KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[Trolllception]

I'll check it out right away. Which folder do I need to place this in?

You can put it anywhere in your Gamedata folder. I put custom patches right in the root of the Gamedata folder so they are easy to find.

FreeThinker: The patch might need NEEDS[ModularFuelSystem] but I haven't had a chance to test. It might conflict with users who have Realfuels installed. By the way, I did attempt to use the RealFuels patch for ModularFuelTanks but it did not work out well for me so I created this ModularFuelTanks patch.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Trolllception

[FreeThinker]

Here's a link to my Modular Fuel Tanks KSPI patch. It's completed and works well from what I can tell.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nlmglj8qqpev1fb/MFT_KSPI.cfg?dl=0

Let me know how it works out for you.

FreeThinker: Feel free to include the patch in the install.

Thanks, I will include it in the next patch. Another mod to add to KSPI suport list

[The Pav]

Thanks! It seems to work perfectly!

- - - Updated - - -

I just want all of you to know, FreeThinker, ABZB and Trollception that you're all great. I didn't expect to get this much help this fast.

[Trolllception]

Thanks, I will include it in the next patch. Another mod to add to KSPI suport list

Ever growing list that's for sure. I'm starting to miss KSPI, i've been playing through RSS/RO/RP-0 and KSPI doesn't play nicely... well not to mention the fact that I am only in 1967 in my career and KSPI tech would be a ways off. Might need to fire up the sandbox and visit some of the Outer Planets which I never got to.

What I really want is to allow for proper support in Realism Overhaul and RP-0. I think the IntakeAir needs to be addressed though since it conflicts with AdvancedJetEngines which is required for Realism Overhaul. I think I will be involved in KSP for a long time so might look at integration eventually, working up my experience on Module Manager configs then hope to get more into Unity/C# and Modeling.

[FreeThinker]

Yes I would like that to. You could help if you do some investigative work. Specifically what is going wrong, how to reporduce the problem. For RP-0, try to get an overview of what needs to be done and write some MM script to get it started.

[Trolllception]

Yes I would like that to. You could help if you do some investigative work. Specifically what is going wrong, how to reporduce the problem. For RP-0, try to get an overview of what needs to be done and write some MM script to get it started.

The one issue I experienced is quite easy to reproduce. If you install Realism Overhaul and it's required mods, then install Realistic Progression Zero and it's required and recommended mods, then install KSPI you will see what I am talking about. The Space center runs at 1 fps and there are a bunch of NullReferenceExceptions relating to attaching Air Intakes. A guess is that this has to do with Advanced Jet Engines. I've got a few things going on over in RP-0 (US Probes integration) and RO but I do intend to come back and visit this, been waiting for 1.1 before I really start getting in the weeds.

[Thorbane]

The Gas core reactor's cost is calculated as if it can store 1200 units of ThF4, but it can't. Also why can't we store liquid Argon in KSPI tanks?

[FreeThinker]

Because the interstellar tank are low pressure liquid cryo tank, Argon would need to be liquidfied in order to store it

[ABZB]

Because the interstellar tank are low pressure liquid cryo tank, Argon would need to be liquidfied in order to store it

what energy would be required for Argon (and Xenon)?

[FreeThinker]

Well I usually just look at the liquid temperature and adjust the energy cost to existing cryo configs with lower / higher temps

[FreeThinker]

[h=2]Version 1.5.6 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4[/h] Released on 2015-09-24

• Added JUMBO reactor, unlocked with Fusion rockets, a very powerful solid core reactor with the same limitations as NERVA
  
• Added improved Jet graphics to Nuclear Ramjet and when it switches to propellant mode, it will be clearly visible (credits go to silversilver)
  
• Added support for modular tanks (credits go to Trolllception)
  
• Slightly improved power Nuclear Ramjet, NERVA
  
• NERVA, JUMBO and Nuclear LIghtBulb can be used in bi-model mode with Improved power researched
  
• Ramjet now behave much more realistic meaning they need a lot of airflow before their true power emerges
  
• Liquid Fuel available from start, removed Thrust bonus and soot factor
  
• Ammonia is now available earlier with improved propulsion
  
• Limited Tweakscale maximum size for NERVA and Nuclear Jet Engine to 2.5m
  
• Restored Molten Salt Reactor power output to original levels, making smaller reactors less powerful and larger reactor more energy dense
  
• Restored Molten Salt Reactor ability use Uranium Floride, which can be pumped and which is much cheaper in comparison to Enriched Uranium
  
• Reduced Molten Salt Reactor core temperature to realistic values
  
• Fixed Nuclear Jet Engine effect of freezing the engine to near zero when in ramjet mode
  
• Fixed NERVA right click menu not accessible in VAB
  
• Fixed LATERN mode being unlocked with improved propulsion
  
• Fixed LIghtBulb resize issue
  

[Trolllception]

Nice work. Looks like you've been quite busy.

