db48x

My first impact with a single accelerometer on Minmus got me 125 science with version .10, but my second impact (this time on the Mun with three accelerometers scattered about) has gotten me 0, with .10.1. Install problem? Bug in the update? I just double checked and all three of the landed probes are recording. I'll try Minmus again; I've still got impactors in orbit.

The thermal mechanics helper will be in the next version of the mod, 0.10. In the mean time, you can calculate the necessary radiator area with the formula A = P/(o*e*T^4), where o=5.6704e-8 W/(m^2*K^4) and e=1. Since your design needs to generate so little electricity, we can allow the generator efficiency to drop as low as we want; in fact, we will ignore the generator entirely. Likewise, we know that the generator will always run at 30% power, since that's the minimum it can run at. At minimum power level, the .625m fission reactor running on uranium hexaflouride (UF4) produces 450kW of thermal power at a temperature of 1674K, as you've seen. Unupgraded reactors can heat up to 1350K before they melt, so we'll use that temperature instead of the reactor temperature. Substituting into the formula we get A=450000/(5.6704e-8*1350). Plugging that into google <https://www.google.com/search?q=450kW%2F((5.6704e-8W%2F(m^2*K^4)*(1350K)^4)> gives me 2.4m^2. If the numbers in the wiki are correct, then you should be able to use three large radial radiators or one medium inline radiator. Note however that your waste heat bar will fill almost entirely up, because the amount radiated is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature. Higher waste heat bar means faster heat radiation. Also, the amount of waste heat in any one part is not used for anything, only the total matters.

As I recall, Unity makes assumptions about the locale it's running in. Try running "LC_ALL=C ./KSP.x86_64".

There's a guide on the wiki that shows you how to figure that out: https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Waste-Heat-Management It's more complicated than electricity because it's non-linear. Have fun!

Rocket or plane? What power source?

Here's a zip.

The problems with the refinery in the editor are KSP bugs; there are only one or two stock parts that use more than two attach nodes, so the bugs have lingered. Try using the Select Root mod, I've used that in the past to work around this sort of problem.

You'll want to show us your base; it's almost always a problem with the fuel lines.

Wow, this sounds like it'll be great. As long as you're at it, could you make a spectrometer we can use to observe the crash from orbit, for detecting the composition of the crust?

No, but installing it incorrectly is known to have caused a wide variety of interesting issues.

Usually people use two different kinds of satellites, instead of combining them. Type A generates power, type B is cheaper and lighter and just relays it. I'm about to embark on a similar mission in my own game. I'm going to send some satellites with solar panels down into low Kerbol orbit. These can beam power to any ship in the system, with the obvious caveat that they can't reach the ones on the dark side of a planet. To solve that I'll put three relays up in Kerbin orbit, about 700km up. If you're worried about your power sats going behind the sun, you can of course put a trio of relays in Kerbol orbit as well. Sounds about right, but remember that the closer to the sun you are the more power a single panel can collect. See Inverse-Square Law.

Are you in space?

That should all be covered on the wiki <https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Microwave-Power-Transceivers>, but if anything is missing you could always just drive some craft out on the runway and experiment. The power details window will tabulate the numbers for you. Also, I note that RadHazard added a great guide to microwave power <https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Basic-Microwave-Powered-Plasma-Spacecraft> to the wiki a few weeks ago. Thanks RadHazard!

The problem is that it's an SVG, and I'd prefer to put the image (and the dot file it was created from) on the wiki itself.

Good catch; I've updated it. Thanks!

You had several questions, but I'll answer this one. No, until now nobody has created a graph of the resource creation options. The refinery is fairly well documented on the wiki (see <https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Isru-Refinery>) and creating graphs with graphview is easy and fun, so I went ahead and did it. You can view it at http://db48x.net/temp/isru-refinery.svg; I'll get it up on the wiki as soon as I can, but you can't do that via github's simplistic wiki editing interface. And yes, any fission or fusion reactor can produce He3 from Tritium (aka H3) by neutron bombardment. Fractal_UK: How would you like me to get this graph up on the wiki? I could email you the diffs, push to your private repository, you could pull from mine, etc.

Jool is more sciencetastic.

Shiny. I note however that the orbit for the Kerbin mission doesn't hit the ideal altitude of 900km; if put the requirement out around 2000km the orbit will cover the majority of the field. You may want to double-check the other missions for the same reason. Can you grade a mission based on the rate of resource gathering? If so, a good mission would be to collect hundreds of mg of antimatter per day in Jool orbit. Or thousands, if you want to require that they have more than one collector.

Thought of another one; build a fusion-powered plane that can function as a SSTO craft on Eve.

These edits are superb!

They're useful for more than just engines. The small fission reactor makes a great power source for a long-duration mission to the outer system, for instance; it'll last a decade easily. The reason the reactor, generator, thruster are on different tech nodes is to give you more choice. You can research reactor+thruster, or you can research reactor+generator.

This sounds really cool; I'll have to give this mod a try. In order to run a warp drive you'll definitely want to have a supply of antimatter, and in order to harvest antimatter you need to know where the antimatter is. This is where the magnetometer comes in. Give the player a mission to map the magnetic field and antimatter flux around Kerbin and Jool, hunting for the best orbits. The magnetic fields are all quite symmetrical and simplified, and the best orbits are all (correctly) equatorial. The best mapping mission then is to get into a highly eccentric orbit so that you can measure the flux at every altitude, or a good range of them. (At the poles the magnetic fields all point down into the atmosphere, so any antiprotons there get lost.) The fission reactors are fueled with Uranium or Thorium, and come fully fueled. Additional fuel can be mined from many bodies around the system; you'll want to send a probe out with a gamma-ray spectrometer. A high orbit is best, because the spectrometer can pick up active deposits across the entire visible area of a planet at once. Just getting the ISRU refinery out to another body is a bit of a challenge. You can mine uranium and thorium from practically anywhere; the gamma-ray spectrometer shows you the places with the highest concentrations. Tritium you get by breeding it from lithium in either a fission or a fusion reactor. You could just have the player set up a factory near the launch pad, or you could have them manufacture it on some other mission. And yes, you can transfer it while docked. Completing a mission involving the DT Inertial-Confinement Fusion engine can be challenging, if you require hat they not kill anyone in the process. That you're perfectly normal, just like the rest of us.

That upgrade allows you to push against the quantum structure of space and time itself, meaning that you need no fuel. You do need to be in vacuum though. Of all the things in this mod, I'd have to say that this is the most hypothetical, even moreso than the warp drive. Enjoy!

Oops, that was my fault. I've updated the wiki; thanks!

Seems to me that you could also change the units.