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

[AmpCat]

Also, another little quirk. The reactor control panel for NF won't let me set the auto-shutdown above 6000K (6kK?). Minor issue.

Boy, learning how to put images into my posts is dangerous.

Edit: After a successful orbit and landing with a quick SSTO rocket, noticed another thing. I'm starting to worry the stock thermal system may be fighting you with this new engine design. I'm lucky fuel tank didn't explode from the heat from the engine. Actually, about 5 minutes after the landing, while I was typing this, the fuel tank did explode. It was fine during re-entry, but after the engine was off during orbit and most of descent, the fuel tank started soaking up all that heat.

Edit2: Adding 4x your VS-1000 radiators around the fuel tank seems to have solved the exploding tank problem, though I'm not sure if that's your intent for how this should work. It's not a terrible solution.

Another issue I've noticed is that in this mode where I have Reactor Status set to 0%, so the throttle determines the reactor power, the relationship between how much heat the exhaust expels vs. how much heat the reactor creates are not in line with each other. If I'm at 100%, it's 1:1, however if I set it at say, 50%, then although the Reactor Status is now at 50%, Thrust is at 50%, but my core temperature will be very quickly rising. Setting the shut down limit higher helps with this, of course, giving me some wiggle room, but it seems you may want these to match fairly close. As it stands, 50% throttle will increase the core by 1000K (going tom 6000K to the max safe temp of 7000K) in about 5 seconds or so. This means you can't really run at anything other than 0% or 100% for more than a few seconds.

I successfully made another flight after some more tweaks, and have an orbital SSTO rocket which I landed it back at Kerbal Spaceport, without any cheats or other real issues, so that's enough for tonight. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, or correct me where I'm wrong, please.

PS. You should talk to USI; somehow RoverDude has managed to cram twice as much LqdHydrogen in his fuel tanks as yours, for the same size! Might be some great technology. 

Edited October 30, 2016 by AmpCat

[Rayder]

@Nertea I'm having an issue with the Near Future Electrical integration. I've followed the instructions regarding installation in the readme and I'm getting this problem:

Spoiler

As you can see, the engine has no data regarding its parameters. The engine also reports zero thrust and ISP when trying to use it. However, the reactor does consume EnrichedUranium and produce DepletedFuel as expected. It also consumes LiquidHydrogen as well. I've had this issue in the past and I've never been entirely sure how to fix it.

EDIT: I'm using Kerbal Atomics v0.3.2 and NFT Electrical v0.8.1

ANOTHER EDIT: Okay I seem to have figured out why this is happening. It seems the nuclear rocket MUST be staged in order to activate the reactor. Simply using the tweakable buttons is not enough.

Edited October 30, 2016 by Rayder

[Mikki]

@Nertea, some ingame feedback to the "Liberator" Engine:

I entered Eve system in career with this large in Kerbin orbit assembled vessel (Konstruction Mod by Roverdude).
Anything goes well with all the latest patches.
The fuel consumption of the "Garnet" reactor feels okay, but the Uranium consumption of the "Liberator" is very low, it could be raised a hundred (Edit: Five to ten) times, maybe even more. I have a fuel drum on this vessel and have allready transfered tiny amounts of waste from the engine, however, your mod is very cool .
The vessel has some passive and active stock radiators which seem to behave reasonable as intended.
It takes some ingame days for the "Liberator" to calm down from running, looks okay to me .
The NFE patch in KAtomics extras folder is installed, works well.
Here is a pic with the details, after shutting down the engine after Eve capture burn:



This vessel makes with a tweaked nuclear fuel ratio consumption of 0.01 (currently 0.002) around 100`000dV, has to refuel LH2 ten times by refueling or asteroid ISRU.

Edited October 31, 2016 by Mikki
Fuelconsumption tweak to 0.01, ....

[AmpCat]

Anyone have a quick example of how to add the LH2, and LH2/Ox fuel types to other mods parts? I'd like to make a little config file I can drop in my root GameData.

[Rayder]

12 hours ago, AmpCat said:

Anyone have a quick example of how to add the LH2, and LH2/Ox fuel types to other mods parts? I'd like to make a little config file I can drop in my root GameData.

