicus among other things as well so it should be back-compatible just fine up to 1.8.X. (I am also making the assumption that if you have a stable mod install at that version your in-game hours vastly outweighs your forum newb status.)

I loaded up a test stand to check the engine and I see a nominal propellant flow rate of 101.5 units/second so that's about right. Something important to keep in mind here is that one unit of LH2 corresponds to one liter of volume (plus a fudge factor on the tanks). One unit of stock liquid fuel actually corresponds to about 5.5 liters I believe, and density-wise is close-ish to RP-1 kerosene. The stock value of a "unit" of a resource of completely arbitrary, while Community Resource Pack (where liquid hydrogen is defined) generally tries to define its values against some real-world baseline. The game calculates fuel consumption based on the fuel mass (one unit has X mass as set in the resource definition), but then lists propellant flow in once-again arbitrary "units" so I wouldn't take it too much to heart. I checked the stock LV-N (with its dual-fuel kerbal atomics patch) and it burns 95 units of LH2 per second, but only 2 units of liquid fuel per second when in that mode.

This sounds on the surface like B9PartSwitch isn't working correctly. Do you have an up-to-date version for your install?

@ProfessorPalpatine Regarding full-length frisbees to orbit ... it can be done. I imagine the intended model is extraplanetary launchpads, but brute force isn't impossible. Its more unwieldy than it is heavy. @kspnerd122 For using the fusion tokamaks for ascent, four of the large static square radiator panels is enough to cool them. The static panels won't break under aerodynamic forces so you can mount them like fins (their aerodynamic usefulness is unclear). I had a spaceplane prototype that mounted them on the dorsal side of the wing with good success.

Table of Contents Chapter 1 Humble Beginnings Preparing for Ground (you are here) Preparing for Ground Investor briefing, 1/13/2021 Greetings investors! Before we begin, I am proud to present our new and improved brand! The marketing team is quite pleased with it. Now with the trimmings out of the way, allow me to get into today’s briefing. In the past week U.S.E.C. has successfully conducted two launches from our complex at Shepard Cape, including a vehicle from our new Very Heavy Launch Platform constructed at pad 17A. Able to support upwards of 800 tons, the pad easily handled the launch of our planned expansion modules for the Mu Gateway, which you may remember. Massing just under 445 tons on the pad, with 367 tons of kerosene fuel & liquid oxygen aboard, this launch vehicle is the largest launch vehicle assembled for U.S.E.C. to date. Carried on the launch is empty tank storage and fuel refining equipment to complete the refueling capabilities of the gateway. These two units will be fitted to the underside of the Industrial Extension Truss. Fitting the Mu Gateway with its refueling capability is an important step to the second major milestone of Phase 1: surface resource operations. In further support of this goal has demanded the development of reusable surface to orbit transport around the moon. Mun gravity is 1.63 m/s/s with approximately 850 m/s horizontal velocity required to maintain stable low orbit. A minimum capacity of 6 crew members was requested in the design requirements handed over to our Spacecraft Design Committee. Allow me to hand it over to SDC for the next few minutes. Spacecraft Engineering Reusability on spacecraft adds extra considerations, as well as rendezvous and docking with a station that’s considerably above low orbit. We opted to use a side saddle tank configuration in later models in order to shorten the vehicle and reduce tip over. Increased stability allowed several other reductions to save mass, all of which saves fuel. Fuel savings are good for a single trip mission but become exponentially more valuable for repeated trips. The product of all these considerations is the Armstrong Munar Surface Vehicle. This vehicle is able to service surface installations with +/- 20 degrees latitude, making the landing and return to orbit without refueling. For higher latitudes, it is not possible to fly round-trip without a refuel on the internal fuel load of 2,314 m/s delta-V. The thrust/mass ratio is rather low, only producing half a g of acceleration, but is sufficient for the low gravity environment. Less engine power allows finer control over the descent and reduces engine mass on the final vehicle. In addition to transport, the team has been designing surface assets and a base modularity scheme. The first draft of this scheme has been incorporated into the modules for this first base, which we are tentatively calling Luna. Below is a schematic for the drone core unit. It includes thermal control, solar power generation, electro-chemical fuel cells, fuel reserves, and communications hardware. It is fully autonomous and self-propelled via the onboard fuel stores. If the core is not central to a base, it can be refueled, launched, and relocated with ease. The other engineers are quite pleased with it. Other modules are still in integration testing, ensuring their thermal management & electrical systems will operate within margin. That’s all we have here at SDC. On behalf of all our investors, big thanks to the SDC team for taking the time. I’m sure you will all be happy to know that the fruits of their labor have already been deployed. The Armstrong lander vehicle was launched from pad 23 just a day after the gateway expansion modules. The vehicle, along with the first long-term crew for the Mu Gateway, has safely docked. The crew is slated for a two-month rotation and will watch much of the construction efforts of Luna Base from up on high. The only remaining milestones for the gateway station is transport of raw materials & fuel supplies. Gateway will likely not maintain its own transports, but several will be operating around Mun at any given time at the completion of Phase 1. We would like to thank our partners at Kerbodyne Aerospace. Kerbodyne Aerospace produces many of our launch vehicles on-demand to cater to various mission payloads. U.S.E.C. is planning to develop an in-house line of standardized launch vehicles in the near future, but we are currently dedicating all of our resources towards developing a reliable surface construction system.

