nyrath

And I've learned that giving a nuclear bomb rocket to KSP players is like giving a platinum Visa credit card to a drunken teenager. But in a good way. However, I'm still waiting for people to use the shocking amounts of thrust the Orion offers in order to boost outrageously huge space stations and stuff into orbit. There has been a bit of that, but I'm sure more is possible.

Bravo Davros! Just when I think I've seen all the weird things people can do with the Orion mod, somebody comes along and opens up an entire new category.

Ah, no. I do not think that compression waves provide much thrust. But the point is that the pusher plate will not protect the Orion ship from being crushed like an egg. In real life, I have no idea what happens in the Kerbal physics engine

The compression wave in the water created by the nuclear detonation will instantly crush all the submarines in a wide radius like a soft-drink can under a steam roller. Mk 101 Lulu nuclear depth charge (1958 until 1971) 11 kt warhead, while the 400 MN pulse charge is 15 kt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk-101_Lulu_NDB_(Nuclear_Depth_Bomb)

Yes, some researchers are trying to exploit that to make innovative space suits, most notably Professor Dava J. Newman. The technical term is "mechanical counter-pressure suit" or "biosuit". http://mvl.mit.edu/EVA/biosuit/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacesuits.php#id--Design--Skin_Suits

Yes, except regenerative fuel cells can be more efficient than rechargable batteries rechargable batteries typically only last 1000 charge cycles before they stop working it is a lot cheaper to increase your energy story by adding a few tanks as compared to adding another bank of batteries water ice for increasing energy storage can be found on site on many planets and moons, while battery components have to be shipped from Kerbin

Yeah, you loved it because you were not the poor guy stuck with the job of fixing said aphysical behavior. I had to use two questionable hacks to get them to settle down, and even now I'm not sure they are not lurking in the shadows, waiting. Nice multi-Orion ship. So far I've seen three popular extreme uses of Orion: Cluster several Orion engines Load up as many 400 MN magazines you can, boost into orbit, then crank up the throttle to max and leave it there until the tanks are dry Put wings on it

And now you know why NASA and Robert Zubrin are so gung-ho on what they call "in-situ resource utilization", which is NASA-speak for "kethane". Being able to refuel at your destination or at a refueling depot is a game-changer.

Now in real life, there is something called a "regenerative fuel cell". You use a solar power array to energize an electrolyser. This takes in water, splits it, and outputs oxygen and hydrogen. During periods of darkness you can take the oxygen and hydrogen feeding it to a fuel cell. The fuel cell consumes the oxygen and hydrogen, outputting electricity and water. (not as much electricity as the original solar array, but close). Periods of darkness like the two week long Lunar night. Basically it is a way to store solar electricity. Actually that would make a nice mod.

Canopus! You have the best screen shots. And some of the wildest concepts. The explosions are great too.

Thanks! I'll see what I can do about the collision mesh, and the contracting attached objects.

Yes! Orion was born to boost ludicrously massive payloads into orbit in one trip. I would imagine that the rolling state of Sergei would depend upon which nation possessed the Orion. Oh, great job! The flag says it all.

I almost spewed my drink all over the keyboard

Ah, Canopus, people like you who do such awesome things with the Orion mod make it all worth while (for all the pain an misery I went through to make it).

Marvelous! Looks like a NASA educational presentation. You make it look so easy! Any chance of releasing the .craft file?

Good news! Have you tried using action groups?

This might help a little http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fusionfuel.php

At one point I did put the heat-per-bomb just a little bit higher. The rocket turned a pretty glowy yellow color just before the engine exploded.

Very interesting! I thought that holding the Z key down would launch bombs at the same rate as throttle at 60% to 100%, with a delay of 0.8 seconds. But that obviously not the case, the overheating proves that. What the heck was that red bar that kept appearing next to the green bombs left display on the stack indicator? Was that an overheating warning or something? The north trailing effects is apparently a Unity 3D thing, that is, I didn't program it. And apparently there is something dreadfully wrong with the explosion sound.

Ah, no, you misunderstand. Boosterspice was hinting that it would be real nice if I added the canisters. I was explaining that it would appear to be a lot of work for something that might not even be visible. But I will look into it. Oh, lordy, I've created a monster! It never ceases to amaze me the innovative ways people have found to use an atomic bomb powered rocket! Cool stuff.

I had to do something to make the flag blend in, and trying to chop a piece out of the body texture turned out to be unexpectedly difficult. I wish I could offload the action groups from the engine segment into the magazines, but there does not seem to be a clear way to do that given the current structure of the code. The magazines do not use conventional Kerbal resources like all the other rocket motors use, the engine contains a crude homebrew bomb resource manager. Currently the KSPEvents that make the pop up menus are in the engine, not the magazines. Otherwise the users would have to rotate the vessel around to find an example of the magazine they wanted to turn on or off, instead of just clicking the engine to have a list of all the installed magazines. This was easier to code by having the engine have the KSPEvents, not the magazines. Switching the KSPActions from the engine to the magazines would conflict with this code architecture. In the action group list, I am unsure [a] how to remove actions from the list and where to put the code to dynamically update the list to reflect the current loadout of magazine types. That is why all the magazine types appear even though some types are not installed on the vessel. I put in safeguard so if you add an action group for a non-present magazine type, nothing bad happens. I was unsure if a toggle action was a desirable option or not. And yes, it would make the list even longer. Yes, I noticed when one reaches the limit of the atmosphere the explosions suddenly start keeping pace with the vessel. I expressed a concern about this about fifty pages ago, but people were dismissive about it. I create the explosions by a call to FXMonger.Explode, the explosions traveling backwards was not done by me. Maybe if I make the explosion first, then accelerating the ship, things will be fixed. Maybe. Trouble with canister drops is that they are fired at 45 gs to a speed of 90 meters per second, they travel to a point 23 meters below the pusher plate. Each canister is 0.6 meters tall. In other words they are tiny objects visible for a quarter of a second. I'm not sure how visible they are. I would like to make some sort of cone shaped flash from the detonation to the pusher plate, representing the plasma flare. Unfortunately everybody says that Unity does not do volumetric lights very well.

Ah, good point. I'll shuffle the folders.

New version for testing see first post for download. In VAB, can now use action groups on Orion engine to turn on/off various magazine types Pusher plate animation is now sinusoidal instead of linear (slows down near top and bottom of stroke) Parts attached to pusher plate will now share in plate animation, instead of floating in mid air Sorry this took so long WARNING the fix for action groups has the potential to create bugs with turning on/off various magazine types manually with the pop-up menu. Let me know immediately if anything like that crops up.

Thanks! I added a section about KSP http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval.php#id--Computer_Simulation--Kerbal_Space_Program and I re-wrote the section on controls using what I learned from KSP http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/controldeck.php

That has been fixed, legs and anything attached to the plate now move with the plate animation. Though other people have managed to land on just the bare plate. I was also embarrassed that Scott Manley noticed the plate animation was linear, not sinusoidal. That has been fixed as well. But I didn't want to release a new version until I got the blasted actions groups to work. I'm about halfway there...