Northstar1989

Wait, what's changes now that you're talking about exactly? And... Why aren't you still taking anything for the Flying Duna Challenge? You know, I keep poking my head in there every now and then (you know it was where I made my first post ever on the forums, right?), and I still dream of earning that patch. I developed helicopters, spaceplanes, and dedicated atmospheric planes all for the task- the only problem was that every time that one was about to get there, real life would rear its ugly head and then KSP would undergo some kind of major update before I ever finished it... Now I've decided to opt for a slightly less ambitious Constellation-style mission first (it's possible all-stock in 1.0.x thanks to ISRU, fairings, and improved aerodynamics) as I've never actually put Kerbal boots on the ground on Duna (except for a certain survivable crash of the Eagle Mk2 for the Flying Duna Challenge a long time back), but I'm still going for a plane or helicopter mission there (probably the latter- as it's never been done) in the long run... I want that patch! Anyways, sorry to go off-topic. I've been following along the comic strip- great work Kuzzter! Regards, Northstar

Something looks fishy about the Delta-V figures for returns (at least using the method you said to calculate returns- i.e. using the Eeloo example). It should never take more Delta-V to get a return-trajectory than it took to capture from the inbound trajectory in the first place, when returning from any body further out from the Sun/Kerbin than the departure point. I.e. it never takes less Delta-V to circularize an orbit with a higher apoapsis from the sun (essentially what you are doing when you capture at a planet further out than Kerbin) than it does to drop the periapsis back down to where it was before... Are you sure you're basing the calculations on the most efficient returns- i.e. burning within the SOI of a planet/moon so that you escape with a trajectory retrograde relative the the planet/moon's movement about the Sun/Kerbin? (when Kerbin is in the correct position for a return if going from planet to planet) Regards, Northstar

Are the textures for the procedural parts currently in DDS format? Would that be workable with this mod, or does the procedural nature of the parts make that unworkable? If DDS is feasible, and not already done, it should be implemented- to save on memory. Regards, Northstar

MAYBE. This is why we need to have the mod author try it out, test it, and see if there is a way to make it work if it doesn't initially. Nobody else knows the code of the mod better. Regards, Northstar

This is as simple as it sounds. I was looking through the Squad folder in GameData, and I noticed that while all the parts and internals textures were in .DDS file format, all the flags (images that appear on the sides of some parts, on flags you plant, etc.) were in .PNG file format. Is/would it be possible for Squad to convert these files to .DDS file format as well? I assume that would marginally improve improve memory management/loading in the same way converting all the parts textures to .DDS file format did? Regards, Northstar

@TriggerAu Hey, I was just looking through the folders for this mod, and I noticed all the icons, textures, and flags were in PNG format. It is possible to convert them to DDS format, just like all the part textures? Or does that only work for parts? If so, do you think you could push a version with DDS images for the next update? (to improve game performance) Regards, Northstar

@Nereid Hey, I was just looking through the folders for this mod, and I noticed all the ribbons were in PNG format. It is possible to convert them to DDS format, just like all the part textures? Or does that only work for parts? If so, do you think you could push a version with DDS images for the next update? (to improve game performance) Regards, Northstar

Will look into the rest sooner or later... KSP-Interstellar Extended (one of the other mods I work on) has working solar sails. Of course, it also has working Propulsive Fluid Accumulators and plasma thrusters, which might be an easier way to restore the position of your mass driver between firings... Regards, Northstar

