DBowman

Mechjeb's Landing Guidance can be used as an aerocapture aid. Just open LG and click 'show landing predictions', there are a few options you can play with but basically you can adjust your Pe and if you are entering the atmosphere and not hitting rock it will tell you what orbit you will end up in. I've not tried it in1.0.2.

D'oh - thanks Crzyrndm, I'll try that for sure. My only worry is that high warp / unload & load might mess up and leave 0 of the resource as a boundary/race condition, but I guess I can just make the 'required part' itself generate it's resource also. I'd still be interested in some existing mod that could be a good start for me to understand how to implement something like this for other requirements like acceleration, pressure, etc.

These guys are touting using natural gas from fracking to feed salmon to feed people, crazy: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21649441-feeding-farmed-salmon-protein-made-methane-gas-guzzlers This is what made me think 'ooooh solar array re-texture' http://www.dw.de/gardens-in-space-how-microalgae-and-flat-panel-reactors-could-sustain-life/a-16997493 This has a bit of a survey / summary: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/lifesupport.php It seems like by picking the species you can tune protein, carb, and fat - the trouble is probably all the right vitamins, avoiding too much of the bits that would make you sick, and I guess 'palatability'.

I thought to make some parts that 'worked together' to produce / consume resources without having them do detailed simulation. The idea was to avoid any of the weird high warp & not active issues, to having to cope with them via 'catchups' or 'background processing'. Is there some mod/plugin that is like a ModuleGenerator/ModuleResourceConverter/TACGeneric... that can check some prerequisites for for producing? For example one can easily use MM to create a 'reactor' part to produce as many kW as you like - but really it needs to have adequate radiators. Near Future Electrical looks like it's done a great job of detailed modelling, including overheat damage etc. But that is kind of overpowered for what I intended. An alternate approach would be to have a resource 'ThermalSink' and some kind of 'ModuleResourceConverter' that 'required' a certain amount to be present in order to produce output but did not consume that resource. Like a CATALYTIC_INPUT vs INPUT_RESOURCE & OUTPUT_RESOURCE. It would be great/interesting if it could check for and require other things; needs photons, temperature range, atmosphere density, gravity/not, ... but just a resource check would be great. If there isn't something like this does anyone have any suggestions re any existing plugin that would make a good starting point? or lesson as to how this kind of things gets implemented as a plugin?

Hi, Soylent modder here. Modelling radiation would be great, are you thinking also ionising radiation? (fission reactors and shielding/not etc) What do you think of the background processing mod - it sounds like it will call a 'hook' at time intervals while the craft is unloaded and that solar panels working 'comes with it'. Re Algae: jonrd463 thanks for the recommendation! Dr. Jet I think it's fair to say that microbe based LS has not been demonstrated so far but also that it has genuine potential. A lot of fish farm food is now derived from industrial use of microbes, including protein from methane for under 2 $/kg. ESA has been running research for years and continues to fund it. I think at a big picture level it makes sense to 'start at the bottom of the food chain' and to use automated/remote managed mechanised fluid pumping tech rather than having expensive astronauts 'do gardening'.

You can try my Be Cool Stock Nuke, it's got some variants on the Orange tank with only Liquid fuel, no need to carry empty Oxidizer tankage around.

I think NASA DRA5 Mars mission LH2 tanks are 30% 'structure, insulation, and chillers' by mass, I believe they need more insulation and the chillers because they have to store the LH2 for years. 'To orbit launchers' (Saturn, Shuttle, etc) can have lighter tanks because the LH2 will be used up within a 'few' minutes.

Front loading washer/dryer command module?

sweet, I'll stay tuned. I have a 'green house' style 'solar arrays full of algae' that I want to keep themselves in synch with TAC consumption & production rates. In the new version when people tweak the production/consumption rates will that require a restart and thus my MM.cfg could get the new values?

I've done like: -atmosphereCurve {} atmosphereCurve { key = 0 8200 key = 1 1500 } to avoid 'editing the curve in place'

Dr. Jet - the new hex core & Elektron are looking really nice.

