Northstar1989

It appears I was trying to install the unpacked source code, which was the source of my difficulty. Getting the proper .zip from "Releases", there are none of these odd "bin", "spec", or "template" sub-folders; there is a dll where I can easily find it, and it is obvious what goes in the GameData folder. My bad! What I get for trying to install mods late at night, I guess...

In addition to the Aviation Fuel Cylinders not swapping between fuels as they should (might be an issue with the B9 PartSwitch dependency that ships with the latest versions not being updated fully, and possibly my attempts to manually install the updated one- or even the more updated B9PartSwitch not being updated for the very latest version of KSP). I am having a more basic issue with the balancing/configs of the parts themselves that definitely needs to be fixed... The "Heavy Engine Nacelles" from NearFuture Aeronautics are not capable of supporting a reasonable amount of weight in surface (radial) attachment mode to the underside of wings, like they should be able to. With even a very modest load attached to them: an appropriate-sized and weight 2.5 meter BROADSWORD engine (also from the mod) attached to their rear, and stock 2.5-->1.875--->1.25 meter fueled diameter-tapering parts (two parts, in that order) plus a 1.25 meter nosecone, and a single stock ExtraLarge landing gear, the Heavy Nacelles are ripping off the bottom of the plane soon after it lifts off the runway- both immediately after, and a few after pulling the nose further up out over the ocean. This even occurs when I reinforce both the nacelles and the tapered fuel tanks attached to the front with manual struts, as well as turning on auto-strut for all parts. In fact, it takes 3-4 struts to even have a decent chance of the nacelles not ripping off in the first minute of flight, and more still to keep them on for an entire spaceplane ascent. TLDR: The strength of surface attachment for the Heavy Engine Nacelle part grossly inadequate to support the weight it is clearly designed for. It barely hangs onto the underside of a wing when stationary on the runway without any landing gear directly underneath (or that particular gear retracted), and even the *slight* additional stress of nosing a plane up 4-5 degrees at low speed (120-150 m/s) is enough to rip them right most "heavy nacelles" off the bottom of a wing. The "Heavy Engine Nacelles" desperately need stronger surface attachment to actually be remotely useful. EDIT: May be possible both this, and the Aviation Fuel Cylinders issue were due to a mistake made in installing an updated version of B9 Part Switch dependency (since the version shipped with the NearFuture mods is outdated, not the post 1.12.2 recompile one). Among other things, that dependency allows both swapping resources AND adjusting part/node sizes, which can affect the strength of attachments (the latter of which, if it occurs automatically, as a scale-up of a smaller reference config, rather than Nertea having created a config with the correct part/node sizes initially, can cause issues like this. I encountered something similar myself with rescaling and attachment sizes having issues when first making my Netherdyne Mass Driver Mod configs usable, before eventually handing the mod off to another maintainer...) EDIT #2: Fixing B9 Part Switch fixed the Aviation Fuel Cylinder issue, but did absolutely nothing for the pathetic attachment strength of the Heavy Engine Nacelles. They still fall apart with barely any stress placed on them.

Ahh, ok, thank you. I might go back and grab that. Does anyone, or @Nertea know why the Aviation Fuel Cylinders from NearFuture Aeronautics, which say they can be filled with jet fuel, rocket fuel, or nothing; actually cannot be filled with anything and are completely empty for me? Other parts from, for instance, B9 Procedural Wings (the only non-NF parts mod I currently have installed)- though I will eventually add others once I get NF working right) can be swapped between LF, LF0, and even Monoprop at will. But the Aviation Fuel cylinders have no toggleable, high weight (for a structural cylinder with no fuel), and only modestly higher tmperature resistance than the stock rocket fuel tanks (which they weigh more than). I need these parts to be able to hold fuels if possible in a non-RealFuels game (in case that's what it is expecting to be toggleable). EDIT: Also, don't forget what I said jsut a few posts back about the outdated dependencies shipping with some of the NearFuture mods.

Is there a fork or continuation of this mod for 1.12.x anywhere?

As far as I know, the edges only modify the wing lift/drag some, when FAR is not installed. With FAR (which you should use with RO anyways), I'm pretty sure the wing lift/drag are entirely recalculated. What counts as "only at high speeds"? And with how much weight on the wings? (Liftoff Speed is ALWAYS a function at least partly of wingloading) Note that a true biconvex wing (both edges biconvex, no flat area in between) doesn't fly amazingly well in real life either, if I recall correctly.

