BlackMoons

Couple minutes if I am in a nice pressurized science lab at least, that was suddenly exposed to.. atmosphere at 5000m, and im in my spacesuit.

Post a screenshot? Also make sure KSPi was installed last since other mods may overwrite the resources it needs in community resource pack. Also its found in the IRSU electrolyiser recipe IIRC. and then you need a cryotank or IRSU refrigerator to turn it from hydrogen to liquid hydrogen.

Brand new station... falls apart during launch, and a kerbal instantly dies of no oxygen in the science lab when oxygen tank snaps off. I thought they could at least go a few minutes without oxygen?

Deorbiting a very old station, I accidentally switched to water as propellant. When the water ran out, my kerbal instantly died of dehydration. What a wuss! Please fix weak kerbals.

having issues when using cone parts, often when saving and reloading a ship in the VAB there is a 1 or 2 meter gap formed between a part and the part further away from the root node. If I save and load again, the gap gets bigger. If I launch from the vab, or click the launch pad and pick my ship, it looks OK if I saved it without a gap, but if I load it in the VAB the gap reoccurs.

I think the thrust multipler for methane (in thermal/plasma nozzles) must be a bug, since its the same as methalox (2.152) Kerosene is also surprisingly high at 1.906

The water/HTP interstellar tank setting only holds water. I think it might be a conflict with the TAC life support patch that turns liquid water to water.

I think you can use one of the IRSU functions to reprocess nuclear fuel? Science lab also has it once you upgrade it. Oh, and as I said, just turn off all the generators on your solid cores and they won't build up any waste during timewarp since they will be at 0% idle. Trying some more tests, 7.5m reactor MFC mk2 and 5m plasma nozzle (without upgrade) with methane fuel MJ KN of thrust 1 20 2 55 3 120 4 220 5 330 6 470 7 650 8 845 9 1100 10 1300 11 1600 12 1800 Seems very log, and seems like the bigger your reactor the less thrust you get per MJ at lower powers. This also means fusion maintenance power is kinda critical, you don't want it be drawing it off your reactor since that last GW nets you a fair amount more thrust. PS top thrust with liquid fuel was 970KN. Also just tested a thermal launch nozzle on the same reactor: 2100KN of thrust at 2280ISP from methane (Vs the 2800 ISP of the plasma nozzle) 2500KN from liquidfuel+oxidiser at 1200ISP. Hell I can get 2300KN and 14000ISP from water with this reactor Thermal launch nozzle the same thrust/power curve too oddly. I wonder if maybe thats why its so crazy powerful with thermal receivers, since they have a 'max power' but that is not actually used? So it looks like the thermal launch nozzle is still very competitive with the (unupgraded) plasma nozzle. lower ISP and higher thrust but can use oxidiser and the oxy-fuels are an attractive mode.

Minor Bug: the Stellarator fusion reactors description is cut off at "which is havier but" as there is a new line in the description in the config file. Also should be 'heavier'.

Cool, the plasma nozzle increases in max thrust for a given amount of input power with size (by about 20% per size), and still uses 'thermal power' from an engine. This is much more how id like the thermal nozzles to act. More nozzle weight/size should make them more efficient or able to handle more power.. something that makes bigger=better till the weight and cost is too much. Im not entirely thrilled at the idea of having to match them with reactor size since 5m+ nozzles are insanely heavy/expensive. Sadly mated with 4.5GW Mk2 MFC spherical reactor only resulted in 400~600KN but at a blistering 2800ISP with methane, And more like 200~300KN if you didn't have enough other power sources for fusion maintenance. (Seems that output thrust is nonlinear with throttle?) Also, Instantly exploded at insane temp when accidentally used in atmosphere.. don't do that. Good to know something has an explosion failure mode though! I like the odd thing that just blows up when you do something really stupid. Hmm, very nonlinear. 1MJ = 60KN, 2MJ = 229KN, 3MJ = 500KN, 3.5MJ = 670KN with 5m nozzle and 5m MK2 MFC. Must.. get.. MORE POWER. Also seems like charged particle generators don't actually have to be directly attached to a powerplant to work properly. You can connect them to a thermal generator too. ie, you can have: Nozzle<-Reactor->ThermalGenerator->ChargedParticle Generator and they all work!

Yea, but now the author can confirm it with a min parts vehicle. Just put a tiny tank of hydrogen on top of that (or a huge one to keep it from lifting off) and see what happens when you slowly raise the throttle with all 4 engine windows open. These are also all fresh engines with no fuel buildup/loss. Might be in addition to another bug your suffering from (unequal depleted fuel buildup)

Uh, SUPER strange, I tried my test rig with some hydrogen above it and throttled the engines up. Each Solid Core Nuclear Engine throttles up one at a time..! Ie, 12% throttle with 4 reactors = 1 reactor at 50%, rest at 1.04% 50% throttle = 2 reactors at 100%, 2 at 1.04% 88% throttle = 3 reactors at 100% 1 at 50% Really not what I expected at all! Basically impossable to fly at anything but 0% or 100% throttle. Worse yet, they throttle up and down in sequence too when you change the throttle from 0% to 100% instantly.

Ah true. Oddly enough changing the power priorities and even putting another molten salt reactor with a priority 1 electric generator on it does not stop the idle throttle usage for solid cores either.

