aristurtle

I updated the filters to work with TAC 0.9. https://www.dropbox.com/s/r3kijhbkji48fo6/BrassMoustache-Tac9update.zip This just contains the part config files, so install it on top of the official release.

Is there any way to have a fuel flow breaker staged, so that when I reach that stage the engine attached gets disabled? I can't figure out how to do it.

Hey, if anyone downloaded my KSOS engine configuration from a couple pages back: I screwed up the engine masses (this is why the orbiter keeps trying to land backwards). Here's an updated version: link

Hey, Nathan, how do I set engine mass correctly? I'm playing around my KSOS config and I'm finding my center of mass is too far aft. I set "basemass=1" for the main engines, but they're coming out over 3 tons each.

The usual standard is that one unit is about one liter, not one cubic meter. 5kg/L isn't exactly right (should be about 17) but it's in the ballpark.

Some of the resources are stored as cryogenic liquids and will slowly boil off (liquid hydrogen especially, but to a lesser extent liquid oxygen, methane, and ammonia). They boil off at a slower rate in a cryogenic tank. However, I'm not sure how to tell in-game if a tank is cryogenic (aside from the Procedural Parts tank where you just set it in the slider, of course).

I've got some resource chains planned right now and I think the only resource that's not already in either RealFuels or TACLS/MKS is a "Hydrogen" resource for gaseous H2, and maybe a "Nitrogen" resource for atmospheric nitrogen (or is that already in ORS?). Universal Storage has a "Hydrogen" resource used for its fuel cell, and I'll stick to the stats of that until told otherwise: // Mol: H2 // State: Gas at STP // Units: Liter RESOURCE_DEFINITION { name = Hydrogen density = 0.0000000899 unitCost = 0.015 flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH transfer = PUMP isTweakable = true }

So, I'm thinking about taking the Karbonite parts and ORS and rejuggle the whole thing to produce RealFuels resources in a moderately realistic-ish manner (i.e. without the Karbonite resource -- electrolize Water to get LiquidH2 and LiquidOxygen, etc). I know KSPI does something vaguely similar, but it's not exactly what I'm aiming at. Is anyone else doing something like this already? If not, I'm going to jump right in on it.

The current version of Real Fuels includes the patch anyway

KSOS has you install Active Texture Management but then ships with an ATM config that turns off compression for its own parts. It'll fit better if you go into that config file and set "compress = true", "max_size_normals = 512", and so forth.

Hey, I did a MM patch for Kerbal Shuttle Orbiter System, if you're interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0sqbk5496co5tq5/KSO_realfuels_v1.1.cfg

I put the tanks and the engines in separate areas in the file to make it relatively easy to separate. I think the external tank capacity needs to go up just sliiiiightly more, though: here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0sqbk5496co5tq5/KSO_realfuels_v1.1.cfg

Hey, does anyone else here use RealFuels? I use RealFuels. I wrote up a ModuleManager patch that makes the orbiter work with RealFuels: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wshk7htvw8i3k8o/KSO_realfuels_v1.cfg Main engines are set up for liquid hydrogen, side boosters for kerosene/LOX, OMS thrusters for MMH/N2O4. If you set up your staging to jettison the external tank at the same time as you activate the OMS thrusters, you'll switch over automatically, because the orbiter itself doesn't hold fuel for the main engines. I tested both orbiters to orbit (with FAR), but this is just a rough first draft, so there might be some bugs, let me know if anything horrible happens.

Okay, here's the first draft of the KSOS RealFuels config: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wshk7htvw8i3k8o/KSO_realfuels_v1.cfg It's basically what you'd expect: main engines are hydrolox, liquid side boosters are kerosene (like the Atlas-based liquid booster upgrade to STS that Lockheed was trying to sell in the nineties) with an option for Aerozine/N2O4 instead (like the Titan-based upgrade that Martin was etc. etc.), and the OMS thrusters are MMH/N2O4. I set it up so that the tanks automatically fill with the relevant fuel to keep it user-friendly when using the defaults, which is pretty much the theme of KSO. Tested both shuttles to orbit, with FAR. Don't know if they'll work without FAR right now, I'll work that later. I wanted to get a kerosene-based alternate config for the main engines, where you'd use a smaller external tank (i.e. the larger orbiter would use the smaller orbiter's tank, and the smaller one would use a Jumbo-64 or something) but couldn't make it work, the tanks wouldn't fit right.

I was in the middle of typing when you posted! I'll give that mod a shot the next time I get a day off. I have my KSO realfuels config just about done, I'll post it soon.

Dawn didn't burn for 4 days, it burned for 270. It would be neat if you could do that in KSP with time compression and some kind of autopilot system, but until they add that in, raising the thrust of the ion engines is the best we've got

Well, in real life Dawn could thrust during it's entire trip to the asteroid belt, but in KSP you're limited to a x4 time warp while the engines are on...

I'm about halfway through making a Real Fuels config for KSOS. I needed to set the external tank volume much higher than indicated by the usual ratio, but it basically matches the volume of the model.