OK, sorry I've been a little slow in uploading more progress again lately. I've been quite busy planning and executing my Duna mission, learning some basic video-editing techniques in YouTube's Video Editor, seeking out permissions to use songs for the video music, etc. for the past couple weeks. Anyways, before I started on my Duna mission I made quite a bit of additional progress. Here are some of the highlights... First of all, I launched a fuel-depot to orbit to store up LqdNitrogen from my latest Propulsive Fluid Accumulator... As has become my standard practice, this was a Space-X style mission with launch-stage recovery: The upper stage was recovered as well: After a wait for phasing, I was then able to dock my Heavy Propulsive Fluid Accumulator with the propellant depot.. I originally considered placing the depot in a higher orbit and having the PFA make trips to it each time it was full, like would be used in real life Propulsive Fluid Accumulator plans (as higher orbits require much less station-keeping propulsion, and the whole point of a PFA system is to accumulate a net-surplus of propellant), but decided this would be too much work, and so just left the two docked together to accumulator LqdNitrogen for my planned Duna mission... I also carried out a test-launch of my Duna Lander. This version was not the exact design I decided to eventually use for my Duna mission (which is currently in progress- and will be posted as an edited and cut-down video instead of a screenshots compilation), but it was close- and confirmed that the basic design was functional: The lander launch was actually unintentional- it was supposed to be a "simulation" (with a revert after reaching orbit), but loading the quicksave instead of reverting after one failed launch (where I was too aggressive with my gravity-turn and failed to reach orbit) caused me to be locked into a buggy situation where a physics-bug caused the launch clamps to dance around on the launchpad and explode if I didn't immediately launch (leaving me no time to hit "Recover"), forcing me to actually make a lander-ascent for real... (I guess I could have just discarded the launch stage near the KSC and landed the lander back at the launchpad/runway- but this way I got more practice using the lander and some additional missions on my Kerbals' Final Frontier jackets...) After reaching orbit with the lander (and failing to remember to swap back to the launch-stage and recover it with FMRS) I then transferred over the crew to the crew recovery capsule that rode to orbit atop the lander as a secondary cargo, and brought both the lander and the crew capsule back to the ground separately (allowing me to test both the lander and crew recovery system in the same mission...) The lander, unfortunately, suffered heavy damage during spalshdown- but that was partially due to pilot error and partially due to the lander only being designed for operation on Duna- where the gravity is much lower. I was sufficiently satisfied with the performance of the lander to conclude it could operate successfully on Duna and meet all mission-requirements with some minor refinements to the design... After this, my next mission was to lift a small probe to Low Kerbin Orbit to complete a contract testing a SRB there. I decided to use my latest Nuclear Thermal Spaceplane design to accomplish this... The ascent went extremely well- and my spaceplane reaching orbit without even having to use any of its LqdHydrogen (which was meant to provide the final push to orbit, after depleting the LqdNitrogen and Hyhdrazine tanks...) was testament to this. It appears my latest spaceplane has a much higher payload-capacity than earlier spaceplane models... (and once again, my spaceplanes are the ONLY ones I know of that don't use fusion or antimatter reactors to yet reach orbit in RealSolarSystem 6.4x/64K...) The recovery of the spaceplane, however, went... Less smoothly. A bug with TweakScale that caused the main reaction wheel (which I had set as the root part while editing the spaceplane in the hanger- and forgot to change back) to shrink down to a fraction of its size caused MAJOR issues. I know that, supposedly, when this bug occurs parts retain their normal stats and the bug is only visual- but the spaceplane definitely lost the vast majority of its reaction wheel force, and what's more the part shrinking created a structural weakness that caused the nose to wobble all over the place... Still, the spaceplane managed to stick a successful landing on the runway on the first try (although the re-entry didn't go quite so smoothly at first, as I was initially surprised by the much-reduced reaction wheel force, and had to adjust my re-entry profile accordingly...) and I moved on to other things... I must say, though- she really was a rather beautiful spaceplane, and I'm going to miss using her when I eventually update to 1.0 (where the new aerodynamics will almost certainly cause her to stop working correctly...) Things like: performing a Munar flyby with the small probe my spaceplane lifted as payload. I must say, though- this probe was meant to bu much more capable that it was. Somehow, while editing it into the spaceplane cargo bay in the hanger, I managed to remove the hypergolic fuel-tanks from the second stage of the probe. As a result, its only propulsion system was a single SRB- which prevented it from establishing a Munar orbit with the probe as was originally the plan... I got considerable amounts of data from the mission nonetheless. Enough to research Experimental Rocketry- which provided one last tech level (Tech Level 7) to my chemical rockets- ensuring I carry out my Duna mission with the absolute state-of-the-art for the propulsion of my launch vehicles (reasonably mimic'd Ares V expendable launch vehicles) and Duna lander... My Duna Mission, despite being Constellation-inspired, will also include Microwave Beamed Power, however. I will be using it both Microwave Thermal propulsion to escape the Kerbin system with one of my lighter modules, Microwave Electric propulsion for one of my more massive modules, and for a tiny transceiver on one of my modules that not only acts as a receiver for power beamed from Kerbin, but as a transmitter for extra-atmospheric transmission (where a tiny transmitter could realistically be used- as use outside the atmosphere allows use of shorter wavelengths which require much smaller transmitters and receivers...) as part of a supplementary power-system that provides an extra boost to the available power of another module when capturing at Duna... Most of the Microwave Beamed Power used during the mission (all except the supplementary power-system described above, which re-uses a small deployable transceiver as a transmitter as well as its main purpose as a receiver...) will come from the ground on Kerbin, near the KSC, however- as this is the cheapest and most realistic way to set up a Microwave Beamed Power infrastructure... Here is the transmitter: Due to the inability to properly construct permanent ground-based infrastructure in KSP outside of the KSC, the transmitter was basically an enormous rover. But you can imagine it as being a proper facility dug into the ground with foundations and connected to the electric power-grid if you want... A Microwave Beamed Power infrastructure is most effective when coupled with an orbital relay system, however- so that the power is available in more places than just when spacecraft are directly within line-of-sight of the transmitter. Thus, I deployed a single relay in a Kerbostationary orbit overhead the transmitter such as to increase the range of the beamed-power system (even where there is direct line-of-sight over the horizon, it often makes more sense to beam the power straight up and then bounce it off a relay, as the atmosphere will act to diffuse the beam to near-useless intensity if it is aimed at a low angle over the horizon...) I am afraid these will be the last screenshots for a good while, though- after this my next update will take the form of a link to a video posted on YouTube of my Duna mission- which will require quite a while longer to finish executing, and even longer to create a cut-down and edited video of... I will do my best to make the video suitably-epic, though! Until next time, this is Northstar, signing off... Regards, Northstar

LOX = Liquid Oxygen, not Liquidfuel. I don't get what Liquidfuel has to do with the comment I was responding to- about LOX clogging reactors... Regards, Northstar

The cryostat power-consumption numbers aren't even that unreasonable with stock solar panels- unless you're using TweakScale to make some ridiculously-huge cryostats (does Tweakscale even act on the cryostats? I haven't bothered to check, as I use RealFuels and thus have almost no use for the cryostats- which are excessively heavy for their volume compared to realistic fuel tanks which can easily be cooled with the RealFuels active-cooling radiators to mostly prevent boil-off...) I would get used to the idea of having fairly substantial power-requirements to keep your more volatile propellants in liquid form for long periods of time (instead of gassifying and leaking out of your fuel tanks...) Once again, the power-costs are quite reasonable to meet just with stock solar panels- so I think your expectations as to how easy actively-cooling your propellants should be might just be a tad bit unrealistic... Just build a bigger rocket than can support the extra solar panel mass with its Delta-V budget. Who doesn't want a bigger rocket!? Big rockets look awesome! Regards, Northstar - - - Updated - - - On LOX??? You mean on Methane and CO2? (although, FreeThinker- you still really need to either remove the SootFactor from CO2 or only make it active with higher-temperature reactors... At the temperature of a Molten Salt or Particle Bed Reactor, Carbon Dioxide acts to CLEAN soot out of a heat exchanger... Personally, I deleted the SootFactor lines of code from my own configs for CO2 and just don't use CO2 with Gas Core Reactors- which are the only reactors I ever use hot enough to pyrolyze CO2 down to elemental carbon...) LOX itself isn't usable as a thermal rocket propellant- only Hydro/LOX (which generates no soot) and Meth/LOX (which generates lots of soot, as it rightfully should...) Soot from Methane and CO2 acts to clog the heat exchanger- reducing your thrust for the same fuel-flow (and thus, indirectly, your ISP) as well as causing the attached engine to overheat more readily... Regards, Northstar

