KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, LastStarDust said:

Hello. This guy read my mind and anticipated my post so I am just quoting ... could you point us to some guides, resources, or YouTube videos that explain even partially the new beamed power mechanics? Thanks

 

Well if it's any help, I started a new document on Beamed Power the Wiki about this subject. Hopefully, this will eventually give you a good base on how to use the beamed power network in KSP

Edited December 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

On 17-12-2016 at 10:56 AM, kokospl said:

Also, I could fly in atmo mode for a long time during launch with no issues, but upon return to Kerbin from Duna engines overheated quickly when I ignited them at 4km with just 200 m/s.

 

1

If you use methane or any other carbon containing propellant, the heat exhanges might have become sooted. To clean them, use small amount of Carbon monoxide at low power levels

10 hours ago, ss8913 said:

2. Wakefield - produces effectively no thrust between 0-90% throttle, then varying ISP from 91-100% but this is a very.. odd throttle curve and makes the engine quite difficult to use with any degree of effectiveness.  Was this throttle curve intended?

 

1

It does provide thrust in Vacuum, its just very little. It is mainly intended for high timewarp travel. It effectively allows you to get anywhere in the solar system. I agree with you that the throttle curve might need some work

11 hours ago, Charon Moloch said:

did you fix the gyrotrons as well?

1

Should be the same issue, but I didn't verify

Edited December 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[kokospl]

On 17.12.2016 at 10:39 PM, FreeThinker said:

Well they supposed to lose power over time due to anticides building up, poisoning the reactor neutronicity, but how long did they run? I might need to adjust the amount of nuclear fuel.

I can't tell you the exact time, but I got around 1 MN of thrust on a Hohmann burn to Duna and about half of that during my return burn. Duna launch was timed with Kerbal Alarm Clock, just few hours on surface and the return trip without waiting for transfer window.

Should I use additional radiators with these two engines?

Do they need to be deployed even when idle?

 

[FreeThinker]

15 minutes ago, kokospl said:

I can't tell you the exact time, but I got around 1 MN of thrust on a Hohmann burn to Duna and about half of that during my return burn. Duna launch was timed with Kerbal Alarm Clock, just few hours on surface and the return trip without waiting for transfer window.

Should I use additional radiators with these two engines?

Do they need to be deployed even when idle?

 

3

Additional radiators should not have any positive effect, their fuel is fixed, but I intentionally made it very low, but perhaps I did it too much. What counts most, is the burn time, the idle time should not matter that much unless your talking months

The reactor does produce a bit of thermal heat when idle, but a small fixed reactor should be enough.

Edited December 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

There is also probably an issue with the VASMIR engine. Scaled up to 2.5m, it produce so much Waste Heat to be useless. With more than 100 GW of dissipation by radiators and just a little more than 20 produced by the reactor, the VASMIR loose more than 50% of thrust in the first 30 seconds, that with his low TWR, makes it useless for any maneuver. To escape the Kerbin gravity with a probe, I needed 5 days of short burns at the Periapsis with the 1% of thrust to avoid the Overheating.

[kokospl]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Additional radiators should not have any positive effect, their fuel is fixed, but I intentionally made it very low, but perhaps I did it too much. What counts most, is the burn time, the idle time should not matter that much unless your talking months

The reactor does produce a bit of thermal heat when idle, but a small fixed reactor should be enough.

I did some more tests, during ~3 year travel to Jool TORY was loosing Thermal Power constantly. First screenshot is taken when idling, second one at full throttle. No radiators on craft. No other reactors. Other part mods used - OPT, NF (though I only used solar panels on this craft), DMagic scinece parts. KSP 1.2.1 KSPIE 1.11.4

IMGUR

[ss8913]

5 hours ago, Nansuchao said:

There is also probably an issue with the VASMIR engine. Scaled up to 2.5m, it produce so much Waste Heat to be useless. With more than 100 GW of dissipation by radiators and just a little more than 20 produced by the reactor, the VASMIR loose more than 50% of thrust in the first 30 seconds, that with his low TWR, makes it useless for any maneuver. To escape the Kerbin gravity with a probe, I needed 5 days of short burns at the Periapsis with the 1% of thrust to avoid the Overheating.

how are you getting it to  make any power at all?  I can't get more than 0.0kN out of them, when I have an ample supply of antimatter reactors, charged particle electric generators, and, yes, full antimatter bottles.. plus appropriate radiators.