Seems there are a few sections to do this, the first being to specify that you want a mode switcher:

Spoiler

    MODULE
    {
        name = MultiModeEngine
        primaryEngineID = Fuel1
        secondaryEngineID = Fuel2
    }

Second part is adding in all the modes you have specified. You need to add this section for every EngineID that you specify:

Spoiler

    MODULE
    {
        name = ModuleEnginesFX
        engineID = Fuel1
        thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform
        exhaustDamage = True
        runningEffectName = fx-sc-lh2-core
        powerEffectName = fx-sc-lh2-plume
        ignitionThreshold = 0.1
        minThrust = 0
        maxThrust = 67
        heatProduction = 86
        fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.574338
        engineAccelerationSpeed = 0.6
        engineDecelerationSpeed = 0.9
        PROPELLANT
        {
            name = LqdHydrogen
            ratio = 1.0
            DrawGauge = True
        }

        atmosphereCurve
        {
            key = 0 950
            key = 1 190
            key = 4 80
        }

    }

This one I just copied from one of the NTRs from the mod. From the looks of it there's no real "quick and dirty" way of just patching it in. You have to effectively write a whole engine for each fuel you want to use.

Edited October 31, 2016 by Rayder

[Nertea]

On 10/29/2016 at 9:59 PM, AmpCat said:

Here I throttled down to 13%, and it wasn't enough to keep the reactors cool, so the power reactor (KerbPower) shut down:

I can't tell fully what is going on, but my suspicion is as follows: 

• Engine reactor generates 13%, 2000kW of heat
• Mini reactor generates 50 kW of heat
• Running engine in atmosphere doesn't produce enough fuel flow to cool the reactor exactly
• Radiators + fuel flow can't handle 2050 kW of heat
• Some stuff shuts down

It doesn't seem like a bug is occurring in this case, but it is not very clear what is going on. Some actions from this:

• Create menu item on a nuclear engine that shows cooling provided by the exhaust
• Do some tests of my own to confirm this

On 10/29/2016 at 9:59 PM, AmpCat said:

Here's an example of the engine at 0% reactor power and 100% effective power as it warms up. This is where I was suggesting it doesn't make much sense to set the reactor power to anything except 0%, since it scales with the throttle.

It scales with priority with the throttle, the power slider still applies. There are situations where you want to run it at less power (with one of the trimodal engines for example). 

On 10/29/2016 at 10:47 PM, AmpCat said:

Edit: After a successful orbit and landing with a quick SSTO rocket, noticed another thing. I'm starting to worry the stock thermal system may be fighting you with this new engine design. I'm lucky fuel tank didn't explode from the heat from the engine. Actually, about 5 minutes after the landing, while I was typing this, the fuel tank did explode. It was fine during re-entry, but after the engine was off during orbit and most of descent, the fuel tank started soaking up all that heat.

 

Not surprised - ZBO tanks have very low thermal masses and heat tolerances, the engine has really large ones :). 

On 10/30/2016 at 3:28 AM, Mikki said:

The fuel consumption of the "Garnet" reactor feels okay, but the Uranium consumption of the "Liberator" is very low, it could be raised a hundred (Edit: Five to ten) times, maybe even more. I have a fuel drum on this vessel and have allready transfered tiny amounts of waste from the engine, however, your mod is very cool .

I'll consider this.

 

Edited October 31, 2016 by Nertea

[AmpCat]

I did a lot more flying around with Emancipators last night on various space planes and rockets, using the following settings:

• Reactor set to 0%
• Thermal Shutdown set to just below damage threshold (For example, 6900K on the Emancipator)
• Adding 2000kW or more of radiators per Emancipator
• Also had an aux reactor to provide electricity for fuel tanks.

With these settings, I noted the following issues:

• Game won't save thermal shutdown settings made in the VAB. Not your fault, I presume, but annoying. You can change them in the VAB and they stick, but next time you go in to the VAB they get reset to defaults. Maybe making the default something above the optimal temperature may help, if it's possible?
• Issue above where the the NFE reactor control won't let me set Emancipator's shutdown above 6000K, but right click menu still works, so not a show-stopper.
• Still keeps reactor at 100% when you run out of fuel, but you're already aware of that.
• Still can't run throttle at any setting other than 100% or 0%, without reactor overheating. This was an issue in vacuum as well, but was most problematic when trying to land vertically in atmosphere, where being able to set something giving me well controlled descent is important.. I understand atmospheric performance of the cooling may be a limiting factor.

