Kenken244

I, too am having a problem with the timberwind engines. as I recall it is supposed to be a powerful thermal reactor suited for launch stages, which has a built in reactor and radiators. however. in the VAB I am unable to get any information about its reactor power, and I cannot change fuel modes. once on the pad, unless I have a separate reactor on the vessel, they refuse to turn on. even with another reactor, they do not produce any thrust. I think this is a bug, unless the engine has radically changed since the last time I used it.

but how will you thrust with your COM that off center? D:

so, mechanically, what will the differences be between the stellerator and the tokomak fusion reactors?

the VASMIR engine is operating very strangely in the latest patch. it is pulling LESS power at higher throttle, which means that in atmospheric mode, it actually has more thrust at lower throttle, and can't even run at high throttle, in addition, even at zero waste heat, it uses significantly less power overall than it did previously. this makes the engine almost unusable for its intended purpose, since it cannot generate significant thrust in any configuration. it seems like the efficiency is being counted twice, both reducing the power demand, and the power used.

I don't know if lowering isp would be the correct way to model time dilation though. the main reason you end up getting less DV is because the effective mass of your craft increases, without increasing your total impulse. so simply keeping fuel flow constant, but decreasing the acceleration provided would be the most realistic way. unless there is a problem resulting from the effective mass of the fuel increasing too? I admit I am not too knowledgeable about this. come to think of it, the increased mass of the propellant would result in less isp naturally. so I guess the isp should be reduced by that slightly, but also reduce the effective acceleration because of the increased effective mass.

magnetic confinement of a plasma is certainly not an iffy concept. It is used all around the world in experimental fusion reactors. it is rather difficult, granted, because the hydrodynamics of plasma are not well understood, but the proof of concept is there. given that most of those engines are unlocked after fusion technology is matured, it seems reasonable for magnetic confinement to be used in them. though, I do agree with your earlier post about chemical rockets needing some attention. currently, there is not much to help you launch these huge reactors and engines into orbit cheaply, without having to resort to reusable launchers with nuclear engines. this roadmap from NASA has a lot of good information, about chemical rockets and some of the technologies already in this mod, as well as a couple that I haven't seen discussed in here anywhere. I posted this a few pages back, but I don't know if anyone saw it. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/2015_nasa_technology_roadmaps_ta_2_in-space_propulsion_final.pdf

the nice thing about science is that it doesn't care whether or not you believe in it

@FreeThinker, have you seen this article by NASA? It contains a lot of good information on a number of theoretical propulsion technologies, including the engineering challenges associated with them, and a number of technologies I haven't seen discussed in this thread anywhere. it might be worth a read https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/2015_nasa_technology_roadmaps_ta_2_in-space_propulsion_final.pdf

that is an interesting idea, but I was thinking more along the lines of a reputation requirement before you are allowed to build/use certain parts. say basic nuclear reactors will have a relatively low requirement, whereas more dangerous or "scary" propulsion systems would have higher requirements. or having increasingly larger microwave antennas require increasingly larger levels of reputation for example.

Have you considered the possibility of adding a Reputation requirement for some of the more high powered or dangerous propulsion systems or microwave transmitters? I think it would add a nice balancing point, and a bit of realism, as you would have to be a well respected space agency before people will trust you with nuclear propulsion or ultra high powered microwave transmitters. Sure if you were well-respected you could have the nuclear salt water engine posted a couple pages back, but if you fire it in or near the atmosphere you will get such a large reputation hit that you won't be able to use one again for a long time.

as I recall, the largest asteroids actually have enough impact resistance to survive a fall into kerbin without any thrust at all. so this should be trivial.

As I recall, Fractal was also planning on adding an engine that runs only on charged particles, which would have stupendous isp. when that is added, it would make he3 (and the dusty plasma reactor) much more useful.

I have been having a consistent problem with my plane designs since using this mod. All of my planes have, after flying perfectly for a while, gaining altitude and velocity, suddenly decide to rapidly pitch up and flip out. I cannot seem to determine the cause of this problem. I have tried adjusting the center of lift versus center of mass, adjusting control surfaces, tried different ascent paths, but nothing seems to avoid this problem. Furthermore, there seems to be no definite cause of the issue as far as I can see. This will happen at wildly varying altitudes and speeds, across a variety of plane designs. is there some common mistake that I might be making? What generally is the cause of such losses of control, and how can I avoid them? I really seem to be at a loss here.

Trying to harvest hydrogen from a star's corona would be a Very Bad Idea, considering it is actually hotter than the surface of the star itself.

It is supposed to look like that.