triple cheeseburger

This next ship returns to the realm of nuclear fusion, a high-end interplanetary transport that can zip across the solar system at lightning speeds. I'm headcanon-ing that this thing is used a lot in outer solar system regions like the Kuiper belt or Scattered disc. Hanging around Pluto and Charon, certainly the skinniest ship I've made thus far. Cruising through space at a leisurely 290km/s. The business end of things, in reality at this distance you'd probably get fried pretty quickly from the radiation coming out of this thing. Stats: - 589km/s of Δv. - Wet mass of 166.882 tons, dry mass of 118.806 tons. - Mass ratio of 1.405. - 172 parts. - 74.4 meters long. - Costs 2,066,324 funds. - Once again using the FFT Z-Pinch fusion torch in afterburner mode, for an Isp of 176,800 seconds and 2,800 kN of thrust (That's a thrust power of 2.4 Terrawatts!). This time the ship has enough radiators to run the engine at full power too. - Wet TWR of 1.71 (Dry TWR of 2.4). - Powered by a small fission reactor able to operate at 65% power, though for most of the time it runs at only 25% power. - Docking port at the front, uses bipropellant hydrolox RCS. - Has room for 17 crew/passengers, with 101 days of life support when all 17 slots are filled. Mods used: - The custom engine nozzle is a mishmash of procedural parts and some radiators, it looks okay I think, but perhaps with more effort it could look better. - The fancy colour scheme on this ship is thanks to SimpleRepaint, using some tanks and flag parts coloured red (the stock flag parts because Conformal Decals' flag parts can't be recoloured sadly). - The rest of the ship is standard Near Future and procedural parts stuff, unfortunately there's a lighting bug with some of the procedural parts but I don't really think I can do much about that...

It's been quite a while since I last posted in here, at the moment I've been busy with other projects outside of KSP (Sorta moved on to modelling spaceships in Blender now) but maybe at some point I'll get back to this game (and maybe get back to making mods for it too lol). However, since my last post I did make a lot more ships I think look rather nice before getting bored of the game. For whatever reason I didn't post them here, so lets go ahead and do that. This ship is more on the lower end in terms of technological prowess. A cheap transport ship that uses methalox chemical engines, designed for simple hops between gas giant moons or other relatively short trips. Above the haze of Titan A close encounter with Saturn's rings Simple no-nonsense moon-to-moon transport for a low price Stats: - 2,972m/s Δv when not carrying any crew or cargo. - Wet mass of 38.927 tons, dry mass of 17.084 tons. - Mass ratio of 2.278. - 115 parts. - 17.2 meters long. - Costs 33,334 funds - Uses the DF-M25K "Owl", an orbital class methalox engine with a vacuum Isp of 368 seconds and a vacuum thrust of 430 kN. - Wet TWR of 1.12 (Dry TWR jumps up to 2.56) - Uses a monopropellant fuel cell to provide power, going off the fuel cell's claim of using 21.6 units of fuel per hour and the ship's 370 units of monopropellant this should last about 17 hours. A bit on the shorter side but I imagine the ship can go a decent while on battery power alone, plus there's always the engine's alternator. - Has a docking port on the side with a slightly awkward tube leading into the main crew space. - Designed to hold 3 crew, but has space for 5. With 3 crew it has 35 days of life support, but if the life support containers are maxed out that jumps up to 164 days. - Has a small cargo storage tank below the life support tank, so it can carry about half a ton of ore or whatever else you can fit into those SSPX cargo containers. Mods used: - The aforementioned Owl engine comes from the lovely CryoEngines Extensions. - The rest of the ship is pretty standard, a variety of Near Future bits and bobs, some conformal decals here and there, and a couple of procedural parts. As with a lot of my ships I haven't thought of a name for this thing. Here's one more image that labels each part of the ship.

Congrats on the release! These parts all look very nice! I'm using the mod without BDB and as far as I can tell it all works just fine.

