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

[philotical]

Maybe off topic - but

I've finished an alpha version of ResourceRecovery for KSPI resources..

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79010-ResourceRecovery-for-KSPI-EL-and-Kethan-DevThread?p=1170691&viewfull=1#post1170691

I would appreciate it if some of you could spare a view minutes and test it out for bugs and problems..

Thanks..

[nli2work]

My Solar Sat uses 12 single Balka panels from Kosmos. I pulled up the .cfg, the word output was not in it, nor did I see anything similiar. I have not tried to use stock solar panels.

When my sat was very low above Kerbol, the energy flow and the heat production of my panels both increased however my power transmission did not.

add more EC capacity to your craft.

[Rabada]

@pheonix_ca

That is the value for how much charge a solar panel generates. I am asking specifically about Interstellar's adjustments to solar panels. Interstellar increased the amount of power that solar panels generate when closer to the sun by a very large factor. I was wondering what the limits of that boost are.

@nli2work

hm... I have 6 2.5m batteries on my sats for 24,000 electrical charge. How much would you suggest I need?

[undercoveryankee]

I know the formula for calculating the space that is needed by the radiators is in the wiki of Interstellar, but how do I determine the temperatur at an specific orbit in the system, without having something there?

The radiator temperature that you experience is completely determined by the amount of waste heat in the radiators, and the only waste heat source that varies with location that I can find is solar panels.

So if you're not using solar panels, you just work out the equilibrium heat production, temperature, and area according to the wiki and it will work anywhere. If you're using solar panels, you'll need to figure the panels' power output at your target orbit, and their heat output will be half of their electrical output. Since Interstellar dynamically modifies the curve from what's in the .cfg file to a more realistic inverse-square curve, predicting solar panels is not yet well-documented.

Edit: After another look at the source code, I think I've got my head around what Interstellar does to solar panels. The chargeRate in the .cfg file gives the available power (in EC/s = KW) for 100% sun exposure at Kerbin's distance from the sun.

The powerCurve in the .cfg file is completely replaced. On each FixedUpdate (every 0.02 s), the plugin calculates the ratio between the panel's distance from the sun and Kerbin's distance from the sun and applies a single-point curve that multiplies the panel's output by the inverse square of the distance ratio.

I.e. at twice Kerbin's orbital distance your panel will output 1/4 of its chargeRate; at 1/10 Kerbin's orbital distance you get 100 times chargeRate.

Edited May 22, 2014 by undercoveryankee

[nli2work]

@nli2work

hm... I have 6 2.5m batteries on my sats for 24,000 electrical charge. How much would you suggest I need?

I have sats at 250km, 40k EC total, pushing ~1.4 GW. The sats each have 60 Gigantors each pushing ~30MW. Transmitters are 90% efficient IIRC. I haven't tried 100km orbit, I don't think I put on enough radiators to handle the extra waste heat.

for 100km orbit... 60k? 75k? 1k EC converts to 1MJ, so you need at least as much EC capacity as the total power flow of all your panels, to be safe 1.5 to 2x your total panel output.

Edited May 22, 2014 by nli2work

[undercoveryankee]

@pheonix_ca

That is the value for how much charge a solar panel generates. I am asking specifically about Interstellar's adjustments to solar panels. Interstellar increased the amount of power that solar panels generate when closer to the sun by a very large factor. I was wondering what the limits of that boost are.

The only limit in the code is how close you can get to the sun before bad things start happening to your ship. The sun's radius is 261,600 km, and Kerbin's semimajor axis is 13,591,840 km. If you square that ratio, the largest boost you'll see before hitting the sun is a little under 2,700 times the panel's output at Kerbin.

In RL, the fact that the sun is not a point source would cause the inverse-square law to start breaking down quite a bit farther out, not to mention that the panels themselves have a maximum amount of light they can process. Trying to model these corrections would cost software performance everywhere for effects that most vessels will never encounter, so the code uses unmodified inverse-square.