[Nansuchao]

9 hours ago, ss8913 said:

how are you getting it to  make any power at all?  I can't get more than 0.0kN out of them, when I have an ample supply of antimatter reactors, charged particle electric generators, and, yes, full antimatter bottles.. plus appropriate radiators.

Thrust, they thrust. I only have issue with the huge amount of Waste Heat they produce. Were you using it in atmosphere?

[FreeThinker]

15 hours ago, kokospl said:

I did some more tests, during ~3 year travel to Jool TORY was loosing Thermal Power constantly. First screenshot is taken when idling, second one at full throttle. No radiators on craft. No other reactors. Other part mods used - OPT, NF (though I only used solar panels on this craft), DMagic scinece parts. KSP 1.2.1 KSPIE 1.11.4

IMGUR

 

 

 

alright, I have determined the problem is the amount of fuel used when idling (but still generating heat) is too high, there was also a mistake in how it was displayed, I will have it fixed next release

Edited December 20, 2016 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

18 hours ago, Nansuchao said:

There is also probably an issue with the VASMIR engine. Scaled up to 2.5m, it produce so much Waste Heat to be useless. With more than 100 GW of dissipation by radiators and just a little more than 20 produced by the reactor, the VASMIR loose more than 50% of thrust in the first 30 seconds, that with his low TWR, makes it useless for any maneuver. To escape the Kerbin gravity with a probe, I needed 5 days of short burns at the Periapsis with the 1% of thrust to avoid the Overheating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It almost sounds if it producing more waste heat than it consumes, which should not be the case unless it a fusion reactor. Are you suggesting the problem becomes worse when scaling up? Does this problem happen in real time and during time warp? Note there might be a cascade effect where it comes in a downward spiral  where it becomes less efficient because of wasteheat, creating more wasteheat, making it less efficient, etc.

Could you describe the complete test setup, meaning, reactors, generator, amount of radiators and kspi/nfe energy mode

Edited December 20, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

It almost sounds if it producing more waste heat than it consumes, which should not be the case unless it a fusion reactor. Are you suggesting the problem becomes worse when scaling up? Does this problem happen in real time and during time warp? Note there might be a cascade effect where it comes in a downward spiral  where it becomes less efficient because of wasteheat, creating more wasteheat, making it less efficient, etc.

Could you describe the complete test setup, meaning, reactors, generator, amount of radiators and kspi/nfe energy mode

Only KSPI, never used NF. It was a simple probe with the Helium scope, an hydrazine tank, 2.5m AIM reactor and 2.5m hydro magnetic generator. As radiator I have a 2.5m inline radiator and the massive one added in the last few releases, the giant squared radiator.  The thermal helper reported in the VAB 20GW of heat production and more than 100GW of heat radiated.

Launched in orbit in the old way, to reach a solar orbit. From LKO I tried a direct solar injection but the Waste Heat rose very fast, close to the 80%, so I had to stop the burn and make small burn at 1% of the trotthle. Any bigger and the Waste Heat will continue to rise. 

Another weird thing I noticed is that the dissipation was very low, also with the engine de activated. Something like -530 of dissipation.

If you need, I can provide the .craft file.

[FreeThinker]

28 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

Only KSPI, never used NF. It was a simple probe with the Helium scope, an hydrazine tank, 2.5m AIM reactor and 2.5m hydro magnetic generator. As radiator I have a 2.5m inline radiator and the massive one added in the last few releases, the giant squared radiator.  The thermal helper reported in the VAB 20GW of heat production and more than 100GW of heat radiated.

Launched in orbit in the old way, to reach a solar orbit. From LKO I tried a direct solar injection but the Waste Heat rose very fast, close to the 80%, so I had to stop the burn and make small burn at 1% of the trotthle. Any bigger and the Waste Heat will continue to rise. 

Another weird thing I noticed is that the dissipation was very low, also with the engine de activated. Something like -530 of dissipation.

If you need, I can provide the .craft file.

 

 

 

 

This might sound like a silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway. Did you switched the Thermal Receiver/Radiator to Radiator mode? By default it is configured for thermal receive mode. which would cause it to generate wasteheat, instead of getting rid of ...

