SuicidalInsanity

Did some more optimization and tinkering based on the success everyone else has had with short and stubby vs long and managed to shave off almost 7 tons: The Fat Sparrow - 36m/s left in the tank @ 81x80km orbit; 16,416 Funds, 22,227 kg Wet mass. Only a single precooler as extra intakes are superfluous and saves on drag - it's not enough air for static full thrust, but by the end of the runway it's moving 150m/s and the precooler becomes more than sufficient for the Goliath. Got to 400m/s @9km before the 100 LF earmarked for the Goliath ran out and the Thuds lit.

I think this is just about as efficient as you can get: (Naturally, I fully expect to be proven wrong at some point). 17,592 Funds, 29.335 tons, 26 parts.

Finished the Medusa - now you too can turn your Kerbals to stone give them searing eye burns with its gaze! Update 1.8 - GitHub | SpaceDock Changelog: -New part: Medusa Drive -Adds Medusa Drive example craft -Fix flight GUI yield select for custom max yields > 5 kt -Reduced A.P.U mass - nuke magazines shouldn't be quite as absurdly heavy now.

At present, nukes are transferred manually via the part action window using stock fuel transfer - Right-click on the the Orion, Alt+Right click on a magazine, then click the Out button to transfer from the latter to the former.

Yes, a Custom part category can be added. Good catch; I'll get that fixed. Odd. It includes a decoupler. If you check your KSP install, does it include a /GameData/Mk2Expansion/Parts/Structural/Decoupler/ folder?

The NPU mags are that heavy due to pulse units being 645 kg each. 0.645*60 = 38.7 tons. As for why they are 2/3's of a ton per bomb is something of a fudge on my end to come up with something between real-world numbers and KSP. RL numbers for pulse units - 1st gen pulse units using '60's tech - as noted were from 86-140 kg for 1kt, looking at what docs I could find gave 1152 kg for 5kt. My main concern was I wanted one unified propellant resource - hence the variable yield instead of having to juggle n different discrete yields (and n different fuel tanks). Problem with variable yield is mass needs remain constant, so all those bombs are going to mass whatever a max yield device would - lower yields are now super heavy/inefficient. 645 kg seemed an acceptable compromise between 150 and 1150 kg for 1-5kt units. That said, looking at the masses for TD's Orion pulse units it looks like I've been too conservative in how I'm scaling things - TD had 5tk units be 549kg, so a revision of pulse unit mass is something that'll happen for next update. Same. Not going to lie, your Orion mod directly inspired this one; I initially wanted to see if I could resurrect the plugin, but the changes needed to get it working meant it was far easier to just code a new one from scratch.

^^ no and yes. There is no BDA dependency/interaction; Pulse units will not cause HP/armor damage. That said, they do have blast radii, and anything caught in the blast will be affected - KSC structures within the 140kPa overpressure zone will be destroyed (~300m @ 1kt), and parts will be subjected to impulse and flash heating - attempting to rendezvous with a station/base under Orion power will end in tragedy hilarity. ... Update 1.7.5 is now up, grab from SpaceDock | Github. No Medusa yet, but the groundwork's there - this is mainly a bugfix update. Changelog: v1.7.5 ============================================= -Further revision to impulse code; 2-4x pyhsicswarp now properly uses impulse curves -ModulePulseEngines now supports Medusa-class Orions -Fixes landing gear NRE -Reduced Nuke flash scale at sea level -Fixes Orion firing when not active vessel and throttle > 0 -Min and max yield is now configurable -Short Crewcan now has light emissives -fixes crewhab IVA lounge table normals -Adds some example ships

Mods allowed, eh? Hmm. Hmhm Mhahahahah. Ahem. I perhaps went a little overboard in my attempt. Is it the most efficient method of completing the contact? From a certain point of view-it will efficiently remove "all" traces of any nefarious shenanigans that may or may not have transpired.