[undercoveryankee]

Edit: This was a repeat of the previous post because it looked like it had failed to post. I'll use it to continue the discussion.

With regard to battery requirements: the FixedUpdate tick that governs power consumption is 0.02 s. Rabada has 24,000 EC capacity. 24,000 divided by 0.02 s equals 1,200,000 per second, which is the observed 1.2 GW.

Let me see if I can work out the math for this configuration.

You said the satellite has 12 single Balkas. I don't have that .cfg, but I'm guessing (based on http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43839-0-23-5-KSP-Interstellar-%28Toolbar-Integration-New-Models-New-Tech%29-Version-0-11?p=1171247&viewfull=1#post1171247 where you quoted part of the double Balka's config) that the single has a chargeRate of 200.

200 * 12 = 2,400 kW at Kerbin.

Scale to 100 km altitude. That's small enough compared to the sun's radius that the multiplier will still round to 2,700. 2,400 kW * 2,700 = 6,480,000 KW = 6.48 GW.

Divide the power in kW by 50 to get the amount of EC in 0.02 s. I get 129,600 EC required to transmit the full panel capacity.

Edited May 22, 2014 by undercoveryankee

[Rabada]

Edit: This was a repeat of the previous post because it looked like it had failed to post. I'll use it to continue the discussion.

With regard to battery requirements: the FixedUpdate tick that governs power consumption is 0.02 s. Rabada has 24,000 EC capacity. 24,000 divided by 0.02 s equals 1,200,000 per second, which is the observed 1.2 GW.

Let me see if I can work out the math for this configuration.

You said the satellite has 12 single Balkas. I don't have that .cfg, but I'm guessing (based on http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43839-0-23-5-KSP-Interstellar-%28Toolbar-Integration-New-Models-New-Tech%29-Version-0-11?p=1171247&viewfull=1#post1171247 where you quoted part of the double Balka's config) that the single has a chargeRate of 200.

200 * 12 = 2,400 kW at Kerbin.

Scale to 100 km altitude. That's small enough compared to the sun's radius that the multiplier will still round to 2,700. 2,400 kW * 2,700 = 6,480,000 KW = 6.48 GW.

Divide the power in kW by 50 to get the amount of EC in 0.02 s. I get 129,600 EC required to transmit the full panel capacity.

Awesome!! Thankyou!! I'm going to book mark this!! for future reference! This was incredibly helpful, and makes perfect sense. also thankyou you Nli2work for your help!

Edit: The funny thing is I only put 6 of those large batteries on my SAT as an afterthought, I needed a spacer to seperate my solar panels from my transmitter and they fit perfectly.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Rabada

[Ammyt]

Hi guys! First of all, congratulations for your awesome work!!

I have problems to install this mod... always crashes on load screen :S KSP 0.23.5. I copy all into GameData folder... that's all. What's wrong?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

[Darkeners]

Hi again, and thx for last answer.

I have other issue, when I watch YT videos i see Plasma Thrusters have lot of power, they managed to start from planet, etc., but my are very slow.

Until now I build:

6 satellites whit: Akulla 3,75m, 2 Electric Generator, 2 to 4 phased array (those solid not blooming), few radiators (statistic are green)

2 Land Base whit 2x items like satellites.

Those have set 1 Transmitter, 1 relay or 2x 2x

Ship have one Akulla Reactor, 2 Electric Generator, 4 those umbrella arrays, 2 kinds of fuel Argon, Lithium and monopropellant too. My thrust is only 12,2kN. Over 75% I start burning my stored megajoules.

This is normal?

[Rabada]

Hi guys! First of all, congratulations for your awesome work!!

I have problems to install this mod... always crashes on load screen :S KSP 0.23.5. I copy all into GameData folder... that's all. What's wrong?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

Most often mods cause KSP to crash because of KSP's 32 bit RAM limitations. Look for the Active texture management mod, it will probably get KSP working again for you.

Edit: Here is a link for ya!

