[1.x+] Community Resource Pack

[Nertea]

Well, we went through all this grief getting all the resources to 1L/unit. It would be a shame to start making exceptions now.

[RoverDude]

Concur. Which exception is being put on the table?

[Nertea]

Antimatter.. FreeThinker proposes keeping Fractal's original definition of 1 unit = 1 mg.

In gaseous form with 1L units, 1 unit =~ 90 mg

In slush form with 1L units, 1 unit =~ 70 g (about the density of LH2)

[RoverDude]

Yep, there is no reason to not adjust that for consistency.

[regex]

RF folk, do you mind unifying with me on DepletedUranium (U235Rods) and EnrichedUranium (DepU235Rods)? I think I use the same proxy as you (uranium oxide rods).

Which density are you planning on using? The rods were intended for use with nuclear engines but I don't know if anything uses them at the moment. Edited March 6, 2015 by regex

[Starwaster]

Antimatter.. FreeThinker proposes keeping Fractal's original definition of 1 unit = 1 mg.

In gaseous form with 1L units, 1 unit =~ 90 mg

In slush form with 1L units, 1 unit =~ 70 g (about the density of LH2)

Hydrogen slush has substantially greater density at 16%-20% over liquid H2.

Give it a density of 85g and a boiling point of -259

[Raptor831]

Which density are you planning on using? The rods were intended for use with nuclear engines but I don't know if anything uses them at the moment.

Stockalike NTRs use the U235Rods for the reactor. Can't say for sure about RO, but I assume it's used there as well.

EDIT: Forgot - current density on the sheet for both is 10970 kg/m^3

Edited March 6, 2015 by Raptor831
Cleanup...

[Northstar1989]

I'm seeing 1256.74 kg/m3 for LqdCO2 (which ties in pretty close to the 1200) and 1142.2 for LqdOxygen (which is what it already is in CRP).

So I'd propose for consistency plugging LqdCO2 in at ther 1256.74 number.

Yeah, that's a better (more precise) number than 1200 kg/m³, and should definitely replace the 1200 number I used as an initial approximation (as I was unable to find sources that agreed on the precise density- all sources gave a slightly different #, so I went conservative and low-balled it...)

Good work on finding that! Where did you find that data, though?

Regards,

Northstar

[Nertea]

I am open to either using the density of uranium oxide (UO2) at 10970 kg/m^3 (the current one in the sheet) or uranium carbide (UC) at 13630 kg/m3 for those two fuels. Both are qualfied solid core (or pebble bed) reactor fuels both for power and thermal rocket applications, though UC may be a better choice for NTRs (was used in late KIWIs). Though, like I said, either works .

[Northstar1989]

I deprecated LqdPeroxide, it'll be replaced by CO2.

Wait, you replaced hydrogen peroxide with CO₂??? Clearly there's something I'm missing here...

Could use some input (KSPI people) on the cost of He3 and Antimatter, as well as whether you guys want Antimatter as a gas or a slush.

Well, Antimatter should be expensive. Incredibly, crazy, mind-staggeringly expensive. If players manage to harvest large amounts of it near Jool (which is realistic, by the way- Jupiter actually has large amounts of antimatter particles trapped in its magnetic field as well...) and ship it back to Kerbin, they *should* be able to make an enormous profit off it- considering just how valuable and rare it would be as a research and (eventually) energy resource in real life.

Regarding Helium-3, Wikipedia and their source-material both concur that the price of it is sharply on the rise. Prices have recently reaches as high as $2,000/kg, are are likely to rise further. Thus, it would make sense to give it *at least* equal to $2,000/kg (in 2010 dollars- the year prices are cited as reaching that high), and likely higher as it is an extremely scarce resource that is only going to become more rare in the future (and KSP-Interstellar is well into the realm of futuristic technology by the time players unlock He-3 utilizing fusion reactors...)

In addition, there may be some things to decide about nuclear resources. We have all sorts right now... from NFT, RF and KSPI.

U235Rods

DepU235Rods

EnrichedUranium

DepletedUranium

Plutonium238

Actincides

Some consolidation seems possible here. Additionally I thought KSPI had some crazy thorium stuff, not sure if it should be in here. My input is that EnrichedUranium and DepletedUranium are enough for me, they adequately represent everything I need to represent.

KSP-Interstellar has a UF₄ and a ThF_{4p/sub] resource- the latter being Thorium TetraFluoride. Which is a real material, by the way, and far from "crazy". ThF4} is regularly used in optical coating, and was supposedly once used in carbon arc lamps according to Wikipedia- Thorium is much, much, much more stable than its scary cousin Uranium, and is only "mildly" radioactive...