I did several tests with two Emancipators, as well as a few with other multiple engines. No issues there, all works fine. Need more radiators, of course. Still ran into issues with the aux reactor (KerbPower or whatever) shutting down on occasion when going from 0% to 100% throttle on the engines in vacuum. Setting the shutdown temp higher on the aux reactor doesn't help, because they will just run their heat up to whatever you set the safety to, unlike the engines. I think this is due to the brief time while the engine transitions from 0% to 100% and heat is out-performing exhaust cooling, causing a brief temperature spike. Once throttle is at 100%, turning the aux reactor back online works without a problem. I need to do more testing.

Tonight I plan more vacuum testing of engines at various throttles, with and without aux reactors, and various amounts of radiators.

I'm actually having a lot of fun with this testing. Sorry if I'm mentioning things you've already responded to. I'm just trying to be complete so I don't miss something. I hope I'm not overloading you with nagging data. Just let me know and I'll keep it to myself. 

Edit: Finished testing, it just confirmed what I noted above in vacuum. Nothing new to report.

Edited November 1, 2016 by AmpCat

[AmpCat]

19 hours ago, Rayder said:

Seems there are a few sections to do this, the first being to specify that you want a mode switcher:

Second part is adding in all the modes you have specified. You need to add this section for every EngineID that you specify:

This one I just copied from one of the NTRs from the mod. From the looks of it there's no real "quick and dirty" way of just patching it in. You have to effectively write a whole engine for each fuel you want to use.

I was actually referring to the fuel tanks, not the engines.

Was hoping for some simple, like:

foreach [FUELTANK] add fuel_option {'LqdHydrogen' = 'LiquidFuel' * conversion_factor }

Or some other clever thing. Something tells me it's not that easy.

[AmpCat]

Since I seem to have killed the conversation, I'll post more! Here's a picture of the test bed rocket I've been using. It's been a lot of fun tweaking and perfecting it. I use this because it has a core engineering section with everything I need, then I slap any fuel tank I want on top, then other payloads over that.

Spoiler

Here's a modification I made with @Nertea's Broadsword engines for an atmospheric boost. They get the rocket to an altitude of 80km or so before they run out of air, then I use the Emancipator to circularize the orbit. This saves a lot of fuel, and it can lift much heavier payloads. Note the rear facing intakes. These and the airbrakes allow the rocket to land vertically on Kerbin using the jet engines. The above model doesn't need intakes of course, just airbrakes for atmospheric landings. Why don't people use jet engines for first stages more?

Spoiler

And finally, a close-up the engineering section, with the landing gear (from Kerbal Reusability Expansion) deployed. The aux fission reactor is hiding in the service bay, along with some monopropellant tanks.

Spoiler

What the heck.. one more. This one was too pretty to pass up. Better shot of the aft on the modified variant.

Spoiler

 

Edited November 3, 2016 by AmpCat

[Nertea]

Sorry for not replying earlier, I've been busy.

On 10/31/2016 at 0:26 PM, AmpCat said:

• Game won't save thermal shutdown settings made in the VAB. Not your fault, I presume, but annoying. You can change them in the VAB and they stick, but next time you go in to the VAB they get reset to defaults. Maybe making the default something above the optimal temperature may help, if it's possible?
• Issue above where the the NFE reactor control won't let me set Emancipator's shutdown above 6000K, but right click menu still works, so not a show-stopper.
• Still keeps reactor at 100% when you run out of fuel, but you're already aware of that.
• Still can't run throttle at any setting other than 100% or 0%, without reactor overheating. This was an issue in vacuum as well, but was most problematic when trying to land vertically in atmosphere, where being able to set something giving me well controlled descent is important.. I understand atmospheric performance of the cooling may be a limiting factor.