A Smelter and a Uranium Processor - both in the Utilities tab - and a Workshop - integrated into the spinal trusses in the structural tab. There's a patch for stock drills to mine MetallicOre and Uraninite from asteroids, which are converted into Metals and Enriched Uranium, which are used by the workshop for pulse units. I'll see about getting CRP added as a dependency for CKAN installs. KSPScalar controls how much additional impulse pulse units generate when in an atmosphere. Setting it higher will give a smoother launch, conversely, setting it below, oh, 5 or so is going to be suicidal for a Kerbin ASL launch outside of the Unbreakable Joints cheat. For vac thrust modification you want collimation factor, which controls thrust and ISP. Current numbers were based around the 10m ship intended for launch atop a Saturn V, as well as keeping in mind the reduced scale of KSP - 6 large external magazines + Orion internal mag can still give a 4000 ton vessel something like 100k dV at 5kt yield; but yes, yields and dV are lower than proposed values for full-scale Orions (That, and dV scaling with yield doesn't help, but is a consequence of going for a variable-yield approach instead of juggling n different types of pulse unit for different yields). But remember - 15tk yields were intended for 20m vessels massing in at something like 10-20k tons, and Dyson's 100-years-to-Alpha-Centauri proposal was even bigger. Doesn't mean I can't open up yield values to let them be .cfg based instead of hard-coded, though. So that's what's causing it. I was wondering what it was; that simplifies my job trying to squash it. That said, until then, the times its cropped up for me reverting to launch fixed the issue. As for people wanting Medusae - I was right about being being able to support them with minimal modifications to ModulePuseEngine: Can't promise a Medusa release date, but they're doable. Scale will need some tweaking, though - that test article is has a 50m diameter when deployed. Semi-realistic, relative to KSP's scale? Sure. Does it fit in the VAB? Not really.

Dres has a certain reputation as a place to avoid. Since I've never bothered to go there before, and I was bored, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. It didn't end well.

Oh hey, its back; time to push the bounds of orthodoxy again. Insanity Aerospace presents: IA-480 Dynamerang (Turboprop/Small Regional Jet): IA's latest offering once again combines innovation with extravagance, redefining flight from a chore to an experience. Once again rejecting the tried-and-tested 'tube with windows' design, the Dynamerang will put to ultimate rest the struggle to get a window seat. Seating 48, the innovative cabin layout takes full advantage of the airframe's blended body design, treating passengers to a frontal view of the skies that turns a otherwise claustrophobic transit into an experience akin to an outing to a movie theatre, opening up the marvels of flight to all by granting them a view otherwise solely experienced by the pilot. Capable as well as stylish, the large wing area grants a takeoff speed of 50m/s and a takeoff distance of less than 200m, the Dynamerang practically leaps into the air. The similarly unique engine outrigger mounting both distances and isolates passengers from engine noise and places the engines and fuel tanks in easily accessible locations to facilitate ground crew maintenance. Powered by 6 Wheesley turbofans, the aircraft has a cruising speed of 204m/s and fuel consumption of 0.46 with a standard fuel load at 8000m, giving a minimum range in excess of 850km. With a standard fuel load, the underwing tanks are fulled half full; if extra range is required, filling the tanks to full gives a maximum wet performance of 185m/s at 6000m, for a minimum range of 1400km. The Dynamerang is capable of water landing and performing as a seaplane, though this drastically decreases engine lifespans and available maintenance budgets, and is not recommended unless performed by a skilled pilot. Avg. cruising speed: 204m/s @ 8km Avg. range: 850km Cost: 62,558,000 48 passengers fully stock(no dlc) After takeoff, climb to altitude @ 25deg until 6500-7000, then begin leveling off until cruising alt and speed reached. Cruising alt can be maintained via trim. In case of an unpowered water landing, maintain a shallow dive to maintain control, ideally want to splashdown at 90m/s or less with a vertical speed of ~1m/s. AG 1 toggles thrust reversers. Buy it from ~here~

Those patches are ~4 years out of date. Updated versions of those patches were integrated into SMX (ver0.99.3, IIRC) and can be found at /MiningExtension/Patches/SME_NFP.cfg and SME_CE.cfg

A Medusa wasn't originally on the to-do list, but with only minimal tweaking (mainly opening up animation/impulse cycle length to be configurable) ModulePulseEngine would support Medusae-class engines, so, maybe? I really hope you mean 10m - 20m in the scaled down universe of KSP goes beyond gigantic into truly colossal. A 10m engine wouldn't be difficult to make, and could be included as an add-on mod to SPO, though it would more-or-less require tweakscale to use. You'll have to look elsewhere for Iowa-class turrets or Casaba Howitzers, though. Those are firmly in BDA territory.

