ss8913

I'm using antimatter reactors though. I don't see why hydrazine would react faster than atmosphere? they're both fluids, a fuel flow valve would work much the same way in either case, no? Essentially it makes these engines useless for VTOL in atmospheric mode; I used to use ATILLA for this, but now those no longer can use atmosphere as propellant...

so.. noticed something about the thermal turbojets and thermal ramjets... on atmospheric mode they have much slower throttle response than they do on closed-cycle mode. Also, they throttle up about 2x-3x faster than they throttle down (on atmospheric mode). Is that intentional? @FreeThinker

Maybe I can make something work with B9 procedural wings.. if i sweep them way back behind the fuselage or something. UPDATE: no.. that doesn't work. still can't get the CoL back far enough.

So.. I'd like you guys to help me out by reviewing a colony design ... I think I understand it, but.... ok, so I found a garden world orbiting a nearby star (Interstellar Adventures mod) and I want to colonize it. Base module has pioneer, kerbitat, agroponics modules with containers for fertilizer, substrate, hydrates, mulch, and supplies. Plan is to build this on-site using EPL, and then have some disconnected base modules elsewhere on the planet to provide things. 1. drilling rigs to dig up silicates, hydrates, substrate 2. hab modules near the drilling rigs for the miners 3. hab and drill rigs have pioneer modules to enable them to act as planetary logistics providers/consumers am I forgetting something?

doesn't this count as.. kind of a serious usability problem? The lack of a way to build an aerodynamically stable craft (with FAR or stock, apparently) due to body lift that is significantly higher than stock or Mk4 parts seems like something that could/should be addressed?

like .. with the compressed air monodirectional thrusters? those are from this mod, yes? What's going to replace the ATILLA's ability, though? was using those engines for VTOL and SSTO propulsion.. as closed-cycle only they're not that useful.

Question #2, @FreeThinker -- when did the RCS and ATILLA lose the ability to use atmosphere as fuel? I just loaded an older craft and it's kind of.. missing the ability to accomplish its intended role, as a result.

Is it just me or do the OPT fuselages make it near impossible to get the CoM ahead of the CoL? I pretty much can't use these parts for spaceplanes, at all, since the bodies produce too much lift to get it balanced correctly. It could be because I'm using the [dev build of] FAR.. are people using stock aero *not* seeing this problem?

Will the QSR boost warpdrive performance? it seems like warpdrive performance is based solely on the size of the drive and not the reactors powering it (well, you need a certain minimum, but the max/min speed seems to be related solely to the warp-mass ratio)... is all of this true? Corollary, why does it take MORE power to go SLOWER than 1.0c? Is that just a thing with the alcubierre theory?

So.. is the light hyperdrive supposed to be scalable above 5m? am I using a bad version of tweakscale(?) or is it not designed that way?

Just noticed something else.. atilla and resistojet RCS can't use atmospheric propellant anymore?

so, tried using 2 light hyperdrives scaled to 20m as you suggested, @FreeThinker - the light and folding only scale up to 5m though I'll try using.. more of them. update: Gonna need at least a few of these. 5.0m light hyperdrives can haul 640t each. Also, cesium is not an available propellant for the ATILLA electric thrusters - intentional? Last night I additionally read that cesium is liquid at room temperature; therefore shouldn't the standard interstellar tanks be able to hold it?

I'm using FTL drives. acceleration under timewarp isn't an issue for me. The issue with parts falling off is using FTL + timewarp, which is kind of different. As long as I keep the timewarp at or below 100x it seems to be fine, though. I'm trying with 'unbreakable joints' and 'no crash damage' to see if that helps. I'm using hydrazine + antimatter reactors + plasma nozzles for the sublight drive. The 6000t craft I referenced can actually launch vertically using the 8 5.0m plasma nozzles on hydrazine from the surface, so it is a true SSTO and does not have to be built in space (although it could be). Suggestion though, @FreeThinker - would be nice if the antimatter reactors could attach radially to a generator (and have them work together), and/or allow the antimatter reactor to scale up as big as the charged particle generator can scale. Not a huge deal but it'd be convenient

I'll see if that saves some weight, thanks. I'm dealing with *interstellar* journeys here of 5+ terameters and I need to be able to go fairly high warp, since FTL + timewarp still seems to cause parts to fall off; I'm still experimenting with some of the debug options to determine a workaround to that. I developed a survey craft last night that is actually capable of 40.00c and around 2g of sublight acceleration, but it weighs *six thousand metric tons* and only has about 50k dV in total with full fuel. If I can save some weight, obviously dV and thrust wins can be had. Unfortunately the only payload this is carrying is a couple of kerbals, some supplies, and SCANsat equipment to map the exoplanets. If I wanted to bring along some kind of dropship... well, maybe the aforementioned weight savings on the light alcubierre drive will help. If there is interest in the .craft file I will upload it.