Yes, I was aware of that- but without RealFuels installed capsules and lander pods still only carry Monopropellant instead of Hydrazine. As they are basically the exact same resource, it might be worthwhile including a fuel-mode for Monopropellant in the thermal rockets- unless you intend to redistribute ModuleRCSFX with KSP-I-E so that the capsules will hold Hydrazine instead of Monopropellant and RCS thrusters will use Hydrazine instead of Monopropellant as well... Regards, Northstar

Welcome aboard husheruk! Kerbal Space Program is a great game, perhaps the greatest game I've ever purchased! I hope you'll prioritize buying it over any other games and put it at the top of your gift wish-lists: you won't be sorry! Regards, Northstar

Just catching up on the posts a bit now- sorry if I was a little harsh on you guys the last few times I posted... Yes- in theory, at least, a 200 meter flying needle should spend more time passing through the Mass Driver and thus receive more acceleration than a comparable, shorter craft of the same mass. No guarantees the ship will survive the structural stresses of being 200 meters long and accelerated at over a dozen g's, though. Your rocket is likely to pull apart at the joints between inline parts this way if it's not of uniform density... It *is* calculus- which is part of why I've thus far avoided including any tools to actually predict exit velocity. It's not only calculus- it's calculus with a hefty dose of coding and the need to reference craft files to find things like the length of the craft... Indeed. I *love* calculation-aids for KSP, but creating informational tools and calculators with advanced math and coding underlying them isn't exactly my specialty... If you're referring to the ability to mass drivers to network together to fire sequentially as a craft passes through them, they all need to be directly attached inline to each other. However, using something like kOS it might be possible to dock several independent "stacks" of Mass Drivers together with clever use of radial attachments and have the Mass Drivers fire off at precisely the correct time to catch the craft as it passes through. Each "stack" would independently try and place the vessel on rails, though- so it might cause issues if the tail end is being placed on rails by one stack and the nose by another stack at the exact same time... Never messed with the LAZOR system, but yeah, that might work... Let us all know if you come up with anything awesome... Well, considering the docking-port magnets don't even work that well (in 0.90, they didn't even work at all- which is creating some SERIOUS annoyances for my 0.90 RSS 64K Constellation-style Duna Mission I'm carrying out and uploading to YouTube before even thinking about to updating to 1.0- especially as RSS 64K has become basically a must-have mod for me...) I should've known somebody would try this out sooner or later. It's realistic, though- they're made of flesh and bone, not metals that electromagnets can act on. Regards, Northstar - - - Updated - - - The problem with that is, heavier vessels pass through the mass driver more slowly- and thus gain more kinetic energy. There's also the issue to gravity to be worried about... The short of it is, doubling the power-levels doesn't double the kinetic energy (and vise-versa) and the kinetic energy gained has interactions with payload mass and driver-orientation (a vessel leaving a horizontal stack will leave the mass driver traveling much faster than one leaving a vertical stack as it doesn't have to fight gravity- which is something to consider when trying to launch a vessel using Mass Drivers from the surface of the Mun... Which would probably require Extraplanetary Launchpads and building the Mass Drivers on site- as it would take an insane rocket to lift a 50-meter long stack of Mass Drivers to the Mun in one piece...) Regards, Northstar - - - Updated - - - You changed the heat tolerance to that of Silicon Carbide (one of the most heat-resistant materials known to man). Now THAT is amusing, and VERY "Kerbal." Learns fast, this padawan does. I'd have to check which axis you offset the mass along, but it sounds like your *real* issues is that you need the Center of Mass forward of the Center of Drag/Lift to prevent the fairing-enclosed payload from spinning out in the atmosphere. That will give it aerodynamic properties more like an arrow or dart- as opposed to, say, a baton... There is an easier (and less cheaty) solution than offsetting the Center of Mass for the fairings (which makes little sense realistically). Install Procedural Parts and RealFuels mods, and place a small Procedural Parts fuel-tank *just behind* the nose of the fairing filled with LeadBallast (a resource from RealFuels specifically-intended for use to change the Center of Mass of vessels to improve their aerodynamic stability...) Add enough ballast up there and your faring should fly straight and true through the atmosphere no matter how fast you expel it from your Mass Driver. You can get away with using less ballast if you take special effort to place the heavier parts of the payload more towards the nose of the fairing (even if this mean, for example, placing the payload inside the fairing backwards). Since the fairing completely covers up all the parts inside it from generating drag or lift, all you need to worry about is getting your Center of Mass as close to the nose of the fairing (and as far in front of it's Center of Lift/Drag) as possible... All this is predicated on using a realistic aero model like FAR or nuFAR, of course. I couldn't tell you what the 1.0 aero model would do as I haven't even tried it out yet (I'm still using 0.90, which is why I haven't even officially updated this mod to 1.0- as I've had no firsthand experience bug-testing it before declaring it ready for a 1.0 release...) Regards, Northstar