[Thorbane]

Because the interstellar tank are low pressure liquid cryo tank, Argon would need to be liquidfied in order to store it

Argon boils at a warmer temperature than Nitrogen. Granted Nertea's unit costs are pretty silly, Argon costs under a cent per liter in gaseous form in reality, but costs more per ton than many rocket engines in-game.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Thorbane

[herman]

Thanks for the update! I gave up on the actinide reprocessing, attached some parachutes, and splashed it down, made for a great screenshot: http://imgur.com/HoYEuNo

[SciMan]

Figured out a useful work-around for ships that have particularly high minimum warp speeds (usually caused by using an Antimatter reactor with a Heavy warp drive of the same diameter).

Put a smaller power plant on the ship, while retaining the larger one. When you want to slow-warp, start charging the warp drive, activate the small power plant (if inactive), then shut down the main power plant. The warp drive will stay charged, and when activated it will go a lot slower.

When you're done slow warping and want to use the main propulsion to get a circular orbit again, just activate the main power plant again, and thrust as usual.

This works because the ships ability to warp depends on the size and type of warp drive (larger/heavier = can warp heavier ships), but the SPEED the warp drive can reach is determined by the maximum amount of power the ship can generate in its current configuration (deactivated reactors/generators don't count).

This allows you to better control the warp drive's speed, but it requires at least 2 more parts to be added to the ship. Don't use something like a 0.625m molten salt reactor for this, it won't have enough power to get a useful speed unless it's a very small ship indeed (think 0.001c).

EDIT: Small Molten Salt Reactors are now especially unsuitable for this task now that their low core temperature makes the generator attached to them even more inefficient than before (low delta-t = low Carnot efficiency, because thermodynamics).

Right now I mostly use that tiny reactor for long-duration probes and things with fusion reactors on them (to charge the Jumpstart on the ICF reactor).

Quick question, do the other fusion reactors not have jump-start ability? If they don't, they probably should. That or add a Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage part which can be used to add that to any fusion reactor (or just store MegaJoules in general).

Also, why does the Direct Conversion Generator's efficiency depend on reactor core (aka heat exchanger) temperature?

It should be fixed at whatever upgrade level's maximum is, because direct conversion doesn't depend on temperature. Instead it depends on the kinetic energy and charge of the charged particles.

This means that efficiency should depend on the reaction being used, not the reactor containing the reaction.

I ask because I have a smallish probe that has one ICF fusion reactor feeding a direct conversion generator (Hexaborane fueled), and one Molten Salt reactor feeding a Thermal generator.

Neither reactor/generator combination connects with the other one.

I have more than enough radiators to keep the whole thing from ever overheating even if 100% of the power was converted to heat.

So why does the efficiency of the Direct Conversion generator on the fusion reactor read at something like 50%?

I have a fully unlocked tech tree, isn't the maximum efficiency of the DC generator supposed to be like 89% or something?

Perhaps it's something with the Molten Salt reactors. They seem to have an odd ability to downgrade the generators and reactors of a ship that was constructed with them.

In other words, the generators and radiators on a ship will be downgraded by at least one tech level SOLELY because of the attachment of a Molten Salt Reactor. Not sure why this happens, but it sounds like an "Off by one error".

Edited September 24, 2015 by SciMan

[tmbomber]

Hiya Everybody!!!

I ran into an issue with Magnetic Nozzle engines again.