Just don't ask what it's made of ...

closes the Life Support Cycle with four part types: Solid and liquid waste is reduced to a Sterile Organic Slurry by a Super Critical Water Oxidation Unit. Sterile Organic Slurry is fed to an algae based micro-biome, cultured in arrays of water filled polymer channels exposed to the sun - producing Oxygen, Food, and Water. It's a flat-pack greenhouse. Electric powered bioreactors can operate where the sun don't shine enough. Soylent Starter provides essential micro-nutrients and "spores" to stop the micro-biome death spiraling Soylent can be used stand alone as 'cosmetic' parts, or functioning with TAC Life Support. The part size, mass, volume, and power demands try to be 'fairly realistic'. Quantity/volume of algae required is worked out on the basis of what is required for a 'man day' but not adjusted down to Kerbal size. The assumptions are based on continuous sunlight so if the craft will be experiencing periodic darkness you should scale up the number of Soylent arrays correspondingly. The Super Critical Water Oxidation is exothermic, it's basically a controlled liquid phase fire, so it has modest power demands for pumping and 'ignition'. This system builds on the work of Evgenii Shepelev who in 1961 sealed himself in an iron casket with 8 gallons of green algae. Two kinds of Algae Array are provided; one reflecting optimistic assumptions, and the other mid range assumptions: Solent Red reflects optimistic thinking on algal yield, purely by serendipity this worked out at one small solar array to support a Kerbal! or 11 Kerbals per Gigantor. Soylent Green reflects more conservative thinking on algal yield, somewhere between best and worst case a Gigantor sized array will support a Kerbal. TAC Life Support interoperation If TACLS is present the parts will inter-operate to 'close the loop'. The resource conversions for 'a man' worth of algae are set to match TAC consumption and production rates. The parts will 'catch up' after being un-focused, for example flying other vehicles or warping in KSC. You need to ensure sufficient buffer resources since the TAC catch up is not perfect. I found the catch up lagged by up to four days, but YMMV, insufficient buffer will kill the crew. KSP doesn't really handle high warp electricity generation correctly so you need a battery buffer to max warp. USI Life Support interoperation If USI-LS is present the parts will inter-operate to 'close the loop'. The resource conversions for 'a man' worth of algae are set to match USI consumption and production rates. Soylent uses the native USI resource converters and acts like native USI 'greenhouses', it still requires Soylent Starter. The Super Critical Water Oxidation Unit adds a 'sprinkle' of Soylent Starter (essential micro nutrients etc) to the Sterile Organic Slurry it produces. It's a tweakable resource, one part Soylent Starter will support the production of 1000 parts Food. News 17 Jul 2015 mmmm - bacon New algae strain - high protein, more nutritious than kale, tastes like bacon! http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/jul/osu-researchers-discover-unicorn-%E2%80%93-seaweed-tastes-bacon 7 Oct 2015 NASA loves Algae NASA just announced the winners of a challenge they ran http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/na...independence-0 It was a three way win, one was: Pierre Blosse, from Urbandale, Iowa, for his entry: Starch from the Micro-Algae Chlorella as the Main Food Source for a Self-Sustaining Martian Colony. Go Algae!! 12 Oct 2015 Soylent has been Modded westamastaflash has kindly put together .cfgs for a TweakScalable Gigantor Green (2x = 4 Kerbals, 3x = 9 Kerbals LS) and a Large Processor Unit to handle the waste of up to 9 Kerbals (based on the Hitchhiker) https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=1731C32CC90F1274!649&authkey=!AL-1jKhqnuczTbU&ithint=folder%2ccfg Dec 15 2015 NASA's Water Walls NASA is funding research into using the water that is supporting an algae based life support system for radiation shielding link. Oct 19 2016 re-invent agriculture with microbes Lisa Dyson wants to re-invent agriculture on earth, kicked off by mid 1960s NASA research into using microbes for closed cycle life support - a TED talk It's a joke right? I like realism, how seriously should I take this? Although it's named for the fictional Soylent, the functionality is intended to be 'near future'. I read that a company was starting to produce high protein food pellets