Congrats on the release! Was great seeing you work your way through this, all of these parts came out wonderfully. Happy to have helped where I can as well

Alright, once I finish the fuel tanks I'll release them and the resistojets as an update. Arcjets can then come in the update after that. Apologies for it taking awhile, I've been working on other stuff (some of which is KSP modding related) at the moment but I should have the time to get back to this soon

Today I ended up building another ship I thought looked nice, so here's "unnamed interplanetary fusion torch thing": Stats: - Around 280km/s Δv when the cargo containers on the sides are empty. Can carry about 50 tons of ore, which drops the Δv down to 194km/s. - 107.5 tons wet mass (again when the containers are empty) - 91.2 tons dry mass (so a mass ratio of only 1.18) - 221 parts - 32 meters long - Uses the Z-pinch fusion engine from FFT running in afterburner mode, by turning the thrust limit down to about 40% you can reduce how much cooling the engine needs - this saves mass on radiators. You can do this with all the FFT engines, it's quite a useful trick I've found for both Δv optimisation and aesthetic purposes. - Can do a comfortable 1 gee of acceleration when fully fueled, which goes up to 1.2 gees when dry. (When full of ore the wet acceleration drops to about 0.72 gees). - Has docking tubes near the top, also includes RCS. Using the electric RCS from NFP that runs on LH2. - Works quite well in-game, its high thrust makes it much more entertaining to fly than a lot of other fusion powered ships. Mods used: - Mostly near future stuff of all kinds - Some far future parts obviously - Quite a few procedural parts (mostly for the trusses and structural bits on the ship) - I used a rather large amount of part clipping for this too, basically the whole ship is built around the length of the Z-pinch engine. But my aim here was to make something pretty in sandbox mode, so I don't really care lol. Here's a couple more screenshots from when I was sending this thing back to Earth. It burnt 40km/s to accelerate and about 40km/s to decelerate, which got it from Mercury to Earth in about a week. Finally, if anyone has any suggestions for names for this craft, feel free to say

Hello again! Apologies for not making much progress recently, have been busy with other projects and haven't really had the energy to work on KSP modding. But I'm back in the mood now, so I will continue work on this. Here's some sketches I did of my ideas for the arcjet thrusters for the mod: And here's a current list of things still left to get done: Finish texturing the resistojet RCS thrusters, then they're done I believe. I started modelling the fuel tanks for these engines. Still trying to think of what sort of look/design I should go for when texturing them... After those two things are done I'll get to work on the arcjets. Also, question; would you prefer if I released the resistojets and fuel tanks as an update and then released the arcjets once they're done later on as their own update? Or should I just stick with the plan of releasing all these parts in one major update?

Hello! Just wanted to say that I'll be away for about five days, so the update may take a bit longer than expected - my apologies. For now though, here's some screenshots showing the progress I've been making: I've implemented the multi-fuel options into the resistojets, fuel choices include: Liquid Hydrogen (787s ISP, 0.2kN thrust) Liquid Methane (373s ISP, 0.422kN thrust) Water (364s ISP, 0.432kN thrust) Monopropellant (296s ISP, 0.532kN thrust) Carbon Dioxide (180s ISP, 0.874kN thrust) Also been working on the RCS thrusters, got those working too and they have a few different configurations (combined with their fuel choices there's about 30 possible combinations for them!). The texture shown in the screenshot is not final. I've also started some work on some fuel tanks for storing these different fuel choices, so you don't have to use something like a life-support container as a fuel tank. Finally, I haven't begun work on the arcjets yet - but they will follow a similar principle of having these many fuel choices and can use the same fuel tanks.

