seanth

Oh, I don't just accept the numbers in that thread. And there are other things said in that thread other than the OP? lol. I Anyway, the logic used by the OP seems sound to me, and the consequences of applying the logic to Squad resources make internal sense.

There was (I thought) a great post that gets to the core of problem of standardizing KSP densities: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/28088-Fuel-Density-KSP-vs-Science In summary, the densities used by Squad don't match any real-world materials. Even if we make a pretty safe assumption--that Oxidizer is just liquid oxygen--the Kerbal oxidizer is approximately 4.5x more dense than real-world liquid oxygen. More importantly, that 4.5x relationship seems consistent for the other fuels (depending on what you assume the fuels are...but the 4.5x "rule" does a great job of helping predict what Squad had in mind for a given fuel if you back calculate. For example, Squad's "SolidFuel" has a density of 0.0075. Divide by 4.5 and you get 0.00164, which is very close to the density for the real world solid fuel ammonium perchlorate). It gets even more complicated because some mods aim for real-world realism (and insist on using real-world densities) whereas other mods aim to fit in with Squad's universe, and end up using Squadish (or just made up) values. As much as I would love to see a unified guideline, even if Squad said "Yes, we base our resources on real things, and modify the density in a consistent way," there would end up being two guide lines: one for realism and one for the Squad universe. Having said all that, isn't the density definition just used by the game to help calculate the mass of a part holding that resource?

I have been busy with life stuff, but am getting back into BioMass. It definitely needs updating.

Booo! Why? I was going to attempt a second circumnavigation (mostly) by water and enter.

I see. Well, on the upside Roboto and I have been working on a few things that I hope will unify the spaceport and github versions. So I hope there will be an update to the github soon

Can you elaborate on how the github version isn't working?

Are you trying to launch a greenhouse that is full of biomass? If so, try launching an empty greenhouse and letting the biomass grow in orbit

Agreed: you can grow many plants in low/zero gravity just fine. For those interested: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53009-0-23-BioMass-Renewable-Bio-Fuel-Modules The version on github is dated and will hopefully be updated soon. It is not 100% accurate as far as the plant growth and fuel generation, but I'm fairly happy with it (all things considered)

The version on github does many of the things you propose. -It allows you to make food from seeds -It allows you to make kethane(methane) -It does not make more mystery goo

Well, I could work on one. I'm so close to Biomass and the topic in general (I'm a plant biologist) that I am not sure what level of detail you're interested in. If you're willing to pick one part they are confused by, I can start writing a guide for that part. Once done, we can pick another part, etc.

Last time I checked, yes.

Science+ is more complicated. The concepts are definitely the same, though.

Hmmm. <confused face> That looks like it's the spaceport version, not the science+ version. Roboto, can you confirm this? I misunderstood the version you were using maybe. If you are after the science+ version, I'd dl anew from github just to be sure. Roboto and I are working to finally merge these two branches into one unified mod to end confusion like this. Don't worry, though: if you like the spaceport version more than the science+ version, you'll be able to continue playing like you have been. Imagine "Classic", "Easy", "Normal" and "Realistic" settings.

"Regardless of how tidy you are, there's always a little something that you need to store, but you'd rather not. This is doubly true in space when you are dealing with biological waste. The microbiome provides a suitable environment to cultivate Mystery Gooâ„¢, which happily decomposes biowaste, generating hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the presence of oxygen, or generates kethane under anaerobic conditions. One can also add water to the device to generate waste water...if you're into that sort of thing."

We tried to make the descriptions of the parts actually describe what the inputs and outputs are. I'm sure that if you read the descriptions of the parts, you will discover one that tells you it will produce waste water If, after reading the descriptions you still have problems, ask again.

For the sake of realism, I'd recommend dialing it back to 0.0001 If I remember correctly, the generator module basically ignores values beyond four decimal points (thus the bug of no seed production), so 0.0001 should result in seed production. -STH

That is AMAZING! Thx for sharing.

The lack of seed production is a huge bug I am working on. I'm hoping to have an update tonight which will end up producing an unrealistic number of seeds, but at least it will work. -STH

Hi all. I've been very busy with work related things, but am back on the case. In order for the BioMass+ version to move forward in a meaningful way, we need to have a better generator module than the one in the Kethane mod we rely on. This, of course, means there will have to be some monkeying with code.

I've been very busy, but can weigh in here. What fuel are you trying to make? Liquid Fuel? Oxidizer? Monopropellant? -STH

I wonder if this is a bug related to the small amounts of seed mass being produced per second. In testing I noticed that generators often do not like very small numbers. Thank you for this test. I need to think a bit about to come up with a good solution that won't terribly violate physics/biology

Hmmm. The plant greenhouse should only produce 0.0000138889kg of seed/second on the difficulty level you are on. Have you let the greenhouse run for a long time with the IR lights off? If you leave the IR lights on, any seeds made will germinate into biomass.

The greenhouses will only start producing seeds when the greenhouse is full of biomass. This may change in the future, but that's the way it is now.

What Roboto said is entirely correct. Here is a simple way to think about where fuels come from: Greenhouse: CO2+Water+Light+Biomass-->Oxygen Oxygen compressor: Oxygen<-->Oxidizer fuel BioReactor: Biocake+CO2+Hydrogen-->Liquid fuel Microbiome: Put practically anything(biomass, biocake, seeds, food, waste, even liquid fuel) into it and you'll eventually get hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide H2 Gas Compressor: Hydrogen<-->Monopropellant

First of all, those are some great images. Nice ship design. I can easily answer on of those: Oxidizer==compressed oxygen. To make oxidizer, you just need to compress the oxygen gas. For liquid fuel, make sure you have biocake, hydrogen and CO2 that the bioreactor can use. To get monopropellant (hydrogen), there a number of ways. It gets sort of complicated, but only because we aimed to maintain mass balanced reactions. All of these happen in the microbiome: -If you are using TAC life support, waste will break down to hydrogen and CO2, but you need to actively remove(compress them), because CO2 and hydrogen will be converted into kethane gas and oxygen. -If you start with biomass, biocake, or seeds, these will be broken down to carbon dioxide and kethane gas. The kethane gas, in the presence of oxygen, will convert to carbon dioxide and hydrogen. We should make a flowchart.... Lemme know if this help.