Sypress

Substantial progress has been made thanks to the efforts of Odin and BlackMoon of the #KSPOfficial channel on EsperNet. Parts now conduct heat in the manner intended, but there's a slight drawback due to the math involved. With the current simulation model, any timewarp over 50k causes the variables to oscillate wildly out of control until they can't be processed, resulting in NaN for reactor and sink values. This can be mitigated, but it will require users to wait in realtime for the core to heat up to operating temperature, which may take 10 or so minutes with the larger versions even with 5MJ/s being dumped into the core. Adjustable output (fuel rods) will be added sooner or later to handle these minor problems. Considerable thanks to Majiir (Kethane) for his suggestions and coding help, Greys (Hexcans) for his constant pestering about making a forum thread, BlackMoon for badgering me into getting the code right, Odin for supplying me with the necessary mathematics, and Taniwha (Extraplanetary Launchpads) for providing clues and examples through his own addon. Without their help, this wouldn't have been possible. Welcome to Alpha testing.

Two problems have been encountered that are hindering my progress. The first problem is the math behind moving heat (or energy) from one object to another. The second is an engine-related problem. When Time Warp hits 100k, temperatures immediately go to -infinity for no explainable reason. I suspect that orbital body heat isn't processed at those rates.

Shoved another update to Github. Locating sinks on a vessel should be easy enough. Adjacency is not implemented yet. But Sink objects now exist in game logic. Code was refactored to look more 'pretty' (thank Majiir for that). Mathematics for part-to-part heat transfer are slowly congealing into a semi-solid equation. Sinks will likely accept as much heat as possible in the form of J/s until their output matches input, increasing overall heat capacity for the system. Radiators will make use of expansive surface area to dissipate large amounts of heat, and thermocouples will take advantage of the transfer difference between parts to generate power.

I've hit a small snag that seems intent on disrupting the completion of the plugin. Simulating heat between two objects in a non-full-body way is poorly documented. Everything else is modeled and ready to go except for this.

It'd be curious to see if something like that could actually be done, but storing heat like that would have issues, such as how you would 'pump' heat from a lower temperature object to a greater temperature object. The Peltier effect could do this to a small extent.

Shoved out another update. UI buttons are functional, heat now works relative to ambient environment. Atmospheric interaction will be incorporated as soon as I can make the configs work properly.

Heat processing works as planned and the code has been pushed to a pre-alpha state. It's functional, but doesn't do much besides show you the temperature scaling for an object of given size. In this case, an aluminum block @ 2 tonnes with 6m2 of surface area.

The plan is to incorporate heatsinks and thermocouples into the design, but I need to construct a working example first to ensure that everything works as intended. Hopefully some progress will be made today!

As promised, the github link: https://github.com/Calrizan/T-TechModularReactors/ The code is all boilerplate at the moment, so it doesn't really do much besides provide basic functions. I figured out -some- of it. And some of it is frightening, like how much energy exists in a single kilogram of thorium.

Greetings. As a small number of people know, I had a previous reactor mod that I designed for generating power for larger vessels. It was prone to bugs, such as unintentional separation of ship components, melting of space suits, and a myriad of other problems that are still under investigation. The plugin's design was inherently flawed in the fact that I relied on KSP's heat system to generate power and KSP doesn't simulate heat while vessels are 'packed' or on-rails. This leads to serious problems when the ship is unpacked at the end of a warp, resulting in such things as the reactor being at -9999999999999 degrees and taking 5 years to gain back it's power output. This time I'm working on an ambitious project to make properly-simulated thermodynamics for a new series of parts, albeit with very little knowledge of the subject itself. So far, the plugin can determine the specific heat capacity of an object given it's weight and material along with how much energy it might lose with a given surface area, emissivity, and temperature. However, atmosphere and sunlight is not accounted for yet, though hopefully will be soon. Hopefully I can maintain focus long enough to turn this into a reality. Progress can be tracked on github: https://github.com/Calrizan/T-TechModularReactors/ -Heat simulation properties of various materials have been added. -Weight-compensation is taken into account when calculation an object's specific heat capacity. -Ambient temperature has been incorporated and works as desired. -Config-based setting of materials and properties is done. Commonly-used construction materials have been included in an inbuilt dictionary. This will be expandable to prevent limitations. The plugin itself and the parts won't be provided until things have advanced far enough to warrant modelling of custom parts.

These are functional reactor components, complete with U235-fuel and a rough four-year lifespan. They suffer from some mild explosion bugs and the occasional overheat, but they can supply a huge number of ion-engines with reliable power for the duration of their lifespan.

Seeing as the old thread was demolished in the forum crash, there has been some desire to have access to the addon and it's source-code still. There is a significant lack of screenshots at the current moment due to my old KSP installations having been cleaned up with the constant updates. Sorry. Version 1.7.1 Download: http://www./?18jnivebbr08nca Issues/Bugs --There is a known problem where reactors will explode if the power supply is significantly depleted. This can be avoided by charging your supply first, then activating the reactors afterward. --Reactors will not function during warp due to KSP's limited ability (or lack thereof) to handle heat during warp. --Likely a myriad of other problems, like the Ion Engine being a bit too power-intensive, or not joining with nodes properly.

Congrats on getting the first mod back up and going after the prior mangling.