Thorium is an important resource that KSP-Interstellar needs to keep. It allows superior performance in Molten Salt Reactors, but at the expense of higher Actinide production. Not that the latter should actually be a problem- Molten Salt Reactors are currently being studied for use as "garbage disposal reactors" much like the current CANDU heavy-water reactors, and should be able to burn Actinides for ThermalPower as long as new Uranium/Thorium continues to get mixed in (the Actinides have to form part of a fuel-mix with Uranum or Thorium, they won't burn on their own...) Theoretically, a Molten Salt Reactor would never have to actually remove any Actinides- it could just keep adding fresh Uranium/Thorium in and burning up the existing Actinide wastes for additional efficiency. Thermal Power production would be reduced as a result however...

Which reminds me, does anybody have some good data on the relative Thermal Power and reactor temperatures that would theoretically be achieved by running a Molten Salt Reactor actinide-rich (such as to consume the Actinides as reactor fuel) as opposed to filtering out the actinides? I believe ThermalPower declines substantially, but reactor temperature increases somewhat- and my initial instincts are to estimate the decreases in ThermalPower and increase in reactor temperature at around 20-30% (vs. Uranium at the very high levels of enrichment that would be utilized for rocketry applications) and 5-10%, respectively. However I could be way off, and I would really appreciate some reliable numbers on the subject...

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

FYI here's where I got my CO2 density:

http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/encyclopedia.asp?GasID=26

Oops, didn't see this earlier.

Yeah, that's actually not a good number to use then- the density should be higher. That website was actually one of the sources I came across in my initial search and discarded for the reasons stated below...

That's the density at -20 Celsius (the boiling-point is -57 Celsius at 1 atm of pressure) kept in liquid phase by pressurizing it to nearly 20 (19.7 to be precise) atmospheres of pressure. Here's the exact wording from the website:

Liquid density (at -20 °C (or -4 °F) and 19.7 bar) : 1256.74 kg/m³

So yeah, it kind of needs to have a higher density than that- considering that density increases quite substantially with lower temperatures, and pressurizing cryogenic liquids to keep them in liquid phase isn't a particularly mass-efficient option (pressure vessel mass increases proportionally to the pressure difference from the environment- a 20 barr pressure vessel in space weighs 20 times what a 1 barr pressure vessel weighs...)

Pressurizing a cryogenic liquid doesn't increase its density by a particularly notable amount either- you can ask NathanKell: I actually embarrassed myself by arguing this point over on the RealFuels thread a while back (at the time I thought you could substantially increase cryogenics density by pressurization, mainly due to what turned out to be a decimal-error in my calculations that led to a result 2-3 orders of magnitude off...)- it turns out that LH₂ only increases in density by about 1-2% at 120 barr of pressure... (and Hydrogen is one of the most compressible of all cryogenic liquids)

Once again, the 1200 figure was a low-ball estimate I went with to make absolutely sure the number we used for KSP-Interstellar Extended wasn't OP'd (since I was the one who did the research of this). But the actual density should be for 1 barr at -70 to -60 degrees Celsius (CO₂ freezes at -78), which means it will be substantially denser than 1256.74 kg/m³, which is for 20 barr and -20 Celsius.

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

I notice a few minor bugs in the CRP spreadsheet. Nitrogen and NitrogenOxide is not a Liquid but a Gas.

Well, as I understand it, RealFuels needs to keep a version of Nitrogen as a pressurized gas for RCS (specifically, for Module RCSFX), where it can be used as one type of cold-gas RCS thruster...

For this reason, there needs to be a separate NitrogenGas and Liquid Nitrogen resource (each with different density and cost), or something along these lines... We already made KSP-Interstellar Extended to utilize both variants in the Thermal and Electric thrusters- remember working with me on that?

Regards,

Northstar

[RoverDude]

1. It would be Nitrogen and LqdNitrogen (which I assume are already on Nertea's working document) to keep with naming conventions. We're limiting the Gas suffix to noble gasses only for compatibility with stock (XenonGas).

2. Since KSPI-E is FreeThinker's project, we consider him the curator for this. Unless he wants to change one of the densities (i.e. LqdCO2), they should be sticking with the current values agreed to by the mod owners involved. It's tough enough cat herding several mod owners as it is.

So given we're darn close to putting a fork in this, were there any specific resources missing, did we sort the nuke fuels, and is there anything else we want to put on the table?

I'd suggest we start by at least finalizing the resource list and getting this signed off and locking that down. Once that's locked, move on to confirming densities and such, which would be up to the folks using that resource, and do some final sanity checks, etc.

