Lionel_de_Lion

Shhh - it's free Science! Besides, I'm fairly sure Mun has an atmosphere (and I can prove that by showing you the readings from the onboard barometer). :-)

The difference with the Elektron is that it isn't running out of its fuel. Running out of ElectricCharge just means you can't switch off an already firing engine - the opposite of the behaviour that's wanted for the Elektron.

That, if I may say, is a stroke of genius!

Extensive fiddling with the part.cfg file tells me that as long as the Elektron is taking water at a rate > 0.0005 then it'll work at x1 speed. I tried multiplying all the rate values by 15 but that meant the device needed 330 Electricity/second and was producing 0.672 litres of hydrogen and 0.336 litres of oxygen per second. That seems a little on the high side. For now, I've changed my part.cfg to use 0.00054 litres of water but left the electric, hydrogen and oxygen rates unchanged. It's 15 times less efficient but (if my calculations are correct) I'm still getting 82.3/41.5 litres of hydrogen/oxygen from each litre of water processed that this seems like a good deal.

For what it's worth, if you multiply all the "rate" values for input and output (and. of course, the Elektron's mass) by 15 then the Elektron works happily at X1 speed. I tried multiplying by 12.5 but that wasn't enough. Having 15 separate Elektrons doesn't have the same effect (other than using up the Electric Charge). I've not experimented with multiples between 12.5 and 15 to see where the exact sweet spot is.

All it needs in a stack of 60 Z-4K batteries to leave a single Elektron running overnight, and it'll convert a full water block in under 94 Kerbin days. I've also learned that a stack of 60 Z-4K batteries makes a really big explosion when you switch back to x1 and physics kicks in. :-)

Ah, I'd not appreciated the miniscule values involved. Having built a massive test rig (10 Elektons and a shedload of gigantor solar panels) I can confirm that it is working after all, but only at x50 or faster. In fact, in 32 days I managed to convert 4 full water blocks into 2321 oxygen and 4642 hydrogen. I would have created more oxygen and hydrogen if the Elektrons didn't still consume water at the same rate during night time when there was no electric charge available to power the conversion. It seems you have to run at X50 or faster AND switch the generators off every night when there's no power (or have the solar panels in perpetual sunlight) to get the most from your H2O.

I've just tried to use the Elektron for the first time and while it'll enthusiastically drink up my ElectricCharge it's not showing any interest in water nor is it producing any hydrogen or oxygen.

Thanks for posting this. Commenting out these sections fixed the problem I was having.

I've no idea if this is the Module Manager misbehaviour mentioned above, but I'm not getting any of the components in the US oxygen, hydrogen and water blocks (the only options I get if I right click on the parts are "Open hatch" or "Structure Off" and for some reason the fuel cell isn't hugely productive without oxygen and hydrogen (it'll still activate, it just doesn't produce any power). I'm using Windows7 (64bit) and have tried both the 32- and 64-bit versions of KSP with the same results (and with ModuleManager 2.2.0). Am I overlooking a mod dependency somewhere? I've not installed KAS on 0.24 yet (nor the US KAS parts) and that's the only obvious difference between 0.24 and what I had working perfectly on 0.23.5.