MatterBeam

For dV, I always find MechJeb to give more reliable calculations.

I suppose this is with Real Fuels, and not with a completely stock game with only KER installed?

Hi. I find this mod, as far as it's come, very interesting. Would you mind if I eventually added them to SimpleNuclear (link in sig)?

v0.6 flashes by, v0.7 now. Small fixes. Electric rocket FX are broken for now, will be replaced by something stock. I'll have to balance the Pulsed Fusion reactor a bit better. So far, the combination of pulsed fusion and MHD generator allows for greater deltaV than the tokamak, at the cost of about a quarter of the thrust to weight, but the ratio is skewed too hard towards the pulsed fusion setup. Will need testers!

Great report. What modpack does that capsule come from? Also, would have liked to see the aero overlay during the skip re-entry.

Yes! Updated to v0.5 We've left alpha, and are definitely in the Beta phase. The ThermalRocketNozzle and ThermalTurboJet now both work perfectly. I will now move on to engines consuming MWe. I have however, hit two problems: -KerbalEngineer cannot calculate the deltaV of engines running on MWt, since it considers the transient, renewable supply of MWt as a physical propellant. MechJeb does these calculations perfectly fine thanks to its 'ignoreForIsp' feature. -Time warping to x100000 will mess up thermal calculations. Entering such high time warps with a reactor on will cause the thermals to flicker between 'cold' and 'maximal heat'. Exiting the time warp causes the reactor to shut down and all temperatures to flicker at about +/-150K of 'cold' temperatures. Re-starting the reactor causes hundreds of hour's worth of thermal energy to be dumped into the reactor. Spamming the restart button eventually causes the reactor to settle into the maximal equilibrium state. I tested with the Solid Fission reactor, designed to never overheat (it stabilizes at 1885/200K temp). The problem is, other reactors with lower thermal margins will likely explode before radiators kick in. I believe @Psycho_zs,encountered this problem and @Nertea solved it with some .dll magic.

Hi! Is there any way to include the 'ignore for isp' feature for massless propellants, as in MechJeb, for dV calculations?

Can't it affect the Output_Resource value? Sorry, I'm new to all this.

Thanks, sarbian, I was looking at the wrong mod the entire time!

Ah stupid me, I kept on looking at the KerbalEngineer deltaV stats. The Mechjeb DeltaV custom window does indeed give correct values. Thyank you for your help!

Hello Sarbian! The objective here is to allow a nuclear engine to consume Megawatts (massless) and LiquidFuel. The density of Megawatts is already set to zero in the ResourceDefinition config, but Mechjeb and KerbalEngineer both calculate dV based on the remaining amount of Megawatts. I will test with the ignoreforIsp line.

Well then, since the dynamic ISP option is out... How do I get MechJeb and/or KerbalEngineer to calculate the dV of a rocket using an engine consuming at least 1 massless propellant? More specifically, how do I get the above two to 'ignore' one of the two propellants an engine is consuming?

That's so sad! Everywhere I go, trying to do anything above the most basic of modifications, there this great big .dll wall in the way.

Can I not perform math on atmosphereCurves? Also, what would this do?: { DynamicISPFactor = 1 @atmosphereCurve { key = 0 500*#$DynamicISPFactor$ key = 1 250*#$DynamicISPFactor$ key = 2 100*#$DynamicISPFactor$ } }

Hello. I'm trying to create an engine with dynamic ISP. The process I'm imagining requires three steps: Measure value X = Available Resource Y (ie Propellant Flow in an ModuleEnginesFX module) Define value Z = (Available X)/(Nominal Resource Y) Render Isp variable: atmosphereCurve { key = 0 500*Z key = 1 250*Z key = 2 100*Z } What is the code required for each step?

Parts with ModuleResourceConverter... like the reactors in my SimpleNuclear mod I checked by tweakscale re-sizing engines. They always have 100% = current max.

My problem comes with Tweakscale expecting original-size-output and calculating the % based off that. My 3.75m scale parts produce 300%, for example. Can something be done about that?

The problem with fusion, in my opinion, is not feasability or technical issues. Those can be solved eventually. It's the fact that there's a long way to go with current energy sources, and applying today's technology to breeder reactors and seawater uranium filtering will power civilization for millions of years. DT fusion is the easiest, and produces neutron radiation, but it is less radioactive than fission, and I'm confident we're handling current levels quite well.

A feature added in 1.0.5 is the display of the requirements or load of a part in its action menu as a percentage of its maximal intake or output. What .cfg code is required to display this as raw data (number of units per second)?

Based on the low temp behavior of the Solid Fission Reactor, and runaway high-temp behavior of the Gas Core Reactor, I managed to mass produce and test the remaining reactors. All I've got left to do is tweakscale integration, action menu descriptions and part information in the VAB. I've moved onto engines, in other words, the 'fun' part. For now, I'm working on a simple rocket nozzle and jet. The nozzle works fine, but the turbojet consumes too little MWt.