1. Yes my fault, I think this can be fixed though.
2. Resolved in upcoming version for sure.
3. No longer planning on implementing this. There are valid scenarios (trimodal engines) where the reactor can be at greater than 0% power when the engine is off or out of fuel. 
4. I can't reproduce this - I was easily able to have high or low thottles with no heating problems during testing. I do not know how to reproduce this. My strategy was to put an engine on a ship, start the reactor, turn the reactor throttle to 0%, and control the engine with the throttle. No heating problems.

 

On 11/3/2016 at 4:16 PM, AmpCat said:

[Screenshots]

Very pretty ship!

[AmpCat]

5 hours ago, Nertea said:

Sorry for not replying earlier, I've been busy.

1. Yes my fault, I think this can be fixed though.
2. Resolved in upcoming version for sure.
3. No longer planning on implementing this. There are valid scenarios (trimodal engines) where the reactor can be at greater than 0% power when the engine is off or out of fuel. 
4. I can't reproduce this - I was easily able to have high or low thottles with no heating problems during testing. I do not know how to reproduce this. My strategy was to put an engine on a ship, start the reactor, turn the reactor throttle to 0%, and control the engine with the throttle. No heating problems.

 

Very pretty ship!

 

@NerteaI don't know how you could NOT reproduce point 4. Maybe I'll try a new ship as simple as I can, once again. Maybe I have other addons messing with something. Did you also have a second KerbPower or something running as well? I can't see how it would matter, because the amount of extra heat generated per second was huge. More than I would think the KerbPower could put out. Probably on the order of 100-200K heating per second if throttle was anything but 100 or 0%. It would go from the 6000K optimal to 6900K in about 4-5 seconds.

[Nertea]

2 minutes ago, AmpCat said:

I don't know how you could NOT reproduce point 4. Maybe I'll try a new ship as simple as I can, once again. Maybe I have other addons messing with something. Did you also have a second KerbPower or something running as well? I can't see how it would matter, because the amount of extra heat generated per second was huge. More than I would think the KerbPower could put out. Probably on the order of 100-200K heating per second if throttle was anything but 100 or 0%. It would go from the 6000K optimal to 6900K in about 4-5 seconds.

I didn't quite catch the "had a second reactor on board" bit :S . So which reactor overheated? The engine reactor?

[AmpCat]

Just now, Nertea said:

I didn't quite catch the "had a second reactor on board" bit :S . So which reactor overheated? The engine reactor?

All reactors overheated. The secondary reactor (KerbPower) would shut down immediately, because it runs right at the shutdown temperature normally. Then the engine reactor would quickly follow suit, with its temperature running right up to shutdown temperature. Perhaps I didn't test a case with variable throttle and no second fission reactor on the rocket. Even if that reactor was shut off, if it had been running at some point, it's still a very hot, very large thermal mass that would keep pumping heat into the ship. Even with lots of radiators, it would still probably not cope.

It seemed like if anything else on the ship was generating heat, it would cause issues. In a pinch, I could keep the engine reactor turned off, and then turn the throttle up so it would generate exhaust to vent the reactor temperature, and cool it down fast, but I couldn't decouple the reactor throttle from the thrust throttle, of course. It was only a quick fix to cool off the reactor if it was sitting high and other parts were starting to overheat.

[Nertea]

19 minutes ago, AmpCat said:

All reactors overheated. The secondary reactor (KerbPower) would shut down immediately, because it runs right at the shutdown temperature normally. Then the engine reactor would quickly follow suit, with its temperature running right up to shutdown temperature. Perhaps I didn't test a case with variable throttle and no second fission reactor on the rocket. Even if that reactor was shut off, if it had been running at some point, it's still a very hot, very large thermal mass that would keep pumping heat into the ship. Even with lots of radiators, it would still probably not cope.

It seemed like if anything else on the ship was generating heat, it would cause issues. In a pinch, I could keep the engine reactor turned off, and then turn the throttle up so it would generate exhaust to vent the reactor temperature, and cool it down fast, but I couldn't decouple the reactor throttle from the thrust throttle, of course. It was only a quick fix to cool off the reactor if it was sitting high and other parts were starting to overheat.