Question: what does the "OrbitalLFOEngines" extra with NearFuture Spacecraft do? It's not explained anywhere easily accessible, like on the original post or the SpaceDock info page.

@Nertea Love the hard work as always! Wanted to give a heads-up that the mods all currently come bundled with B9 Part Switch version 2.18.0 when the latest version is 2.19.0 (even that one wasn't made for KSP 1.12.3 explicitly, but is more likely to work with it without issues than 2.18.0 at least...) EDIT: Other dependencies with NearFuture... - Packaged Module Manager versions with all the mods are outdated, EXCEPT for with NF Spacecraft for some reason. They are version 4.1.4 when there's a MM version 4.2.1 except, again, in NF Spacecraft, which carries MM 4.2.1 as is the latest. - Dynamic Battery Storage (with NF Electrical) is outdated version 2.2.4 when there's a version 2.2.5 . The update has a few feature fixes beyond simple bugfixes (should have been called 2.3.x instead) - Kerbal Actuators (with NF Aeronautics) is outdated. It has version 1.8.3 when the mod was recompiled for KSP 1.12.2 with mod version 1.8.4 (the latest version). -The Deployable Engines Plugin in NearFuture Aeronautics (but NOT Launch Vehicles) is outdated. It has version 1.2.2 instead of version 1.3.1 - Community Resource Pack is up-to-date as far as I can tell (can't locate versions past 1.4.1/1.4.2, with some nonsense about them possible being identical...)

Love the hard work, as always! Two quick things: 1. Is this updated for 1.12.3? If so, could the thread title be updated? GitHub says for version 1.12.2, so I assume is still up to date 2. Could some more detailed information be added to the original post about manually installing (by adding the folder to KSP folders) B9 Part Switch? It is unusually confusing to install manually, as there is a folder labeled "GameData" *within* the top-level folder, below levels like "bin", "spec", and "templates." For most mods, only what is a layer BELOW "GameData" is added to the GameData folder, and occasionally some DLL's float in GameData without a folder (few mods have anything outside GameData, except occasional reference craft, etc.) Anyways, great work, really appreciate it, hope that this mod will be kept current well into the future!

Love and appreciation for the work as always! Getting back to KSP after a bit of a break, now that my preferred mods are all updated. I do recall some lingering issues with the Advanced SAS when controlling vessels in-atmosphere or with very low rotation rates outside the atmosphere last I checked, though. I'll try to post about them if I notice them again (although I normally just use Atmosphere Autopilot for really finicky spaceplanes instead...) Wanted to say, hope this mod won't be abandoned/frozen! There's always more ways to improve something like this, when time permits- and KSP has lots more development potential for mods - so people need not treat it as dead (SQUAD could release another DLC, too, to keep funding up for more free updates, if they would give their focus on KSP2 a rest for a moment- as it looks to be hitting countless development delays...) Anyways, thanks and appreciation! Hope all is well!

Thanks as always for the great work Sarbian! Hope this will still be updated as future KSP updates come out (if any), or at least once in a long while to let people know it's still active (maybe with tiny changes like cleaning up code or fixing a lingering bug). MM is as always, essential for any Kerbalnaut, and I appreciate the dedication!

Awesome! Thanks!

So, hate to ask this, but is this working on 1.11+ yet? The thread title still says 1.9.x I'm waiting for this to be fully compatible with latest KSP versions (currently only using 1.11 because of un-updated mods) before jumping too heavily back into my current career save. And may I say, as always, to past, current, and future modders here, great work and I appreciate all of it! This mod has been a cornerstone of my playthroughs for years!

As always, a great mod! Loving it, and really wish they would bundle something like this into the stock game. I find my spaceplanes are impossible to fly without this (particularly as I don't have a joystick), without insane levels of built-in stability!

Just checking in, to see how this is going. @linuxgurugamer?

Awesome! By the way, one thing that may need to be considered (and rarely is in mods) for balance and realism: tech node and unlock cost (that one-time fee you pay to unlock parts with the right difficulty option enabled...) Both should probably be somewhat higher than where I had them before: for gameplay purposes, too many mods cluster parts about where they were (especially in Community Tech Tree), and the unlock cost needs to reflect their high utility... And, for realism I did more reading since setting these parameters in my mod: and it appears that while Mass Drivers like this can ABSOLUTELY be built, there are more obstacles to cost-effectively upscaling some of the needed electrical systems for them than I originally expected (meaning the technology still probably wouldn't reach full tech readiness for at least another 10-20 years if we really invested in researching it today...) Mainly, though, it'll minimize complaints of their being "overpowered" (Gosh I hate those people- when they're complaining about things feasible in real life! Compared to the primitive tech of a Saturn V rocket ANYTHING New Space or even slightly futuristic is realistically overpowered!) if you can point to their advanced tech node (in the custom tech trees) and very high part unlock costs and simply ask players if they were using a custom tech tree and had part unlock costs enabled. Also, what ARE the most popular custom, advanced tech trees (those going into future tech, used with mods like NearFuture pack and KSP-Interstellar Extended) nowadays? I'm still only really familiar with a couple of them, and Community Tech Tree remains my old standby favorite...