I'm surprised MechJeb's ascent guidance doesn't tank your framerates with the Thermal Turbojet as well (are you using it in internal propellant mode?) Under-the-hood, the way atmospheric ISP is calculated is now quite different than most rockets... Because a thermal rocket nozzle can be used with a variety of heat exchanger temperatures and power-levels (even different power-levels at the same HX temperature- as with Microwave Thermal rockets receiving different amounts of beamed power) it was necessary to make use of a more realistic calculation for atmospheric vs vacuum ISP to not get ridiculous results- especially in certain edge cases (you can blame me- this was my idea- and one I'm still rather proud of...) Instead of an engine losing a certain percentage of its ISP at sea-level based purely on the part and/or fuel-mode, thermal rockets and turbojets (when in internal propellant mode- the code is quite different for atmospheric propulsion), it loses ISP due to the relation between its thrust and the physical size of the rocket nozzle. Thus, a 10 GW Hydrogen-propelled Microwave Thermal Rocket is going to lose a much smaller percentage of its thrust at sea-level than a 1 MW Nitrogen-propelled Microwave Thermal Rocket of the same size nozzle, despite the Nitrogen having a much higher molecular weight (14x to be precise), due to the much higher volumetric flow and thus mass flow rate and exhaust-pressure through the 10 GW Microwave Thermal Rocket. If we had fixed ISP-loss to fuel-mode instead, then the Hydrogen-propelled rocket would have lost a much higher percentage of its thrust at sea level than the Nitrogen-propelled rocket, despite having an insanely higher exhaust-pressure. If none of that makes sense to you, don't worry. Here's a really simple explanation of how ISP-loss due to atmosphere ACTUALLY works, though: Imagine the atmosphere pushing against an invisible wall around the bottom of your exhaust nozzle. The exhaust stream in turn pushes back. Whichever has the higher pressure tends to win... If the atmosphere has higher pressure than your exhaust, then it compresses your exhaust stream (and pushes its way into the exhaust nozzle itself if the difference is great enough) and causes your rocket to lose a lot of thrust. This is known as an "over-expanded" exhaust stream (see the part on expansion-ration below). On the other hand, if the exhaust stream pushes back with a higher pressure, then it tends to continue to expand past the end of the nozzle, and prevents the atmosphere from sapping nearly as much thrust from the rocket (the stronger the inequality the lower the thrust-loss). However, since the exhaust pressure was stronger than it needed to be to stop the atmosphere from compressing the exhaust stream inwards, you would have been better off with an even larger expansion-ratio exhaust nozzle. Such a case is known as an "under-expanded" exhaust stream. (Exhaust nozzles act to expand the exhaust- reducing pressure but producing additional thrust from the expansion by increasing the exhaust-velocity... The ratio of initial exhaust size at the nozzle "throat" to final size at the end of the nozzle is called "expansion ratio" and determines how much pressure is reduced and the velocity increased...) By the way, in practice, most real-world rockets over-expand their exhaust-stream: even launch-engines that are used off the ground. This is because as you ascend, atmospheric pressure goes down, and the ideal expansion-ratio goes up as you need less exhaust pressure to counteract the ambient atmospheric pressure. Since rockets tend to go UP, it only makes sense to design them to optimize for the highest *average* ISP over their ascent, rather than the highest ISP right on the launchpad... (Put another way, as you expand an exhaust stream more and more, the atmospheric ISP at a given altitude goes up until you reach the point where exhaust pressure equals ambient pressure, after which point the stream becomes over-expanded and the atmospheric ISP at that altitude declines. However, vacuum ISP *always* increases as you increase your expansion-ratio: which is one reason rocket engines heavily specialized for extra-atmospheric use tend to have very large engine nozzles and very high vacuum ISP's, but very poor sea-level ISP's...) All this has led to the creation of variable-area rocket nozzles in real life: that is rocket nozzles that become LARGER as you ascend (usually by mechanically deploying a telescoping sheet of metal from the initial engine bell as the rocket climbs). Which would be a pretty cool thing to include in KSP-Interstellar for the thermal rockets, but something I don't necessarily forsee us working on anytime soon... (it would ideally require some sophisticated animations- which is something neither myself nor FreeThinker are particularly good at...) So, to the main point- MechJeb is probably tanking your framerate because it's going absolutely bonkers with the changing ISP (and thus Thrust) as you ascend being governed by a *very* different set of equations under-the-hood than anything it's used to (or code for) from stock or even RealFuels (*although*, RealFuels is about to undergo a MAJOR change to the way they calculate their atmospheric ISP in the next release- it's possible they were inspired by our code to release something even more sophisticated/realistic, or something basically on the same level as our math/code...) You could have the MechJeb creator take a look at our atmospheric Thrust/ISP code- despite the increased complexity of explanation, the actual math is actually no more complex than what goes into stock of RealFuels- it's just very different (and better), and thus it should be easy enough to release an update coding around it... Is this an issue specifically with the 1.0 heat system and overheating of the entire rocket? (which I couldn't tell you much about as I haven't updated to 1.0 yet- whereas the atmospheric code has been around for a long time...) Or is it an issue with just the engine part itself overheating like in the earlier system? Couldn't tell you much about heat-management with the new system, but the VISTA has generated a lot of heat for a long time now. You are correct that this is meant to be one of the limiting factors preventing its use at full-throttle for long periods of time... Thermal Turbojets- so it atmospheric mode on the planets, in space around them, or during aerobraking/re-entry? The situation matters a LOT here! If you're talking about during atmospheric use, the atmosphere of Jool has a *very* different composition than that of Kerbin. At some point we were meaning to make TTJ performance reflect that- so maybe FreeThinker already threw in some code along those lines (you'd have to ask him). If you mean during re-entry, well, it's Jool (or a planet modeled on Jool). Re-entry speeds are *MUCH* higher, so of course it's going to overheat much more readily... I'm not aware of anything that should make the engines overheat more readily in space/orbit out that way... So you might also have stumbled across a previously-unidentified bug we need to fix... Regards, Northar - - - Updated - - - @FreeThinker Anyways, I came here to report a couple bugs/issues I've come across (in one of the last version for 0.90- so quite outdated- but I just wanted to make sure you fixed all of these...) There are resource-naming issues, so they originated with the swap to CRP resource-names (LQD instead of LIQUID), and they should still be around unless you explicitly fixed them (which I couldn't find mention of in the changelogs- but you did say you "Removed Obsolete Resources", so maybe it fit under that...) (1) Some of the code in the RelaFuelsFix file still references "LiquidCO2" instead of "LqdCO2", wrecking havoc on the ability to store the correct CO2 resource at certain times when RealFuels is installed... (2) The Nitrogen Radiator part still references "LiquidNitrogen" instead of "LqdNitrogen" it its compressor and active-cooling code: preventing either of these from actually working with the renamed nitrogen resource- unless a player manually fixes this in their config (as I did in mine). (3) The plasma thruster still uses "LiquidNitrogen" instead of "LqdNitrogen" for its "LqdNitrogen" fuel-mode (the GUI name is "LqdNitrogen", but the resource-name is "LiquidNitrogen"). You mentioned something about fixing the plasma thruster, but I'm not sure if you caught this bug or if that was just a fix for other more general malfunctions... (4) Not exactly a bug- but the ElectricPRopellants file still needs to include a Hydrazine fuel-mode (much like the Thermal Rockets include a Hydrazine fuel-mode). It should have *exactly* the same performance characteristics as Monopropellant (which Fractal_UK clearly decided represented Hydrazine back when he added the plasma thrusters and an ISRU reaction to produce Monopropellant from Hydrogen Peroxide and Ammonia... Speaking of which- is that reaction included in the latest release and updated to use the new resource-names of "HTP" and "LqdAmmonia"?) By the way, a thought- if you still intend on supporting stock "Monopropellant" in the long run (and not partially or fully phasing it out like with LFO), then you should probably allow Monopropellant to be used in Thermal Rockets with exactly the same performance-characteristics as Hydrazine, since that's clearly what it's meant to represent... Regards, Northstar

