Lightwarrior

And you do not really need upgraded reactors to do this. You can do it with unupgraded reactors, you will simply need more of them parked near KSC, which is easy anyway. Also argon is better than monoprop because it gives better efficiency with almost the same ISP, resulting in higher thrust.

It seems like really good idea to test such things on launchpad or LKO before actually attaching them to the station, it will save you a lot of time. Also you can read wiki to get some basic info.

And generator must be attached directly to the reactor, or it will not work. So reactor with no attached generators/thermal nozzles is useless. You will need to get generator+reactor to the station... ... I think this is done in such way because reactor will need maintenance after shutdown before restart, and it cannot be done while reactor is still hot. Also it will generate some power during this process.

It makes awesome probes with 0.625m fusion reactors and few stock toroidal fuel tanks. With insane dV, reasonable TWR (~1-2T weight, ~7KN thrust) and plenty of power for additional equipment like RT antenas. And same with plasma thruster BTW, but with lower thrust and higher ISP.

Tritium decays into He-3. Just place some tritium (not empty obviously) and He-3 tanks on your vessel and use 10 000+ timewarp.

This should not happen. They should only close when craft overall wastedHeat is full, not individual panel. ... Any single radiator.

Try waiting for radiator temperature to raise a bit, they will radiate more heat and this should be enough. Or they radiate no heat at all?

Technically works fine. Does not requre "a lot of cfg edits" to get KSPI fuels from kethane, only adding few sections to kethane converter cfg's is required. However it is way too easy, unbalanced and "magical" to get all those from some "magical substance" which can be gathered on any planet/moon. It is better to use integrated KSPI resource mining capabilities. BTW also tried EngineIgnitor with KSPI, made cfg for KSPI engines, and it is definitely fun. It allows such things as additional power requirement to start engine etc

I thinks samples are similar to other experiments, second time you get small amount of science and then nothing. I used this lander: 4 fusion reactors + 4 thermal nozzles, ~1.2 TWR on Tylo, not very easy to land, but with those insane ISP/dV definitely possible. And Laythe's atmosphere reduce thrust, making landing/takeoff impossible. Also i used 2.5m RCS tank + material bays&goo canisters in 8x symmetry instead of lab, used them in space and then transferred results to pod and thrown this thing away. It seems to be easier as it does not require kerbals (and life support supplies).

It is not just possible, it is really easy. You do not even need to go to "hard" places like eve or tylo, you get enough science just landing on / returning from "easy" planets/moons. Also Warp Drive / AM reactor upgrade node cost 10000, and i got it in a single mission, landing on Jool moons except Laythe. And this is not even close to optimal, i only had 4 magnetometers and did each experiment only once per place (i had do store them in single pod).

And how about those things which are possible only with physics working like asymmetric thrust etc? If they are just ignored (and it seems so) there will be lots of ways to exploit it and create unrealistic/impossible crafts. It may be not a big problem for solar sails because of their limitations, but for other engines...

It will work. And it happens often to other sources of heat like reactors. Only total amount of WasteHeat really matter, not its distribution through different parts.

You will never get WasteHeat down to zero. The more WasteHeat you have, the higher radiator temperature is and more heat is radiated. This process will stabilize at some point, and if WasteHeat will still be lower then ~95% of maximum capacity it is ok. Also inline radiators are almost useless in space.

It works fine. You cannot use Interstellar water for life support or TAC water for engines by default, but if you do not need to plugin itself work ok.

Seems interesting. The only drawback is... either stock science need to be nerfed or whole tree cost need to be increased a lot, because now it is too easy to get science, even science labs are not needed.

Actually tritium/He-3 and even antimatter production is really easy if you produce them directly on your ship, not somewhere else. Just tested one simple idea. Ship with DT Vista, powered by 3.75m fission thorium reactor, with science lab already there to reprocess fuel can produce enough antimatter while traveling from kerbin to eve for antimatter powered lander to land and return to orbit using only ~1/2 of produced antimatter. Lab is not that heavy, so it seems that just taking it with you to use all those power your ship is producing anyway during transfers will give lots of antimatter.

