JadeOfMaar

Sounds quite legit. So far I only encountered the need to learn to refuel a reactor and that was when I had EL bases on Kerbin's moons in KSP 1.1.3 and I needed to topup reactors built at these bases. Ore -> EnrichedUranium didn't exist yet and I had to do some digging through the old NFT thread to learn to do it, then I could bother shipping it from Kerbin.

@eddiew I've thought of putting a note in my NFT tutorial about SSTOs and crewed landers in general. The idea of ion SSTOs are out of scope imo but a nice thing to experiment with, and I'm already pushing the limit approaching things that can launch at nearly 0.4 surface gravity so forget about Tylo capable ascent vehicles. Spaceplanes are more troublesome because folding radiators, while so much more powerful than the static ones, will get torn off in any atmosphere. What should I include in there next, though? ( @Streetwind suggestion?) The Whirljig is good. It may seem quite OP but the thing is I expect you'll quite rarely need to use it. If you love mining you'll be even less likely as finally, you can produce EnrichedUranium without having to install MKS, and I'm quite happy for that. I have yet to mine Ore for Lithium or use the Whirljig as I spend far more time doing dev or designing craft than even trying to play a long-term game.

I took off and flew where the great river divideth on Gael. It looks like a fitting place for Hydro Thunder! epic boat racing. Cruised at Mach 2 or 3 for several minutes, maybe a half hour, exploring and beholding. Wanted to land on that tiny isle in the river but this craft's not prepared for that and I didn't feel like using VesselMover and HyperEdit. Finally I came down seaside and found a place with the gentlest of slopes to land at after flying and exploring for a good while... Nailed it!™

I've found a newly posted 6.4x GPP + Rald + Kerbalism + RemoteTech game. This guy's betting his farm on a Leto conquest! Also, I took off and flew where the great river divideth (in the middle of the super-continent Uakora). That'd be a great place for Hydro Thunder! epic boat racing. I came down seaside and found a place with the gentlest of slopes to land after flying and exploring for a good while... Nailed it!™

Sir. You are under arrest. You are charged with the following crimes: 2 uses of the word "schlep" physical and psychological abuse against 2 women kerbals 100 counts of funky humor (Don't make me count) deploying haphazard machinations Seriously, this is quite entertaining and it has me wondering now if you used to be SQUAD. These writings are possibly too kerbal. (And I just ran out of likes to give. )

@Norcalplanner I didn't create or adapt that. I copied it directly...

Ohhh. So given that you're still getting this problem, feel free to delete the GPP antenna patch and let us know how that works out.

range_StockAntenna.cfg exists exactly because the stock antennae can't reach further than Gauss which is further than Eeloo. At the time of writing, Kerbalism, RemoteTech and Sigma Dimensions weren't yet a concern to us...and we didn't anticipate antenna problems when we later made the scaled system options. Unfortunately, cloned parts are not an option as having parts (especially an obscure one like an antenna) depend on the presence of a solar system sounds like bad news. I would recommend installing the JX2 Antenna which now happens to disable that patch. If any conflict still comes up with Kerbalism then delete the patch. @CatastrophicFailure has done something about this same matter. I'm sure he'll be willing to share. @eddiew