for farmed Salmon from processed methane eating bacteria, at under USD 2.00 / kg (Methylococcus capsulatus). Naturally I thought - methane, Mars ISRU, food for Mars Astronauts! Turns out people have been thinking about microbe based life support for a long time. Early experiments in the 1960's, NASA reports from the 1980s (84, 88 ) (including 'why not genetic engineering'), a large ongoing ESA research project MELiSSA). These are all proposing some mixed system of algae, bacteria, plankton, etc. Who knows how close it is, but it seems like there are some compelling reasons to think it will pan out: Earth's life support system has microbes as huge and critical component. The lower down the food chain you eat the more efficient it is, and you cannot get any lower than microbes. Even if you don't stay right at the bottom it seems like a good place to start. Greenhouses are fiddly, labor intensive, take a lot of space/mass, and don't play well with others (for example their equilibrium humidity is higher than humans and electronics like - not a killer but has to be managed). We can manipulate microbe bio-mass by pumping water around, since it's all industrial and mechanical it can be automated and run remotely. On the downside no one has got far enough with the production aspect to start worrying about the palatability aspect - but since people basically like fatty, sweet, and salty you can imagine a super centrifuging thermo mix machine that spits out various blends and textures of pellets, bars, and pastes. So Algae? not really, but Microbes surely. Light, Distance, & Yield The Soylent Algal Arrays use sunlight, the intensity falls off as the inverse square of the distance. Using Kerbin as 100% you get light intensity as % of Kerbin normal: 38.98 % @ Duna 08.46 % @ Dres 04.00% @ Jool 01.40% @ Eeloo The photic zone on Earth goes down to 1% of surface intensity, below that intensity photosynthesis will not operate. But it looks pretty grim, at Jool you need 25 times the collection area to get as many photons as at Kerbin. It turns out photosynthetic efficiency is linear with light intensity up to 10% of earth surface normal, after that it's 'saturated' and the extra light is not useful. So yield will ramp up from 0% to 100% as light goes from 1% to 10% of Earth surface normal. This gives the yield as a % of Kerbin normal: 100% @ Duna 86% @ Dres 1/3 @ Jool 4% @ Eeloo So for Jool missions you should triple the 'nominal' Algal Array requirements. If you are on a surface with night and day, or in low orbit experiencing periods of darkness you should scale up accordingly. If you will be spending a fairly short time at each end of a trip with periodic darkness then you can just make sure you are a little over break even production and use your life support supply buffer to 'tide you over', usually there is plenty of time to catch up during transit - just make sure your waste buffer is large enough. If you are playing in Real Solar System the yields work out as: 100% @ Mars 100% @ most of the asteroids 38% @ Jupiter 0% at Saturn - it's sitting right round 1% light intensity I'd originally intended to have the arrays produce 'photons' for the Algae, however KSPs seemed to bork it under high warp and in any case does not model solar arrays for un-focused craft. Until I resolve this somehow, I have eliminated the photon dependency - just pretend it's there. Requires Module Manager Spacedoc: mod/355/Soylent Change Log: v 0.2 - add a radial attach container for Soylent Starter for large and / or very long term missions. Tested against 1.0.4 with TAC-LS, tested against 1.0.5 TAC-LS. v 0.3 - Add USI-LS compatibility. Add UDA Agency, this makes stock filter by manufacturer work. Add a UDA flag. Fix Soylent Starter Container manufacturer. v 0.3 - tested against TAC LS 0.12.4.0 in KSP 1.1.3 - looks okay, marked on spacedock.info v 0.4 - fixed gigantor re-texture for red and green Soylent. Launched craft should update v 0.5 - tested against KSP 1.2, changes to match TAC-LS 0.12.5 & USI-LS 0.5.3.0 v 0.6 Add 'Dark' grow-light parts that run on e. Community Category Kit compliance. Agency images fixes. Less threatening logo. :FOR[UDASoylent] so you could use :NEEDS[UDASoylent]. Tested against KSP, TAC, USI per v0.5. v 0.06.1 Add SuperCritical Water Oxidation Unit Array from @String Witch tested with KSP 1.2.2, TAC-LS 0.12.7.0 Best Version For KSP Version: KSP 1.1.3 use Soylent 0.4 KSP 1.2 use Soylent 0.6 KSP 1.2.2 USE Soylent 0.06.1 KSP 1.9 use Soylent 0.06.4