Impressive! All this, AND those 1.75 meter jet engines we were talking about earlier? (which I BADLY need for the super-heavy airlaunch platform I've been working on for my Career mode games: to lift massive rockets to 24-30 km and then release them for their trip to orbit...) Rad, man!

Don't just automatically assume you know better than another player more experienced than you and post a Craft File: that's just rude. Yours is a grossly suboptimal design: if you're going to use a Mk3 fuselage, it should only be for much larger payloads than that (or MULTIPLE payloads in that weight range). If I were going to lift a payload of that size to orbit, I'd use a long Mk2 fuselage, with 1.875 meter fuel tanks on the payload. This will get you to orbit for much less fuel, as the Mk2 is a Lifting Body and more aerodynamically efficient (in FAR and especially in Stock- which lacks the FAR code that creates Body Lift from ALL fuselages to some degree) than the Mk3 for payloads in that size range. To use a Mk3 (which is really meant for use as a Shuttle fuselage, and is terribly-shaped for horozontal takeoff spaceplanes- meaning I'd probably use a Stail fuselage from OPT instead of not playing Stock-only...) I'd have to be lifting a payload MUCH bigger than that- at which point I would need the extra engines I just talked about.

Comfortable? For optimum efficiency a spaceplane with a Mk3 fuselage requires at least 8-10 jet engines. Any less than that and you're wasting fuel on an excessively-slow ascent and run for speed at altitude. With 1.875 meter supersonic jets, we could do this with just 4 jet engines (each 1.875 meter jet could have 2.25 times the Thrust of a 1.25 meter jet, to get the same Thrust per unit of cross-sectional area: so 4 of these would be equivalent to NINE 1.25 meter jets). This would also generate less Drag- for the same reason four 1.875 meter stacks generate less Drag than nine 1.25 meter stacks: less wetted surface area due to the Square-Cube Law...

A lot more than a comparable rocket (TWR is at least, 1:20 to maybe 1:24, with the mixing chamber ramjets also active). But Effective ISP is much, much higher (in the range of a jet engine just for the ducted rocket performance, 3500-4200 sec Effective ISP, depending on mixing-ratios of LH2:air). This is basically a type of Hybrid airbreathing/rocket engine, much like the SABRE, except that the TWR is actually much better than many jet engines (which typically range from TWR of about 1:6 to 1:12), and the airbreathing Effective ISP a bit lower than some high-end jet engines. The Thrust per unit of cross-sectional area (important for spaceplane design) is also much higher than any jet... The main advantage though (because none of that would nearly justify use of a nuclear reactor inside the atmosphere, from a PR/safety perspective) is that this doubles as a Nuclear Thermal Rocket when you reach the point where airbreathing propulsion is no longer viable (however with an internal Scramjet, rather than Ramjet, this wouldn't be until at least Mach 7-12). So the NTR is actively producing a *HUGE* amount of Thrust (but TWR is still poor as it weighs so much) in the atmosphere when in airbreathing mode (at very low Exhaust Velocity: but since almost all the Working Mass is from the atmosphere, at high Effective ISP), rather than being deadweight all the way until rocket closed-cycle Thrust is desirable... This unfortunately doesn't scale down well- nuclear reactors become less and less efficient in terms of power output per kg of mass the smaller they become, but DOES scale *UP* extremely well. It would also require a rather large, to potentially HUGE airframe (with lots of wing-area, at very low Aspect Ratio due to the vast majority of the time spent in atmospheric being supersonic/hypersonic) if put on a spaceplane (which is where this really shines) both due to the lack of scalability of the engine (you have to build a really huge airframe around a really huge engine) and the need to reduce re-entry and ascent heating (you can fly higher for a given speed with larger wings, helping with heat issues) to reasonable levels... If the payload capacity this design/airframe led to ended up being overkill, I would suggest NOT going the way of the Shuttle- and trying to find huge payloads to justify a huge spaceplane with more payload capacity than you actually need- nor of trying to shrink the whole thing down too far (which will kill the payload-fraction to little benefit, as reactors lose performance very quickly as you shrink them down), but instead suggest increasing the mass budget of the least reliable/reusable or most expensive parts of the design, so heavier/cheaper/more reliable parts with wider safety-margins (and built to higher tolerances of manufacturing error) and built of easier-to-machine materials (high-end Steel instead of Aluminum, for instance: which is far heavier, but more heat-tolerant and much cheaper to machine) can be substituted in instead (one of the reasons the Shuttle was so expensive- a lot of the parts were designed to INCREDIBLY strict margins, leading to a lot of parts that required excessive maintenance or had to be replaced after just a few flights...) You can also add redundancies to the design, increasing mass but allowing use of less reliable (but cheaper) parts that are more likely to fail, to trade-off any excess payload-capacity for lower cost and higher overall vehicle reliability...

