My Quest For Fully Electric Space Craft.

[areutheman]

I'm an eco geek, and I love everything self sufficient, so you could guess I find it rather annoying to use metric funk tuns of fuel just to get Jeb up there. Im looking for mods and/or self made craft files that provide an ethical means to travel the system using electric power, im aware of the teeny tiney ion engine in the stock version of ksp but have not had the patience to utilize it, but im sure some of you have! So if any of you have any mod sugestions that would help, or even .craft files that would fill my needs or peak my interest im more than welcome to give them a try!

[SkyRender]

You may want to look into the Interstellar mod. Basically all propulsion technology to date still relies on chemical reactions (even ion drives are still chemical-based, they're just much more efficient about it in exchange for practically no thrust). The Interstellar mod adds future technologies such as fusion and antimatter drives, which are much closer to full electric and actually more practical than ion thrusters since they can provide meaningful TWR.

[Pecan]

Just as a stock example - LightMun F Ion-powered Apollo-style (separate lander and command module) return Mun ship, <5t including launch-vehicle.

[justidutch]

Are there any mods out there that include solar sails? Or would it be kerbolar sails??

[WhiteKnuckle]

You could just pretend that the LF/O fuel is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that's been electrolyzed from seawater using solar or wind power.

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Are there any mods out there that include solar sails? Or would it be kerbolar sails??

Probably the only way to make ion engines look fast... put them up against solar sails.

Although it would be a cool sight to see a kilometer wide umbrella floating towards Jool.

[Doctor Axel]

Interstellar and Near Future are your tickets to super-efficient spaceflight, though if you want consistency I'd pick either one or the other. Interstellar goes a little further down the realism spectrum and has a LOT of moving parts to play with, but Near Future is a lot more stock-like.

Also, check out the Karbonite and Asteroid Recycling Technologies mods if you're interested in ships that can refuel themselves by mining. There are others but those are my favorite. ^^

As far as stock equipment, you'll generally burn less fuel getting to orbit by building a jet-powered ascent vehicle. In space, atomic and ion drives have the highest fuel efficiency of any drive. Sometimes, however, the more efficient options surprisingly may not include either of those components, especially if you keep your payload as light as possible. ^^ It's a fun challenge getting places the 'conventional' way using as little fuel as possible.

EDIT

I think Interstellar has/had a Solar Sail, though it packs more oomph than it realistically would for the sake of not being boring as heck. =P

[Torquemadus]

There is a proposed type of propulsion called a magsail. It's similar to a solar sail, except that it uses magnetism instead of light, allowing it to be pushed by the solar wind.

The "sail" is actually a huge loop of high temperature superconducting cable. When deployed, the cable is uncoiled and magnetically repulsed into shape. Using high temperature superconductors means that once electrical current is flowing through the cable, it will keep going indefinitely, meaning that the spacecraft doesn't have to generate huge amounts of power to maintain the field. The power to get the current going is provided by solar panels.

Once the magnetic field is up and running, the spacecraft is generating it's own magnetosphere. This protects the crew from solar flare radiation and allows the spacecraft to be pushed along by the solar wind. Steering can be achieved by varying the current in the cable, which would affect the force balance between the push of the solar wind and the pull of the Sun's gravity. Steering cables can be used to pull on the magnetic cable to distort the shape of the cable loop and thus distort the shape of the magnetic field.

Many planets have their own magnetosphere, which blocks the solar wind. In this case, a spacecraft in a polar orbit can use the sail to push against the planet's magnetic field each time it passes over the poles. This would allow it to perform a series of periapsis kicks to make it's orbit more and more eccentric, eventually escaping into solar orbit.

The advantage of all this is that once you've got your spacecraft into orbit, it can perform propellant free spaceflight to wherever you want to go.

If you want an eco friendly way to get it into orbit, you could consider using methane derived from biomass as the rocket fuel.

[GreeningGalaxy]

I can also recommend KSPI. It's not terribly realistic that it calls liquidfuel hydrogen, because liquidfuel is quite a lot denser than hydrogen is, but it works. For the most part, I think the complexity of getting the mods various engines to work (combined with their truly ludicrous mass) makes them relatively balanced, but I think NFT is still a better (albeit far less realistic) option if it's game balance you're after.

