[1.10.x] Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting: Stockalike ISRU, no ore required (v1.0, 2020-09-22)

[jan Melantu]

Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting v1.0

Tired of lugging around heavy mining equipment for your Interplanetary ISRU? Looking for a compact ISRU for your Single-Stage-To-Laythe Planes? Have no fear, for now you can create fuel from the air around you!

Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting (MAH) is a small mod to complement the Stock ISRU with atmospheric harvesting and converting. Specifically, it is designed to turn Carbon Dioxide in the atmospheres of Duna, Eve, and Laythe (and Kerbin, though I'm not sure why you would need it) into Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer. This mod is inspired by Mars Direct (its chemistry), The Martian (its power requirements), and the MOXIE experiment on the Mars 2020 rover (its form factor). It is a repurposed Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer, that can turn a small liquid hydrogen supply into a large amount of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer using less power than the PB-NUK RTG. Sounds too good to be true? Well it takes a really long time, and only works in atmospheres. It Takes about 33 hours to fill up an FL-T100, 88.5 Kerbin Days to fill up a Rockomax 16, and 354 Kerbin Days to fill up a Big Orange Tank. 

In addition to the Basic LFO, there are more specialized ISRU Modes including Methalox, Water, and Oxygen, designed to play well with mods like Life Support and Rational Resources. (note: at this point, RealFuels is not supported)

Dependencies

This mod would not be possible without other mods doing the Heavy Lifting. Specifically this Mod Requires

• Community Resource Pack by Roverdude (included in Download)
• ModuleManager by sarbian and Ialdabaoth (included in Download)

Recommended Mod

• CryoTanks by Nertea (separate download) (the best way to get Liquid Hydrogen Tanks, required for the sample craft)

Future Plans

• 1.1: Proper Agency implementation, Contracts to bring back samples of CO2
• 1.2: Larger/Faster/More Expensive Parts with integrated tanks (aka I have to learn how to model and texture)
• 1.?.?: RealFuels support (I look at those cfg files and my brain just breaks)

Licensing

• My cfg files are licensed under the MIT License
• Bundled Mods are licensed under their own licenses

Download: GitHub

A look at the included sample craft, a Duna Ascent Vehicle, as well as the basic MOXIE stats

The Sample DAV on Duna at night, slowly processing CO2 and LH2 into LFO

More images of the Sample DAV and an Example Mission: https://imgur.com/a/ff7WDuG

Edited September 23, 2020 by jan Melantu
Updated for v1.0

[theJesuit]

Nice idea.  And you have thought about hydrogen needing to be brought along so as not to make this too overpowered.

Simple and effective.

Peace.

[jan Melantu]

15 hours ago, theJesuit said:

And you have thought about hydrogen needing to be brought along

That's why CryoTanks is a Dependency 

[theJesuit]

1 hour ago, jan Melantu said:

That's why CryoTanks is a Dependency 

Ah.  I missed the dependencies. 

Lol.  

[Brimarx]

Man, I was about to custom made the same out of desperation as for my latest save I want to stay away from KSPIE (which is amazing btw). I'm playing with RR (very rare Ore...) and JNSQ (much higher DeltaV requirement) which make such a process super important to keeping Duna mission viable interm of mass.

Perfect timing  I'll test it and report back!

Some thoughts meanwhile:

Calling it MOXIE was kind of confusing to me considering the NASA MOXIE experiment outputs O2 while your process is akin to a Sabatier process. But hey, that's your mod

You may also consider adding H2O as an output as it would be both plausible and convenient on Duna, at least for guys like me playing with USI and RR.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Brimarx

[jan Melantu]

On 8/22/2020 at 11:39 PM, Brimarx said:

Calling it MOXIE was kind of confusing to me considering the NASA MOXIE experiment outputs O2 while your process is akin to a Sabatier process

There’s no real use for O2 in stock KSP so I just used the name because it was free and I’m still planning on adding a science experiment. And technically it’s the Fischer–Tropsch process, since it makes Kerosene not Methane

On 8/22/2020 at 11:39 PM, Brimarx said:

You may also consider adding H2O as an output as it would be both plausible and convenient on Duna, at least for guys like me playing with USI and RR.

Sure thing, I’ll add it to the 0.2 release which should be soon

[Brimarx]

I've been using your mod for testing and it's working great

Next step: Duna!!!

I did not check against other mods (KSPIE, Kerbalism) or real processes but it "feels" like it should use more EC.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Brimarx

[jan Melantu]

On 8/25/2020 at 11:29 PM, Brimarx said:

it "feels" like it should use more EC

I wanted to make sure that it could run on a Stock RTG.

Update: I got the new texture working last night, and am currently finishing up the cfg files so v0.2 should be out today.

[jan Melantu]

v0.2 is live! Changes include:

• NEW TEXTURE LET'S GO (it's red instead of blue)
• Added ISRU Modes for Water, Oxygen, and Methalox

I tried making a Duna SSTO as a sample craft but apparently I'm terrible at Duna Planes

[Brimarx]

Great! I'll try this asap

[Brimarx]

LFOx, H2O and Ox working ok for me  Did not test LCH4Ox as I don't have tanks and engines for that.

I noted that H2O production is much slower than LOx. Is that because this process supposed to be more energy-demanding, all processes being capped at 0.4 EC/s ?

Edited August 29, 2020 by Brimarx

[jan Melantu]

On 8/29/2020 at 4:33 PM, Brimarx said:

I noted that H2O production is much slower than LOx. Is that because this process supposed to be more energy-demanding, all processes being capped at 0.4 EC/s ?

It's a less efficient reaction, yes, but I haven't quite nailed down the balance I want yet. I was thinking it as a slower reaction so it doesn't use all the CO2, but now that it think about it, the built-in load system should just be fine. I'll scale the CO2 usage to the LFO level in 0.3.

Speaking of which, I spent a bunch of time last night coming up with funny science messages, so that should be out later today/tomorrow

[jan Melantu]

v0.3 is Live! Changes include:

• Replaced stock science experiment with cool new one
• Rebalanced ISRU Modes for Water and Oxygen
• Now includes Sample Crafts: Duna Ascent Vehicle (with and without RTG) and a full launch vehicle for it (with and without RTG)
• Fixed the incorrect localization version number

The next Release will probably be a full public 1.0 release (for CKAN/SpaceDock), which should just be making Life Support, RealFuels, and Rational Resources compatibility patches.

[jan Melantu]

v1.0 is HERE! I just made a Release Thread and will be handling most of the questions/support there now that it's in full realease

Changes:

• SpaceDock Download, CKAN support
• Moved Methalox and O2 ISRU Modes to a ModuleManager Patch

I don't have RealFuels support because the cfg files for it are breaking my brain