BlackMoons

Basically you connect that black tube to a thermal launch nozzle, set it for oxidiser/fuel (or just liquid fuel if you have enough power), connect some fuel tanks and HOLD ON FOR DEAR LIFE. if you got a few GW and only a few 100 tons. It will accept any beamed power type. Note that once you stop using full thrust it overheats quickly and you have to turn off the receiver or turn down the reception. once it overheats past 90% waste heat it automatically turns down its reception and it takes forever it cool it off. There is also mirror thingys for making IR and UV relays. PS: don't expect beamed power to work at range. 2000MW at KSC becomes 0.2MW at duna with a 20,000M spot size, even with near IR. (Admitly with a 20M receiver but) On the other side of kerbin from KSC, its 1000MW after bouncing off a few relays.

They do, but only if its 'near IR', not the 'long wave IR' that most beam emitters start with or microwave that the gyrotron emits. try the shielded laser emitter for those (has built in diode, must be configured to near IR in vab). Note I think they have like 1% or 15% conversion efficiency depending on what one your using. Rectennas are like 70% or something really good. PS: Line of sight matters, so you'll only get power while your orbital powerplants are overhead. Thats why I made reactor boats and parked them just outside physics range around KSC (So they don't lag up my launches!) Warning: A couple GW of power into a thermal nozzle can make a (light) ship that accelerates so fast outta the atmosphere it burns up on exit unless you throttle back PS: Thermal receivers generally work on ALL freqencies, but only are good for making heat, so basically only good for powering thermal launch nozzle or the two thermal jet engines.

.. why not use imgur? Also, '4x radial gold thermal dish reciever' Is your issue, those need to be connected to an inline thermal receiver and only produce thermal power. Try the rectenna's, they directly convert microwaves to electricity. The ball ones work well. It automatically connects to any and all available sats/relays when its the correct frequency/direction/etc for the receiver, AFTER the receiver has been enabled. Also, transmitters must be manually enabled before they will transmit too. You'll see 'WALL to beam: <some number>' on your transmitters when they are working (even without any receivers)

Saurenath: They work for me. Beamed microwave power spreads pretty fast though, IR and UV are better and the mod author is adding x-ray. \ Did you enable the receivers? how about some screenshots? Many receivers are also directional. Some are thermal and need a thermal generator + tons of rads (Seem to be better suited for thermal nozzles)

Saurenath: From what I can tell, right off the bat you have to use the proper charged particle fusion modes, and most of these seem to only output 50% as much power as regular, except maybe the HE3 modes? I havent profiled everything quite yet. Then unless you upgrade it, the charged particle gen is still only 70% efficent so your 23GW reactor outputs 11GW in charged particle mode, and that results in 7.7GW power, and another GW or two is being eaten maintaining the fusion mode... Awnser: Scale the reactor up another notch. Make it a 100GW reactor and you'll get enough power out. Though then even more power is being used to maintain the fusion reaction and expect the idle heat generation to be fierce untill you get that 90% charged generator efficiency. And even then. PS: Thermal generators just overheat in space for mass power production, they work wonders on planets with atmospheres and convection rads, but other then to power cryostats, life support, comms, drills, refinerys, etc, your not going to find they make enough. I have nuclear generators on KSC beaming power through the atmosphere, works really well with IR near spectrum. Microwave falls off so quick.

"IRSU Converter" Haber Process function does not use/recongize liquid nitrogen or liquid hydrogen from intersteller fuel tanks and won't fill liquid ammonia tanks either. They will from cryotanks but only when the liquid/gas slider is not set to '0' Using the refrigeration IRSU can convert, But you still need a hydrogen, nitrogen and ammonia gas tank somewhere or the Haber process won't be usable with just liquid tanks. Also this: It used all my ammonia (spelling error on menu?) and UF4 in the blink of an eye and produced 10,000 units (max of my storage) of UN from 400 units of UF4, since it didn't stop making UN even when I ran outta everything else. Seems a little broken.

Does anything use ColliderHeliumDeuterium fuel type yet? Seems like such a nice way to get rid of excess helium.. Though I guess it makes decent reaction mass too.

The Cargo Container is the only thing that holds LithiumHydride. (the white cylinder with grey bands on top/bottom, Specialized Fuel Storage Tech)

I notice you get new fission types, I checked the datafiles and only found 'TechLevel = X' in your ReactorFuels.cfg what are the tech levels that unlock new fission fuel types? IMO its pretty good, especially after you upgrade it. Think mainsail good. Downside im finding is only a couple 100 days worth of power if you want to use its reactor to keep your LH2 cool! Bring another reactor or only use its power generation for low power stuff...

