[1.12.x] Kerbal Atomics: fancy nuclear engines! (January 22, 2022)

[DStaal]

2 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

And what sort of conflicts are there, or, I suppose I should say, were there?

Tanks semi-randomly changing contents back to 'defaults', I believe.  (I haven't seen the issue myself - but I haven't bothered to debug why my modded install won't launch in 1.3.1, and it's a *very* new feature, so I haven't been running it.)

[AmpCat]

Hm. I was having this issue with someone else's tank swapper recently. It's a very nice one (though doesn't work with one of my other part addons), but does have a weird bug which sometimes goobers up a tank permanently and I have to take it off and re-add it. Wonder if this fixes that one too.

[linuxgurugamer]

@Nertea

I was looking for the license for the DeployableEngines module, I am thinking of using it in a mod I am going try to to release this weekend

[Nertea]

On 1/22/2016 at 3:20 PM, Nertea said:

• All code and cfgs are distributed under a CC-NC-SA-4.0 License

From the OP.

[krautbernd12]

Just dropping in for a few quick question:

Some of the engines don't seem to have a [FissionGenerator] module listed in the corresponding NFE-patches, i.e. they have enriched uranium and are listed in the manager, but don't generate electricity. Also, the endurance of those engines that do have the module have a burn-up rate that is many orders of magnitude greater than that of the  NFE reactors. Is this intended?

Edited January 6, 2018 by krautbernd12

[Nertea]

On 1/6/2018 at 1:52 PM, krautbernd12 said:

Some of the engines don't seem to have a [FissionGenerator] module listed in the corresponding NFE-patches, i.e. they have enriched uranium and are listed in the manager, but don't generate electricity. Also, the endurance of those engines that do have the module have a burn-up rate that is many orders of magnitude greater than that of the  NFE reactors. Is this intended?

Yes. 

1) Not all reactors have electricity-generating equipment. Read the part descriptions to see which ones have it installed (offhand there should be one in each size category).

2) Running the generator at maximum power takes 1% of the full reactor output which is only needed for thrust. That decreases effective burnup rate by 1/100.

[krautbernd12]

That was along the lines of what i thought of initially, but apparently the engines itself don't burn-up any EnU during operation and run just fine even without it. Did you include EnU for engines that don't have a functional (or rather usuable) reactor for...i'm lacking a better word here...aesthetic purposes? Also, shouldn't taking 1% of full reactor output reduce thrust by approx. 1%, instead of increasing the burn-uprate of the reactor fuel? Like i stated before, if you compare the stand-alone reactors and the engines, the effective run-times seem to be way off - the reactors can run years at 100% output, while the reactor modules of the engines struggle to run more than a few months at 1% output. At least that's the case for the smallest reactor+engine, but the burn up rates for fuel in the engine(-reactors) are in general about 3 magnitudes higher than they are for the stand-alone reactors.

I've superficial knowledge of reactor and engine design at best and i can't tell if this is simply due to limitations of what's possible in KSP (i.e. making thrust fuel level dependent), but it simply strikes me at odd. Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to talk down your mod - the whole NFE series is an excellent piece of work; i'm just trying to figure out why you implemented it this way and how i can best use the engines and reactors in the game.

BTW, what is the second option in the advanced reactor control panel for? The first one controls shut-down temperature, but i can't figure out what the other does.

[Nertea]

Well uh... have you tried actually running the engine? It runs, sure, you can force propellant through a cold reactor, but the thrust and efficiency are very low. 

Having faster burn up rates is a design decision intended to make the consumption of fuel relevant. If your core lifetime is 10 years, but your engine burns are 10 minutes or less, your reactor will basically never run out of fuel in normal operation. Therefore either the fuel capacity has to be lower or the burnup rate higher. I chose the second option. 

[krautbernd12]

Haha, silly me. Might have needed to point those engines downward in the test rig instead of upwards, maybe i'd have noticed it then. Thanks for the enlightening me.

On a related note, shouldn't running fuel through an inactive reactor produce thrust if it is still hot? Or rather, shouldn't running the engine with the switched off reactor cool the reactor? Because my reactor cores don't seem to radiate away any heat (or just very slowly, also regardless of how many active radiators i have on them).

Sorry for repeating myself, what exactely is the second option in the advanced reactor control panel for?

[Starwaster]

6 hours ago, krautbernd12 said:

On a related note, shouldn't running fuel through an inactive reactor produce thrust if it is still hot? Or rather, shouldn't running the engine with the switched off reactor cool the reactor? Because my reactor cores don't seem to radiate away any heat (or just very slowly, also regardless of how many active radiators i have on them).