[FreeThinker]

2. Since KSPI-E is FreeThinker's project, we consider him the curator for this. Unless he wants to change one of the densities (i.e. LqdCO2), they should be sticking with the current values agreed to by the mod owners involved. It's tough enough cat herding several mod owners as it is.

Regarding density of LqdCO2, I think Northstar is correct. But what would be the correct density of LqdCO2 @ 1 bar @ -70C ?

And what about other resources, could they be wrong also?

Edited March 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

Hydrogen slush has substantially greater density at 16%-20% over liquid H2.

Give it a density of 85g and a boiling point of -259

Per unit?

[Raptor831]

I am open to either using the density of uranium oxide (UO2) at 10970 kg/m^3 (the current one in the sheet) or uranium carbide (UC) at 13630 kg/m3 for those two fuels. Both are qualfied solid core (or pebble bed) reactor fuels both for power and thermal rocket applications, though UC may be a better choice for NTRs (was used in late KIWIs). Though, like I said, either works .

Would there be a reason against using both? I mean, in Real Fuels there are a ton of fuel types already, so adding one more isn't going to be a big deal.

[Starwaster]

Per unit?

Correct. 85g/liter

[RoverDude]

@FreeThinker - then we will need some numbers please Just want them coming from one source to avoid confusion.

- - - Updated - - -

Side note.

To put things in perspective, it's not like things can't be adjusted later... this is why mods have versions So I'd rather sort out the resource list, density standards (5L v 1L), and get some initial numbers in there just so we can get this bundled up for our collective testing. If during that any of us finds an issue, we can address it as it comes up. That's the point of this thread.

- - - Updated - - -

Would there be a reason against using both? I mean, in Real Fuels there are a ton of fuel types already, so adding one more isn't going to be a big deal.

More from an ISRU standpoint - it means more configs, and more restrictions for players. If there's a compelling reason, so be it. But part of this is also consolidation so it makes it easier for other modders to make stuff (new engines, reactor mods, etc.) and someone would be sad if, say, an MKS ISRU module could not make the kind of nuclear fuel they wanted but could make others, esp if they were almost the same thing.

[Nertea]

Would there be a reason against using both? I mean, in Real Fuels there are a ton of fuel types already, so adding one more isn't going to be a big deal.

For me, it would be a case of functional differentiation. There's no particular reason to differentiate between those two fuels - we don't have a nuclear reactor core simulator in KSP. I prefer just one more general resource because it can be quite abstract, I can say, use it for a solid core, gas core or even a microfission fuel without creating different resources and different tankages.

If you want both, I'd like to keep EnrichedUranium anyways.

[RoverDude]

I for one vote for EnrichedUranium for all thingies that are... well... enriched uranium It makes mod interop a LOT easier.

[billkerbinsky]

If we're going to consolidate U235/Uranium, remember to mark the EnrichedUranium/DepletedUranium as a RF resource as well. Currently they're marked only as NFT.

The name "DepletedUranium" for spent fuel continues to really bug me as terminologically misleading. It's as if the game called the high point of the orbit the periapsis...

Real depleted uranium is uranium with less U235 than usual (under 0.3% U235, vs natural uranium being around 0.72% and enriched being anywhere from 3-4% U236 for reactor grade to 90% U235 for bomb-grade. There are apparently significant size & mass advantages to running a reactor on more highly enriched uranium but (on Earth) it has to be balanced against the proliferation risk. No such contraints for Kerbals, though.. :-)

DU would have never seen the inside of a reactor (it's a byproduct of enrichment), but could be used in a breeder reactor as feedstock to produce plutonium, or anywhere you need something dense to use for for counterweights, ballast, armor, or even for radiation shielding.

[Starwaster]

The name "DepletedUranium" for spent fuel continues to really bug me

So suggest an alternative name.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Starwaster

[FreeThinker]

@FreeThinker - then we will need some numbers please Just want them coming from one source to avoid confusion.

For the moment, please keep Antimatter with their original stats. The exact weight will not be very important, the storage is often going to have much more mass than whatever you store, which will never be much. So for the sake of continuality. Keep this very special resource what it is, special. Meaning 1 unit = 1g

[RoverDude]

But why?

We're going through great pains as it is to sort this out - to include myself and Nertea having to essentially redo all of our tanks. I am confused why we can't do the same for antimatter to get it in line with our agreed to conventions for storage size?

I think we all kinda threw continuality out the window when we decided to come together and sync things up Which is precisely why this version can't go live till 1.0 - so we all have time to sort out our respective configs, and since we're going to be dealing (all of us, or rather, it should be all of us and not just me and Nertea) with game breaking changes.

[Nertea]

^ What he said. We've made quite a few concessions for KSPI, and created conventions as a result. It seems strange to throw that away.