Deuterium and lithium from oceans. This will require lifter (which can be really small because D/T tanks are very small and light) and only work in few places. Tis seems to be the only way, if you do not want to use oceans you can only carry lots of fuel if you want them to run for a long time... Yes, i thought about "a bit higher efficiency", problem here is that this power seem to be usable only for lab/refinery, still way too low for propulsion. And transmitters/receivers are not available at this point if i remember correctly. Anyway you should know exactly what for you are doing this (unlocking upgraded generators/reactors befor reactors) or you will just waste science and slow down your progress.

Hughesdylan , As far as i know there are no downsides of using tritium breeding. And it was mentioned somewhere earlier that fusion reactors can be made self-sufficiend if you really want to. Also rememder to shut down those reactors during transfers and you will save lots of fuel. You can use single small reactor if you need some EC, or just few stock RTG-s. It is good idea to include RTG-s anyway because it will allow you to restart fusion reactors if you will occasionally shut them down and run out of EC/MJ.

Store some tritium in D/T tanks and use 10.000+ timewarp while this vessel is active and tritium will slowly decay into He-3. You also need some He-3 tanks obviously. The easiest way seems to be... just build your craft, launch it, and while still at the launchpad transfer tritium from the reactors to external tanks. Then timewarp for few weeks until you get some He-3 for launch. Later, when you will be using timewarp during transfers you will get mor He-3 then you will ever need, just remember to turn off those reactors, or switch them to D/T mode.

This is still counter-productive. You get nothing from this upgrade, and still spend science on it, which can be used to upgrade reactors instead, which will have WAY better results. BTW tested it again and antimatter production at 100.000x timewarp is still broken, it does not consume antimatter anymore, but does not produce it either, still consuming power.

This is one of good ideas in this mod - upgraded is not always only better, sometimes upgrades have some disadvantages. Upgraded radiators can get hotter reducing generator efficiency, but also dissipating more heat. Another example is fission reactor lifetime without maintenance. Yes, upgraded reactors generate more power, but they will run out of fuel faster. Sometimes i wish i can use basic, unupgraded reactor even after upgrade. All new crafts you launch will have upgraded parts. On old craft just right click part, there will be oa option to retrofit it.

Unupgraded reactor + upgraded radiators = very bad idea. Reactor core temperature is way lower than maximum radiator temperature, so radiators will actually be not much better than unupgraded ones, except when they will heat up to ~reactor core temperature you will get ~0 generator efficiency. You have enough of them to have 15% efficiency which is good enough

Problem with antimatter reactors is that they consume antimatter which require some time and effort to collect. It also limits their usage as long-term power source because you will run out of antimatter and collecting/prodicing it is hard and slow. But fusion reactors can be used "out of the box", even with He-3 you only need to warp few weeks on the launchpad. And you can carry enough fuel for then to run for years, and/or collect those fuel fast enough for them to run indefenitely long.

Those 6*fusion reactors are WAY lighter. Here are the numbers: 43T (3.75 fission reactor) + 8T (3.75 generator) = 51T (1.55T (1.25 fusion reactor) + 0.5T (1.25 generator))*6 = 12.3T And this is without radiators, which will be heavier for fission reactor too. Also by the time you get upgraded fusion you can simply use single 1.25m AM reactor which will be just 3.5T reactor+generator+AM storage, but you will need some antimatter. Also fission reactor will require some maintenance. Refuel (with really heavy fuel + kerbals), removal of waste etc. But fusion reactors can be simply refueled using few light and small tanks, produce no waste, and can be shut down / restarted at will to conserve fuel.

When you get fusion power you can throw away those plazma thruster, put DT Vista on its plase and get ~1 TWR with higher efficiency. Personally I found plasma thrusters usefull only for small probes with fusion reactors/power transmission, or for small manned crafts with AM reactor or power transmission when when i get plasma thruster upgrade and can abuse those unlimited fuel. In all other cases either thermal nozzle or DT Vista seem to be better.