Edited May 22, 2014 by Rabada

[Ammyt]

Most often mods cause KSP to crash because of KSP's 32 bit RAM limitations. Look for the Active texture management mod, it will probably get KSP working again for you.

Edit: Here is a link for ya!

Yeah!! thank you!! that works!!

[undercoveryankee]

Hi again, and thx for last answer.

I have other issue, when I watch YT videos i see Plasma Thrusters have lot of power, they managed to start from planet, etc., but my are very slow.

Until now I build:

6 satellites whit: Akulla 3,75m, 2 Electric Generator, 2 to 4 phased array (those solid not blooming), few radiators (statistic are green)

2 Land Base whit 2x items like satellites.

Those have set 1 Transmitter, 1 relay or 2x 2x

Ship have one Akulla Reactor, 2 Electric Generator, 4 those umbrella arrays, 2 kinds of fuel Argon, Lithium and monopropellant too. My thrust is only 12,2kN. Over 75% I start burning my stored megajoules.

This is normal?

Try simplifying the rocket. Remove the reactor and generators entirely - a fission reactor doesn't supply enough power to lift its own weight with a plasma thruster, so you're only hurting yourself by having it on board.

Remove the lithium, reduce the monopropellant to what you're going to need for RCS, and right-click the thruster and make sure it's running on argon or xenon.

Right-click each umbrella receiver to see how much power it's receiving. On the launch pad, make sure you have a receiver pointed directly at each of your ground stations. Atmosphere eats power, so most of what you have on the ground will come from the ground stations. It helps to put the receivers on Infernal Robotics hinges so you can fine-tune their angle without rotating the entire ship.

It sounds like you have a total of four Akula reactors across all of your ground stations. Upgraded, each of those has a maximum of 7.5 GW thermal power. Taking into account reactor power decreasing with core temperature, generator losses, and atmospheric transmission losses, you should be able to receive maybe 3 GW if you aim your receivers right, which should get you 176 kN on argon. Or about a third of that if the reactors aren't upgraded.

[Darkeners]

How to upgrade those?

I take other fuel only for testing (first try of Plasma)

I have mostly Argon for that ( I saw table on trusters)

Now I have 8x satelites whit Akula all over the space, some on Kerbin orbit, some on other orbits (Eve x1, Jool x2), 2x Satelittes on sun orbit, but whit that other reactors, those have 2x 3,75, but i think that they doesnt work well, or at all.

On ground I have only support.

When I watch plasma movies, I have feeling that they have 200kN trust at least.... my shows only 12,2 on Argon... my manouver node take 6h ; d

[ArcFurnace]

You need to pump a LOT of power into plasma thrusters to get good thrust. Antimatter reactors are obviously more than capable of supplying such. Upgraded 3.75m fusion reactors are another good bet; my plasma-thruster based asteroid tug uses 5 of those to max out the power usage of 4 1.25m plasma thrusters, and it can take off from Kerbin under its own power using Argon propellant in drop-tanks, even with the hefty load of LiquidFuel for orbital maneuvering and Monopropellant for holding the craft straight when the asteroid starts trying to swing you around (and the substantial mass of the reactors themselves). With anything smaller and less high-tech, the power-to-weight ratio starts dropping pretty quickly, and that's what you need for high thrust-to-weight ratio with plasma thrusters, since their thrust is directly determined by the power delivered. At maximum throttle, the argon thrusters on my tug produce 2045 kN of thrust each, but that's at a power consumption of 32.9 GW* each.

Alternately, you can start spamming power transmitters and use microwave transmission to run your plasma thrusters, which takes away a lot of the TWR issues. You just have to deal with line-of-sight issues instead.

*Note: the "max power" of the 1.25m plasma thrusters is 25 GW, but that's after efficiency is taken into account, so it uses even more than that, depending on the efficiency of your fuel (argon is 76%, so 25 GW / 0.76 = 32.9 GW).

Edited May 23, 2014 by ArcFurnace

[undercoveryankee]

I've added https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Solar-power-satellites to the wiki to collect everything we know about beamed solar power after the latest discussion. I wrote down what I currently know, but there are probably a few things left to add.