Yargle. Well, I should be able to reproduce this I guess, though I can't really understand the why. I mean, if the fission engine is creating 1 kW/unit throttle and cooling at 1kW/unit throttle (which is the intended behaviour), running the engine at say, 75% should produce 75kW and cool 75kW. There should be no reason to cannibalize the power reactor's radiators.

Best explanation would be the exhaust producing a non-linear cooling response. Which could be happening I suppose... wouldn't be the first time KSP variable aren't quite what they sound like. 

[AmpCat]

@Nertea, I'm playing with it right now. I tried it both with having a second reactor onboard, but never using it, and pulling the reactor off completely. I've tried different types of fuel tanks. I can't get it to not very rapidly overheat if the throttle is anything but 100%. I guess the next thing to try is a clean install with just NFT and see if it still does it.

My assumption right off the bat was that the exhaust was a non-linear cooling function, but that's because I always assume non-linearity when things don't behave like I expect.  I run into this a lot at work with my software. That digitally controlled power supply is never as linear as they claim!

Edited November 9, 2016 by AmpCat

[Mikki]

I have no issues with throttling the KAtomics engines... The Emancipator for example is nicely ajustable to the decreasing vessel mass and i use to flush it after shutting down the reactor with LH2 for some 5-10 seconds to cool it down faster, so my stock radiators manage the rest heat in a reasonable time. Nuclear Fuel transfer works as intended.
Mods installed: (Build 1604) KIS/KAS, NFElectrics, KAtomics with NFE patch, USI tools, USI Malemute rover, USI AES resque pod, USI Konstruktion, Asteroid Day, KEngineer 1.1.2 devbuild, Transfer Window Planner, Module Manager 2.7.3... what else... MKIV System, ... NFConstruction, Modular Flight Integrator, B9partswitch... CRP... NFProps... Firespitter... Cryo Tanks, Deployable engines...
Thats pretty much it. 
 

[Nertea]

16 hours ago, AmpCat said:

@Nertea, I'm playing with it right now. I tried it both with having a second reactor onboard, but never using it, and pulling the reactor off completely. I've tried different types of fuel tanks. I can't get it to not very rapidly overheat if the throttle is anything but 100%. I guess the next thing to try is a clean install with just NFT and see if it still does it.

My assumption right off the bat was that the exhaust was a non-linear cooling function, but that's because I always assume non-linearity when things don't behave like I expect.  I run into this a lot at work with my software. That digitally controlled power supply is never as linear as they claim!

I think I figured this out today. Expect a test fix in the next version. 

[AmpCat]

On 11/9/2016 at 0:07 PM, Nertea said:

I think I figured this out today. Expect a test fix in the next version. 

Care to share your thoughts? I'm curious why I can't get it to behave properly, and seems like at least two people can't replicate my problem.

[Nertea]

On 11/10/2016 at 4:26 PM, AmpCat said:

Care to share your thoughts? I'm curious why I can't get it to behave properly, and seems like at least two people can't replicate my problem.

It's a bunch of code fixes, I can replicate it just fine.

[Nertea]

Here's version 0.3.3

• Marked for KSP 1.2.1
• Updated bundled MM to 2.7.4
• Updated bundled CRP to 0.6.3
• Fixed missing CTT patch for Emancipator engine
• Increased thermal mass and explosion heat maximum of Emancipator engine
• KPBS ISRU now produces LH2 (thanks Wyzard256)

[Jim Meillente]

35 minutes ago, Nertea said:

Here's version 0.3.3

• Marked for KSP 1.2.1
• Updated bundled MM to 2.7.4
• Updated bundled CRP to 0.6.3
• Fixed missing CTT patch for Emancipator engine
• Increased thermal mass and explosion heat maximum of Emancipator engine
• KPBS ISRU now produces LH2 (thanks Wyzard256)

Hello,

Thank you for all your wonderful mods and the hard work that goes into supporting them!