Is Boris not planning on coming back for this? Sorry I've been so out-of-the loop: long hours at work, a lot of time sick, and a Duna mission I'm trying to squeeze out in 0.90 before updating to 1.0 (which I'll be publishing to YouTube- which has also meant a lot of time spent on video editing and soundtrack-selection...) Regards, Northstar

Oh, lol. I always just assumed it was a mis-spelling of Dionysus. That actually makes more sense! And makes it more obvious it is a Raptor-analog! So, Raptor, could we get some Meth/LOX fuel-modes for engines besides the Raptor? It makes sense for the K2-X engines in Novapunch (I was mistaken: they only come in 1.25, 3.75, and 5 meter sizes- there is no 2.5 meter variant) at the very least, and the RMA-3 and Orbital Bertha would make excellent Meth/LOX lander engines (like were at one point considered for use in the Altair Luna Lander program...) Regards, Northstar - - - Updated - - - Well, I'm really not so sure a RosCosmos "personality" was the best choice for NavaPunch2. It has Saturn V, no fewer than *THREE* J-2X (in different sizes), and aerospike analogs (the last of which was a technology that was most developed by NASA, not RosCosmos)- and some entirely original stuff. If anything, it's more of a mixture of the "best" ideas from both NASA and RosCosmos than a direct analog of either... Anyways, many players (including me) are severely pressed for RAM and don't install more than one conventional parts-mod (as opposed to KSP-Interstellar, which I also use but doesn't really have a lot of rocket engines in the conventional sense- opting for a number of thermal rocket setups where you combine different reactors, fuels. and even nozzles to get different performances...) As such, having options that limited really isn't FUN. I'd very much like to have a Meth/LOX lander engine (which I'm not sure can be found in ANY parts-pack at the moment, even SpaceY...) as well as a Meth/LOX J-2X fuel-mode in Novapunch+Stockalike, and the RMA-3 and Orbital Bertha are NovaPunch's 2 main lander-engines... One last, unrelated question. What's up with the Thrust/Weight Ratio (and ISP) on the M50 rocket engine in NovaPunch? Its mass and Thrust values remain COMPLETELY unmodified from their stock values. In fact, I'm not sure the engine was even modified by Stockalike at all aside from a backup-config replacing its LFO with Kero/LOX (the *ONLY* fuel-mode it is capable of using, which itself seems strange). I can't even find the m50 in a text-search of the Stockalike config for NovaPunch- so it seems you probably missed it. The excessively-high mass of the engine make it nigh-worthless compared to all the other 2.5 meter engines in Novapunch+RealFuels+Stockalike, and the engine-config really should be fixed to balance properly with Stockalike... Regards, Northstar P.S. Precisely *because* major changes are coming down the line for RealFuels, I strongly advise updating things like this *BEFORE* the RealFuels 10 release. It's usually easy for something like this to get kicked down the road indefinitely and never get done if you put it off until after some major project. Go for the low-hanging fruit (a couple extra fuel-modes for some engines that I already provided balanced configs for) first!