You're looking to, or you've already downloaded @Nertea's shiny, shiny things so the air filters on your Laythe base keep filtering, or so the cryogenic fuel in your Eeloo probe doesn't escape. But how do you use these exactly? How do you balance the reactors, engines, radiators and overall dry mass to get decent TWR, consistent burns and keep the reactors in their prime too? Here is all the introductory info you need to get you going. Topics will be added over time so don't worry too much about things missing from this post. Glossary Reactor + Engine Balance Reactor + Radiator Balance Reactor Longevity Reactor Control Capacitors Capacitor Control Fuel Performance Argon Xenon Refueling Lithium Reactor + Engine Balance When picking a reactor, watch its Fission Generator > Power Generated value and Fission Reactor > Required Cooling value. When picking an ion engine watch its Propellants > EC consumption and you'll find that this consumption will tend to be exact to the output of a given reactor and that there are several more such pairings begging for you to notice them. Reactor + Radiator Balance Once you can keep in mind how much the Fission Reactor > Required Cooling of a given reactor is, it should be easy enough to look at the stock radiators and add or multiply their Radiator Specs > Core Heat xFer values. Once your total exceeds the reactor's Required Cooling value that's it, that's how many of that radiator you need. This is a good setup: 400kW from 2x large static radiator > 300kW from 1x Garnet. Also, never forget that static radiators must be attached directly to the reactor or its parent part or else. I don't need to install a radiator mod to show how to balance a reactor with them, but I would need to install one because stock radiators do have their limitations, and "options" are especially important for ion-powered vehicles that dare to pass through an atmosphere with their reactors running. Reactor Longevity Don't get swept away with the power of a nuclear reactor that you decide to or completely forget to put an RTG or solar panel on your craft. Always include an alternate means of power generation so that the probe core can be kept alive and that you don't waste the reactor's nuclear fuel Enriched Uranium between the last orbital maneuver and the next. In flight there is the danger of the reactor overheating and the loss of core health (separate from core life). Core Health is expressed as a percentage and iirc, once health is lost, total output becomes capped and it can eventually meltdown and become dead and useless (I don't know if it explodes, haha). Core Life is the amount of time you get depending on how full it is with Enriched Uranium and what the output cap is. The output cap is controllable via a slider in the NF Reactor toolbar panel between 0 and full EC/s rate, technically allowing the reactor to run for decades or centuries as an oversized RTG. Reactor Control The final thing about nuclear reactors is, of course, how to operate them directly, especially from the snazzy NF GUI app. Look for this in your KSP toolbar once you have Near Future Electric installed and a nuclear reactor on the active vessel. (It does not show in Map View.) Every proper nuclear reactor mod out there should integrate into Near Future and can be controlled through it, and that makes life good. Such mods (that I know of) include USI Core and Mk2 + Mk3 Stockalike Expansion but exclude KSP Interstellar which changes all nuclear devices in its own way. Do not expect this to control any radiators associated with a reactor. Those must be toggled separately. The UI Elements are as follows: The radio (circle) button under a reactor name is the main switch and lights up when toggled on. The thermometer (with two checkpoint markers) respectively indicate the thermal range, the peak operating temperature, and the overload/shutdown temperature. The number will always be the temperature at a given moment. The three symbolic items above the thermometer represent kilowatt output (not necessary to most of us), the ElectricCharge output (most important) and Core Life (very important). When a reactor is on it will show you the duration in years instead of "Reactor Offline". Basic Controls is the output control slider or reactor throttle (at 100% by default) which lets you finely control the ElectricCharge output. Accordingly, the kW, EC and Core Life values over the thermometer will change. Most of us don't need to click Advanced Controls. I didn't, so I don't even know what that looks like. This screenshot features the 2.5m USI device with its context window open and the NF control window. Note that in both GUI its output slider is set to 25%. Both windows have their distinct advantages, but NF's window shows you what matters right now, and for all your reactors if you have more than one, removing the need to pin all your reactors' context windows if you ever have to access them all at once. You do not want to end up like this! In the odd chance that you visit an infernal planet and decide that solar panels