[0.25]KSP Interstellar (Magnetic Nozzles, ISRU Revamp) Version 0.13

[panarchist]

That depends entirely on how much water you have. And it doesn't have to be water.

Actually, it kinda does. ;-) The poster you replied to said "if you have water on a spacecraft" - that pre-supposes water.

Getting out of the realm of pedantism, though, the two scenarios are "drink" and "coolant". The first probably *should* be water, the second could also be more exotic and more dangerous substances which are better coolants (especially for KSPI) like liquid sodium or lithium. Liquid sodium is potentially far more corrosive than steam.

[NeoAcario]

Well, the best place is still Jool, as far as I'm aware.

Russ

Jool is undoubtedly best for Antimatter flux... however... I like using Kerbol because you can the trasfer back and forth is only around 25 days and there's almost no waiting for a transfer window. One way I like to play is to do as little time acceleration as possible. I've almost got all tech (besides warp) and I'm only 77 1/2 days into this new campaign. That said, you can fill 1million storage of AM in less than 19 days with my current design around Jool.

I'd rather burn the 20k dV to get into LKO (kerbol) and then another 5k to get back (over less than 2 months), than wait a couple years round trip with the Jool AM farm. Besides, all I'm going to have going back and forth will be the 1m AM storage probes. Easy to get 25k dV for only 14.5t storage unit. Naturally, my opinion will change once I've got warp on all my transfer probe-tugs.

~Steve

Edited February 1, 2014 by NeoAcario

[forsaken1111]

Actually, it kinda does. ;-) The poster you replied to said "if you have water on a spacecraft" - that pre-supposes water.

Yes, and he was replying to me suggesting boiling water to jet from said spacecraft. In any case I was just saying that the working fluid need not be water specifically. Its just convenient.

[Lightwarrior]

I sure do hope so, because that can be fixed, i have a AMD fX-4100 (but i thought this game doesn't need a good CPU to run, and it was running fine until when i installed the new PSU and GPU)

This game almost entirely depends on CPU speed. The faster CPU you have more parts you can use. And GPU requirements are relatively small (even on those ~10 year old GF 9600GT it runs good enough) and almost constant (do not depend on things like part count).

And it is not that easy to fix, KSP only use single core, so if you will buy something like FX-8*** you will most likely have no performance increase at all. Probably the best thing you can do is to overclock you current CPU, because increased frequency will increase single core performance => increase KSP performance.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[Jivaii]

This game almost entirely depends on CPU speed. The faster CPU you have more parts you can use. And GPU requirements are relatively small (even on those ~10 year old GF 9600GT it runs good enough) and almost constant (do not depend on things like part count).

And it is not that easy to fix, KSP only use single core, so if you will buy something like FX-8*** you will most likely have no performance increase at all. Probably the best thing you can do is to overclock you current CPU, because increased frequency will increase single core performance => increase KSP performance.

Can confirm. FX-8350 and can lob things in the thousands of parts around.

[merendel]

Jool is undoubtedly best for Antimatter flux... however... I like using Kerbol because you can the trasfer back and forth is only around 25 days and there's almost no waiting for a transfer window. One way I like to play is to do as little time acceleration as possible. I've almost got all tech (besides warp) and I'm only 77 1/2 days into this new campaign. That said, you can fill 1million storage of AM in less than 19 days with my current design around Jool.

I'd rather burn the 20k dV to get into LKO (kerbol) and then another 5k to get back (over less than 2 months), than wait a couple years round trip with the Jool AM farm. Besides, all I'm going to have going back and forth will be the 1m AM storage probes. Easy to get 25k dV for only 14.5t storage unit. Naturally, my opinion will change once I've got warp on all my transfer probe-tugs.

