VaporTrail

Here's an idea for asteroid mining. On creation of an asteroid (or on mod-add) query the asteroid's mass. Some (random?) fraction of said mass (40-60% top end? probably much less...) is assigned as "mineable asteroid ore" (possibilities of different material end products...) and is assigned as a new variable to the 'roid's file. Add new code to the augers (or build a new mining tech strictly for asteroids) that allows extraction of asteroid ore from said asteroid. As "mineable asteroid ore" depletes, mass of asteroid is updated to reflect depletion. Once "mineable asteroid ore" is gone, the asteroid is basically a junk rock and can be disposed of. This basically handles the "what happens when the asteroid is used up" question, by saying you can't completely use an asteroid (which might not be entirely true real world... but, gameplay). It allows mining of an asteroid. Kethane might use a similar method, however I'd think that the percentage of Kethane in any given space-rock is probably going to be pretty low. That said, a comet-like body would probably be higher in kethane, but much lower in ore. From what I've read though, the masses of asteroids seem to be in the hundreds of tons range... which aren't going to be very worthwhile as mining goes. [edit]Wow... perhaps I should read a bit more, and skim a bit less. Looks like that's the plan.

Actually had a thought about that, but it involved the Extraplanetary Launchpads mining/recycling functionality. Basically code that "removes" fractional tons of "ore" (updating the mass of the 'roid) via a method similar to the "recycling" or "mining" funcitonality already present. Going to detail my idea in that thread for that modder to consider using.

Yeesh... Well... guess someone else had the same thought. Still bouncing around the forum trying to catch all the mod updates so haven't read as much as I should...

Had a thought while writing a bit of theorycraft in another thread, and remembered that someone had mentioned that asteroids are basically treated as vessels. Here it is: "What happens if you hit an asteroid with an active recycling bin?" Anyone want to test that little gem?

Since I'm waiting for all my mods to get officially updated/verified as 0.23.5 compliant before trying to play again, here's a bit of KSPI theorycrafting... Big asteroid on collision course with Kerbin. You're effectively sandbox in tech. How do you prevent collision, and what do you do with the (potential) impactor? My first thought is the Alcubierre warp drive. Launch a ship (probably orbital-construction) composed of some form of docking mechanism (multiple KAS grapples?) a large fusion reactor/generator set (possibly multiples, and possibly a microwave receiver set as well), a warp drive, and a big plasma thruster. Intercept the impactor far enough out that you can get docked, change the orbit of the impactor with the warp drive, and use the quantum plasma thruster to tweak the velocity so you can (eventually) put it in an orbit of some other body... (Mun would be my first choice... but not a whole lot of room for error.). After orbital placement, mine that sucker for whatever you can get. Hm... that brings up the question of what happens with the Extraplanetary Launchpads recycling bin and asteroids. To the ExPL Thread! Looks like someone already had that thought. The changelog for ExPL specifically states that they will not recycle asteroids. I had to be cluebatted with the changelog.

Actually it's NINE 4K size batteries... Here it is in the VAB. 333 parts. Deployed: 290ish parts. 1.7 GW minimum (is more facing the other way by ~100MW) steady state transmitter output @ warp x1. 42 gigantor panels, 20 1x6 panels. Sixteen lights (surface mount radials). A bunch of cubic octagonal struts, six small decouplers for panel arm launch stability, quite a few hinges and telescoping pistions. Have a smaller version that I set up as a relay @ 100Mm. Six of those in a hex-spaced orbit. Once the relay ring is there, dropping a new generator sat into the constellation is cake.

Was still working that out myself. Right now I have a design that generates approx. 1.6GW @ 20-25Mm. Trick is, that it's something like a 200 part payload (42 gigantor panels...) and has (IIRC) 7 4k batteries. Pretty much requires some welds in the booster or a fairly simple booster. I get around it by using a thermal turbojet as a primary booster, a monoprop fueled plasma thruster as an injection stage, and the quantum vacuum as final booster/transfer stage. Takes a couple of hours to drop it into the proper orbit, but once the first one is in orbit the second isn't as hard. This is the version before the current:

Not big issues, but one is kinda jarring. In the tech tree, I'm seeing the Augers each listed as "Kethane Extractor" with an 'Ore Rate' in L/s. I'm fairly certain this is legacy code from the part's Kethane origin, but measuring ore in L/s just seems odd. The Kethane Extractor bit is confusing, but only if you don't know exactly what the differences between the Augers and Drills are. Like i said, minor. Need to be put on a list for clean up, if possible, though.