were not necessary...or they are present but useless at the time, make sure to never leave things on that will guzzle the current. In this case I had a life support device on and the ship's radiators were maxed out, causing them to fail to cool the reactor, which in turn led to the reactor gradually overheating, losing output efficiency, and nearing its overheat/shutdown temperature. If it reaches its shutdown temperature and does not receive cooling, it will remain super-heated and its Core Health (the percentage status of the core, not the output duration bit) will start to fall, meaning it's decaying and it will become a metal brick. As long as it is hot it will decay. If there's a separate power source able to feed the radiators and cool the reactor down, the decay will stop. Jebediah! Capacitors As @Supercheese mentions below (which helps me a lot in do this part, so thanks muchly ) installing capacitors instead of a reactor can save cost and weight and increase deltaV by quite a lot. As shown in the first picture, you get 8x the amount of StoredCharge (SC) to ElectricCharge for the same mass and volume of the part. Each part here weighs 0.25 tons but one quarter-ton of capacitor shines brightly against 2 whole dark tons of normal battery. (Stock 2.5m batteries featured here). While that is a great thing, they have their disadvantages. They are not a proper 2-way street like batteries. They cannot "charge while discharging" and their charge rate is very small to avoid possibly bricking a low-specced or unmanned ship. A capacitor can be paused from charging (and when charging it will feed from everything that produces or stores ElectricCharge) but it cannot be paused while discharging (in doing so it will feed everything that stores or consumes ElectricCharge or it will dump and waste its charge). Part powers: Item, Holds, Discharges, Recharges CAP-101, 800 SC, 80 EC/s, 8 SC/s CAP-106, 3000 SC, 300 EC/s, 8 SC/s CAR-1.6, 1600 SC, 160 EC/s, 8 SC/s CAR-8K, 8000 SC, 800 EC/s, 16 SC/s CAR-EXTRA, 32000 SC, 3200 EC/s, 32 SC/s Capacitor Control You can control the discharge rate of a capacitor in the VAB and in flight at the Near Future Capacitor toolbar button. The Capacitor Control Panel is only accessible in flight. In the VAB or in flight, the PAW features the discharge rate slider with a non-zero minimum (50% actually) and its maximum (the default). This can be adjusted on the fly in case of the need to throttle down (or up again mid-burn). In the UI, from left to right the elements are: Master switches: The three lightning buttons are: Blue: Discharge all capacitors simultaneously. This is necessary for large vessels that want to release enormous amounts of ElectricCharge at once. Think hard before feeling the need to press because a discharger cannot be paused. Green: Turn on the recharger for all capacitors. This lights the radio buttons on the far right of each row in the part list below. Red: Turn off the recharger for all capacitors. This un-lights the radio buttons on the far right of each row in the part list below. Item row. There's one for each capacitor in the vessel: Icon (not customizable). The part's title. The 2.5m inline one is indeed called "CAR-EXTRA Capacitor" Blue lightning button. Discharge this part. Speedometer icon and slider: The discharge rate controller. In screenshot they are all set to their minimum rate which means they will produce 1600 EC/s. Battery icon and blue gauge: The fuel bar. How full this capacitor is. When its recharger is turned on it shows how much SC/s (StoredCharge) it is rated to produce, not how much it gets to produce (with respect to sub-optimal situations). Battery (charging) icon: The recharger icon. Radio button: The individual recharger toggle and status light. As shown in the: Argon-fueled stack (left): because the visible ion engine consumes 1999 EC/s I set the discharge rate to just over that to feed the engine and any vital systems. Lithium fueled stack (right): because the 2.5m capacitor releases 1600 EC/s minimum I've chosen to build a test ship with 4x the tiny "LF-1 'Charon' Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster." Two capacitors have their recharger turned on. Even if for some reason you end up stacking a reactor's weight or more in capacitors (and heavy, heavy solar panels...) on a craft, you're still saving more than just cost. You're avoiding the troubles of nuclear fuel and reactors themselves if you're still skeptical about the things, but you'll remain at the mercy of solar panel efficiency if you're operating very far from a star. The next thing to consider is how many capacitors set at a given discharge rate will afford a consistent engine burn up to a desired maximum length. The reference formula to measure by is very simple: Total StoredCharge / Discharge Rate = Maximum burn time in seconds. Fuel Performance If you're a nut for fuel performance, then here are a few opening stats including engine sizes to help weigh Near Future's propellants in your mind before you read about them below. Argon Engines 1 ~ 54.55 