on the other hand if your willing to burn 25k dV round trip you can make the round trip to jool in significantly less than 2 years. your still looking at a multi month journy depending on the exact alignment at the time of launch. my curent game I've got a standard jool window coming up in 20days. Useing the standard transfer your looking at around 280 days and 2k or so dV to make the transfer. thats 300 days from now I could get to jool on a standard approach. If on the other hand I have an outbound budget of 10k dv I can leave in 30 minutes and get a SIO intercept in 63 days. Ya I'll hit the system going like a bat outa hell and probably have to burn just to make a proper aerobreak but still you can get there quite fast if your willing to burn oodles of dV. Incidently I tested the duna windown in 27 days and I could leave now for twice the normal delta V and get there befor the actual window is up Actualy half tempted to launch that mission as one of my current craft could easily make that transfer and return with plenty of room to spare for both ike and duna science missions.

[AndreyATGB]

How did you manage so much science in 77 days? That pretty much means no missions outside Kerbin's orbit, maybe even Duna is off-limits. You're definitely planning your stuff well, likely flying 3-5 missions at a time. It's pretty awesome how people make the game harder with rules like this, I follow similar stuff but mainly it's "no timewarping science with the Moho station". That means I collect its science only after missions, so a Jool mission means a lot of science for example.

[SorensonPA]

One little thing for the next update? Could you set generators to start off with full Electriccharge instead of being completily empty and having to rely on extra batteries/RTGs/launch clamps to start reactors proper? Been doing a lot of prototyping lately and I've forgotten how many times I've set up a design only to forget extra batteries or manually setting the generator charge and have the dang thing crap out on the pad and force a VAB revert to fix it.

How did you manage so much science in 77 days? That pretty much means no missions outside Kerbin's orbit, maybe even Duna is off-limits. You're definitely planning your stuff well, likely flying 3-5 missions at a time. It's pretty awesome how people make the game harder with rules like this, I follow similar stuff but mainly it's "no timewarping science with the Moho station". That means I collect its science only after missions, so a Jool mission means a lot of science for example.

Lots and lots of Mun and Minmus landings, I imagine. Now that Minmus also has biomes, its science point content has increased like nine-fold (lesser flats, flats, great flats, greater flats, slopes, lowlands, midlands, highlands, poles). Once you get all the science goodies, each biome is probably worth 750-1,000 Science a pop between high, low and surface experiments. Heck, the experienced folks always say you should really go for Minmus first and now there's another reason why.

Edited February 1, 2014 by SorensonPA

[NeoAcario]

on the other hand if your willing to burn 25k dV round trip you can make the round trip to jool in significantly less than 2 years. your still looking at a multi month journy depending on the exact alignment at the time of launch. my curent game I've got a standard jool window coming up in 20days. Useing the standard transfer your looking at around 280 days and 2k or so dV to make the transfer. thats 300 days from now I could get to jool on a standard approach. If on the other hand I have an outbound budget of 10k dv I can leave in 30 minutes and get a SIO intercept in 63 days. Ya I'll hit the system going like a bat outa hell and probably have to burn just to make a proper aerobreak but still you can get there quite fast if your willing to burn oodles of dV. Incidently I tested the duna windown in 27 days and I could leave now for twice the normal delta V and get there befor the actual window is up Actualy half tempted to launch that mission as one of my current craft could easily make that transfer and return with plenty of room to spare for both ike and duna science missions.

Ok... now I feel stupid for not checking the dV cost for leaving for Jool at really inopportune times. Guess I'll check where I'm at now. It might be time to send a massive AMF(arm) to Jool afterall. Include a couple of the 1m AM return probes with AM reactors.

~Steve

Leave right now... 6k dV.. arrive in Jool in 250 days. A bit more reasonable approach. Easy speed to break a little and aero-capture at.I'll build my rig and send out an AMF(arm) with 10k dV. Plus a return probe ship w/1m AM storage.