Okay, I spent the last couple of days writing up a ModuleManager patch to fully integrate RealFuels and NearFuture, and I think it's good to go: Download link What this does: - Tweaks the dry mass for the RealFuels modular xenon tanks to more closely match stock. Basically, when "useRealisticMass = false", it should have the same mass fraction as the stock tank or thereabouts, and the same amount of xenon by mass. - Changes the NearFuture xenon tanks to use the modular tanks. - Changes the density for the ArgonGas resource to one-unit-equals-one-liter - Added a modular tank type for Argon and changed the NearFuture argon tanks to this type - Added a procedural tank that can hold either Argon or Xenon. - Changed the NearFuture LiquidHydrogen tanks to RealFuels BalloonCryogenic tanks, holding the same mass of LiquidH2 that they previously held of LiquidHydrogen. (The BalloonCryo tank type matched the old dry mass value so closely that I didn't need to change it) - Changed the NearFuture engines that used LiquidHydrogen to use LiquidH2 instead - Rebalanced all ElectricCharge consumption rates to match the new fuel densities -- should have the same EC per second that they had before. - Added RealFuels engine configuration for the chemical engine in the NearFuture Spacecraft pack -- it uses MMH and N2O4, like the real-life Space Shuttle OMS thrusters. (One would hope that in the "near future" we'll find hypergolic propellants that aren't ridiculously toxic, but there's no sign of them yet, so...) - Changed the couple of chemical fuel tanks to RealFuels modular tanks I think that about covers it. At some point I'd like to unify the RealFuels "NuclearFuel" resource with the NearFuture "EnrichedUranium" resource, so that you can reprocess spent NTR nuclear fuel in the NearFuture nuclear reprocessing plant, but this is good enough for now. I think I might do KSOS next, but I need to take a break from messing with config files for now.

They don't use one-unit-per-liter, which makes things irritating, and there's a separate LiquidHydrogen resource, and having LiquidHydrogen and LiquidH2 both in my game bugs me endlessly. I just spent the past few hours cooking up a fix that I'll post after I finish testing it. NF only adds one chemical engine, which is basically a thinner version of the Poodle. The big draw is the electrical engines, which I like using. They generally have enormous ISP, low thrust, and high electrical requirements -- it basically fleshes out the Ion Propulsion part of the tech tree that Squad only put one part into. And they're all fairly believable, too; they're based on things that are in at least the "working prototype" stage in the real world, as opposed to KSPI's antimatter engines and Alcuberre drives and whatnot. NASA really was going to send out a nuclear-reactor-powered, ion propelled probe out to Jupiter's moons a couple years back before the project's funding got cancelled, for example.

The LFO tanks are the easy part; I'm stuck on how to switch its LiquidHydrogen resource for RF's LiquidH2 without screwing up the balance they were going for.

Cool, I'm glad I could help. Right now I'm trying to work on a patchset to make NearFuture work properly with RealFuels. Speaking of which -- Nathan, did you realize when you changed the density of the XenonGas resource that it would increase the ion engine's ElectricCharge consumption dramatically? Just wondering if it was on purpose. If it wasn't, I think this should fix it: @PART [*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleEngines]:HAS[@PROPELLANT[XenonGas],@PROPELLANT[ElectricCharge]]]:NEEDS[RealFuels] { @MODULE[ModuleEngines] { @PROPELLANT[ElectricCharge] { @ratio *= 0.05894 } } } @PART [*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleEnginesFX]:HAS[@PROPELLANT[XenonGas],@PROPELLANT[ElectricCharge]]]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:AFTER[NearFuturePropulsion] { @MODULE[ModuleEnginesFX] { @PROPELLANT[ElectricCharge] { @ratio *= 0.05894 } } }

I was lazy -- I figured out the ratio of LiquidFuel in the original parts to Volume in the new parts for the config file that was already there. It was 10.41666... So then I took the LiquidFuel amount in the new 5m tanks and multiplied by that to get the volume. I think that next, I want to find some way to make RealFuels play nicely with Near Future Propulsion. That'll probably take a bit more work though.

Hey, I noticed that the new tanks in KW Rocketry 2.6 don't have modulemanager configurations included with RF. Yeah, I could just use ProceduralParts but the textures that KW has for the new unpainted tanks look really nice. Anyway, I never liked complaining when I could just as easily solve the problem, so here's the MM configs for the new KW tanks. I did the new small "05" tanks, the alternate large tanks, and the 5m tanks, using the same volume ratios that were used for the existing ones. @PART[KW1mtankL0_5] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 562.5 type = Default } } @PART[KW2mtankL0_5] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 4500 type = Default } } @PART[KW2mtankL4A] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 36000 type = Default } } @PART[KW3mtankL0_5] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 15187.5 type = Cryogenic } } @PART[KW3mtankL4A] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 144000 type = Cryogenic } } @PART[KW5mtankL05] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 36000 type = Default } } @PART[KW5mtankL1_5] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 108000 type = Default } } @PART[KW5mtankL3_5] { //!RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] {} //!RESOURCE[Oxidizer] {} //!RESOURCE[MonoPropellant] {} //!RESOURCE[XenonGas] {} MODULE { name = ModuleFuelTanks volume = 252000 type = Default } } edit: note that the 5m tanks are of limited utility because the 5m engines aren't in Raptor's engine pack yet. Maybe I'll do them later.

The Universal Storage version of the barometer appears to provide science reports on Minmus (and I assume other planets with no atmosphere).