Table of Contents Chapter 1 Humble Beginnings (you are here) Preparing for Ground Humble Beginnings Investor facility tour, 1/7/2021 Greetings investors! We here at U.S.E.C. are thrilled to introduce you to our operations. Chartered in 2019 under the United Kerbin Space Alliance, we specialize in extraplanetary construction & long-term operations in the most extreme, distant, hostile environments known to kerbal. Here at the start of 2021, we are proud to announce the completion of a major milestone in our Phase 1 program: the Mu Gateway space station. In addition to Mu Gateway reaching operational readiness, SAR satellites have been busily returning natural resource data from both of Kerbin’s planetary children. The Mu Gateway includes upgrade plans as part of the Luna program to support onsite resource operations. Up to 12 crew members can live in relative comfort aboard the station, enabling easy rotation with ground operations. The station includes room for raw material stowage and connections for fuel & processing modules on the underside of the Industrial Expansion Displacement- … yes? Oh… I see. Right away Ma’am. *ahem* Corporate has asked me to inform you, investors, that the module has been renamed to Industrial Extension Truss, and that the individual responsible for the initials “I.E.D.” has been sacked. The truss features two couplings on its underside. We currently pan to seat fuel storage and resource processing equipment in these positions in support of orbit-to-surface transit. Primary attitude correction, thermal rejection, and electrical generation are all provided by the Service Utility Module, with the science lab receiving its own onboard auxiliary power. Habitation is provided by a rigid-wall module adjacent the command module and by inflatable living space attached to the main hub. The station currently orbits at 240 kilometers above the rocky surface and is prepared to receive crew at once. Our Satellites In addition to our crown jewel orbiting our nearest celestial neighbor, we have three operational satellites in two proven patterns deployed to our moons. Our autonomous operations provide communication relay & natural resource scanning via synthetic aperture radar. The Archangel (center, left) mapping satellites have already returned valuable terrain data on both Mun and Minmus and identified a number of promising deposits of natural resources using powerful synthetic aperture radar. Paired narrow-band transmitters provide low-power, high-bandwidth communications to download scan data from anywhere in Kerbin orbit, and an included boost stage provides roughly 1,670 meters per second of delta-V, in addition to the vehicle's onboard fuel supplies of 1,220 meters. With upgrades to the communications hardware planned and additional sensors in development, the Archangel spacecraft will continue to be a U.S.E.C. staple for the rest of the decade. The smaller, lighter weight ComStar vehicle has a storied history. Over 500kg lighter than an Archangel bus, the smaller ComStar vehicle is purpose-built for relay operations around Kerbin's moons. A smaller thruster and smaller onboard tanks provide 770 meters per second of delta-V, in addition to the upper stage it launches on. No boost stage is packaged with the vehicle, which resulted in range limitations of initial launches. Both ComStar 1 and 2 failed to insert into acceptable munar orbits and had to be terminated. ComStar 3, in conjunction with relay antennas aboard the Mu Gateway, services the far side of Mun. Thank you everyone for visiting our facilities. U.S.E.C. would like to remind all investors, current and prospective, that any information not included in marketing or promotional materials, official press releases, and legal filings is considered confidential. Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, please direct them to our fundraising director.