Progress being made on the resistojet engines. Haven't done the RCS engines yet but here's the Fudge, which works as a main engine. Here's the stats and a size comparison against the mk1 command pod: Thinking of making a dedicated resistojet/arcjet fuel tank, since this thing will have liquid hydrogen and liquid methane as fuel options I can add them to this fuel tank so people don't need to install something like cryofuels for the mod to work. Also, since it's using community resources I could pick any of the resources from that as potential fuel options. So water as a fuel choice might be a thing, and I'm talking to people who are smarter than me to find out what other things could be used as fuels. Thinking these fuel tanks could just be one part but then their contents can be decided through the variants. (Feedback on these ideas/this approach is welcome)

Awesome suggestions! From what I've read arcjets have very different performance from resistojets, I was thinking to have them be a separate part. Could be unlocked slightly later in the tech tree or something, I feel like if they were unlocked at the same time then it would render the resistojets even more useless. And yeah I agree, if I were to include water as a fuel option I would go and add a few small water tanks. With liquid fuel I was thinking of people who don't have stuff like cryofuels installed and thus wouldn't be able to use things like liquid hydrogen. Though I suppose if the engines can use water and the mod includes water tanks then that eliminates the need for a liquid fuel option. Cold gas thrusters are a neat suggestion, I was thinking about them a bit. Though they don't really fit the namesake of the mod (since they're not electric)... but I suppose I can make an exception (or rename the entire mod lol). Using liquid oxygen as a propellant is a cool idea - could maybe add it as a propellant option for resisto/arcjets too. Not sure about the tweakable thrust mode for CG thruster - can't really think of many use cases where it could come in handy and might just overcomplicate things. So so far my current ideas for parts are something like this: Cold gas thruster - has an engine and RCS version. Small and extremely cheap, but pitiful ISP. Propellant options include: Liquid oxygen (default option probably) Liquid hydrogen (slightly higher performance, but comes with the downsides of dealing with LH2) Liquid methane (sure why not) Water (although I suppose if liquid oxygen is available then it makes water a little bit useless, because liquid oxygen on its own is quite cheap - which is sort of what I was thinking with this option. Plus having some fuel tanks specifically for one mode of operation for an engine seems a bit weird so idk actually) Resistojet - Similar to cold gas, but has slightly improved performance. Takes a small amount of electric charge. Can also use all the same propellants as the cold gas thruster can. Still comes in both engine and RCS forms. Arcjet - An improved version of resistojets that is unlocked later on in the tech tree. Has a good ISP (around 2,000 seconds probably) and retains the multi-fuel options of its predecessors. Could maybe have RCS versions too? I have not heard of monoprop ion engines, so I suppose I'll need to look into them a bit. If they look interesting though and could fill a niche I don't mind considering adding them to the mod.

Here's some shoddy doodles I did of how the resistojets in the mod could look. trying to come up with ways to make up for their poor performance Resistojets can in theory use pretty much anything as propellant (with different affects on performance), so I thought it would be neat to include that as an option. Using water as a propellant is a unique idea imo, and water is extremely cheap so it could be worth it in some cases. But I imagine it could get frustrating for those using life support (for instance - you try doing a burn and accidentally use up all of your ship's water supply, your crew will now die). Thinking they could also be available pretty early on in the tech tree, before the first ion engines tech node.

Funny you say that... Near Future Propulsion has a pulsed plasma RCS engine, it's pretty much what inspired this whole mod lol. Earlier I was just thinking that perhaps resistojets could be a nice addition... Yeah, in the future I'll see if I can go ahead and add some

Thank you! About adding more fuel tanks... fuel tanks in the traditional sense wouldn't really work I think due to the structure of the engines (in theory the block of solid fuel is kept inside the engine and is pushed forwards by a spring, so a regular fuel tank wouldn't really line up with that description). I did consider making variants of the engine where they're a bit longer and have more fuel stored in them, but I'm not sure... feel like it might just make the original variants obsolete, as solid fuel is extremely cheap in terms of funds so there's not really any downside to using the more fuel versions. I'm not sure, it feels like something that might need a bit more balancing. Cool video! Looking forward to hearing your full review video too. About a 1x1 version... I did consider that, but I feel like it would be so tiny it would be difficult to get a useful amount of delta v out of it on even really small probes. Although I suppose there might be some cases where it could be useful. I'll think about it and if more people ask for one I'll go ahead and add a 1x1 version

Ah okay, alright I've gone and updated the mod now to include that. Thanks for letting me know

Thank you for the diagrams I just used Paint.NET and some renders I did in Blender Oh woops, my apologies. I added the liscense to the top of the post, should that do?

