Colonel_Panic

Thanks! Since these craft files were built many versions (and at least one aerodynamics update) ago, please feel free to let me know if they still work, or if you have trouble loading or orbiting them.

yeah, it looks like that's what happened... darn. All that work. :c Good to know for the future, I guess... and perhaps I should quicksave more often. I guess this is the end of my career playthrough, until I feel like hacking my way back to where I was.

Long story short I'm playing in campaign mode, playing a relatively strict game with permadeath but having quickload and revert flight enabled. At some point I was messing around with control schemes jumping in and out of menus, and when I went back into the game my plane was already on the runway. I tried to take off, but it immediately exploded. I hit escape, but the revert flight option was greyed out! so I held down quickload.... I thought the game was saving my progress periodically, and it would just load to the last stable point, but I was wrong and it loaded the last quicksave point I made, like a week ago.... and all my progress is now gone, and all my ships are invalid (locked parts). I can't seem to find anyway to undo that load and load back the original save from when i booted up the game. Is there any way to fix this or did I just {snip} myself? Thanks.

To clarify, my ship didn't blow up from overheating, just watching the heat accumulate and spread from tank to tank was a little unnerving, and I wanted to know if there were a particular design method to managing heat. overheating is a fairly realistic issue with some propulsion systems like that (have you tried radiating heat in a vacuum?), so I don't see it as a "problem" per-se. Not as long as there's a solution for it, anyway. Gameplay wise I'm fine with it. As said before, this is kerbal physics... not every theoretical technology need be perfectly realistically balanced. I could just use plane tanks, but what's this I hear about fuel flow issues? I want to stage drop tanks and leave them behind with the heavier part of the lander before making the return trip... fuel flow management is kinda important. I agree that stock KSP should let you tweak your fuel tank ratios within reason (some tanks may only be suitable to some types of fuel), but what about in terms of a short term solution in 1.0.2?

So yesterday I built a new lander using a nuke engine, and noticed the mechanics had changed since I last played... so much so, in fact, that it turned out to not have enough dV to complete the mission! Partly because I was carrying around dead weight in oxidizer instead of extra fuel.... Anyway, Jeb is now floating in space and rethinking his life while I plan a rescue mission. I hope I gave him enough spare life support supplies. I also noticed heat seems to be a major problem now. Together this raises a few questions... Are nuke engines now more practical on spaceplanes? it seems that without the need for onboard oxidizer, this would be the natural choice for planning SSTO missions with limited wet weight. Has anyone yet built a good spaceplane design with 2 turbojets and a nuke? how about 2 nukes and a turbojet? Is there a good method for bleeding off the extra heat they generate? It seems like ship designs centered around nuke engines could now benefit from dedicated heat radiators, to keep the engines and fuel tanks cool during long burns. Thermal management is now a practical part of logitstical planning, and I consider this a win, but only if there's an actual way to manage it.

^what he said. I really don't know what Eve's atmosphere is supposed to be composed of, but if it contained, say, a high amount of methane, it would be worthwhile to have special methane-breathing engines that used oxidizer as fuel for the sole purpose of EVE spaceplanes.

Yes, exactly, well, more or less.... a ramjet based design would be useful for high speed and transatmospheric flight, SSTOs, etc..., but even a turbojet based design makes sense when you're thinking outside the box of terrestrial atmosphere. Kerbalnauts may want for example to operate an aircraft on Eve for short distance, low-speed flights, and the cost of fueling it would make efficiency gains easily outweigh those of raw speed or thrust. I don't need anything especially exotic. Anything is more efficient than a jet engine that produces no thrust due to lack of breathable oxygen. That said, thinking outside the box here, it makes sense in a non-terrestrial environment to pursue alternative propulsion engines capable of utilizing compounds present in alien atmospheres. Just because an atmosphere lacks oxygen doesn't mean it lacks the potential for harnessing the power of exothermic chemical reactions when introduced to other compounds carried as fuel.

So in that case, how WOULD you prevent asymmetrical flameout?

I think you misunderstand the concept here. It would not be as efficient as an air breathing engine in an oxygenated atmosphere, but the energy of combusion can be much more efficiently harvested to produce thrust by turning a turbine. Think of it as a turbojet with direct oxygen injection, or an internal combustion engine with a prop and NOS. The idea is you're using a tank of oxygen to allow combustion, and it's still more efficient to do it this way than just dump propellent out the back, so long as you have an atmosphere to swim through. This is the reason speedboats and submarines use propellers and not rockets, despite being unable to breathe water.

If this is correct, would that mean that you could avoid flameout by always placing all your intakes before placing any of your engines? I'm not sure if I understand what the implication here is.

I made a post in reply to another thread on this subject, and thought it belonged here. This would be a good way for stock KSP to handle fuel flow without having too many problematic side effects: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/119607-Airbreather-fuel-flow-logic?p=1908956&viewfull=1#post1908956

Quite simply, it should be possible to run a jet engine in atmospheres not containing oxygen, as long as you provided your own oxygen source (oxidizer tanks), and it would have the benefit over rocket engines that it would still be far more fuel efficient for providing thrust. This would allow construction of spaceplanes made specifically for atmospheres on bodies such as Duna and Eve. Perhaps even including special methane-breathing engines that require ONLY oxidizer to run in atmospheres containing the combustible substance (Eve?) Before anyone suggests it, I am not looking to run Kethane mod. I want something simple that adds only 2-4 engine prototypes and maybe special air intakes for this specific purpose and doesn't need exotic resources to work. My VAB has enough useless parts already.

Hmmm, I would suggest a fourth option: treat jet fuel like rocket fuel, however, include a fuel balancer part. Quite simply, a part that, when active, automatically transfers fuel between all tanks which are directly connected via crossfeed to the balancer. That way, you can choose the behavior which best suits your design, be it for balanced weight distribution, drop tanks, etc... tank segments separated by non-crossfeed parts or decouplers would need to have their own balancer. Balancers would be able to manage/reverse the flow of fuel lines when active. As a bonus, we could apply the same logic to xenon and regular rocket fuel. One or two balancer parts could have balancing turned off/on for different fuel types, allowing the default behavior for all fuels to be the same. Except monopropellant. That should still ignore crossfeed rules for the most part, but maybe still only draw from the active stage? Shouldn't this really belong on the suggestion forum? Fuel tanks and other crossfeed parts should be controllable via action groups.

That would require WAY more time and resources than just de-orbiting the thing.

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