Between Planetary Base Systems (not Nertea's work) and Space Station Parts Expansion redux (Nertea's work) including some nice landing leg options, base-building should be covered. BTW @Nertea I noticed there's two modulemanager DLLs in the NFAero release on github (haven't checked the other mirrors). EDIT: Also caught this on load: duplicate pass identifier [WRN 12:30:14.022] more than one pass specifier detected, ignoring all but the first: NearFuturePropulsion/Patches/Waterfall/NearFuturePropulsionWaterfallHallEffect/@PART[ionArgon-0625]:NEEDS[Waterfall]:FOR[NearFuturePropulsion]:FOR[NearFuturePropulsion] It's harmless, but MM does throw a warning about it. Minimum priority fix, just making it known.

My CMTV (cismunar transfer vehicle) is pretty straight forward to replicate. Cabin + adapter from SSPXr, command pod from NFSpacecraft (stock pod also substitutes), tanks & engines from CryoEngines, structural paneling & misc. retextures from Restock. Here's another view if you want to try to rebuild it: Note: the top flat adapter is covered in 24 PX-STAT solar panels for power generation and there's four small radial batteries (the 100s) tucked up behind the structural panels. I found I need to have more battery storage to complete a lunar orbit without going zero-power and the landing legs are a bit wimpy under >50% fuel load. Larger ones are in order. A Mk2 design is probably on my to-do list. In terms of dV, this thing makes it down and back (albeit a little close on fuel) in 2.5x scale.

Check out these high quality digs ... And yes, they're already merge requested in for next release. Turns out the font for "PKMC" is not available for free, so I had to recreate it entirely with geometry (which would be easier if I had the software & skills to do vector art). That was of course made possible by having an original. The full words I found a very similar font for free. It's not perfectly 1:1 but I think it looks slick. I made a few different versions: black on transparent, white on black, gray on blue gradient. Aside from being merged to the mod extras, I can make these available standalone (no attribution to me required, credit to Nert for the original logos) if people want a pack.

There's no true fission torch in the mod. The closest thing to that would be the nuclear salt water rocket. The three true torches are the Fresnel mirror-cell fusion engine (the entry-level torch), the Cascade axial-flow z-pinch fusion engine, and the Frisbee beam-core antimatter annihilation engine. Those three are hilariously strong because balance is a relative concept when dealing torch drives.

There is definitely a logo and we can see it in the technical images in the FFT release album. I second making it into a flag when Nertea comes back from well-deserved vacation time. And speaking of vacationing time for him, I want to use that to hijack this thread briefly for my own tangentially related purposes. I wanna talk about these engines. Not the fusion tokamaks, the nuclear jet engines. I want people's opinions on the jet engines from NFAero, particularly when in use with Mk4 system (since they were originally a part of that). I personally have my own gripes with the balance and the mod FAQ even admits there's probably room for improvement on that front. So to that end, I want to pick the brains of other rocket engineers here on the topic.

I have been immortalized in the release album!

The three torches are beam-core antimatter annihilation, gas dynamic mirror-cell fusion, and zeta-pinch axial-flow fusion engines. These are the three at have both good thrust power and insane delta-V, something everything else must choose between.