I have a tourism contract pack loaded and got a contract to haul some billionaire out to visit all the moons of Jool. I built another version of the ship I posted pics of earlier in the thread and set out for Jool. I used conventional rockets to leave Kerbal SOI and set up a Hohmann transfer. I got an intercept that would take me four years to get to. I figured that billionaire kerbal wouldn't wanna waste that kinda time and seeing the MN engine can thrust during warp I targeted Jool, set thrust to 5%, and warped time up to x100000. My plan was to accelerate half way to Jool, turn around, and decelerate the rest of the way there. The Magnetic Nozzle worked perfectly and I made it about half way to Jool and unwarped time. I turned retrograde and tried to warp time again and ran into a problem.

It seems that I had put myself in a solar orbit with a period of 7500 years, an ap over 10 trillion meters, and a pe of -150 million meters. I got a nasty message saying I couldn't warp time during a sub-orbital flight. Time did warp, but thrust fell to zero at anything faster than x1. My choices were to let the ship thrust for a few weeks in real time, or reload from a save. I reloaded.

Is the sub-orbital limitation really intended? Should it really apply to a solar orbit???

[SciMan]

-snip-

It seems that I had put myself in a solar orbit with a period of 7500 years, an ap over 10 trillion meters, and a pe of -150 million meters. I got a nasty message saying I couldn't warp time during a sub-orbital flight. Time did warp, but thrust fell to zero at anything faster than x1. My choices were to let the ship thrust for a few weeks in real time, or reload from a save. I reloaded.

Is the sub-orbital limitation really intended? Should it really apply to a solar orbit???

That limitation does seem to be intended, but it does seem a bit ham-fisted.

IMO, a more elegant solution for a similar effect would be to check for all three of the following conditions:

Sub-orbital AND Decending AND in the "rotating" reference frame.

At kerbin, the transition between "rotating" and "intertial" is around 90km. It's a different altitude for every celestial body, but it's always above the atmosphere (if it exists) and always above the surface.

You're in the "rotating" reference frame while in orbit if you can see the background stars moving while in time warp.

If they stay still, you're in the "inertial" reference frame.

It would be nice if those three conditions also caused the game to set time warp to 1x, but I would understand if that's too much to code.

To fix that problem if you encounter it again, you should raise your orbit's Pe above the surface of the body your "orbiting". This should change the game's situation flag from "Sub-orbital" to "Escaping" which should allow you to resume thrusting in time-warp.

Edited September 24, 2015 by SciMan

[tmbomber]

...To fix that problem if you encounter it again, you should raise your orbit's Pe above the surface of the body your "orbiting". This should change the game's situation flag from "Sub-orbital" to "Escaping" which should allow you to resume thrusting in time-warp.

Tried that... but with a pe starting at -150 Mega Meters it would have taken a lot longer than I wanted to wait.

[FreeThinker]

That limitation does seem to be intended, but it does seem a bit ham-fisted.

IMO, a more elegant solution for a similar effect would be to check for all three of the following conditions:

Sub-orbital AND Decending AND in the "rotating" reference frame.

The problem is a technical one, not a gameplay one. When you would attempt warped acceleration while in a suborbital flight, you would be pulled in the direction of the body, causing you to crash.

- - - Updated - - -

EDIT: Small Molten Salt Reactors are now especially unsuitable for this task now that their low core temperature makes the generator attached to them even more inefficient than before (low delta-t = low Carnot efficiency, because thermodynamics).

Notice molten salt reactor power grows with size, as it allows them to be more energy dense. Also note that in Bimodel mode, engines like the NERVA (internaly powered by KIWI reactor) can produce more power than Molten Salt reactor, they do not last very long as the internal nuclear fuel is limited and cannot be replaced durring the mission. Molten Salt reactor are ment for long term power, not for short duration high power applications.

Edited September 25, 2015 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

Argon boils at a warmer temperature than Nitrogen. Granted Nertea's unit costs are pretty silly, Argon costs under a cent per liter in gaseous form in reality, but costs more per ton than many rocket engines in-game.

LqdArgon would be an intresting idea to introduce. It's actualy the 3th most comon element in earth/kerbin atmosphere, so it should cheap. The reason it is so cheap is because it's a by product from Nitrogen production.

One intresting property of LqdArgon is that it's quite dense; 1400 kg/m3 Combined with the fact it's not so expansive (especialy compaired to xenon) and easier to store than Nitrogen, it's seems quite intresting as an propellant.