[Mikki]

@Nertea

Hi there, (lord of the fuelrods), i`ve encountered a issue with all the latest updates to KAtomics and the NFEpatch for waste transfer and accurate heating... My Vessel with a Emancipator engine tends to heat up the part which it is attached to in really dangerous ways, after testing it about 15 times (F9) i found it needs like about five times more active radiators on the current vessel to prevent the ship from melting down nearby the engine... Keeping the vessel active and watching the cooling attempts in realtime or slight timewarp ends in a nice "decoupling" of the propulsionsystem, and my Kerbals break out in panic .
However it doesn`t break my game, i still can timewarp a few days in the trackingstation and return to the vessel which has cooled down nicely. Have a look, after running the engine for some seconds, the large reaction wheel is going to blow up soon:

Edited November 19, 2016 by Mikki
8D

[Nertea]

I do see a bug in that picture (the turbo exhaust shouldn't show a gauge), but it's pretty hard to tell whether there is anything wrong. The engine intentionally produces a lot of heat. It should produce less when NFElectrical is patched in... hmm.

There might be a problem there. There's technically 2 "engines" on that part and the patch that reduces the heating might not be targeting the right one. I'll look into that. 

[Mikki]

On 20.11.2016 at 1:05 AM, Nertea said:

...I'll look into that. 

Take it easy, it still works. I attached with KIS additional radiators from your updated Heat Control mod, and it works the better the more it slap onto it. 
The turbopump engine(s) are tweakable, true, and i think it shouldn`t as well. No pump, no fuel... 

Edit:

Some ingame feedback for couriosity: I`ve disassembled my vessel in Bops orbit with KIS, estimated the radiatorcapacity needed and "sent" a fixed engine module with F12 "rendezvous", attached with spare "Konstruktion mod" dockingports and welded the whole bunch. This is the point shortly after where internal and radiation flux equalized after a minute burn for testing. Having the vessel in focus without timewarp is save, it takes about 15 minutes to reach this point, stock radiators in the mid section retracted. All radiators from Heat Control mod.

To me it looks reasonable, since the "Emancipator" has to make it`s name every honour.     (My wife behaves the same somehow.)
Have a look:  Engine got hot, but survived. Excellent. "Nuclear Overkill". I guess the crew must abandon any hope for future breeding.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Mikki
Edit:D

[Tau137]

Suggestions:

1. Would you consider implementing automatic reactor throttling (throttle-up is already there, but what about throttle-down?) to keep reactor at optimal temperature while avoiding (if possible) overheats?  This will make life easier for players, eliminating an unnecessary "busy work" of balancing reactor.

2. Same as above for all reactors?  Although this part is not nearly as critical...  Ok, may it is part of the fun to fiddle with reactors for the purposes of balancing consumption, overheating and EC production, and extra/unnecessary work for you...  It is different for engines though, as outlined above.

 

Bug reports (KA+NFE+LFO patch, no CryoTanks):

Everything listed below is easy to reproduce on the launchpad.

1. [SEVERE]  Reactor fuel consumption is constant, no matter the reactor power setting (except if reactor is OFF); 

If it is not a bug but "a feature" to cut down on "1% power" cheat, it would be a lot more rational to enforce minimal reactor throttle (e.g., 25-35%);  Also please see above.

IMPORTANT:  This does not apply to normal (non-engine) reactors - those consume proportionally to power level set.

2. [SEVERE]  If reactor is out of fuel, it is still listed as active, and, more importantly, will start producing power again if throttle is applied

3. [MEDIUM/LOW]  No reactor info shown in right-click menu unless engine is activated

4. [May be unrelated to Near-Future SEVERE]  Loosing right-click info and functionality after non-physics timewarp (menu is there, but there is no control over tweak scales and options, and no reactor/engine options or info at all); somewhat random, but vey quick to replicate; may or may not be related to trying to start the reactor while engine is still in shutdown state); reactor still works and control panel (if opened prior) still works.

IMPORTANT:  This has never (in my testing) happened to a regular (non-engine) reactor.

 

Conclusion: you might want to take a closer look at FissionFlowRadiator and/or FissionEngine code.

 

P.S.  Eagerly looking forward to further updates, as so far your mods provide the best (in my view) combination of accessibility, realism and refinement (Karbonite is a fantasy-land, Interstellar is a big tweak-scale-dependent mess that still employs "waste heat").

P.P.S.  Still cannot include the picture without uploading to a third-party resource, sorry.

 

Edited November 22, 2016 by Tau137