kN, 2800 ~ 5500 Isp 0.6m, 1.25m, 2.5m Xenon Engines 1.4 kN, 4000 Isp (Stock Dawn engine) 2.3 ~ 5.6 kN, 6500 ~ 19300 Isp (Added engines) 0.6m only VASIMR Engines (can halve their Isp for nearly triple thrust, no change in propellant consumption) Xenon mode: 4 ~ 68 kN, 6000 ~ 7000 Isp Argon mode: 2.5 ~ 44 kN, 8500 ~ 9500 Isp 0.6m, 1.25m, 2.5m Lithium Engines 46 ~ 237 kN, 2900 ~ 3800 Isp 0.6m, 1.25m, 2.5m Argon I personally prefer ArgonGas over XenonGas because it's more abundant in-game (as it is irl) than Xenon and is hence easier to harvest from Duna and other planets with atmosphere. Here I modify a probe that was never meant to go far from wherever it's deployed, to (almost) be able to cross SOI. Almost = not enough fuel but there's plenty, plenty room to fix that. Adding a radial Argon tank (or 4) and changing the Garnet to its TopNode subtype so I can attach things to its other end. Xenon Here's a Xenon-powered Duna probe I launched soon before KSP 1.2.0 was even announced. This is 6 tons, 1 TWR in low Mun orbit iirc, and 11km's dV! The Garnet reactor underneath has 2x Radiator Panel (edge), the straight ones with 150kW cooling power directly attached and they're exactly enough (300kW together) to keep it at/within its limits (300kW). The particular Xenon engines on this one have been deprecated so I can't explore them now. Refueling There are two mods I know of that supply a means not just to use Argon or Xenon, but to replenish your tanks. The first is Karbonite, part of USI. Its low-altitude atmosphere scoops come in 1.25m and 2.5m size. They have very poor intake values since they are firstly filter type devices, and they operate better the faster you're moving and the thicker the atmosphere. Strap some of these, a karbonite power cell and a USI kontainer (for Argon) or a stock Xenon tank to your airplane and fly around (if you have the patience or an autopilot mod). Have the scoops filter karbonite too to feed the power cell and even better, feed some karbonite jet engines so you can infinitely fly and refuel faster.... Or you know, spam them on a landed craft and do the timewarp disco. (Forgive me for mentioning so much karbonite.) Then there's Near Future, of course. It provides the AIReS Atmospheric Sounder (Science category) and the M-2 Cryogenic Gas Separator (Utility category) for harvesting Argon and Xenon. The AIReS is a scanner and both parts only work in atmosphere. Unlike karbonite's scoops, the M-2's performance is not influenced by whether it's moving, and it consumes between 12 and 24 EC/s, or 12 + 24 depending on which gas, or both, you're processing. Lithium The story isn't very different for lithium-fueled crafts, except that Lithium, being a solid material is much denser than Argon and Xenon and that makes it better for crewed ion vessels. TWR is much better at the cost of Isp, and empowers heavy landers and even enables Duna SSTOs. I've made Argon-fueled SSTOs (in KSP 1.1.3) but those required very, very tedious mixing and matching of USI and NFT's reactors, karbonite scoops (to refuel themselves), and engines for sufficient dV and TWR. I don't know if it's still possible now. I haven't been at this kind of thing since KSP 1.2 arrived. Sometime perhaps I will post examples of a perfected ion-powered SSTO. Near Future Propulsion adds Lithium modules to the stock drills and stock ISRU (and the ISRU of Kerbal Planetary Base System if also installed). Here we have an Augustus-capable Lithium SSTO prototype. Since I always have Galileo's Planet Pack installed, I have KER set to Augustus, a moon, and it compares as follows: Augustus: 0.35g, 65km atmo, 350km radius. Duna: ........0.30g, 50km atmo, 320km radius. The Garnet reactors have just enough cooling and this Lithium engine pairs it perfectly for EC flow. The 3 tons of Ore simulates precious cargo like LS resources. Full or empty, though, this craft can make it (however, it's not aerodynamically sound). When devising a Lithium-driven vessel and want to make your engine setup controllable, make sure to add this to your procedure: Setup the reactor on its own stack and if possible, attach all the needed radiators to it. Attach its complement engine and if necessary, nerf the engine so it doesn't drain more EC than is produced (this is only necessary for the huge engines). Take that stack now and multiply it with symmetry until you get a satisfying number for TWR. This only really matters if you want to land or launch in atmosphere. With the prototype craft below, 2x is not enough and 4x is even better. But this isn't always the case. Diminishing returns are hard to avoid or control, especially when the payload fraction goes up from here. Here's a mothership I launched from Minmus. It doesn't claim to be an SSTO but it had about 6km/s dV fully loaded and had some LFO and roughly 1.2km/s for its VTOL mode and a tiny chemical rocketed lander. it was rated for operation with the surface gravity of Vall which is greater than that of Mun. It also contained 3x Near Future's 8 ton Prometheus reactor and 6x 1.25m Lithium engines.