Hi Raptor, As always, I've been busy (when I'm not working one of my 3 jobs! Speaking of which, I'm sick today...) doing research on finding what the current frontiers are of rocket science, what current capabilities really are, and where things are headed- such as to better direct the growth and development of the KSP-Interstellar Extended mod I help develop. Anyways, my latest thing has been Meth/LOX chemical rocket engines, seeing as they would be highly useful in combination with the Sabatier Reaction of real life/ KSP-I Extended for Mars/Duna missions... It turns out, there are a lot more types than the Raptor being designed to use Meth/LOX. Many of the more famous/successful rocket engines are being re-designed for Meth/LOX (probably in anticipation of a future Mars mission- and because it provides the best ISP of any mainstream fuel that is not Hydro/LOX, a bit better than Kero/LOX and quite a lot better than hypergolics...) including, notably, the J-2X Rocket engine which NASA has been working on for Constellation and then SLS for most of the past 5+ years... http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=31679 I've been play-testing and doing research on Meth/LOX fuel mixtures, and it seems the ratio used in the KSP-Interstellar Meth/LOX Raptor-analog (44:56 ratio Meth:LOX) is fairly accurate- as there is a strong tendency to want to burn fuel-rich (the stoichiometric burn-ratio is 2:1) in order to get a lighter mix of exhaust gasses (with some unburned methane and Carbon Monoxide molecules mixed in with the CO2 and H2O) and better ISP. Given a 44:56 fuel-ratio, and existing ISP figures (380 seconds for a vacuum-optimized Raptor- which would still fundamentally be an engine optimized for thrust rather than ISP), some play-testing revealed an appropriate and realistic balance with the following code for most engines: PROPELLANT { name = LqdMethane ratio = 44 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = LqdOxygen ratio = 56 } IspSL = 1.1100 IspV = 1.1200 I have extensively play-tested this config, and it seems to be accurate- typically yielding an ISP that is typically about 30-50 seconds lower for Meth/LOX than for Hydro/LOX (compare the real life RS-68 Hydro/LOX rocket with an ISP of 410 seconds with the 363 seconds that is expected for the atmospheric version of the Raptor Meth/LOX rocket and 380 seconds expected for the more vacuum-optimized version) and a slightly higher sensitivity to atmospheric pressure than Kero/LOX (which, once again, matches with reality- Meth/LOX engines appear to be much more similar to Kero/LOX then Hydro/LOX engines in terms of atmospheric ISP-loss, despite their higher ISP to begin with, as evidenced by such designs as the Raptor...) The highest possible ISP you can get with this config is over 400 seconds with the NovaPunch2 RMA-3 engine at techlevel 7, at which point the Hydro/LOX version is pushing some obscenely-high ISP figures inching up on 500 seconds (both of these figures are within the theoretically-possible ISP range for these fuel-mixtures with a sufficiently large vacuum-optimized nozzle: and the RMA-3 is an engine designed purely for vacuum use- it loses over 3/4th of its thrust at sea level, ostensibly due to its very large nozzle and atmospheric-compression of the highly over-expanded exhaust stream...) I would very much like to see Meth/LOX added as a normal fuel-mode for, at the very least, the NovaPunch2 K-2X rocket engine line (there are NovaPunch J-2X analogs called "K-2X" rockets in all diameter-ranges, from 1.25 to 5 meters), the RMA-3 rocket engine, and the 2.5 meter Orbital Bertha rocket (these last two engines are designed for orbital stages and extra-atmospheric or low-atmospheric landers, such as on the Mun or Duna... They have no clear real-life analogs that I could easily identify...) to provide upper-stage and orbital/lander-stage Meth/LOX engines to go along with the launch-stage Meth/LOX engine provided in the form of the KSP-Interstellar Meth/LOX Raptor-analog... (whose name I can never remember how to spell- but is named after the Greek god of wine...) I provided the necessary code above. The Thrust should remain the same as Kero/LOX and Hypergolic versions of any engines Meth/LOX is added to (Meth/LOX is several times denser than Hydro/LOX on a per-liter basis, and would not pose any greater challenges for a turbopump than Kero/LOX, which it only has *slightly* greater turbopump-requirements than...) as should heat-production (which we currently don't vary with fuel-mode in 0.90) etc. If we can go around setting up the foundation for weird "Cold War Nightmare" fuel-mixtures that never saw use in real life for some very good reasons, certainly we can go about adding the very boring but useful fuel-mixture of Meth/LOX to some existing rocket engines- particularly many of the NovaPunch2 ones, which currently tend to be limited to use of hygergolics and Hydro/LOX in most cases... (many of the engines in the mod pack are based on real engines that would be poorly-suited to using Kero/LOX, but are well-suited to using Meth/LOX, for reasons I'd prefer not to go into right now... Some are based on engines, usch as the J2-X, that are actually being deisgned or retrofitted for Meth/LOX as a possible fuel-mode...) Most could use a third fuel-mode with density (and boil-off characteristics!) intermediate between the two to round them out and make them more competitive with engines from mods such as KW Rocketry! Raptor, please give this serious consideration, and let me know what you think. I can go about adapting NovaPunch2 engines to use Meth/LOX for you where it seems appropriate if you'd like Regards, Northstar

Awesome that you finally want to work on this- but what do US wedges have to do with anything here? No need to simulate the soot buildup. As the reaction requires CO2 in the first place, just simulate the NET reaction (CO2 -- > C + O2, followed by C + CO2 --> 2 CO) which is 2 CO2 --> 2 CO + O2 to get a simpler process. No, SOC doesn't normally produce CO directly though- so the originally posted reaction is actually more realistic... I think you mean Hydro/LOX? Or do you mean Kero/LOX? There is nothing called "LFO" in real life... The Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction is normally proposed as a complement to the Sabatier Process. It allows the extraction of O2 directly from the atmosphere without having to worry about graphite buildup (which you have to periodically purge with superheated CO2). The Sabatier Reaction fails to produce enough Oxygen to burn all the Methane it produces on its own... We have 3 separate ISRU reactors- 2.5 meter inline, 3.75 meter inline, and the oddly-shaped dome ISRU reactor. All of those would obviously be capable of different reaction-rates. As for energy-consumption of the Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) Reaction, that's entirely dependent on the reactor-setup. According to Wikipedia, the RWGS reaction could easily be run off the waste-heat from the Sabatier Reaction (which is actually exothermic and thermodynamically FAVORABLE- i.e. it shouldn't require *ANY* electricity to run at a moderate pace once initially heated up if the ISRU reactor is sufficiently insulated, much like combustion only requires activation energy and then proceeds under its own heat...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-gas_shift_reaction#Reverse_water-gas_shift Even without the Sabatier Reaction for wast heat, power-requirements are going to be very moderate- and should be balanced against existing ISRU reactions in KSP-Interstellar rather than against figures from real-life experiments under an arbitrary set of conditions... (power-requirements will vary by the level of insulation of the reaction chamber and the temperature the reaction is being performed at, for instance) Real-life numbers are only truly useful for ballparking ISRU reactions, as a LOT of factors (from insulation of the reaction-chamber to ambient temperature and convection- for instance exothermic reactions like the Sabatier are actually going to require more insulation or proceed more slowly inside an atmosphere due to convection of heat away from the reactor-walls) are actually going to affect power-requirements... Here is another link on the Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) Reaction, by the way: http://www.marspedia.org/index.php?title=Reverse_Water-Gas_Shift_Reaction We're going to have to do a balance and realism-pass on the ISRU very soon anyways (a lot of numbers need tweaking, like the power-requirements for the Sabatier Reaction, which are unrealistically high). So just ballpark the figures by balancing against the other ISRU reactions. RWGS should have a power-requirement just slightly higher than the Sabatier Reaction (which should have very low power-requirements- as no electricity is require to heat the reaction chamber, only to separate out the products and pump in the reactants..) Regards, Northstar