Adding mass to the trip is kind of the point. It adds a new aspect to mission planning- taking a longer/slower trajectory and saving fuel, vs..a faster one to save life support mass. It also synergizes well with nifty things like Greenhouses- if they added those too.

Because then you need two seperate, both very heavy, engines. A nuclear ramrocket might be lucky to clear a TWR of 15:1 or maybe 20:1 (with enough bypass, Thrust from the scram/ramjets, more modern materials than NERVA, and a more powerful reactor than NERVA) in atmospheric mode- but at least you don't need a seperate system for vacuum thrust. A chemical ducted rocket gets maybe 30:1 TWR, but then you need an entire NTR for outside the atmosphere that weighs at least as much as the ducted rocket- and probably about 5-6x as much (NTR's only get a TWR of maybe 2:1 at best, NERVA only managed 1.38). And your launch stage ends up being much heavier due to only having about 1/4th (or less) the Effective ISP in atmosphere (700-800 sec vs. 3400+ sec). Space Programs are expensive. And haven't achieved but a fraction of what they're capable of. With all the scientific benefits you'd reap (or money you'd save vs. the even more massive budgets necessary to achieve the same things with more conventional rocketry) you could save THOUSANDS of lives here on Earth... For an example of just how many lives a little science can save, consider how many people have died worldwide of Covid-19 (numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and still growing). Now imagine just how many lives could have been saved if we magically had a vaccine back in early March. Ditto for a million other scientific breakthroughs. You save far more lives pushing a space program forward at all costs (through discoveries that save lives here in Earth) than you could EVER possibly lose in nuclear rocketry accidents. The cost:benefit analysis is MUCH more favorable than, say, nuclear power for electricity on Earth (which can give us something like Chernobyl, or Fukushima, and a cost:benefit analysis says we should HALT IMMEDIATELY, because we don't really spend THAT much money on generating electricity by more expensive alternatives... Plus, we need ALL the nuclear fuel we can get for the next 3-5 centuries of space exploration...) As far as I'm concerned, based on the costs and benefits, the anti-nuclear folks can suck it.