Edited February 1, 2014 by NeoAcario

[lammatt]

just to nitpick (from a chemist point of view)

you dont actually have to do an LC/MS to analyse the ocean content unless you are fairly sure there are some bigger molecules you are interested in. because a lot of time in an LC-MS set up, you are doing an MS-MS or even MS-MS-MS in the mass spectrometer... which...is used to analyze proteins or large molecules, (speaking of those in hundred kilo dalton molecular mass)

- instead a more reasonable method is ICP-MS or ICP-AAS/AES because it's more likely you are interested in the metallic cations in the ocean sample.

- and for the gas method, GC-MS is also doubtful. yes, we do use GC-MS to analyse air sample; but most of the case, just a simple quadruple MS or a ToF MS together with an FT-IR will do because again, the thing in the atmosphere is very likely to be some diatomic elements or simple compound like the NOx, H2O, CO2... (yes, there is no convenient way to couple an IR to an MS tho')

Edited February 1, 2014 by lammatt

[Konnor]

Could you set generators to start off with full Electriccharge instead of being completily empty

Starting ElectricCharge of generators is tweakable in the VAB/SPH.

[Boamere]

This game almost entirely depends on CPU speed. The faster CPU you have more parts you can use. And GPU requirements are relatively small (even on those ~10 year old GF 9600GT it runs good enough) and almost constant (do not depend on things like part count).

And it is not that easy to fix, KSP only use single core, so if you will buy something like FX-8*** you will most likely have no performance increase at all. Probably the best thing you can do is to overclock you current CPU, because increased frequency will increase single core performance => increase KSP performance.

Thanks will probably buy a new one anyway

[lammatt]

Thanks will probably buy a new one anyway

Intel always.

AMD sucks now.

(AMD was good in the K6 and K6-2 era when it almost matched the performance of pentium or pentium 2... but now, it's just... way behind in terms of performance...yes, it's cheap, a mid range i5 isnt expensive anyways.)

----

and i hv a desktop on phenom2 X4 955 @4.0G + ATI 7850

and an i5-4200M notebook

the i5-4200M totally out performs the phenom 2 when it comes to KSP (of cos the phemon2 is way better in ALL other games because i hv a 7850 on it)

Edited February 1, 2014 by lammatt

[SorensonPA]

Starting ElectricCharge of generators is tweakable in the VAB/SPH.

...which, depending on how hurried/absentminded/whatever you are when putting a ship together, you may completily forget to do and thus resulting in a dead ship on the launch pad due to a lack of electriccharge to give the reactor the necessary kick in the pants to start reactin'. Because the default starting value in the .cfg files in 0 and is the value which new parts are set to no matter how many times you've tweaked them before. Ergo the request to set the default to 1000 so you don't have to keep resetting it with every new idea you test.

[Boamere]

Intel always.

AMD sucks now.

(AMD was good in the K6 and K6-2 era when it almost matched the performance of pentium or pentium 2... but now, it's just... way behind in terms of performance...yes, it's cheap, a mid range i5 isnt expensive anyways.)

----

and i hv a desktop on phenom2 X4 955 @4.0G + ATI 7850

and an i5-4200M notebook

the i5-4200M totally out performs the phenom 2 when it comes to KSP (of cos the phemon2 is way better in ALL other games because i hv a 7850 on it)

yeah but i'm scared about compatibility issues with my HD 7970

Also is there a way to get lithium other than starting with it?

Edited February 1, 2014 by Boamere

[Lightwarrior]

There is no need to have AMD CPU if you want AMD GPU. Intel CPU/chipset + AMD GPU will work just fine. If you are going to change motherboard too it will probably be better choice.

As for lithium - you can get it from water:

[Boamere]

There is no need to have AMD CPU if you want AMD GPU. Intel CPU/chipset + AMD GPU will work just fine. If you are going to change motherboard too it will probably be better choice.

As for lithium - you can get it from water:

http://i.imgur.com/c7dr9eg.jpg

Thanks for all the help , That's good because I'm sending a science lab to laythe, I'm guessing i need an ISRU to get lithium

[xfrankie]

As for lithium - you can get it from water:

Can it not be mined?