Sorry I've been slow on the uploads again! My next mission was to launch a capsule to rig up some parachutes on the Munar Lander. Along for the ride was a very scared-looking engineer, there to do the actual parachute-rigging! In keeping with tradition for me, this was another Space-X style mission: I then rigged the Mun Lander with parachutes for landing on Kerbin: And performed the landing... Not all the parts survived re-entry, but ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? Following this I rigged the Nuclear Thermal Tug used for the Munar mission for re-entry as well: In the future I will be relying on larger tugs, launched empty as a single payload instead of assembled in orbit (thus saving mass and part-count on docking ports) with an occasional extra-length of fuel tankage for especially heavy of high Delta-V payloads. But more importantly, the Kerbin-system tugs will be fueled almost entirely by Nitrogen harvested by Propulsive Fluid Accumulators (tugs around other locations, such as Duna, will be equipped with different propellants...) As such, a replacement of the NTR tug I so handily relied on before was in order... Surprisingly, the tug managed to splash down in one piece. I wasted no time in recovering it before the buggy/unrealistic 0.9 water-physics could eat it... I then wasted no time in recovering the parachute-rigging vessel itself (as I also did with the Tug Refueler- not shown). If I had known I would have this much fuel left over, I would have launched some sort of small depot to hold the reserve fuel for future missions... A while passed without any major activity (I messed around with some helicopters and other stuff around Kerbin I didn't bother to take screenshots of) until an update of KSP-Interstellar Extended required a name-change for the cryogenic nitrogen resource from "LiquidNitrogen" to "LqdNitrogen" to comply with the new Community Resource Pack 2.0 naming standards... As such, I was forced to launch a new Propulsive Fluid Accumulator- this one with LqdNitrogen tanks. the KSC has a *cough* 'communications failure' with the older Propulsive Fluid Accumulator (out of laziness, I didn't bother recovering it, and terminated it instead...) and I immediately activated the new PFA to take its place for scooping small amounts of nitrogen for probes and other small missions over time... The scooping-capabilities of the small, new PFA were still deemed woefully inadequate for the needs of larger, flagship-class missions (such as a manned Constellation-style mission to Duna's surface using Nitrogen for orbital propellant instead of chemical fuels) however, so I launched a heavier, 2.5 meter Propulsive Fluid Accumulator (featuring 5 independent atmospheric scoops for a faster collection-rate and "redundancy") soon afterwards to prepare for a major planned mission to Duna... I haven't updated to 1.0 yet, and won't be doing so for a good while (I'll give SQUAD this chance to apply some of the additional bug-fixes and further balance-tweaks that they should have applied BEFORE releasing 1.0 in the first place...) Instead, I'll be continuing with 0.90 and my large and relatively well-functioning set of mods, carrying out a MAJOR Duna mission before I update to 1.0 It won't be THIS good- but if you want an idea of what my mission will look like, I drew my inspirations from real-life Constellation and Mars Direct, and Katateochi's YouTube Constellation-style Duna mission, as well as some design-ideas and refinements of my own (such as use of Propulsive Fluid Accumulators at both Kerbin and Duna to collect propellant gasses...) The video is, of course, probably one of my favorite KSP videos *EVER*. I'm considering recording video-footage (and yes, even editing it to improve presentation!) of my own mission. If I do so, expect some not-so-subtle tributes to and even mirroring of certain aspects of his own video. It will be my own unique product (there were many aspects of actual mission-design that I think could have easily been improved on for efficiency, if not necessarily style... Of course, Katateochi was limited to simply mirroring real-life Constellation plans using some relatively vanilla mods of KSP...)- but I particularly liked his choices of music (and have acquired a taste for some of the same and other tracks by the same bands) and the use of split-screen presentation of multiple launches in the beginning and such... Regards, Northstar

@FreeThinker, Sorry I've been AWOL for a while, but as I have not updated to 1.0 yet (and won't be doing so until I complete a major Duna mission I have planned- giving other mods I use more time to update as a side-benefit...) I haven't been able to play-test any of the latest releases... I noticed, though, that no progress has yet been made on any of the remaining ISRU reactions I've been bugging you about... I don't know how many times I have to say this, but not having the Reverse Water Gas Shift (CO2 + H2 --> CO + H2O) or Solid Oxide CO2 Electrolysis (CO2 --> C + O2, the graphite can be cleared with blasts of superheated CO2 much like soot...) reactions is a MAJOR deterrent to Mars Direct-style Duna missions- as the Sabatier Reaction does NOT produce enough Water/Oxygen (another issue- in KSP-Interstellar the Sabatier used to produce O2 and Methane instead of H2O and Methane- I believe this still hasn't yet been fixed...) to burn all of the Methane produced- which hurts TREMENDOUSLY your mass-leveraging ratio on Hydrogen hauled from Kerbin if you have to dump some excess Methane into the atmosphere to get enough O2 to run your Meth/LOX chemical rockets... Also, Kalloran wants to help out with KSP-I Extended however he can. He sent me a nice message about this earlier today... Get in touch with him and see which of the tasks I e-mailed him back about he'd like to do (or something else), could you please? Regards, Northstar

AWESOME as always! I just wanted to make a list of future priorities at this point: (1) Add additional ISRU Reactions (Solid Oxide CO2 Electrolysis, Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction, Methane Pyrolysis, and various RealFuels-specific reactions from THIS list) (2) Compile a complete one-shot download that includes the latest files from the Boris 0.90 branch, so that players can just install KSP-I Extended directly, without having to install anything else first... (3) Remove all "LiquidFuel" tanks from the new one-shot download as well as anything else that is obsolete or refers to deleted assets. (4) Code cleanup and optimization. I think that's about it for now... I also need to get you data on the Ammonia/Hydrazine Thrustmultipliers for arcjets- which might take me a while... Speaking of which, do you have any accurate data on the internal temperatures reached by propellant in an arcjet thruster? I need reliable/definitive data on this in order to properly calculate the energy released when breaking down Ammonia/Hydrazine at very high temperatures (it will be a LOT more than released at the temperatures of a thermal rocket, although as E = 1/2 mv2 it will actually lead to a relatively smaller increase in Thrust and ISP...) Regards, Northstar