That applies to pure Nuclear Thermal Rocketry. But this isn't a pure nuclear thermal rocket we are talking. You take the power output of the reactor, and then you divide that among a MUCH larger Working Mass in a nuclear ramrocket- similar to how using heavier propellants gives you higher Thrust from a nuke. But there is no Effective ISP cost to doing this here, as the extra Working Mass cones from the air intakes- so you actually INCREASE the Effective ISP while doing this. The problem I was referring to is that a current-generation nuclear reactor weighs a lot, while not producing that much more (and often, less) Thermal Power than a chemical rocket's Combustion Chamber. So TWR suffers. But in terms of raw Thrust: when most of your Working Mass comes from the atmosphere, and the internal propellant merely acts as a means of transfer of heat to this air (similar to how a heat exchanger directly warms the air in a Nuclear Thermal Turbojet- except the bit of internal Hydrogen you add does give a little extra Thrust and Exhaust Velocity by slightly increasing the Working Mass *AND* provides the basis for a ramjet to operate in the Mixing Chamber at higher atmospheric speeds) the main determinant of Thrust is simply how much Thermal Power you can produce. If you can produce more than an equivalent chemical rocket, your Thrust will actually be HIGHER when most of your Working Mass is atmospheric air... The final iterations of NERVA (the -XE models) produced about 1140 MW of Thermal Power. That was enough to produce 246.6 kN of Thrust at 841 seconds (8250 m/s Exhaust Velocity). However if you split that same Thermal Power over enough Working Mass from air to bring Exhaust Velocity down to 2000 m/s (a little over 200 sec ISP, but due to use of atmospheric air, over 3400 sec *Effective ISP*) by dividing it over a bit more than 17x the Working Mass (given the relative densities of H2 and atmospheric air, this only requires a 1.10:1 ratio of atmospheric air volume to H2 volume: whereas ratios of up to 2:1 are easily achievable...) you get 4.125x the Thrust: or 1017.225 kN of Thrust. That's more than the Thrust of a single Merlin engine (9 of which are used to lift a Falcon 9, at 854 kN of sea level Thrust each). And if you used a 2:1 bypass ratio (easily feasible) you could get a little over 1.348 times the Thrust (sqrt of 1.818, which is 2/1.1) instead: or 1371.626 kN of Thrust. At these #'s (note the high EFFECTIVE ISP massively reduces fuel requirements), you'd only need a cluster of 3 NERVA's converted into air-augmented rockets (at a 2:1 bypass ratio) to lift a rocket with a launch stage capable of propelling the Falcon 9 upper stage 7000 m/s, if most of that 7 km/s were provided in-atmosphere where the air-augmented rockets work (not feasible in reality, I know, but a useful thought-experiment). More likely a single, larger reactor, as reactor Thermal Power scales much faster than mass when you scale an individual reactor up (meaning one large reactor is better than 3-4 small reactors). And all this is with 1960's reactor technology. More modern reactors should be able to obtain higher power density (more thermal power per kg of mass: NERVA-XE weighed 18.144 tons, nozzle and all, and included a 1140 MW reactor...) Bottom Line: giving a nuclear reactor this much more Working Mass to play with MASSIVELY increases your Thrust (about 5.56- fold for a 2:1 bypass ratio, BEFORE you include any extra Thrust from an included ramjet/scramjet in the mixing chamber...) Don't get me wrong though: chemical rockets can produce even more Thrust than this as ducted rockets for the same weight (about 4x more Thrust, in fact), at very respectable sea level ISP (up to about 700-1000 seconds Effective ISP, at a 4:1 bypass ratio). But they aren't capable of then acting as a >800 sec ISP rocket once you leave the atmosphere (negating the need for separate, vacuum-specialized engines entirely: and allowing you to make all your staging just about losing/recovering bulky LH2 fuel tanks...)

Let's not forget this thread was about nuclear ramrockets? There are plenty of intelligent things to say about that: like I've been considering the TWR, and am concerned it would be abysmal without a much more powerful nuclear reactor (than what is currently possible with US reactor technology). However talking about a TBCC engine (which the US has been working on its own versions of for a decade at least) as propaganda doesn't say anything about the possibilities for nuclear ramrockets.

The publication I linked was not from the Chinese state media. It was from a U.S. Air Force publication, 2 years ago. No corrections have been required to these articles since. These aren't multiple engines they are looking at designing. This is a single, multi-stage engine they are ALREADY building the factory to manufacture. The design work was apparently done years ago, in a highly secretive manner... You would know all this if you read the publication. EDIT: The engine in question (TBCC engine) has already been built and tested on test-stands, as of last year. Next step is putting it on an aircraft: https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/china-successfully-completes-hypersonic-engine-test/articleshow/67435297.cms

P.S. And if you think 3-mode engines are insane, the Chinese recently opened a factory to assemble FOUR mode engines: turbofan, ramjet, scranjet, and (ducted) rocket all in one: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/CASI/Display/Article/1604494/chinas-opening-a-factory-to-build-engines-for-hypersonic-missiles-and-spaceplan/ What I suggested is actually simpler than this, in that it does away with the turbofan and Scramjet parts entirely (*OR* swaps the Ramjet for a Scramjet) and uses the ducted rocket to achieve ramjet speed (Mach 2) instead.. Only the heat source for the rocket is a nuclear reactor rather than combustion- and the nuclear rocket uses pure LH2 for propellant. So some supplementary (conventional) ducted rockets might still be necessary to provide extra Thrust (still lighter/simpler than adding an integral turbofan, though!) The Chinese engine is also designed to operate off LOX/RP-1 (Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen) rather than Liquid Hydrogen. And is planned for use in the FIRST stage of a horizontal takeoff launch-system: with a reusable rocket launching off its back at the edge of the atmosphere (at speeds of at least Mach 7-8, likely, based on the engine capabilities) and propelling itself with rockets alone the rest of the way to orbit...