Edited September 25, 2015 by FreeThinker

[The Pav]

I was testing the new version using an upgraded 2.5m gas core reactor with a thermal nozzle using hydrazine and liquid fuel. In both cases there was really high isp but quite a low thrust. I think around 135 kn for the liquid fuel and a little higher for the hydrazine. Is it supposed to be that low now?

[FreeThinker]

Usually, the higher the Isp, the lower the trust. High Isp is generally a good thing, except if you try to escape a gravity well. In Kspi, There are 2 kinds of gas core reactors, the open cycle and closed cycle. The open cycle reactor has twice as core temperature as the closed cycle gas core reactor, but suffers from buoyancy effect whenever the vessel is under any acceleration (which includes being on the surface of a planet).

the Gas Core reactor is an example of a reactor that is specifically ment for generating a relatively high amount Isp with a high amount of thrust. These reactor were not ment for power production. The problem is that at full power the produces gases would melt the electric generator. In order to allow the to be used in Bi-model mode, the need lower their core temperature, which consequently lowers their power output. The Open-cycle gas-core reactor is only 20% efficient which the close cycle gas-core reactor has an efficiency of 40% for thermal power production.

Reactor like NERVA and DUMBO operate at a much lower temperature. As a consequence they operate at 80% efficiency in bi-model mode. Especially the DUMBO can potentially generate a huge amount thermal power. It's kind of like a NERVA or steroids. The big disadvantage of the DUMBO is that it can't be refueled and there will run out of power pretty quick. So don't count on them to run for multiple mission. This is compensated by their relative low cost.

Btw, has anyone tried the new DUMBO reactor yet?

Edited September 25, 2015 by FreeThinker

[The Pav]

Ok I was just wondering since the thrust values weren't listed in the chart and this reactor behaved quite a bit differently with a thermal nozzle the last time I had tried an earlier version of the mod. I hit a sweet spot with this. The thrust is fine since I manged to design a small light interplanetary vessel using this. Only 55 tons (including lander) and gets over 23k DV.

[Psitticine]

Btw, has anyone tried the new DUMBO reactor yet?

I tried it this morning in a spaceplane I eventually hope to get Eve round-trip worthy. I experienced severe lags as soon as it hits the runway however. The actual framerate as far as the GPU is concerned is normal but I saw a spike in CPU usage and the simulation slowed down to unplayable.

The same vehicle was working with a magnetic-containment fusion reactor. I was trying swapping out for the DUMBO to see if I could run the multiple thermal turbojets I had on there at max since they were draining the fusion reactor to the point it auto-shutdown if I cranked them all the way up. I tried yanking some things like the turbojets and various radiators to see if they might be causing it but didn't found anything that seems to be alleviating it when removed.

Unfortunately, it was then time to go to work so I haven't had time yet to test other configurations/usages to see what may or may not trigger the lag. I'll let you know if I spot anything that might be useful for debugging when I can get back to it.

[tthewman]

Hi I'm running into a bug, but note that this is on version 1.5.2 and may indeed be fixed with the latest version.

I'm using a 2.5m particle bed reactor paired with a thermal generator, a thermal nozzle and either hydrogen, hydrolox or hydrazine fuel. The bug is happening with hydrolox and hydrazine (haven't tried any other fuels yet). When I launch with just the thermal nozzle, the thrust when using hydrolox and hydrazine does not increase with altitude. Even in space the thrust is the same as it is on the ground, and that includes using srb's to get to space. This is making thrust with hydrazine and hydrolox LESS than it is with hydrogen.

As far as I'm aware, thrust should be 1.4x hydrogen using hydrazine and 2x hydrogen using hydrolox, so I'm thinking this is a bug with the atmosphere curve of those 2 fuels, and most probably other fuels as well. Anyone else noticing this?

EDIT: The Reactor, nozzle and generator are 3.75m parts, and the fuel tanks are 2.5m. The problem is definitely with the 3.75m parts, most probably the nozzle as when I tried 2.5m just now it worked as expected. I'm about to try 5m and will edit again with results.

EDIT 2: Alright it seems like a bug with tweakscale and the thermal nozzle. With 5m parts the thrust didn't even increase over 3.75m for hydrazine. It did for hydrogen but now hydrogen has the same bug as hydrazine had: ISP and therefore thrust not increasing with altitude.

Edited September 25, 2015 by tthewman