Update 1.7 is now up, and includes many of the other Project Orion parts hinted at earlier. GitHub | SpaceDock Changelog: Orion impulse has gone through a further code revision to smooth things out even further. Heavy parts like the Orion pulse magazines have also had their joint strength increased, and the payload spines now have radial attach nodes for stronger joint connections; together, vessels should be much less prone to RUD than before. Also added is ISRU pulse unit fabrication. It's not as complex as something like MKS' systems, but it's also not the level of abstraction seen with stock fuel ISRU. Pulse unit manufacture is a 4 step process. -Step 1 is mine the ore you need, Uranitite and MetallicOre: both can be found planetside or in asteroids, but are not guaranteed to appear in the latter. -Step 2 is use the Smelter to process the MetallicOre into Metals; you'll need a Smelter, LF/O, and lots of radiators. -Step 3 is process the Uranitite into EnrichedUranium; you'll need an Uranium Processor and Ec. -Step 4 is combine intermediate resources into Pulse Units; you'll need a Workshop, EnrichedUranium, Metals, and Ec. Both Payload Spine Truss parts now include Workshops.

You can land Orion vessels, you just need retrorockets for final descent. Sure, they'll only have a few hundred dV, but you only need to fire them in the last ~100 meters or so.

Yes. The denser the atmosphere, the greater the impulse from the bomb, and vice-versa in vacuum. On the launchpad even the dinky 0.05 kT pulse units are going to provide thousands of kN of impulse, you absolutely want lower yields; A 'standard" launch profile I found myself using during testing (~1500 ton test vessel) was 0.05kT on the pad, by about 10 km atmo density's a 6th of sea level, so increase yield to about 1 kt, then boost it again to whatever the optimum vac yield for ~1.5 TWR is about 15-20km - for 500 ton vessels, this will be about 1.5kT, my test vessel needed 2.5kT for an expedient orbits - lower yields will be slower and require more pulse units, but put less stress on the vessel; going for a 1.1-1.2 TWR ascent will cost you about 200-250 pulse units. In the Orion Drive's Part Action Window there's an Impulse readout for the current impulse per bomb right under the yield selector that can be used to judge when a higher yield/throttle setting is needed. An alternate method to orbit would be to use a booster to get the Orion vessel into high atmo/suborbital, then light the Orion drive - retracting the Pusher plate in the VAB toggles a bottom attach node that can be used to stick the Orion Drive on top of a rocket. Be warned, though, the engine won't activate while the plate's retracted, so staging will be a bit more complex than usual. DeltaV calc ended up being dV = ((PlasmaVel/9.80665 * (((((NPUMass * CollimationFactor) * (yield * 0.2)) + ((1/3Pi*PlateDiameter^2) * DetonationDist) * 0.0012 * atmoDensity))) / NPUMass)) * 9.80665)ln(wetMass/dryMass) + ((NPUVelocity/9.80665)*9.80665) ln(wetmass/drymass). tl;dr - Dynamic calculation of pulse unit Isp based on selected yield and atmo density fed into a standard dV calc+ second dV calc for the recoil from firing a pulse unit, since that's modeled too. No, it currently doesn't account for staging, that's on the to-do list, but given the mass of an empty pulse magazine vs the mass of an Orion vessel, that's currently maybe a 1% discrepancy between reported and actual dv.

I keep forgetting Autostruts is not enabled by default. Why is it not enabled by default. Version 1.02 - GitHub | SpaceDock Impulse code is changed, should provide a smoother, less vessel-destroying impulse. Minimum Pulse unit yield is now 0.05 kT. For further tweaking, there's two values in the Orion/Parts/Orion/part.cfg - KSPScalar and CollimationFactor. Increasing KSPScalar will reduce atmo impulse, and reducing CollimationFactor will reduce all impulse, atmo and vac - though this will reduce Orion Isp and dV.

Only when physics warping. During normal conditions, there is an initial impulse from the recoil of the pulse unit being fired, followed by the impulse of the detonation, which is applied via a curve over 8 frames. Main problem is Orion supplies lots and lots of impulse, so it feels like an instantaneous application if you're, say, using 5kt pulse units in vac when your vessel only masses 400 tons - it's going to be 20-30 gees of accel over a short period of time either way.