I actually like having some cooler cores, because you can't get high thrust with a really hot core right now. (What I wouldn't do for a core temp slider! Or a max temp slider on the nozzles?) And by high thrust I mean like 0.5TWR after you add on all your other stuff. Once you get to 800ISP or so, getting around kerbin is realllyy easy and I would rather have more thrust. The Timberwind for example while lower ISP, just rules the Light Bulb engine for thrust because of its much lower core temp. (Timberwind IIRC like 1000KN on liquid fuel, even though its VAB specs say 310KN. >1TWR on kerbin from my tests, even though its VAB specs say it can't be used in atmo)

Add a note to the description of something too while your at it if it only works with some reactors. Would be nice if it worked with the 16000k fission engines too. (MFC spherical, Stellarator). Right now I haven't even researched the open gas core because of its gravity limitation. Didn't look like an attractive engine for power generation or thrust. usable with the MHD could however change that.

Ahhh. how come it does not benefit any of the other reactors with high core temps? I did notice by accident connecting it to a thermal receiver it had a 4400k hot bath temp. I can totally dig a higher hot bath temp thermal generator! I would really love if it worked at say 4000k+ for any nuclear reactor that gets that hot.

Yea thats fine. Just minmus/mun science stations are bringing in 2000 science every few months and I only filled them up with data like once (took only a 2~3 biomes of science) And thats with playing at 50% science reward.. bring on the more techs!

Contracts for duna high resolution scan and scan for ore keep flickering/disappearing before accepted. Also, the contract for low resolution scan, biome scan and resource scan won't even show up. Just updated to V18.0 but V17.9 was doing it too. Using KSP1.3

Description of engine gives hints: "While this engine utilizes anuetronic fusion it does still produce a large amount of gamma rays, so beware when thrusting near other ships and unprotected kerbals. Also note that in order to achieve inertial fusion, it can only operate in vacuum of space."

I see now using charged particle generators lets you keep an efficiency regardless of max temp, so you could use your rads to 100%, and only have 10~30% heat dissipation from total power. I guess thermal power generation in space is just too primitive of a tech to really work well.

How is a Magnetohydrodynamic generator any better then a stock thermal generator? It seems bigger, heavyer, more costly, yet same efficiency, hot bath temp, etc? It says its a direct conversion generator in its description but It doesn't seem to actually want to convert charged particles.

So how about making them heaver and more effective? maybe the heat transfer mechanism could work better? they do seem to have a lot of surface area and heatpipes. Stock rads are so light its silly and the tanks your attaching these rads to weigh way more then the rads. I could really get into them being heavier then stock, more effective (there is only so much room on your rather heavy rocket fuel tank/whatever to put these things), and costing say 2x or 3x more then what stock charges for the same amount of dissipation. Also maybe thermal generators could heat up rads more before becoming totally inefficient? It seems a little weird that my rads are only performing at <10% VAB rated dissipation with my thermal generator already up to 750K cold bath temp and 40% efficiency. increasing thermal input at that point just results in less power out as the thermal generator overheats and less efficiency results in more heat and less efficiency.. I understand you went to a rads work linearly with waste heat system recently, but maybe the math was not completely looked into how that affected thermal nuclear powerplants.

Very carefully off the end of the runway at <10m/s! using aircraft landing gear, they will support amazing weight. Picture with landing gear deployed: Once into the water they ran great! lifts outta the water at 30m/s and does 60m/s stable and once got it up to 100m/s before things went wrong.. I got one positioned like just into the water and another 40km out. that one you can only get the beam if your like 1.5km up! They (the wrap around rads) suck because they cost a lot more per MW radiated then pretty much anything else, and they hardly have any surface area for the overall cost. Weight is not a factor IMO. They look AWESOME so I often use them on a lot of my designs anyway (how can I resist making part of the rocket glow red!) They are nice for high speed in atmosphere cooling but its so little cool as to be practically non existent other then from stopping your thermal generators from complaining about no rads. Actual in flight dissipation from orbit reactor posted previously: 2.28 MW dissipated from thermal wrap around (3.75m) 222MW dissipated from "Thermal Control System(Large) (Resized to 170%) the rad temp is just around 1000k on both. But I mean I could cover my entire space station in these rads and it wouldn't dissipate as much as a single large thermal control panel. (Spec on a wraparound is 45MW max, large panel is 3500MW according VAB) Even a small thermal control panel is rated 132MW (3x what a wraparound is rated), and its only just under twice the weight of a full wraparound. Except its also only $450 vs $8000 Sure compairing that against a deployable sucks but the rad panel large, just under 2x the mass of the wraparound again, dissipates 1/2 as much, but only costs $450 vs $8000 and you can fit 2 in the space of a wraparound. If anything, I would like it *heavier*, somewhat cheaper and MUCH more effective. Right now with its current mass and effectiveness I view it as a visual decoration part that is too expensive to spam so I only use 1 set of them (At an eye watering $32,000 for 4! I could buy 2 mainsail's for that price) Also im going to say rads in space generally suck because im only getting 1000K rad temp with a 750K cold bath temp at my thermal generator. this reactor might be usable for serious power if the rads actually got anywhere near the rated 2600k. I don't see getting 3k+ max temps on the graphite reactors any kinda upgrade if they won't even go over 1000k before my thermal generators overheat badly. Thorium fuel gives only a month at full power like uranium floride mode. No idea if you can refuel it without EVA. I like the 1+ year lifetime at full power of uranium burnup mode. Hu, thought thorium had less power. turns out its 1.38X power. Anyway, my problem isent tempature of my reactor or power output, its disippation. My thermal generator has 750k cold bath temp and is operating at 40% efficency, any more reactor output and power output goes DOWN. that reactor is already throttled to 32% on uranium burnup mode. Also learning that actinides buildup does effect uranium mode (the reactor mentions it affecting thorium mode worse) but burnup mode seems less effected, infact after some buildup uranium burnup mode produces more power then floride mode.