Generally speaking, the propellants have the right thrust and ISP for their molecular mass relative to the other propellants. The Magnetoplasmodynamic thrusters do have less ISP than they would in real life- this is for gameplay balance reasons as I understood it... When did we add LqdHelium as a valid electric thruster propellant??? Arcjets require propellants stable under very high temperatures (i.e. not CO2, CO, or Methane). Magnetoplasmodynamics directly accelerate the propellants more than they heat them, and as such work well with propellants such as CO2 (which would quickly break down into soot in a Arcjet thruster...) I think I remember these propellants would be unmanageable in an arcjet for some reason... Balance reasons. Really, it should be theoretically possible to build a Magnetoplasmodynamic thruster with much lower ISP and higher Thrust (which is what is currently simulated in KSP-Interstellar). I think Fractal_UK assumed higher ISP would not be useful (also remember he was balancing against the excessively-low power output of the old nuclear reactors- if his reactors had produced a realistic amount of electrical power he might have considered a higher ISP and lower Thrust/MW more acceptable...) Nobody wants to sit through a 2-hour series of burns just to make a single maneuver (such as a Duna transfer), even if it does mean your costs to haul things around the solar system become incredibly low... If you're referring to the extra ISP from the breakdown of the propellants into smaller molecules, yes this is currently not well-reflected for Ammonia or Hydrazine (which should remain usable in standard plasma thrusters, by the way). The mathematics would have to be re-done, though, as the pressure conditions are extremely low and the temperature extremely high inside an arcjet thruster (making the breakdown of Ammonia/Hydrazine much more energetically favorable and powerful than in a Thermal Rocket- if you can manage to control it...) Nope. There's a reason I never suggested adding CO2 to arcjets- only to the standard plasma thruster (where it remains well below temperatures were breakdown is problematic before the CO2 is ejected from the thruster...) Ammonia and Hydrazine, on the other hand, should be usable in BOTH thruster types- although they only get a Thrust/MW and ISP boost in arcjet thrusters... (for the record, I think most existing data on arcjets already takes into account these benefits when calculating ISP and Thrust/MW for Hydrazine or Ammonia- i.e. the Thrust/MW and ISP figures would be *much* lower with a completely passive propellant like Hydrogen...) Regards, Northstar - - - Updated - - - Why did you remove Ammonia and Hydrazine from conventional plasma thrusters? They should be perfectly usable in these engines- they just don't get the thrust/ISP benefits they do in arcjets... Ammonia is DEFINITELY a valid fuel for Magnetoplasmodynamic thrusters- in fact the first MPD thruster *EVER* tested in space, (the MST-4 satellite, by Japan, in 1981), used Ammonia for its propellant: http://erps.spacegrant.org/uploads/images/images/iepc_articledownload_1988-2007/1995index/IEPC1995-02.pdf Hydrzine is similarly useful for MPD thrusters, as well as arcjets. Regards, Northstar

Freethinker, Two minor additional things that need to be fixed: First of all, I missed this in my comments before, but the commented-out sections in the RealFuelsFix file should say they are adding "LqdNitrogen" to the RelaFuels tanks, not "LiquidNitrogen". Second, you forgot to add the code for the lightly-insulated (Default and Balloon) tank-types. Here it is, again, with the comment fixed: @TANK_DEFINITION[Default,Balloon]:NEEDS[RealFuels]:FOR[WarpPlugin] { TANK //Add LiquidCO2 to standard tanks. { name = LiquidCO2 mass = 0.000062 utilization = 1 fillable = True amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 temperature = -56 loss_rate = 0.000000002 note = (lacks insulation, pressurized) } TANK //Add LqdNitrogen to standard tanks. Values are based off of LqdOxygen. { name = LqdNitrogen mass = 0.000014 utilization = 1 fillable = True amount = 0.0 maxAmount = 0.0 temperature = -183 loss_rate = 0.00000001 note = (lacks insulation) } } RealFuels already allows players to stick cryogenic fuels such as LqdHydrogen and LqdOxygen in lightly-insulated (Default and Balloon) tanks. Players should be able to do the same with LqdCO2 and LqdNitrogen, which have higher boiling-points (and thus are going to suffer less boiloff as a result of cutting down on the insulation mass...) Regards, Northstar

Awesome! Look like another great set of changes to me! Just a thought- I honestly don't think Kethane players will be too bothered by the changes. There exist configs out there to allow Kethane to produce Interstellar and RealFuels resources- as long as those remain up-to-date (which is Kethane's responsibility, not ours) they should easily be able to convert Kethane into Methane or any of the other realistic fuels we use... Your changes reduce GUI clutter for non-Kethane players, and makes our download a bit smaller and easier to maintain the configs of... Finally, I just thought I'd share one of the videos that first inspired me to want to expand the KSP-Interstellar ISRU system to be more complete. Even though this video relies on Kethane (and is thus somewhat unrealsitic) the same plan could be better (and more realistically) carried out in KSP-Interstellar, especially once we add the ISRU reactions I listed before (either the Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction or Solid Oxide CO2-Eletrolysis are necessary to produce enough LOX to burn all the Methane produced by the Sabatier Process in a chemical Meth/LOX rocket on Mars/Duna using Hydrogen sent from Earth/Kerbin as a feedstock...) This video was nominated for the Oscar-B awards! This also reminds me- we REALLY need a smaller version of the chemical Meth/LOX engine in KSP-Interstellar. One with a more compact profile, better-suited for landers and upper stages... Regards, Northstar