Hammertong is able to produce dV numbers that approach that of the torch drives, but it has absolutely nada in terms of thrust. I think it's base TWR with just the engine and a tiny smidgen of fuel is like 0.3 and it only gets worse as you add mass. Now that said, it doesn't take a whole lot of fuel to get these numbers and if running it deuterium-rich, it has better helium-3 efficiency than both fusion torches. The torches are still ultimately in a league of their own, but the Hammertong is the only non-torch engine that can remotely compete in terms of dV. In a career environment, it may have some use still even when the torches come out if your helium-3 infrastructure is a bit lacking (the stuff costs a fortune on Kerbin).

KJR pretty much stabilized the stack when I launched it. My stack was only like 15 parts top to bottom too. The biggest spot I was worried about flexing was the interstage because I was using a step-down upper stage with clustered engines. I was coupling 7.5 meter cores to a 5 meter cluster mount and that sometimes doesn't like to stay rigid but KJR usually keeps it where its supposed to be. And of course @CDSlice is right in that puller config only helps if your rocket behaves like a noodle rather than a rocket. KJR of course fixes that. I would dare say KJR is basically required when using this mod because absurdly long constructs (often punctuated with docking ports) are pretty normal for spacecraft which use these drives, especially the torches.

Not with that attitude. @SpaceFace545 it looks something like this: It ain't pretty but it works.

I finally played with the afterburning mode on the Cascade. I think its safe to conclude the thing is absolutely insane. Nailing down a precise fuel mixture is proving a bit tricky so I opted for a slight surplus of fusion fuel. I can either run a reactor off of that (overkill for tank cooling) or have a slight buffer for reaction products mode if I run out of hydrogen mid-mission. Its only like 4,000 dV buffer but that's all you need to save a mission. Oh and I think I broke the embeds in my previous post while cleaning up my imgur so uh, RIP. Have a new album instead. full album

Thought I'd work on some harvesting vehicle prototypes. So far I've come up with this glorious monstrosity: No your eyes do not deceive you on my engine choice, those are fusion tokamaks. I ended up swapping out the Pluto multimode engines for Fireflashes because the Plutos just guzzle too much fuel in reaction-mass mode. Its better to rely solely on the fusion engines for the punch to orbit, but this only works on Kerbin and how it will work skimming the stratosphere of Jool is another matter entirely. The thing weighs almost 200 tons fully loaded (I cut the monoprop down to only 2000kg which might cut it close and the 3.75m fusion tank inside is only at 10% load) so even four nuclear thermal jet engines can't even break Mach. I have to kick in rocket power to go supersonic and get the ramjet compression going. Once there its a Mach 4.5 cruise to 18km before I punch the rockets a second time and go for orbit. Honestly I run into the whole "not enough static thrust" problem with the 2.5m engines from NFAero pretty regularly. In terms of craft-to-engine ratio its definitely on the low side compared to smaller successful SSTOs I've built but the alternatives just feel structurally ridiculous (in this instance I lower the wing, double up the nacelles on the top and have 8 engines, which IMO looks hideously unrealistic). But the balance of those jet engines is a topic for another time. So on another note, I have some prettiness of the new engine in action. Yeah, I see what Nertea meant when he counted three torches. This is definitely in that performance realm. I didn't even test the LH2-afterburning but even in standard reaction products mode, hot dayum this thing is sweet. I was getting just over 1g and 340k dV with those two tanks. I'm not sure how the radiator power needed compares to a full-length Fresnel offhand but I can check. The lack of shorter options is a bit of a challenge but its absolutely worth overcoming for this performance envelope.

