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This is a development thread for the re-release of "'Mass Accelerator" parts. These parts originally come from the Stanford Torus Mod, which reached version 0.6.1 for KSP 0.90 on Curse on February 20th, 2015 before apparently having its development dis-continued (you can find the old forum thread here). I thought it was *excellent* work with a lot of potential, and worth re-releasing to continue the parts' legacy (Stanford Torus' updates were already coming less and less frequently by the time I created this) and make them available to more players. The mod was released under a CDDL-1 license, which allows anyone to "use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute" the content with or without author permission. The license requires that I credit the original author, and re-release the original source code: which is provided below... However, this isn't just a cut-and-paste re-release. While the Mass Accelerator parts do achieve a purpose never realized before in KSP (a functional, part-based Mass Driver), they aren't very realistically balanced... The original parts can only accelerate a 2.5 meter 12.5-ton rocket at roughly 2 g's, whereas the Mass Driver designs for the real-life Star Tram proposal could accelerate a 40-ton 2 meter wide, 13 meter long rocket at 30 g's... The original parts are also darn expensive, heavy (30 tons/piece), and have weak attachments to each other which tend to cause Mass Accelerator stacks to break apart under the acceleration they create... Thus, from the first day I got my hands on the Mass Accelerator part, I went into the config and started making some modifications to make it more realistic. ORIGINALLY: - I increased the acceleration to 11760 kN/s (30 g's on a 40-ton rocket), and increased electricity consumption proportionally (this still needs some re-balancing: the original author states in config-file comments that he aimed for 1 MW per 100 kN/s- which equates to 10% efficiency, but it actually came out to 1 kW per 250 kN/s, if 1 EC = 1 kW). This performance is based on the real-life StarTram gen-1 designs... - I decreased part cost to a more reasonable+realistic level (12,500 funds per part instead of 185,000 funds per part- the new cost equates to the still astronomical figure of $92.74 million/section in 2015 dollars, using the convention of 1 Fund = $1000 1965 US dollars), and reduced the part mass to 10 tons/ring (reasonably accurate for real-life aluminum-based Mass Driver coils). - I also increased the toughness of a stack of Mass Accelerators in various ways (such as by increasing the node size from 2 to 3- as the rings are roughly 3.75 meters in outer diameter, raising the Crash Tolerance from 7 to 9, and tripling BreakingForce/Torque values...) The part-balancing has changes somewhat since (I'm sure you can find the math errors I made above if you look carefully), but anyways, the result is this: a functional Mass Driver part, that, while it still has a few bugs/quirks, works realistically in KSP. Version 1.3.2 is now LIVE. Changes from 1.3.0 include the addition of a readme, NEW SIZES of the Mass Driver part (with internal diameters sized for crafts from 0.625 to 5 meters!), and adjustment of tech node assignments (moved back in the tech tree). https://spacedock.info/mod/1227/Netherdyne Mass Driver Mod [Official] I would like players to let me know how the mod works for them. Let me know if you have any issues- I am still in the process of tweaking this version before "release". Like the Stanford Torus mod this comes from, these parts are released under a CDDL-1 license: so there's nothing stopping you from modifying them and re-releasing them yourself as desired. And, here are some more images of a mission I launched using the Mass Accelerators a while ago... NIGHT LAUNCH in 0.25: (For the curious- the rocket pictured above also utilized a parachute-assisted Space-X style recovery of the launch stage, and travels all the way to the Mun with its payload... The engines produce less than 1 g of acceleration at max throttle when the fuel tanks are full- hence why the rocket has gained barely 3 m/s of speed after climbing more than 3 km...) Regards, Northstar