Realistically speaking, yes, running propellant through it would produce thrust. (don't call it fuel. The fuel is the radioactive isotopes in the reactor)

Some NERVA documents even discuss this and called for minimum levels of thrust / Isp when operating under cooldown thrust.

But for a game, would you really want go there? Where both throttle up and throttle down times are up to ten minutes or (possibly) even more?

[krautbernd12]

11 hours ago, Starwaster said:

(don't call it fuel. The fuel is the radioactive isotopes in the reactor)

I can call it reaction mass if that's any better

My question was more along the lines of "can i effectivly cool the inactive reactor core to ambient temperature using radiators or by passing liquid hydrogen through it?".

Also, could you please tell me what the second option in the advanced reactor control panel does?

[Nertea]

4 hours ago, krautbernd12 said:

My question was more along the lines of "can i effectivly cool the inactive reactor core to ambient temperature using radiators or by passing liquid hydrogen through it?".

You can cool it to nominal temperature with either. For reasons that are to do with KSP's thermal simulation, it is nontrivial and unstable to try to create a perfect equilibrium system. 

4 hours ago, krautbernd12 said:

Also, could you please tell me what the second option in the advanced reactor control panel does?

Patience, I have a life. It's a time warp cutoff.

[Space Marauder]

Hey ! Thank you for this awesome mod. I enjoy the design of the engines a lot.

However, I'm a bit confused regarding the values shown by Kerbal Engineer when I place the engines on a ship.
The values are way too high regarding delta v and thrust in the VAB (something like ten times too high)
When I start the engines in vacuum, the delta v suddenly drops to lower value, while the TWR increases to something completely irrealistic (sometimes over 500). The shown TWR doesn't correspond (happily) to what is experienced, and the acceleration is very slow as it should be. But it makes things difficult when it comes to designing a ship with appropriate delta v and TWR.

Is anyone experiencing the same issue / knows a way to fix it ?

Thanks a lot

[Nertea]

No idea what's going on there. Mod conflict? KSPI-E installed?

[RocketRaccoon]

On 1/17/2018 at 12:40 PM, Nertea said:

No idea what's going on there. Mod conflict? KSPI-E installed?

Is this not compatible with KSPIE? I also have the same question for Near Future Technologies.

[Nertea]

11 hours ago, RocketRaccoon said:

Is this not compatible with KSPIE? I also have the same question for Near Future Technologies.

KSPI-E changes many things about the game that I don't keep track of. They're compatible but KSPIE may be causing those effects you saw. That's up to that mod's dev. 

[Uncia]

I'm having trouble with the LF patch, it seems some of the engines (specifically: Eel, Liberator, Deliverence, Emancipator) dont switch to liquid fuel but do receive the nerfed stats for mass and LSP that are included with the patch, I have tested this clearing my game data and installing only the latest kerbal atomics and placing the LF config file in the gamedata folder, and making a testbed in sandbox to be sure its not just the tooltips. Thanks, Uncia

[b0ss]

Is there any reason this hasn't been combined with Near Future Propulsion?

[MaverickSawyer]

5 minutes ago, b0ss said:

Is there any reason this hasn't been combined with Near Future Propulsion?

Probably because there's enough interest in keeping the packs seperate for those who either want only electric propulsion or only nuclear thermal propulsion. It also makes the download easier to manage, due to smaller file sizes.

[b0ss]

Aha, thought so. Say, Kerbal Atomics is compatible with Near Future, right?

[Nertea]

On 2/4/2018 at 1:25 AM, Uncia said:

I'm having trouble with the LF patch, it seems some of the engines (specifically: Eel, Liberator, Deliverence, Emancipator) dont switch to liquid fuel but do receive the nerfed stats for mass and LSP that are included with the patch, I have tested this clearing my game data and installing only the latest kerbal atomics and placing the LF config file in the gamedata folder, and making a testbed in sandbox to be sure its not just the tooltips. Thanks, Uncia

I'll check it out. 

3 hours ago, b0ss said:

Is there any reason this hasn't been combined with Near Future Propulsion?

Because some people like ion engines, and some people don't. I mean, those people are silly and should be pitied. 

[Nathanson]

Why is that impossible to refuel Emancipator with Enriched Uranium? Seems strange, engine is expendable.

Edited February 9, 2018 by Nathanson

[Nertea]

Because I wanted it to be.

[Raptor9]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

Because I wanted it to be.

The very definition of concise...lol

[Nathanson]

Bad decision, so I won't be able to use it at all.