The 3000 is a typo, it was corrected to 1000K. Here's my pretty much finished SolidFission config: PART { name = SolidFission module = Part author = ZZZ, Fractal mesh = Nuke_Reactor_Jr.mu rescaleFactor = 3 node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.25, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -0.25, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 1 TechRequired = basicScience entryCost = 50000 cost = 10000 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = Solid Fission Reactor manufacturer = SimpleNuclear description = A fission reactor generating thermal energy. It contains solid rods of Uranium cooled by molten lithium salts. Energy is extracted by a heat exhanger. It is dense and durable, and requires very little cooling, making it best suited for rockets intended for atmospheric re-entry. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 1,1,1,1,0 mass = 8.5 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.3 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 30 breakingForce = 4000 breakingTorque = 4000 maxTemp = 1200 RESOURCE { name = MWt amount = 0 maxAmount = 2000 } MODULE { name = ModuleResourceConverter ConverterName = Reactor StartActionName = Start Reactor StopActionName = Stop Reactor INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 0.1 } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = MWt DumpExcess = true Ratio = 765 } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge DumpExcess = true Ratio = 0.1 } AutoShutdown = false TemperatureModifier { key = 0 765000 key = 400 765000 key = 800 765000 key = 1000 100000 key = 1400 100000 key = 2000 0 } GeneratesHeat = true ThermalEfficiency { key = 0 0.3 0 0 key = 400 0.6 0 0 key = 800 0.8 0 0 key = 1000 1.0 0 0 key = 1200 1.2 0 0 key = 1400 0.8 0 0 key = 2000 0.6 0 0 } } MODULE { name = ModuleCoreHeat CoreTempGoal = 1000 //Internal temp goal - we don't transfer till we hit this point CoreToPartRatio = 0.1 //Scale back cooling if the part is this % of core temp CoreTempGoalAdjustment = 0 //Dynamic goal adjustment CoreEnergyMultiplier = 0.2 //What percentage of our core energy do we transfer to the part HeatRadiantMultiplier = 0.1 //If the core is hotter, how much heat radiates? CoolingRadiantMultiplier = 0 //If the core is colder, how much radiates? HeatTransferMultiplier = 1 //If the part is hotter, how much heat transfers in? CoolantTransferMultiplier = 0.01 //If the part is colder, how much of our energy can we transfer? radiatorCoolingFactor = 1 //How much energy we pull from core with an active radiator? >= 1 radiatorHeatingFactor = 0.01 //How much energy we push to the active radiator MaxCalculationWarp = 1000 //Based on how dramatic the changes are, this is the max rate of change CoreShutdownTemp = 2000 //At what core temperature do we shut down all generators on this part? MaxCoolant = 5000 //Maximum amount of radiator capacity we can consume - 50 = 1 small } } RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 0 maxAmount = 1 } MODULE { name = TweakScale type = stack defaultScale = 2.5 } } It heats up quickly to 1000K, while the part internals lag behind. Without any cooling, it is inefficient and will eventually explode. With little cooling, it will not explode and maintain superefficiency. Too much cooling and you'll still get the nominal 100% output. I've been testing empirically, with different values for the temperature modifier, and my conclusions are that there is no way I can ask players to add 100 large deploying radiators to deal with the heat, of say, a 4GW 3.75m scale Tokamak reactor. However, dropping the power levels to what can be handled by the stock heating system (kW-scale), the nuclear reactors will be extremely non-competitive with chemical and direct-thermal engines, like the NERV. My current balance runs on specific power and power density, with operating temperature as a extra balancing factor. For example, if I dropped the Solid Fission reactor from 90MW/ton to 90kW/ton, I'd be able to use a very realistic 90000 temperature modifier... but it'd be even less competitive than the actual 78MW/ton NERV.

Anybody in the UK trying to build a £400ish PC?

Amazing as always, Nathan. I have a feeling the Ares III-4's boosters could be glided back for recovery.... My tip would be to add multiple fins so that you can reduce the length of each one. Here's the largest thing I used in RSS/RO: It's the first rocket launch of the album. Named the Africa I, it can place 50 tons in low Earth Orbit. Weight on launchpad is 1250 tons.

The NSWR might be pushed to sufficient temperatures in its most extreme versions, but it will never reach the pressures required to contain the tritium long enough to force it to interact and fuse.

As far as I know, the S-turns were done well after the ultra- to hypersonic part of re-entry, mostly to bleed of speed before lining up for the final landing run. The most important part of an RSS re-entry, in KSP at least, is to remove as much speed as possible in the upper atmosphere. I usually place a dozen air brakes and activate them at 100km altitude. This reduces the re-entry speed from about 9km/s to about 8km/s before I hit the stratosphere, which is critical for avoiding exploding parts.