We Need More Nuke!

[Gameslinx]

I think there are 2? nuclear engines in KSP so far, and I think a new... Thing should be added:

Actually, I will list some!

RCS

-nuclear powered RCS - more efficient but less thrustthrust

-RCS mode - nuke. This will switch the RCS thruster from mono propellant to liquid fuel

Engines

-Big, massive ones for large ships

-small, tiny ones for miniature ships

Asteroids

-Radioactive asteroids - contains uranium (see below)

-uranium - harvested from asteroids with a pump (see below)and can be turned into liquid fuel

Parts

-pump - extends a pipe which sucks uranium from asteroids and converts it into liquid fuel

Well I hoped you liked this suggestion! Feedback is greatly appreciated. I would love to see more nuclear power in this game!

Edited June 15, 2015 by Gamel0rd1
Changed Plutonium to Uranium

[KrazyKrl]

What problems do these new parts solve? We already have high-thrust LFO Vernor RCS engines. And the cores in NERVA engines don't decay quick enough to be of relevance in KSP at this point (they wouldn't use Pu anyhow.) NERVAs use hydrogen as propellant.

I agree that there should be a few more sizes of NERVA engines. Of course the larger engines would need to be proportionally heavier in dry-weight, as you're flying a nuclear reactor into space.

[TheSaint]

Well, there are already tons of mods that add larger nuclear engines to the game. KSPX, Atomic Age, Taurus HCV, and Modular Rocket Systems all come to mind, but I am sure there are more. Atomic Age also adds a 0.625m nuclear engine. But I do agree with you, we are way overdue for a stock 2.5m nuclear engine.

I think a nuclear RCS would be woefully overweight. The TWR would be prohibitive. Also remember that, IRL, starting up a nuclear reactor takes a lot of time, hours at least. It would not be very responsive. I suppose you could make one that ran off of a slug of plutonium like an RTG, but it would only run for a short while before the plutonium cooled off, then you would have to wait for it to heat back up before you could use it again. Again, not good for an on-demand system like RCS. Overall, not very practical. But props for thinking outside the box.

As for mining plutonium: Nuclear engines don't work the way you think they work. They aren't spewing molten plutonium out of their exhaust nozzles. (Thank God.) They have a nuclear reactor that heats liquid hydrogen up to a very high temperature and spews that out of the exhaust nozzle. The nuclear material (uranium, not plutonium) stays safely in the reactor core. The life of the reactor core would be measured in years at 100% power, so refueling it would be essentially beyond the scope of the game. Plus, plutonium isn't a naturally occurring element, it is only created through neutron bombardment of U-238 in nuclear reactors. But, uranium would make a great high-value resource if they ever wanted to turn ISRU into a revenue stream.

Edited June 14, 2015 by TheSaint
Couple other thoughts

[Laie]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I'd be happy enough if just the existing nuke would be made stronger and heavier. One large Kerbodyne tank plus one of today's LV-Ns look very much like the proposed nuclear tugs. What's lacking is thrust. Give it enough oomph that such a vessel would work is what I'd suggest. Yes, that would probably mean that we'd have a small engine weighting more than a Mammoth -- so what?

That doesn't mean that I'm opposed to even bigger ones. But I am of the opinion that we don't really need to have the current small Nerva. Would it really be such a big loss if one-man missions to Duna would have to resort to Poodles?

[cicatrix]

Nuclear RCS?! OMG, WHY?

Seriously though, this game is already unrealistic enough not to add to it free plutonium in asteroids. For your information - Plutonium is very scarce in nature. It doesn't exist in any free form and you cannot pump it since it's a metal. All Plutonium we have was synthesized milligram by milligram over the years in special reactors. Even if you are lucky enough to catch an asteroid containing several micrograms of it I doubt it will make any difference in space. Actually your chances of getting several atoms of Plutonium out of your own body (thanks to all that nuclear weapons tests) is better than finding them in any asteroid.

[Kaos]

If high ISP RCS thrusters were neccessary, I would prefer ion RCS instead of nuclear RCS. But I do not see the neccessarity for that, even more as we now have ISRU and thus Monoprop available nearly everywhere. Admittedly ion RCS would be somehow cool, but not neccessary.

[Windspren]

Waaait a second.... So suddenly Uranium can be converted into fuel?????

[cicatrix]

Waaait a second.... So suddenly Uranium can be converted into fuel?????

Depends on which kind of fuel you have in mind. Certainly you can enrich it to the point the fission reactions within it generate enough heat. Sooo it is a fuel of sorts by itself

[TheSaint]

Waaait a second.... So suddenly Uranium can be converted into fuel?????