[G'th]

Are the Atilla thrusters really supposed to be as powerful as they are? I mean, I used a cluster a four and a single B9 S2 liquid fuel tank and I get 1.6 TWR and over 7k dV, and it works just like a regular rocket engine. Doesn't seem right.

[undercoveryankee]

Are the Atilla thrusters really supposed to be as powerful as they are? I mean' date=' I used a cluster a four and a single B9 S2 liquid fuel tank and I get 1.6 TWR and over 7k dV, and it works just like a regular rocket engine. Doesn't seem right.[/quote']

The ATTILA is supposed to be another type of electrical engine with lower Isp and higher thrust than the plasma thruster. 7k dV sounds about right, but the 1.6 TWR should require several gigawatts of electricity. What kind of power supply are you using?

[G'th]

The ATTILA is supposed to be another type of electrical engine with lower Isp and higher thrust than the plasma thruster. 7k dV sounds about right, but the 1.6 TWR should require several gigawatts of electricity. What kind of power supply are you using?

Two large stock batteries?

[Atrius129]

Awesome!! Thankyou!! I'm going to book mark this!! for future reference! This was incredibly helpful, and makes perfect sense. also thankyou you Nli2work for your help!

Edit: The funny thing is I only put 6 of those large batteries on my SAT as an afterthought, I needed a spacer to seperate my solar panels from my transmitter and they fit perfectly.

I have been using Procedural Parts lately, totally fantastic mod; keeps my part counts way down and they look great. For my solar satellites I have been trying to add procedural batteries. I hate how the current batteries are spongy/springy. They are pretty much completely useless if they have any kind of mass stacked on top of them. Plus they only have 4K EC max so to reach the aforementioned 129k EC you would need to add 33 parts to the count.

I got the charge capacity to scale fairly closely to stock parts, but I am waiting on help now on getting the mass to scale properly. Will let you know when I get it figured out so we can have our "Solar-Off" properly.

P.S. What do Kerbals make their batteries out of? I don't understand why they appear to be made of water balloons, and are 1/6 the density of the stock tanks. Batteries don't work that way, silly Squad.

[Atrius129]

Two large stock batteries?

Undercoveryankee means how are you generating your power. Batteries are for EC storage only. What kind of reactor are you using?

Also, in regards to electricity driven drives, when using multiple engines, the power is split evenly between. So unless you are maxing out their power capacity, you are only adding to your part-count and weight.

[G'th]

Undercoveryankee means how are you generating your power. Batteries are for EC storage only. What kind of reactor are you using?

Also, in regards to electricity driven drives, when using multiple engines, the power is split evenly between. So unless you are maxing out their power capacity, you are only adding to your part-count and weight.

I'm actually not using any reactor. Apparently something is severely wrong here.

[Atrius129]

I'm actually not using any reactor. Apparently something is severely wrong here.

Well that's your problem right there

You need power in Megajoules (Mj) produced by Interstellar parts, not ElectricCharge (EC).

[G'th]

Well that's your problem right there

You need power in Megajoules (Mj) produced by Interstellar parts, not ElectricCharge (EC).

Well yeah, but thats the thing. I'm not using any reactor, but the engines still work at the stats I gave earlier.

[Psawhn]

I've read that this was supposed to be fixed in KSPI 0.11, but IR Telescopes still don't appear to be generating science while unfocused in version 0.11.

I just tested with a new installation with only stock and WarpPlugin to eliminate mod effects. I've tried both the Deep-Field Survey and the G-Lensing observations. In both 0.5 sci/day and 15 sci/day modes, science accumulates in the persistence files while the vessel is focused, as expected. However, if I let several days elapse in the tracking station then return to the vessel, no science is accumulated in the persistence file.

On the other hand, the cryostats are not losing liquid helium to cook-off while unfocused, either.

Science labs appear to be fine. After time warping in the tracking station then focusing on the vessel, the message pops up with how much science is added and the persistence file changes properly.