"Although lithium is widely distributed on Earth, it does not naturally occur in elemental form due to its high reactivity.[3] The total lithium content of seawater is very large and is estimated as 230 billion tonnes, where the element exists at a relatively constant concentration of 0.14 to 0.25 parts per million (ppm),[38][39] or 25 micromolar;[40] higher concentrations approaching 7 ppm are found near hydrothermal vents.[39]

Estimates for the Earth's crustal content range from 20 to 70 ppm by weight. .... At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust,[43] lithium is the 25th most abundant element."

According to wikipedia article, it should be much more common in earth than in seawater.

[Boamere]

Any ETA on 0.10?

Or are you still squashing BUUUUUUUUUUUUUGS!?

[Lightwarrior]

Can it not be mined?

"Although lithium is widely distributed on Earth, it does not naturally occur in elemental form due to its high reactivity.[3] The total lithium content of seawater is very large and is estimated as 230 billion tonnes, where the element exists at a relatively constant concentration of 0.14 to 0.25 parts per million (ppm),[38][39] or 25 micromolar;[40] higher concentrations approaching 7 ppm are found near hydrothermal vents.[39]

Estimates for the Earth's crustal content range from 20 to 70 ppm by weight. .... At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust,[43] lithium is the 25th most abundant element."

According to wikipedia article, it should be much more common in earth than in seawater.

As far as i know it can only be extracted from water now.

[charno]

There are actually misplaced commas in the file (which I have now fixed ready for the next update). The resource definitions include a comma seperated number, which might explain why this is only affecting certain people and certain platforms. Try to taking that out and see if it improves things.

Perfect, it works without this comma. It also works if I start with LC_ALL=C. Thanks for the tip and for fixing it in the next version.

[Fractal_UK]

- and for the gas method, GC-MS is also doubtful. yes, we do use GC-MS to analyse air sample; but most of the case, just a simple quadruple MS or a ToF MS together with an FT-IR will do because again, the thing in the atmosphere is very likely to be some diatomic elements or simple compound like the NOx, H2O, CO2... (yes, there is no convenient way to couple an IR to an MS tho')

GC/MS is what has traditionally been used in the context of missions involving atmospheric sampling, this includes the Viking Landers on Mars, Cassini-Huygens on Titan, Venera and Pioneer Venus on Venus.

IR (along with UV) spectroscopy is usually done, in the context of a space program, as a remote sensing method but obviously this requires several instruments to try and build-up a more complete picture.

just to nitpick (from a chemist point of view)

you dont actually have to do an LC/MS to analyse the ocean content unless you are fairly sure there are some bigger molecules you are interested in. because a lot of time in an LC-MS set up, you are doing an MS-MS or even MS-MS-MS in the mass spectrometer... which...is used to analyze proteins or large molecules, (speaking of those in hundred kilo dalton molecular mass)

- instead a more reasonable method is ICP-MS or ICP-AAS/AES because it's more likely you are interested in the metallic cations in the ocean sample.

I don't think any LC/MS has ever flown in space but there is interest in miniaturising the equipment for space applications, big organic molecules are one thing you would really want to have the capability to identify within the context of your mission.

[Jivaii]

Part 3 finally done =/ I need to stop getting distracted with work.

[cjones]

Refueling Fission reactors?

My reactor is fully off (Says EVA Maintenance required, not Decay Heating):

I have a ship docked to the station with UF4:

I get the 'Refuel UF4' in EVA but when I click it, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Also, as an aside, can you please increase the click range for Refuel UF4 and Manual Restart? The range is so short that even when my Kerbal is touching the reactor, the option is not always available.

[Fractal_UK]

I get the 'Refuel UF4' in EVA but when I click it, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Your reactor is full of actinides, you need to get rid of those (by reprocessing) before you can refuel.

Also, as an aside, can you please increase the click range for Refuel UF4 and Manual Restart? The range is so short that even when my Kerbal is touching the reactor, the option is not always available.

It will be in the next update.