Supplementary Electric Engines [1.3.2] Last Updated: September 13th, 2024 KSP 1.12.5 Download *Also on CKAN This is a parts mod that adds some additional electric engines. Dependencies: Module Manager, B9 Part Switch. (The mod will not work without these mods installed). Recommendations: Waterfall (These engines do not have any stock plumes configured). Suggests: Near Future Propulsion Supports: Vab Organizer, Community Tech Tree, System Heat. Screenshot Gallery The engines in this mod can be split into the following categories: Pulsed Plasma Thrusters: Very square-shaped engines, comes in two sizes. Middling performance by electric engine standards, but are quite cheap and do not take much power. Contains a limited amount of solid fuel inside itself, which cannot be refuelled. Resistojets: Small, simple electrothermal thrusters, comes in two sizes and an RCS thruster. Unlocked early in the tech tree, these engines run on monopropellant but get an ISP in the range of 400 seconds. Arcjets: More advanced electrothermal thrusters, also comes in two sizes. More power-hungry, but still run on monopropellant and can get ISPs around 800 seconds. However these engines steadily corrode their internal electrodes, and as such has a limited lifespan (represented by the limited ablator resource each engine stores). Field-Emission Electric Propulsion: An electrostatic engine that uses liquid Caesium as propellant, comes in one size. This engine has an exceptionally high ISP of 14,000, but is otherwise lacking in all other areas. Its liquid Caesium propellant is quite expensive too. Most of these engines are quite small and not terribly power-hungry, so you should be able to get away with just using solar power or RTGs for them. However, for larger ships you may want to use one of the nuclear reactors from Near Future Electrical. Liscense: CC-BY-SA

Hello! I made a ship last night and wasn't sure where to post it, so I thought I'd make my own thingy where I can post similar style ships and stuff too. I hope that's okay. Either way, here's some of the ships built by Triplchii Aerospace Innovations (TAI) To start things off, here's the "Phantom" Orbital Patrol Drone: This small autonomous drone, first designed around the 2170s, is primarily used around Jupiter and its moons to spy on other ships from a distance. It boasts an extensive set of communications and scanning equipment (the large organic lump sticking out of the side of the main fuel tank). It uses a simple hydrolox chemical thruster for propulsion and can deploy a large solar array to recharge. Stats: - ~4.5km/s Δv - 14.833 tons mass - 161 parts - About 15 meters long (the widest part of the ship is made of 2.5m parts) - Comes with RCS and a docking port too - Actually works pretty well in-game, the assymetry can make it veer a bit while burning but mechjeb's SAS keeps it pointing the right way Mods used: - 90% of the ship is made using the procedural parts mod. - There's also, as you can tell, a lot of decals involved. These were done using the custom decals mod, and the designs are custom flags I made myself. - Besides that, there's a few near future stuff too such as the RCS, the engine, and the dish.

yeah it's the stockish orion drive mod with some structural tubes slid over it. the wear is made using conformal decals and some custom flags. i've been experimenting with it recently and found it looks quite nice imo (here's a couple more examples of things i've done with it) to make the decals i just downloaded some pngs off the internet and threw them in the flags folder, i can send you the exact images i used if you want (i think you can dm people on this website? idk still kinda new and not quite sure how it works)

reusable modular orion-based interplanetary booster idea is it docks with a payload, sends it to its destination, undocks and then waits for another payload to come along this crew module can extend on a tether, by spinning the whole ship it can produce artificial gravity for the duration of the trip