As for eco-friendliness, it's your call whether or not nuclear rockets are eco-friendly. Sure, they don't use fossil fuels, but then neither do HLOX rockets. They often need less propellant than chemical rockets, but they also have that pesky radiation thing going against them.

If it's really electric rockets you're after, I recommend Interstellar's beamed power mechanics. It can be a little tricky to figure out and set up (and nobody who's worked on the mod to date, be it the original creator or anyone else, as managed to squash all its bugs), but it does indeed let you launch things to space with quite low propellant costs, and no dangerous nuclear fuels carried on the beam-powered ascenders.

And, of course, it opens the door to planes which can reach escape velocity at one and a half kilometers above the water.

[Frozen_Heart]

Use a K-drive? They don't require the power themselves but eat a whole lot of it with the reaction wheels needed to make them go straight.

[Xavven]

In order to produce thrust in a vacuum, you must throw matter in the opposite direction you want to go. Conventional rockets do this by releasing chemical energy stored in the bonds of molecules, thereby heating the matter and expelling it out a nozzle. Ion drives expel ionized Xenon using an electrostatic or electromagnetic field instead, but this still spits ions (which is matter) out at high speed. Ion drives have a TWR of less than 1 in Kerbin's gravity, meaning that no matter how many Ion drives you put on a craft, it will never lift it off the surface (because the engine can't even lift itself).

I guess the Alcubierre drive (warp drive) works by warping spacetime instead of expelling matter. I think that's the only drive that fits your criteria of using only electric power, strictly speaking, but it is only a theoretical device at this point. I also have not installed this mod so I don't know if it can be used on the launchpad.

So I guess I actually would like to ask you to expound on your goals here. By "ethical means" do you mean that you want to minimize the carbon footprint of your launch vehicle and payload? Many real life rockets use solid boosters which contain caustic chemicals, so you'd definitely avoid those. Many liquid fuel boosters use kerosene and liquid oxygen, which releases CO₂, so you'd want to avoid that too. But the conventional rocket with the highest Isp today happens to be liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. That chemical reaction creates heat, light, and water as the only products of combustion. Ironically, water vapor is in fact a greenhouse gas, but it's not nearly the concern that CO₂ is today, as water vapor condenses into clouds and later falls as rain. Sequestering CO₂ takes a little longer via photosynthesis or dissolving into the oceans, but I digress.

Dropping spent stages is arguably more ecologically unfriendly (or "unethical" if you prefer the term). You're basically littering, but also wasting all the energy that went into producing the rocket, the tanks, the electronics, the lubricants, etc. Consider parachuting them to the ground and recovering them, or only building SSTOs that are based on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen rocket engines. The "liquid fuel" burned by the KSP turbojet/rapier/etc I am assuming is a hydrocarbon mix of some kind, like kerosene.

[merendel]

In order to produce thrust in a vacuum, you must throw matter in the opposite direction you want to go.

A solar sail theoreticly does not require the craft to expel mater for a velocity change. Not technically thrusting as its the star expelling mater/energy and pushing the craft along but it is an option for a quasi reactionless drive. There is also what is called the EM drive that uses electricity to push against the quantum vacuum. The real world experiment demonstrating this drive may or may not actualy work, its has been shown that something is happening but the jury is still out on if its something else acting on the test rig. It probably wont ever work as a lifting drive as even ion drives make the predicted thrust look anemic.

Still KSPI has both solar sails and the option to upgrade to quantum vacuum thrusters as well as thermal turbojets to use atmosphere as reaction mass. With that mod you could potentialy get into orbit with no fuel, just a crap ton of reactor power. A craft could use a thermal turbojet to put it on a suborbital trajectory, basicly sucking in air and spiting it out the back faster. Once up above atmo kick in the quantum vacuum thrusters to reach orbit and you could then go wherever without need for fuel as long as your reactor held out. If an antimater reactor is what is used you can even attach a couple of collectors and gather more from the Van Allen belts around body with a magnetic field for indefinite range.

[Xavven]

A solar sail theoreticly does not require the craft to expel mater for a velocity change. Not technically thrusting as its the star expelling mater/energy and pushing the craft along but it is an option for a quasi reactionless drive. There is also what is called the EM drive that uses electricity to push against the quantum vacuum. The real world experiment demonstrating this drive may or may not actualy work, its has been shown that something is happening but the jury is still out on if its something else acting on the test rig. It probably wont ever work as a lifting drive as even ion drives make the predicted thrust look anemic.