Does this mean it's going to have a different ratio of D-He3? Much like how the Hammertong has the deuterium-rich mode, this is going to have a similar ratio but guzzling helium? On a semi-related note to this mod, PersistentThrust has been giving me no shortage of issues largely as a result of patching itself to engines that it has no right to be patching itself to, like jet engines. Most of this went away when I disabled its automatic universal patch and manually patched only the relevant engines. In my case, this includes the stock ion, all of NFP, the stock/ReStock+ NTRs, Kerbal Atomics NTRs (excluding the aerospikes), and every engine in this pack excluding the tokamak aerospike and the NSWR. If anyone wants this patch, or any mod's section thereof, I'm pasting it below. I don't know if its wise to bundle this as an extra with these mods as you have to first disable PersistentThrust's default patch. In any case, hope someone finds this useful: // Stock parts (assumes RESTOCK is present for ion engine) @PART[ionEngine] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = colorAnimation } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[nuclearEngine] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } // RESTOCK+ @PART[restock-engine-cherenkov] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } // Kerbal Atomics @PART[ntr-sc-0625-1] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[ntr-sc-125-1] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[ntr-sc-125-2] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[ntr-sc-25-1] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[ntr-gc-25-1] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[ntr-gc-25-2] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } // NF Propulsion @PART[ionArgon-0625] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = ionArgon-0625-1-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[ionArgon-0625-2] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = ionArgon-0625-2-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[ionArgon-0625-3] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = ionArgon-0625-3-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[ionXenon-0625] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = ionXenon-0625-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[ionXenon-0625-2] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = ionXenon-0625-2-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[ionXenon-0625-3] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = ionXenon-0625-3-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[mpdt-0625] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = MPDT-0625-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[mpdt-125] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = MPDT-125-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[mpdt-25] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = MPDT-25-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[pit-0625] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = pit-0625-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[pit-125] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = pit-125-Throttle } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[pit-25] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = PIT-25-ThrottleA } // -MODULE[FXModuleAnimateThrottle] {} } @PART[vasimr-0625] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[vasimr-125] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[vasimr-25] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } // FFT @PART[fft-antimatter-*] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[fft-fission-zpinch-1] MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[fft-ffre-plasma-1] MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } }@PART[fft-ffre-solid-1] MODULE { name = PersistentEngine throttleAnimationName = DrumSpin } } @PART[fft-fusion-inertial-*] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[fft-fusion-magnetic-mirror-1] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } @PART[fft-fusion-magnetic-tokamak-1] { MODULE { name = PersistentEngine } } EDIT: After reading a bit of Atomic Rockets, the axial-flow is the mythical third torch I couldn't figure out a few days ago isn't it... Goodie.

No you're right, that is there. CryoTanks is patching the tanks to include LH2O configurations. AFAIK it shouldn't modify the default LFO configuration. The linear aerospike is not patched to LH2 burning, so I left the fuel load in the tanks at LFO. Here's the fuel load in editor. Do these numbers look correct versus not CT-patched?

I have cryotanks but the aerospike isn't patched to hydrolox, still an LFO engine. So I was launching with standard liquid fuel load. I don't think the configs mess with the LFO configuration but I could be wrong.

So I've been playing with this and the vehicle's performance envelope is ... interesting to say the least. For reference, I'm flying this on 2.5x rescale so I'm flying fully fueled. Four aerospikes off the pad is actually way too much thrust, even with a full orange jumbo in the cargo bay. I was leaping off the pad at about 1.75 TWR. I found the ascent was much more manageable when I scaled this back to 3 aerospike segments. Fuel-wise, I had enough to fill out a 110km orbit with 1800m/s to spare. I could put my 64 ton payload on a geostationary transfer orbit and still make it back home. I had basically no heating issues when reentering even at over 3,000 meters/second. I did find that the glide profile on the bird is ... strange. Its very draggy and slows down pretty quick once you're no longer hypersonic, but its also oddly floaty. It felt like it was gliding rather well for how slow I was going. I'm still searching for the right descent path. I was also surprised at how many kerbals were packed into the cockpit and I didn't lose any fuel capacity. I feel like anywhere from 25-50% of the tank space is being filled with crew cabin but its still carrying full fuel. I get that it's to ensure vehicle in both configurations but I was still surprised. Even if I did lose half that fuel I could probably be just fine so long as I didn't try to lift more than about 40 tons to orbit. I had success pushing all fuel to the aft tank. That greatly improved my aerodynamic control on entry.