How? the reactor has to be directly attached to all of those nozzles, and to any electric generators, and radial attachment doesn't seem to count (tried that). Come to think of it... if the heavy warp drives weren't quite so aggressive on their weight scaling, that'd solve a lot of the problems... should a 10m heavy drive really weigh 1600t ? That seems like ... a lot.

I could, yes.. that... almost works. By the time I add in the giant hyperdrive which weighs 1600t by itself, and enough vista fuel to give the entire resultant craft ~14k dV, i'm up over 6000 tons total. antimatter/hydrazine/plasma nozzle at that weight I can get much more dV and much more thrust both. Also, regarding the cesium thing - I see the storage module listed twice in my parts list, one that can hold cesium and regolith, one that cannot, and the part name is the same. Also the plasma nozzle doesn't have cesium as an available propellant type in the VAB. Looking forward to that update, want to see how that fuel performs

Wouldn't I need like 8 or 9 VISTAs to push 2000t at +1.0g? Plus they only run on hydrogen, which requires *enormous* tanks to hold enough of it to be useful. The VISTA has changed a lot over the past few years...

Which "magnetic nozzle"? I don't seem to see the part that was formerly named exactly that...? By charged particle reactor you mean that reactor in combination with a charged particle electric generator, yeah? Daedalus won't work for me. I have ships in excess of 2000t and the daedalus is already super huge producing what would be for that craft a woefully inadequate amount of thrust. When I drop out of warp I need to burn off about 10k Dv on a good day and fast... need at minimum 1g of acceleration.

Nice, thanks. As this mod progresses, I keep having the following issue with it, once all the tech is fully unlocked: 1. To use the FTL drives, you need a lot of dV and a lot of thrust to match velocities when exiting warp 2. The only sublight propulsion system that really provides this is hydrazine + antimatter reactor + plasma nozzle. I've tried all the other reactor/fuel/engine combinations and nothing can beat that. Did I miss one? Are the other electric engines and such designed just for... before you unlock the alcubierre drives? I do use the ATILLA for VTOL but they're not the most efficient.. they respond better than the thermal engines though, so TCA likes them better Also... in the latest update (haven't played in a couple weeks), the arcjet RCS thrusters have become... incompatible, somehow, with both MJ2 and stock SAS. ie, I tell MJ2 or stock to "point retrograde" - it'll do it *eventually* but the roll/pitch/yaw indicators just flap all over the place, and on a really heavy craft, it just won't budge. If I control the ship manually, it's got proper RCS authority to make the turn, and the autopilot can hold it once I point it there manually, but maneuvering is like.. manual assist. It wasn't doing this a month ago, or at least not as much; now the RCS is nigh unusable. I'd blame MJ but stock does it too. MJ actually is a little bit less bad than stock.

I just tried using cesium... the storage container claims it can contain cesium (caesium) in its part description, but neither it nor any other KSPIE tank seems to store this fuel... am I missing something? Tech tree fully unlocked.

I'll try that.

so.. what can we do about that model? I have a fairly decent computer and that part is unusable for me.

@FreeThinker I have 2 questions: 1. The really really huge dish antenna that can be used as both a comm array and as a MW transceiver.. it looks cool but it's super super bad on framerates, even within the VAB/SPH it bogs it down horribly... could we perhaps get a less.. intense.. model for this part? 2. reading the first page, it appears that for thermal propulsion the tokamak is better than the plasma beam antimatter reactor since it has a higher core temp... true/false ? (true/false as in, will it give me better thrust/isp with the same thermal engine compared to the plasma beam antimatter reactor?)

Is the pebble bed supposed to have an integrated electric generator? All evidence points to no, but in practice it keeps my ec full without a generator installed anywhere on the craft...

Looks interesting yes there's also interstellar adventure continued, w h iChat isn't related to this mod but adds some .. farther stuff as well. Still having problems with ftl speeds over 6.3c and time warp above 100x though... without persistent rotation it's less catastrophic but I'm still mysteriously losing parts off the ship in transit with nothing logged. Might be an old issue, never need to use time warp much with ftl if staying within the kerbol system... now that I am, it's biting me in the butt.