Hu, Bug confirmed, Multiple solid Core nuclear engines on a ship do not load share properly: Note 3 reactors at 1.04% and one at 1.19% Turning that 1.19% reactor off causes one other reactor to increase in output slightly. Seems to me they should either load share equally, or only 1 should be idling at all. Still, turning off all the generators in your solid core engines will fix it, because then they idle at 0% as expected.

So if I have this right, Proton-Nitrogen-15 takes 145e-12kg per MW and Deuterium-lithium6 is as little as 1.8e-12kg per MW?

Ah, So is total fuel consumption for a mode FuelPerMW / Power Rate?

Yes. Most of them will shut off after the 1st one fulfills any 'need'. Turn all the generators off and they will go to inf life when idle.

Very cool. I like how the reactors act differently and have different fuel modes. Gives them personality and distinct purpose, not just 'You unlocked B and will now be using B exclusively as A is obsolete' I even still put small molten salt reactors on many of my ships because a tiny one is light, will power everything I could ever want for 20 years on uranium burnup mode at 6% idle power, and will jumpstart fusion powerplants no problem. Ok but seriously try clicking 'disable generator' on all your nuclear engines. Just because you have other things running does not mean your nuclear engine does not see a reason to be active at all. Just checked and solid core has a 1 year 80 day lifespan with its internal generator active (1% idle power even with no real need for EC/MJ)

Ok but what is the difference in game? What uses only reaction rate instead of reaction*power rate? Also updated spreadsheet to list what ones are available on trialpha reactor (And what ones are only on trialpha) Shows that Proton-Lithium7 is the highest power reaction for the Trialpha if anyone is wondering. Followed far behind by Lithium6 cycle, lithium6-helium3 and helium3-helium3

Hu, I just learned the TriAlphas fusion maintenance power draw depends on activity level of the reactor, while for all others its fixed.

Can't find any reactors that will do spin-polarized helium3-deuterium. Tested in sandbox mode. (Many say they do in description, but don't actually have that option once the reactor is launched

Either tritium breed rate or consumption rate readout is off. Shows 0.015kg/day breed rate and 0.75kg/day consumption rate, except my tritium amount is not going down. Also, Arcjet RCS jets don't consider liquid methane a valid source of methane to switch to for use as a propellant.

Most likely what is happening is you are leaving the generator on the nuclear engines running. It keeps it throttled up so to produce power for the ship at a min %, so it builds up decay products as it burns through fuel. Try turning off the generator on all your engines (instead have something else provide power in timewarp, or alternate what engines are enabled), its uneven because at min throttle of one engine, none of the other engines need to throttle up so they don't.

The water purifier makes water needs to be 0. It seems default setting is kerbals produce slightly more wastewater then they consume in water, and the purifier uses up the exact same amount of wastewater to produce the starting water. It seems a little odd that the water purifier is 100% efficient at recycling water, since it seems it would be very hard to make a purifier that is 100% effective and never needs maintenance. 90% would be a lot more believable and realistic IMO, since to remove all the water from the waste you would be left with a solid cake that would be very hard to remove, vs leaving some water it could drain out as a sludge.

Making a spreadsheet of fusion modes. Deuterium-Helium3 mode, uses 1.69424836125e-12kg of one resource and 1.1294989075e-12kg of another, but produces 2.2470469e-12kg That is a fair bit of missing mass there. PS: What is the diff between Normalized ReactionRate and Normalized PowerRate for reactor fuel mods in ReactorFuels.cfg? Ohhh, Iv finally found a good reaction loop! Proton-Lithium6 requires 2.177E-12 hydrogen and 13E-12 lithium6 per MW. thats a fair bit but lithium 6 is IMO easy to get.. Sadly only has 0.6 reaction rate and 0.227 power multiplier. just under half of that fuel mass, turns into HE3 Helium3-Helium3 fusion, Requires only 4E-12 per MW and produces 25% hydrogen. Result is almost closed loop, should supply I think 75% of the hydrogen needs running at 1:1 MW output. So it would be fueled by lithium6 and water. (or hydrogen, or HE3, or tritium..). Advantage being that all fuels are solid/liquid and don't require cryogenics or high pressure to transport. Also can be IRSU'ed from just about anywhere, or indeed stolen from other reactors lithium cores and life support water if need be in extreme emergency. Also, 100% CP output with only 0.001% neutron emission so very low heat, Although very low specific energy too. I do wonder if Lithium-6 Cycle fusion might be simpler/more fuel efficient/higher power to mass ratio for reactors.. Plus Proton-Lithium6 is tech level 4. All that said, Proton-Lithium6 might be a good way to IRSU Helium3 that you otherwise could not get without deuterium as every single Tritium Producing mode requires Deuterium unless you use fission. <Edit> With a 0.227 * 0.6 power multiplier, Proton-lithium6 is near worthless unless you really REALLY needed some HE3 for some reason. 170MW outta a 2.2GW tribeam after fusion maintenance. Meh. HE3 seems mainly used to decrease fusion maintenance of a fuel. That said, Proton-Lithium7 is 1.87GW outta a 2.2GW tribeam, And lithium6 cycle is 1.2GW. The only cycles over 61% max power are: Deuterium-Tritium 100% (produces neutrons and mainly heat) Deuterium-Lithium6 95% Deuterium-Helium3 88% SP Helium3-Deuterium 84% Proton-Lithium7 83% Also interesting to note: there is no way to power a thermal nozzle without deuterium for a fusion powerplant. Only fission powerplants have the option to run on non deuterium fuels and produce heat.