I'll bet that's great fun at parties.

Actually, I haven't had it shut down on me yet... Perhaps I haven't had it run long enough. On a interesting note, I've managed to orbit a similar version of this that output almost 2x the power the reactor was rated for. Also had a strange issue where one of the generators kept swapping types when I reverted to VAB.

Having an issue... but it may just be me. I have an experimental fusion reactor - microwave transmitter design, that for some reason provides ~1.35 GW of power *more* than the reactor design spec. Quick notes: -I have a 2.5m Fusion Reactor connected to both a Solid State generator, and a Direct Conversion generator... also attached is a small Microwave Transceiver. -The Fusion Reactor's spec max output is 6.8 GW. -Thermal power output: 5.4GW_th max, .54GW_th @10% idle -Charged particle power output: 1.4GW_cp max, .14GW_cp @10% idle =Direct Conversion generator output 1.22 GW_e max. (85% efficiency? Closer to 87...) =Solid State generator output 4.07 GW_e max (steady-states close to 3.22 which is roughly the 59.5% efficiency...) *Now the big item. Microwave Transceiver Beamed power: 8.150 GW I would expect somewhere closer to 4.44 GW max beamed power. What did I miss? Here's the visual aid: This is approximately 10 seconds after activation of the transmitter.

You have how much antimatter? On my planet?! Talk about safety hazard

Fission probably is better used for microwave generation. Four receiving antennae and pointing gear is a lot more weight efficient than a reactor and generator. But then you might run into problems with waste heat... eventually.

Stopped using Remotetech a little while ago... loved the models and the premise... Just too much work to keep relay sats in a stable configuration. However, since I've started using hyperedit to stabilize orbits, I may go back to using Remotetech after .24 hits. What I'd like to see is a constellation planner for Mechjeb and/or other auto-pilot or piloting guide. Hmm... how active is the coder at Mechjeb anyway... I loved the resonant orbit maneuver calculator, perhaps an extension of that might be possible to put a sat into a stable synchronous orbit?

The MechJeb all-in-one pod... Breaking the Fourth wall since '13.

Am I right in assuming the Kethane tank size you need is capacity of your converter per unit time? Basically if your converter converts one unit of Kethane per tick, and you can supply the tank with one unit per tick, the largest size Kethane tank you need is exactly one unit?

Well, I'm just now getting past two dozen flights in progress at the same time... so it was more of a "can I do this kind of thing" thing... That, and the maintenance issue. I don't want to have to service my power supply. I could just stick about twenty, which would give me an easy 20 GW. Or I could just go the fusion route... Hmmm... floating fusion reactors processing the sea for He2/He3...

Hm... Guess I'm going to put my Dyson Ring on hold for now. Plan was for 360 solar generators a degree apart in 20 Mm orbit of Kerbol, each pushing ~1.5 GW out to a ring of relays in ~100Mm orbit. Thats roughly .54 TW of power available. 1/32 of a planetary power supply, maintenance free...

Hmm... No offense meant, but that's actually a pretty dumb way to run a power network. Granted you want the ability to shunt all power to any specific node if you can swing it... but you don't want the necessity of doing that. It's like powering each individual house/building in a city with the full output of the local powerplant. You'd blow crap up that way too (mostly transformers). In fact, building a microwave power network (or ground based electrical network, for that matter) with that kind of flaw is actually harder than doing it the right way... because there should be some kind of intelligence in charge of the system. The easiest way of limiting a power network from doing this is simply turning off select relays. Or just don't make microwaves. Or don't beam all the microwaves at the requesting node. Alternatively you can sweep the beam across the receiver, so it only gets hit by the beam for a few milliseconds out of every second, just enough time to supply enough power for your needs, and little enough that you don't melt. The player should be able to control the network, not the other way around. Mechjeb allows the user to set a throttle limit (multiple ways in fact), so breaking Kerbals with chairs isn't going to be much of an issue for me... That said, the possibility for human (kerbal?) error should still exist. If you have a ship that has megawatt levels of heat dissipation and you make a terawatt power request of the network, you're going to get that terawatt... if the ship can't deal with the waste heat and shut down fast enough... boom. Speaking of, why does a ship with radiators explode if you hit its receiver with a terawatt beam, and a ship with a receiver but without radiators simply shut off the receiver? Haven't tried that experiment lately, but the last time I did I hit a radiatorless receiver with a gigawatt and all I got was a slightly scorched receiver and a nasty-note from the system.