Can we have LithiumDituride manufacture as well? PS: Test Atmosphere on the IRSU Processor does nothing on kerbin.

Beamed power.. weapons maybe I would sure hate to be on the receiving end of that. Lets just not think about what that kinda power would do to the poor soul (or even electronics) on the receiving end of it. For those wondering how much rad to use for a big powerplant.. LOTS! Also, on kerbin, use those convection rads they are 100x better then other types. Here is a 6.8GW beam output design. Note that each one of the above rads is dissipating 619MW of thermal power just to keep everything cool. PS: this design lifts up outta the water at 30m/s and will travel on its nuclear ramjets at up to 60m/s safely with a top speed of 100m/s. Not bad for a 400ton powerplant that generates its own fuel from the sea water Meanwhile, in space, this is not NEARLY enough rad! my thermalelectric generator is overheating and im only pushing 335MW beam power! I had to turn my reactor down just to prevent from totally overheating the cooling system and pushing thermal electric generator efficiency down even lower. You really need charged particles and 90% conversion efficiency or insanely huge rads to be able to produce good power in space. Also those wraparound rads suck (But are awesome at glowing red, the only thing they do really well.. that and working at escape velocity through the atmosphere), those huge extending ones dissipate like 50x more!

Apparently you can also get nitrogen 15 from the atmosphere in not too terrible quantities.. interesting. Can't wait to have a reactor that can use it. Bug: Large Folding Radiators (Graphene) become heavier then stock large folding radiators at 2x and larger scale. And dissipate less then 1/2 as much as the regular stock large folding radiators, in orbit, at MK3 upgrade level for both types. Shouldn't they be an upgrade?

So, My experience with beamed power tech, using 5m scaled up deployable Microwave phased arrays. Great for launching a few dozen tons per GW into space using plants dotted around KSC. Make boats (Hydrafoils are my fav) to float some reactors out to sea too. Relays: Well, with 2GW+ available at KSC, I only ever got about 20MW at the mun, and only about 300MW on the other side of kerbin from the reactors at KSC, Generally using a 2.5m inline thermal receiver but I might have been using something else for those mun tests. Same test with long IR and 5m scaled up Shielded Diode Laser Beam Transmitters, and I got about 600MW on the other side of the planet (5 relays all around the planet at 500km) Much more encouraging, Despite the higher claimed atmospheric loss of IR, the distance losses due to focus are MUCH better. I am very much looking forward to vacuum UV tech and Id say X-ray tech is likely the only thing that won't diffuse so badly as to be unusable for moho orbit solar collection.

Large Radial Atmospheric Scoop has 2 different CO2's listed when you toggle through resources while landed at KSC launch pad.

Oh so the aperture of the relay does matter. Good to know. I liked sending up those solar reflectors tweakscaled to 5m or 10m :0 You get heavy water from the ocean, you get deuterium from processing that. It will automatically fill up any liquid deuterium tanks. there is even a slider on said tanks if you want to shift it from liquid to gas (in some other tank). Sadly it seems boiloff does not go into the gasious tank if you lose power on a cryotank, and most things are designed to suck gas or liquid, they don't care what they get, so you can be producing deuterium without a gas tank to store it, and it will just turn into liquid instead. The reactors come loaded with lithium stock. Im pretty sure they all do this, fission and fusion. Maybe not the antimatter ones, I havent unlocked those yet. No idea how to load lithium, maybe you can just transfer it like a regular resource? Again most reactors come with like 20+ years of the stuff so iv never worried about it. Btw, Later on theres lots of other stuff that you can use as fuel for fission engines. Including hydrogen+various ores, so don't get too hung up on the whole deuterium stuff. Personally, I prefer molten salt reactors in uranium burnup mode for long term power. Good for over a year at full power output without refueling! though learning now that I have to reprocess the waste or they lose power...