Another rocket-shaped SSTO I just remembered I made awhile ago. This one was powered by a 3.75m nuclear aerospike (from the mod Kerbal Atomics). It is able to switch between running purely on LH2, and running on LH2+LOX - this mode offers higher thrust at the cost of ISP. The idea was that the ship launches on the high thrust mode, and then once it's time to perform a circularisation burn it switches to the more efficient LH2 mode. Unfortunately, fine-tuning the ratio of LH2 to LOX was pretty tedious - so I don't think it was as well optimised as I could've made it. Regardless it was able to take about 35 tons to low Earth orbit (again - playing on x2.5 KSRSS so the cost of reaching orbit is a bit higher than it is in stock). Once its payload is delivered (In the third screenshot it's deploying a dummy payload, just a couple of ore tanks set to be a specific weight) the craft can return home and do a parachute-assisted powered landing. Thankfully the nuclear aerospike engine has ridiculous heat tolerance of something like 5,000K so it works well as a heat shield. The mod list for this craft is about the same as it is for my previous post. As mentioned before the engine is from Kerbal Atomics, the radiation hazard symbol on the side of the craft is from Conformal Decals, the fuel tanks are regular 5m fuel tanks, and the landing legs/airbrakes are from Kerbal Reusability Expansion.

Exploring the solar system (In x2.5 KSRSS) Top left: An uncrewed probe flies under the rings of Saturn, propelled by an afterburning fission-fragment engine. Top right: A crewed vehicle sits in low-Earth orbit ready to fire up its antimatter-catalyzed microfission engine. Bottom left: An Orion-drive propelled crewed vehicle explores Mars. Bottom right: A nuclear-electric probe explores the moons of Uranus.

Not being able to pitch up might just be because you're on the surface of a body, and Tylo has pretty strong gravity so that might be holding you down. Are you sure you're not running out of electric charge? Those wheels take a lot of ec to run I think, and I don't see any solar panels/RTGs. Besides that I'm not too sure what might be preventing you from turning, unless maybe you landed on a slope or something and that might be slowing you down.

"Doppler III" reusable SSTO launch vehicle I made this in x2.5 KSRSS, so it takes a bit more dv to reach orbit than it would otherwise. It uses a large 3.75m aerospike engine to deliver its payload into orbit, and then re-enters and does a powered landing. Unfortunately because of the limits of the engine it's using its payload capacity is only 12 tons (including the mass of the fairing surrounding the payload). Is it really practical? Idk, but I'm still happy with how it looks. I also tested it a lot, fine-tuning the ascent path etc so despite its limitations it's quite reliable. The flag on the ship is a custom flag I made, I use it for a lot of my crafts. Mods used (not a list of every mod I use but just the ones used for this ship): x2.5 KSRSS Graphical mods (Scatterer, EVE, TUFX, Shaddy, Shabby, Waterfall) Mk33 (The big aerospike engine) Kerbal Reusability Expansion (The landing legs assembly and the airbrakes) ReStock and ReStock+ (The fuel tanks are just stock 3.75m fuel tanks) Cryotanks (By default the engines from the Mk33 mod run on liquid fuel + oxidiser, but there's an extras patch that adds compatibility with Cryotanks which makes them run on hydrolox which is apparently more accurate to the engine concepts they're based off of, or something) All of the near future mods (The RCS thrusters are from Near Future Spacecraft I think)

Hi there! Not really too sure what to put in this message but I'll try my best... I think I first got KSP back in 2013, got over 2,000 hours in the game at this point (though I'd say I only really started getting good at the game like 3 years ago or so). Haven't played much KSP 2 yet, mostly just waiting for it to get more updates/bug fixes - looking forward to playing the game more in the future though! Hobbies include digital art, creative writing, and 3D modelling. Always had a big interest in space/rocket science as well (I think KSP is to blame for this lol). Recently thought it'd be fun to try learning how to make KSP part mods, so I'm currently in the process of trying that. Idk when it'll be finished, I have side-projects not related to KSP to focus on as well. Anyhow, excited to be more active on this site and maybe meet new people and help people out etc etc