Yeah, that's pretty much true. There's a momentum exchange between the solar wind and the sail, though, so charged particles are bouncing off and pushing you. As for the EM drive, I'm not familiar with it. Sounds cool. Do we have a working example or is it an idea at this point?

Good stuff!

[Mighty1]

I think KSPInterstellar is for you. Set up a microwave network powerd by solar or fusion power and you can go anywhere in kerbin system with realy small amounts of fuel and even launch with no fuel at all (using the atmospehere as fuel). Just watch a couple of Scott Manleys episodes of Interstellar quest and you will get the idea.

[merendel]

Yeah, that's pretty much true. There's a momentum exchange between the solar wind and the sail, though, so charged particles are bouncing off and pushing you. As for the EM drive, I'm not familiar with it. Sounds cool. Do we have a working example or is it an idea at this point?

Good stuff!

Depends on your definition of working example. Nasa is runing tests on a prototype but they are geting inconclusive results. The prototype did generate some small amount of force but strangely so did the supposedly inert control test. Needless to say things are confused at best. Theroreticly it works and experimentaly something is happening but it could also be a testing error and some other force is acting on it. Only time will tell.

[areutheman]

Could you provide a link to the Interstellar mod please?

[Nedal]

Yeah interstellar is awesome. Not sure if it's .90 compatible yet though, I think someone was working on it in place of fractalUK though. Iirc

[Taki117]

Yeah interstellar is awesome. Not sure if it's .90 compatible yet though, I think someone was working on it in place of fractalUK though. Iirc

Two people actually.

[KerikBalm]

You may want to look into the Interstellar mod. Basically all propulsion technology to date still relies on chemical reactions (even ion drives are still chemical-based, they're just much more efficient about it in exchange for practically no thrust).

No.

There are no chemical reactions powering Ion drives.

There are no chemical bonds. Its just elemental Xenon gas, and electricity to accelerate it.

There is reaction mass, of course - but that is not like A H2+O2 chemical reaction powered rocket that expells the chemical Dihydrogen Monoxide.

As a side note... KSPI has added "quantum vacuum thrusters".... ughhh.... the alcubierre drive was bad enough... now this.

Much of what is has is extremely OP in terms of thrust/energy density relative ot the real universe... and these things fly in the Kerbal universe, where one needs much less dV to get anywhere....

I recommend just learning to use airbreathing SSTOs to lift a payload to orbit, and then use Nuke/Ion tugs to go to other worlds.

[mythic_fci]

Use a K-drive? They don't require the power themselves but eat a whole lot of it with the reaction wheels needed to make them go straight.

Ahh, the old K-Drive thread with ComradeJenkins... Too bad the 0.24 joints update broke all K-Drives and forced all the engineers into hiding.

[Madrias]

You could always take something like a Basic Jet and make a duplicate of it, config-modded to consume ElectricCharge and IntakeAir as part of your launch kit. I've got about half-a-dozen like that in my save files. Done right, you can make it as inefficient as needed to feel balanced (just reduce ISP and fuel needs go up, both in Air and Charge) and reduce the thrust to more reasonable levels.

As for how you can claim it works: Ducted Fan.

For getting into space, however, you'll need a bit of a kick to get there, as the atmosphere becomes too thin to throw out the back. At this point, you'll need some form of propellant, even if it's a huge Ion Drive with greater-than-1 TWR and really, really horrid efficiency, consuming tons of electric power and roaring through your Xenon supply. Best method would be to make a different fuel resource than Xenon be used, because Xenon, from what I've seen, draws from the entire ship and could leave you stranded in orbit without fuel.

Then again, I also use KSP Interstellar, mostly for reactors (I hate, absolutely hate, solar panels. I always break the stupid things, or I've angled ships so I can't get any power.) for station-power and long-distance ships.

What I'm saying is, it's easy enough to make some all-electric spacecraft, if you're willing to put time in to mod it. Ducted fans work in atmosphere, at some point, you need mass to throw out of the ship (some form of fuel) to get into orbit, but once you're there, you have some more options.