Squadcast Summary 2015/10/16 - Two Types of DC, and Two Types of ISRU

[KerikBalm]

I agree, Xenon is too expensive, its cheaper to use LF and LV-Ns... even before ISRU.

I made a dedicated Xenon ISRU convertor, that only works on planets with atmospheres to get around this... Duna is now my Xenon fueling station. I can also refuel Xenon at Laythe, and hypothetically... eve... but I can't imagine that the "free" Xenon produced on Eve's surface would come out cheaper than the Xenon purchased on Kerbin, when you consider the cost of the disposable launch vehicles to get the xenon to orbit.

[Wjolcz]

Could we finally have a way to utilize the atmosphere as a resource? Maybe the smaller ISRU could do that, hm?

[Laie]

Not sure how I feel about a smaller ISRU (and possibly drill). Right now it's a real tradeoff to include ISRU due to its mass and bulk, if it is smaller and lighter it becomes almost a no-brainer to include it on almost every vessel meant to touch down.

Maybe I'm missing something, but...

I've done some experimenting with a go-everywhere type of vessel: can land/mine/takeoff from every body but Eve and will have enough spare dV to hit another body. I found that you pretty much have to biome-hop before you can even get started. You need a surface reading from most if not all biomes in order to find the worthwhile spots. So on every new body, I had to send an ahead team to basically explore the whole body before deciding on a landing site for the infini-driving refinery.

TL/DR: ISRU is a little more involved than just carrying a converter.

[Red Iron Crown]

My point was that the tradeoff of carrying an ISRU setup becomes less important when the ISRU unit can be had in a lighter, smaller form factor. With no penalty for timewarping landing in a less than ideal spot or having the converter process the ore slower doesn't make a huge difference.

[NecroBones]

The mining equipment setup takes the same space as a Rockomax X200-32 Fuel Tank - but masses significantly less.

Although I could swear in 1.02, the drills were .25 or .15 tons... now they are 0.75 tons... that is a step in the right direction.

My saved data shows that this mass increase happened in 1.0.3.

[magnemoe]

Maybe I'm missing something, but...

I've done some experimenting with a go-everywhere type of vessel: can land/mine/takeoff from every body but Eve and will have enough spare dV to hit another body. I found that you pretty much have to biome-hop before you can even get started. You need a surface reading from most if not all biomes in order to find the worthwhile spots. So on every new body, I had to send an ahead team to basically explore the whole body before deciding on a landing site for the infini-driving refinery.

TL/DR: ISRU is a little more involved than just carrying a converter.

Not my experience, you have an probe with docking port and the global scanner, drop this during circulate and have it go into polar orbit and scan, you recover it later if you move on.

Then use the medium scanner and look for an good biome, pick an place where the color is dark, land and mine.

You don't need the best location, just an decent one. Only showstopper is landing an place with no ore at all and out of fuel to move.

You want an good one for large scale mining operations like supplying your fleet from Minmus, not for jumping from Duna to Ike.

[Terwin]

As already explained... this heat mechanic seems to break the laws of physics in our world, and thus in un-intuitive.

*Doesn't overheat in the sun... captures some energy from the sun, uses it... now suddenly there is enough energy to overheat it? (the same would go for a RTG powered thing, if the RTG doesn't overheat it from the start)

Actually it is very realistic.

Solar concentrators can easily make things much hotter than they would get just sitting in the sun. As the solar panels are collecting solar energy from a larger area than the area of the ISRU, and the ISRU has a smaller surface area than the area for which that energy is being collected, it would be very unrealistic for the ISRU not to get hotter than the solar panels that are sittingin the sun with all that surface area to radiate away heat(assuming the efficiency of the panels is higher than the ratio of ISRU surface/panel surface).

Several large solar panels feeding a small ISRU that is using that energy, is just an alternative form of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

I'm looking forward to the option of smaller ISRU, and the mass loss during conversion should make it an interesting trade-off, even for ships with plenty of radiators. (currently I use ore tanks as auxiliary fuel storage once I have reached my first non-kerbin body, and the mass loss during refinement will mean I need to consider just how useful having that extra mass along will be while I lift off from the current body...

(suspect it will still be useful to lift off with full ore from small bodies like Minmus, Bop, Pol, Gilly, and Ike, but not from heavier bodies like Tylo, Lathe or Eve, and The Mun, Dres, Eeloo, Duna, and Vall will depend on your specific configuration)

I am already speculating about potential designs for refillable scansats...(currently I use a single nuke engine pushing Mk2 liquid fuel parts with attached scanners and such, usually with a pair of Mk2 drop-tanks that make it look like a sandwich when horizontal, but the ability to refuel a small nuclear ship on Gilly, Ike, Bop, Pol, Minmus, or Eeloo could be very interesting...)