Edited December 20, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

23 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

This might sound like a silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway. Did you switched the Thermal Receiver/Radiator to Radiator mode? By default it is configured for thermal receive mode. which would cause it to generate wasteheat, instead of getting rid of ...

I noticed the switch in the right click menu and I setted it to be a radiator, however I didn't noticed any difference.

[Amnesy]

hey, 
under my last video the question came up weather the open cycle gas core engine has been removed - I assume it has been disabled because you revived the gas core reactor and the combination of plasma nozzle and reactor acts as a replacement?
 

[FreeThinker]

9 hours ago, Amnesy said:

hey, 
under my last video the question came up weather the open cycle gas core engine has been removed - I assume it has been disabled because you revived the gas core reactor and the combination of plasma nozzle and reactor acts as a replacement?

Correct

[FreeThinker]

On 20-12-2016 at 3:16 PM, Nansuchao said:

I noticed the switch in the right click menu and I setted it to be a radiator, however I didn't noticed any difference.

Except from some repeating exception, it works , but you need to manually active cooling and switch to radiator mode to benefit from the 5000 square meter radiator

Edited December 21, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Charon Moloch]

This might be a stupid question, but fusion tokamaks can use proton - lithium fusions, that consume "hydrogen" not liquid, how do I get that? except from the VAB where I can add a certain amount in the reactor, but that's peanuts compared to the amount I would need for a decades long journey to another star. So, can I liquify liquid hydrogen?

Edit: I found the tank capable of holding gaseous hydrogen, but the question still stands, can you boil liquid hydrogen into gaseous hydrogen?

Edited December 21, 2016 by Charon Moloch

[FreeThinker]

58 minutes ago, Charon Moloch said:

This might be a stupid question, but fusion tokamaks can use proton - lithium fusions, that consume "hydrogen" not liquid, how do I get that? except from the VAB where I can add a certain amount in the reactor, but that's peanuts compared to the amount I would need for a decades long journey to another star. So, can I liquify liquid hydrogen?

Edit: I found the tank capable of holding gaseous hydrogen, but the question still stands, can you boil liquid hydrogen into gaseous hydrogen?

Yes, it's called the universal gasifier, it's a interstellar part which comes available under utilities when universal parts is installed.

Still this is more or less a stop gap solution, my intention is that it can also use liquid  hydrogen as an alternative fuel source when it requires Hydrogen.

Edited December 21, 2016 by FreeThinker

[OnkelUhu]

hi,

 

just a question to isru. Is there a documentation to that feature?

I cant find anything how to collect the materials what i can produce, especially solarwind. how to collect and store?

[ss8913]

On 12/20/2016 at 0:17 AM, Nansuchao said:

Thrust, they thrust. I only have issue with the huge amount of Waste Heat they produce. Were you using it in atmosphere?

Yes.. atmosphere is a listed propellant, and I've used it that way in the past.. did that change?

[FreeThinker]

11 hours ago, OnkelUhu said:

hi,

 

just a question to isru. Is there a documentation to that feature?

I cant find anything how to collect the materials what i can produce, especially solarwind. how to collect and store?

 

 

Not yet, but it is under development. The idea is that solar wind can be harvested directly in space (by large parabolic solar collectors) while Regolith can be harvested from atmosphere-less planets/moons. Both SolarWind and Regolith go though a refinement process to be converted to useful resources, which includes Tritium and Helium3

Edited December 22, 2016 by FreeThinker

[OnkelUhu]

@ Freethinker

 

thanks, so if i understood you correctly. the feature "solar wind" is under construction. 

and keep up that great work.

[FreeThinker]

25 minutes ago, OnkelUhu said:

@ Freethinker

 

thanks, so if i understood you correctly. the feature "solar wind" is under construction. 

and keep up that great work.

 

Well thank you as well, you one of the first one of showing an interest.

[Charon Moloch]

The ISRU uranium tetraflouride ammonolysis works, but it's instant, is that supposed to happen? I tested it with both ISRU refineries.

[LastStarDust]

4 hours ago, Charon Moloch said:

The ISRU uranium tetraflouride ammonolysis works, but it's instant, is that supposed to happen? I tested it with both ISRU refineries.

I have done some testing these days and although it seems to work (even if instantly), in reality it is severely broken. It uses all the input resources up and fill all the output resources up no matter their relative ratio.

Edited December 22, 2016 by LastStarDust