That's the strangest thing. Well if it means anything, I have Mk2 Expansion installed and one of its patches adds IntakeAtm to every intake part I have so I'm just fine. Save this and drop it in your GameData

@Norcalplanner There's no mod conflict. The karbonite scoops have horrid intakeAtm values (which makes some sense). Their first purpose is filtration and no filter has a gaping hole in it to let the medium it operates in just gush through it. You must supplement them with normal intake parts.

@New Horizons I've noticed Custom Asteroids' return but right after I already took the time and learned to make magic with Kopernicus asteroids. I doubt they will scale as the author has only made his mod useable again and has not added features or fixed bugs. If anyone has already used Custom Asteroids with RSS and gotten them to scale then let me know and I'll investigate. Karbonite's atmospheric scoops (available in 1.25m and 2.5m) allow you to filter Karbonite, Argon and Xenon from an atmosphere. This is the key to infinite flight in every atmosphere with appreciable amounts of Karbonite (All landable worlds in GPP but only Eve and Duna afaik in Stock). With this you can refuel ion-powered vessels on the go; deploy Argon/Xenon refueling bases at other planets; and not have to ship a load only from Gael. Near Future Propulsion provides the AIReS Atmospheric Sounder (Science category) and the M-2 Cryogenic Gas Separator (Utility category) for harvesting Argon and Xenon. The AIReS is a scanner and both parts only work in atmosphere. NF Propulsion also adds Lithium modules to the stock drills and stock ISRU (and the ISRU of KPBS if also installed). I'll post something soon about how to balance reactors and engines for ion-powered crewed vessels.

@The White Guardian @Gamel0rd1 At the mention of a problem with the download size for this mod, would you consider saving the planet textures (those that don't need transparency) to DDS DXT1? I do believe those afford more savings and personally I find it a little sad that the planets themselves have to be distributed separately and image maps reduced to 2048px across and below to achieve the download savings. (Umm... How large is the download at this time anyway?)

I'm having the problem too. The download link isn't resolving.

That's a good question.

@Tyko Planetary rings in KSP are so far only cosmetic features and have no colliders and no particle fields. There's no need to worry about hitting anything while passing though them.

If anyone here uses MKS, it allows kerbals to breed now. So I wanna see nurseries on (or direct recruitment at) Niven. Hyyyype!

Deep Sky launched their first local relay + scanner probe into a 140k polar orbit, dubbed the "Homer Mk0 #0" or simply Homer 0. A second on was to launch but the main objective was return the science boxes from the obsolete CardPicker probes around Iota and Ceti, and unlock more/better scanner parts. @Galileo The hiring process finally began, looking for extra hands in order to accomplish the science box return project. Among the accepted nominees was a very promising female pilot, Haidrien Kerman. With her name strikingly similar to the first moon of Nero, both reputation and skepticism followed her about the KSC. Maybe she's a messiah? Lead the way to Nero's holy food kourt? She's done one thing no kerbal has done before. With an experimental new VTOL she scienced the depths of an ocean, and boldly launched alone to intercept the CardPicker probe in Iota polar orbit. Unfortunately the retrieval operation failed; she could not access the science box's contents to transfer them to her ship. She can't be held accountable for that though. She never promised to be able to do a scientist's job [or maybe there's something I'm missing]. Repeat mission a few days later, she didn't go alone. The third namesake kerbal from the group with Eiyuu and Samael Kerman rode along with Haidrien, a male engineer with Mass Effect powers? The recovery vessel was also fitted with a klaw and it captured the science box without any RCS. With @Enceos KIS omni-tool, Jade Kerman detached the bottom of the probe from the box (and kraken-ly flung the whole heap a few hundred meters away). The top of the probe was removed by a decoupler--that upper part meant to be disposable in the first place. The operation took place during a deorbit, preventing 99% of orbital debris (the 1% turned out to be one of the recovery ship's radial tanks ) and a tricky and lengthy return phase was executed, filled with a needless repeat encounter with Iota and far more LS being consumed than ever expected. (Packed 53 days worth, expected to consume 12 ~18 days, came back with only 8 days remaining). Along with that decoupler, the science box had two full-sized chutes attached, allowing the recovery ship to skimp and be fitted with drogue chutes. It was a wild ride, dropping in on Gael at 3200m/s and almost losing the klaw, maybe the lander can, and the mission ending in a catastrophic... but it was a success... [I got only 1 science point for the whole mission. I'm tempted to simply delete the Ceti probe and spare the effort.]

I'm looking for pictures of all 27 planets and moons. That's why I only want 2 pictures per person, and to be fair to other folks who want to submit screenshots for the upcoming feature.

@astroheiko My selections won't be limited to posts within that thread but it's convenient to gather them there and I'll consider posts in there first. That said, this one is sheer awesome! What are the four bodies?

@Galileo more like ninja vs ninja.

It's in the the Optional Mods folder inside the download.

@bigcalm Sorry, fellow. GPP already has a FinalFrontier package. I fear you've wasted your effort.

I did not notice this question and it seems fragmented. Tellumo is intended to be breathable. Your favorite air-breathing engines work here and with Texture Replacer installed kerbals can take off their helmets. Also, no planet is left behind in Kerbalism support. If some particular additional code or feature is required for oxygenated planets other than the homeworld in Kerbalism, let us know.

@4d4Garrison Be fair now. Pick only one body.