Pulse Unit ISRU - I want it to be simple enough to fit in with the level of abstraction that stock uses for Ore, so that it's accessible to players who don't want to mess with MKS-tier ISRU proceses, but complex enough it's not simply a matter of finding the nearest asteroid and Abrakadabra! More nukes. Current thoughts are to remain within CRP, so Uranite -> Enriched Uranium via a Uranium Processor; MetallicOre -> Metals via a smelter, and then Metals + Enriched Uranium -> Pulse Units via a Machine Shop (Was entertaining the idea of Metals -> Parts via Machine Shop, then Parts + Enriched Uranium -> Pulse Units via Machine Shop, but that's likely getting too complex). Then there'll be MM patches for USI/MKS/NFE integration so their resourcing processes could be employed instead. Project Orion already called for onboard Machineshops, not too much of a stretch to envision ISRU variants with the other stuff as well. Speaking of other stuff: I've been bitten by the muse, and Project Orion was more than just the engine, after all. The untextured cylinders above the 3.75m hab are inline Launch Escape Motors, the untextured wedges are radial cargo containers you can stuff in the spine trusses, and the suspiciously spaceplane-looking parts to the right are Spaceplane bits inspired by the proposed Orion Mars mission landers and are likely beyond Feature Creep to the point they'd need to be a separate mod if finished. Not shown - Smelter for Pulse Unit ISRU, Orion landing legs/Inline landing thrusters (ala Orion Lunar Ferry designs), and various super-heavy RCS nozzles to maneuver around your 1000+ ton Orion vessel. Crew parts already have some IVAs done for them, and the remainder will be getting them, because I'm apparently a crazy person (incidentally, if any of you want to do some commissioned IVA modelling...?). Since I want to get these parts done and then be done with it, instead of releasing new parts piecemeal for the next few months, are there any other Orion bits that are needed?

About what I figured. I'll add in support for Kerbalism to the Orion module - it seems the simpler solution. Thanks for the help.

Question about radiation. There's been a request to add Kerbalism Radiation integration to the Project Orion mod I released recently. Looking at the code and configs for Kerbalism, a passive radiation source - reactor/rtg/nerva core/etc - can be defined via a Module Emitter with a radiation value in rads/s (0.01 Sievert/s?); is there a way to config an active radiation source (exploding nuclear pulse units) that only delivers a radiation dose when triggered?

The 5m Orion Drive part contains fuel. It uses that fuel first. Magazines add extra fuel, used later. ... Re: Kerbalism: Looking at the original design docs, radiation yield for a 1kt pulse is 1000 Sievert per shot on the pusher plate, dissipating due to distance/intervening mass to 3.5 Sievert/shot for crewed sections. Rad shielding requirements called for a minimum of ~120g/cm2 of hydrogenous material + 55g/cm2 of lead for shielding to reduce crew rad exposure to ~0.5 Sievert/mission(~3k pulse units). Radiation case failure and the pulse unit exploding ~3ms after detonation releases 20000 Sievert/shot, reducing at a rate of 4*PI*distance^2 to the surrounding area. Radiation opacity from the radiation case material of the pulse unit renders them radiation safe. Assuming 'rads/s' = rad = 0.01Gy, and 1Gy = 1 Sv(X-Ray and Gamma), 2x10^6/(4PI*Dist^2) rads/shot for local area exposure(vac) and 0.01666(with shielding) to 350 (no intervening mass)rads/shot to Orion crew. I can poke around the kerbalism code and see if there's a way to get while an engine is firing instead of passively. For ISRU, Pulse Units are just another fuel type, and can be created via a stock ISRU converter no differently than LF/O or Monoprop. Admittedly it doesn't make much sense to stick a pulse unit recipe onto a Convert-O-Tron (or maybe it would, they can already magically create everything else), but I can see about adding an ISRU Pulse Unit fabrication part.

Oh. That's the issue. The Orion drive will use up the 225 nukes carried internally first before needing fuel from the external magazines. The external magazines are there to extend the range of the vessel, rather than as a primary fuel source. Apologies, should have specified that in the usage notes in the OP.

Minor update to 1.01. rounds out the collection of adapter parts and the nuke magazines now have integrated decouplers - should help somewhat with part count and strutting stuff - as well as fixing an atmo density calculation; The Orion drive should now produce more reasonable levels of impulse in atmo. The nuke magazines are standard fuel tanks with a fancy fuel type - just radially attach them. But you're by no means required to attach them specifically to the payload spines - those were included if players wanted to recreate classic 60's USAF Orion vessel concepts, but are otherwise just a fancy structural part.

Not at present - v1.0 is just the standalone - but it is something that I can add for future updates. No 5m adapter at present, though I can easily add one. I agree on radial stack nodes for the fuel drums; I'll see about integrating a decoupler as well for part count/joint reductions. Yes. What is your vessel mass? Even the 0.5kt pulse units should be more than capable of lifting a 1000 ton ship off the pad with alacrity. That said, my pre-release testing was in a vanilla stock environment, so it's possible another mod is interfering. Are you running a mod that changes part mass/gravity/aero/atmo density?