I was more trying to say 'could TAC choose to place a file where both they and other modders could access it?'

oh hmm if TACLS placed that data somewhere else then other MM .cfgs could access it? but if it did that then would TAC still be able to use it to config the plugin?

thanks v much starwaster - I'll give that a shot Is the syntax explained somewhere? I didn't see it on the wiki. #$$ is the 'this is variable magic' signifier? @ is value of 'remote' variable? / is 'value of 'local' variable?

can anyone tell me if something like this is possible? TAC Life Support has a .cfg file GameData\ThunderAerospace\TacLifeSupport\PluginData\TacLifeSupport\LifeSupport.cfg containing ... GlobalSettings {... WasteProductionRate = X ... }... is there a way I can address X from a .cfg file? to do something like: My.cfg: PART {... MODULE {.. somevalue = ThunderAerospace.TacLifeSupport.PluginData.TacLifeSupport.LifeSupport.WasteProductionRate ... }... }

For my part I feel non ISRU cannot 'compete' with ISRU - free fuel cannot be beat. That would tend to force every entry to ISRU. More variety seems like a good thing for participants and spectators.

I saw mad for adding ablative to parts, fairings + ablative = heat shield? maybe they could go that way? It seemed a neat idea begin able to 'harden' parts.

thanks sarbian - ah a bogus node... I just now tried that: Patch.cfg with BOGUSNODE:FOR[PatchNode] {} part.cfg with ...MODULE:NEEDS[PatchNode]{}...MODULE:NEEDS[!PatchNode]{}... I tried with the Patch.cfg in MyMod directory and in the GameData directory - it always matched the NEEDS[!PatchNode] one. the log says things like: Config(BOGUSNODE:FOR[PatchNode]) MyMod/Patch/BOGUSNODE:FOR[PatchNode] - if I put Patch.cfg in GameData/MyMod or Config(BOGUSNODE:FOR[PatchNode]) /Patch/BOGUSNODE:FOR[PatchNode] - if I put Patch.cfg in GameData and later [ModelManager] Deleting node in file: MyMod/Part/part subnode: +PART [solarPanels2]/+PART[solarPanels2][]/MODULE:NEEDS [PatchNode] as it can't satisfy its NEEDS I hope you can see something obvious I'm doing wrong. Maybe there is a well known example of where someone uses this technique? - I could pull down that mod and take a look.

Hi, I'm wanting to have some global flags that I can use to drive inclusion of things in MM.cfg files. The end effect I want is that by replacing/tweaking one .cfg all the others should change their behaviour. For example in a .cfg: ... MODULE:NEEDS[MY_TWEAK_A&!MY_TWEAK_B] { // module A version } MODULE:NEEDS[!MY_TWEAK_A&MY_TWEAK_B] { // module B version } ... and MY_TWEAK_A etc is 'set' in tweakit.cfg I 'got the effect' by adding a file GameData/MY_TWEAK_A/Stub.cfg with - but that feels like a misuse of things, and I'd much rather keep the tweakit.cfg inside the directory of all my .cfgs I saw some 'variable access' kind of stuff I've not come to grips with yet, it looks like the kind of thing I'm after but I don't know how to leverage that into a NEEDS style effect (nor how to actually use it yet...). Can anyone suggest a neater way to get the effect I want?

TaranisElsu: I just found LifeSupport.cfg GlobalSettings. Is that accessible via MM variable addressing? When someone adjusts rates via the GUI does that tweak these values? or the adjusted rates available to MM somehow? I was wanting to make a part via MM that could keep up with any reconfig the user did via the GUI.

Thanks for the ref Gryphon. I got a clean install, newest TAC, newest MM. Ran a similar test again - it all worked as TanisElsu described - doing the catch up processing when I re-flew the craft, without the recycler the crew should have been long dead. So thats good, but I'm not sure what I saw before TanisElsu - what do you do re electricity when you 'catch-up'? just assume 'enough' or 'enough if there is enough 'for one tick' on unpack'? thanks

Thanks for looking at this. It's not just a small discrepancy like you'd get from out of order of dependent processes. I had KSC warped forward a few days, when I fly the ship again I see that the few days water is consumed and a corresponding amount of WasteWater is in the container - as though the Recycler had not been running at all. It 'manually' 'catches up' as the ship has focus and time passes - but I did not see any 'automatically catch it up as the ship loads' which is what I was expecting. I'll make a log file - um what's the best way to get it to you?

dureiken - https://github.com/taraniselsu/TacLifeSupport/wiki/FAQ answers your query 'yes it's normal' - but with a Duna round trip at about 1200 days ... TaranisElsu - I have a problem when running a test with a Mk2 Lander Can (2 crew) + 12 RTG + large Food + large Oxygen + empty large Water + TACLS Water Purifier - I warp up to 1000 and all looks good the purifier can easily keep up with the 2 crew and I get net increase in water (from the digested food I guess). However if I go to space center and warp 1000 for some days and then fly the craft I see the purifier has not run. I see Waste Water accumulated and Water & Food consumed. I expected that 'active warp 1000' should have the same effect as 'go ksc, warp 100, switch back to craft' - I can see why the coding challenge could be totally different (and from reading some other threads I'm sure it is different and harder). Am I seeing what you expect to see? If you say it's not I'll do a clean install of just TACLS and try it again and give you logs.