[KerikBalm]

yes, locally the ISRU would be hotter, but it shouldn't overheat the whole craft.

The mention of a "safety" to prevent heat damage to the craft seems to imply that this thing will generate more heat than the combined solar flux while in operation.

[Superfluous J]

There does not appear to be a Squadcast this week, just FYI for anybody expecting a summary.

[luizopiloto]

Maybe because of the Cyclone hitting Mexico today... I hope ppl at Squad don't get affected too much by it...

[CalculusWarrior]

Apparently there's no Squadcast tonight, so instead they shared this image and confirmed the cargo ramp will be in 1.0.5.

[Alshain]

Apparently there's no Squadcast tonight, so instead they shared this image and confirmed the cargo ramp will be in 1.0.5.

http://i.imgur.com/gnxCS4d.png

Nice, glad to see how they did the deploy limit. There was a lot of discussion about that. I think this was the way most of us wanted it to go.

As for the hurricane, it will cause a lot of rain but I don't think the eye is on target for Mexico city. (I'm in East Texas and we are already seeing the rain with minor flooding). It's coming ashore near Guadalajara and heading north to Texas. By the time it reaches the border it will be a day and a half over land, so there won't likely be much of it left other than rain storms.

There is a slight chance the predictions are wrong and it could possibly skip across to the Gulf. If it makes it to the Gulf... Mexico, Texas and Louisiana (possibly more) are going to be in deep trouble. As it is now the Guadalajara area is still in a lot of trouble. But, that isn't the prediction.

Edited October 24, 2015 by Alshain

[sgt_flyer]

They should add this limit slider to all the control surfaces and cargo bays (for having control surfaces that would deploy by 90° to become pure aerobrakes)

[klgraham1013]

They should add this limit slider to all the control surfaces and cargo bays (for having control surfaces that would deploy by 90° to become pure aerobrakes)

They could also add it to the hinges and other stock robotic parts.

[Wjolcz]

Apparently there's no Squadcast tonight, so instead they shared this image and confirmed the cargo ramp will be in 1.0.5.

http://i.imgur.com/gnxCS4d.png

Awwwww yissssss. And it even has the adjustable slider thingy!

[RoverDude]

Glad you guys dig the cargo ramp Also, coded that up in a way that the module will be fully accessible to modders and has lots of dials and levers so you can get the behavior you want.

[01010101lzy]

But after all, 1.0.5 release time is still a mystery(but it's close! lol)

[Starhawk]

Glad you guys dig the cargo ramp Also, coded that up in a way that the module will be fully accessible to modders and has lots of dials and levers so you can get the behavior you want.

Thanks RoverDude!

This and the new Aerospike are the new parts I'm most interested in, so I'm glad it will be included in 1.0.5.

Happy landings!

[KerbMav]

I will just throw this question in here: So we are going to have 63bit yes? Will this make jumping/changing orbits during timewarp less severe? Will the Kerbal Space become larger and allow for more distant objects and missions?

[LostOblivion]

I'll have to agree with regex on getting even smaller (0.625 m) ISRU parts in the game. The time-warp argument is invalid, as IRL concepts with ISRU usually involve tiny amounts of fuel every hour that accumulates to alot in a year or two.

The drawback should still be time, even though we can time-warp.

[Terwin]

I will just throw this question in here: So we are going to have 63bit yes? Will this make jumping/changing orbits during timewarp less severe? Will the Kerbal Space become larger and allow for more distant objects and missions?

I believe the plan is for 64 bit in 1.1, 1.0.5 is just parts and a few tweaks. (not 100% sure about tweaks, might just be parts)

[magnemoe]

I will just throw this question in here: So we are going to have 63bit yes? Will this make jumping/changing orbits during timewarp less severe? Will the Kerbal Space become larger and allow for more distant objects and missions?

64 bit and unity 5 is 1.1, this is an part pack and some tweaking.

Unity 5 require rewriting the GUI to.

Not sure about jumping then timewarp, only know jump then changing SOI.

[NathanKell]

Err, s/some tweaking/shedloads of bugfixes and some major new contract mechanics/

[Eric S]

I will just throw this question in here: So we are going to have 63bit yes? Will this make jumping/changing orbits during timewarp less severe? Will the Kerbal Space become larger and allow for more distant objects and missions?

The 64-bit changes are strictly a matter of usable memory space, the accuracy won't change between 32-bit and 64-bit, since the 32-bit code is already capable of using variables larger than 32 bits.

On the other hand, it's possible that this issue may get improved by general code cleanup/debugging in PhysX, Unity 5, or the KSP client itself.

[NecroBones]

Glad you guys dig the cargo ramp Also, coded that up in a way that the module will be fully accessible to modders and has lots of dials and levers so you can get the behavior you want.

Man, that is totally awesome!