With the upgraded plasma thrusters (playing around with the stuff in sandbox here, rathter than in career) you can do SSTO for small craft (couple of tons IIRC) using nothing but a 62.5cm thruster and monoprop as fuel, and not a whole lot of that. Trick is you have to be able to put ~1gigawatt on target at surface. That tends to translate to somewhere on the high side of 3GW in orbit... I actually built my low orbit relays around that combination (one fixed Xcvr, three receivers (made angle agile with Infernal Robotics) landing legs, lights, and control pods). Best thing you can do for a plasma engine is more power input. That said, once you've got the Vaccum Plasma thruster, the Kerbol system is your oyster. Getting anywhere just means you've got to get power there. Reaction mass is unnecessary... Of course, unless you're getting multiple tens of gigawatts of reception, you're still stuck with some pretty low thrust without a carried reaction mass. Still, it's quite a bit easier getting somewhere if you don't have to haul tons of fuel. Matter of fact, I've got a Solar Generation station braking into 20,000 km Kerbol orbit right now... ~three hours of boost @ 2.526 M/sec^2 from 4.38 GW received.

Actually, there is a 1Mx warp mod around... I'll see if I can dig it up... have an hour burn in progress. Here it is... and it actually has a 10Mx setting as well: Maximum Warp: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68365-0-23-%28Alpha%29-MaximumWarp-Time-Warp-Modifier?highlight=Maximum+warp

Nope, those are stock Gigantors. Kinda leery of adding another mod to the mix... getting missing numbers in my navball dV occasionally, think I'm tempting the memory Kraken. Though I have to check and see if I actually have ATM installed. I cleaned out my mods a couple months ago, and I don't recall if I actually put ATM in or not. Nope it's in there.

Thanks for the clue. Is there some rule of thumb (X EC capacity for Y MW transmission)? Doing it by guesswork now and want to make sure i have a near optimum setup before I start in on the serious power network building. As it is now, the transmitter drains my craft of EC completely when active. With that in mind, here's version 3 (or is it 4?...) which is pumping 1.381GW at the moment. Dyson Ring, here I come.

Installation instructions are included in the .zip. Here they are: "1. If you have an existing copy of Interstellar, go to your Kerbal Space Program/GameData folder and delete the contained WarpPlugin folder 2. Unzip the KSP Instellar mod file into the main Kerbal Space Program directory. That is the main directory, not the GameData folder. The directory structure should look like [KSPMain]/GameData/WarpPlugin, [KSPMain]/GameData/TreeLoader, [KSPMain]/GameData/OpenResourceSystem,[KSPMain]/GameData/ModuleManager_X_Y_Z.dll. Make sure to check this is correct or the Plugin will not load. 3. When the game starts, you will be given an option to select a technology tree from a list of options. Select "KSP Interstellar Tree". 4. Have fun!" On another branch... 60 MW transmitted? From this close to Kerbol? I've got twelve OX-STAT panels (at 1.6 MW each) and six Gigantor pairs (at 40MW for EACH panel). This does not compute. This is approximately 90% loss of energy. Y U NO XMIT?!?! Seriously, does anyone see anything obvious I'm doing wrong?

Just one side comment... apparently Kerbals don't get motion sick. Humans tend to start getting motion sick around 2-6 rpm. That would put a 1g station about 223m radius minimum... The value for a 1/4 g producing radius is much less, but IIRC greater than ten meters.