Fuel in the sense that it can be refined and enriched and loaded into a nuclear reactor: Yes. Fuel in the sense that you could load it into your rocket and blast it out of the exhaust: No.

[RainDreamer]

Nuclear RCS....why do I imagining a small scale orion drive that blows up a small bomb on the sides of ships... that sounds dangerous as hell, but would be so fun

[Windspren]

Fuel in the sense that it can be refined and enriched and loaded into a nuclear reactor: Yes. Fuel in the sense that you could load it into your rocket and blast it out of the exhaust: No.

Yeah, I don't see Uranium being used as Liquid Fuel...

[Tankman101]

If your uranium is a liquid something has gone horribly wrong.

[windows_x_seven]

Also, if you expected Uranium to be this:

It's actually this:

[lajoswinkler]

RCS

-nuclear powered RCS - more efficient but less thrustthrust

-RCS mode - nuke. This will switch the RCS thruster from mono propellant to liquid fuel

LOL god, no. Completely useless and perfectly nonrealistic.

Engines

-Big, massive ones for large ships

-small, tiny ones for miniature ships

We do lack a 2.5 m nuclear thermal engine. KSPX has the first stockalike made ever, called LV-NB. You should check it out.

Tiny nuclear engines can not exist if they use the same resources. There really is no need for smaller ones. If you need a high specific impulse engine for probes or tiny ships, you have the ion engine.

Asteroids

-Radioactive asteroids - contains uranium (see below)

-uranium - harvested from asteroids with a pump (see below)and can be turned into liquid fuel

Uranium can not be a propellant. Silliest suggestion I've encountered in a while.

What could be used is hard to get uranium ore which can be turned into nuclear fuel (UO₂) for powering LV-N reactor up if the thing ever gets a depletable one. It would be a good idea to make nuclear engines single-use-only, in a way that if you need to save money, you can land the thing and recover it for fuel recycling.

BTW, nuclear reactor fuel looks like this.

It's uranium(IV) oxide (chemically, pretty inert material) formed into a pellet which goes into zirconium tubes. It goes not glow. It never glows except if you heat it up. If it's spent and filled with fission products, it will make the surrounding water it's in glow blue.

Edited June 18, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[clivman]

No, even Nerv doesn't belong in stock game.

[Kuu Lightwing]

Nuclear RCS sounds so... kerbal.

- We need low thrust engines for reaction control system.

- Okay, let's just add a 3-ton nuclear reactor to the ship so we can get better efficiency from 500 kg of fuel for these thrusters...

[Francois424]

The problem with Stock KSP and engines now as of 1.0.2 is that we are really missing a high-ISP *and* thrust engine.

Back then I installed "kommit_nucleonics" mods especially for the 2.5m 250 thrust engine (was same ratio as the 60 kN ones or there abouts). 4 of these on my mothership and voila ! respectable burn time with great ISP

Unfortunately the mod's look changed and so did engine balance... but by then I was in KSP hiatus which lasted from late 0.25 thru 1.02.

Ions have great ISP, super annoying thrust. The LV-N with it's overheating and new mass isn't really nice unless modded.

We really need more range in thrust/ISP. As someone else posted somewhere/sometime ago a 600isp engine with 250-400 thrust would really hit home.

And obviously 2.5m Ion engine for end-game purpose, complete with better thrust as well... I usually download a mod and make it for myself, but it's also missing.

Something with 250kN thrust and 4200 ISP but working on Xenon and Electricity.

[KrazyKrl]

Assuming the Nerv is 1.25m in diameter; and has an overall length of 3.136m. The Nerv weighs 3 metric tons. For a density of 780 kg per cubic meter overall.

To get a, say, 300 kN Nerva; we would need to preserve that approximate engine density (or mess with ISP, but i'm ignoring that.)

Which would need to be a cylinder massing 15,000kg. Assuming a 2.5m diameter form factor. A 19.23 Cubic Meter engine would need to be 3.9m in height.

This form factor, and mass; is met by a Rockomax X200-32 fuel tank; with 270LF/330Ox removed from it.

That's sort of insane for a 300 kN thrust engine. You're pretty much flying an 81% full Rockomax X200-32 as deadweight.

[Starwaster]

Assuming the Nerv is 1.25m in diameter; and has an overall length of 3.136m. The Nerv weighs 3 metric tons. For a density of 780 kg per cubic meter overall.

To get a, say, 300 kN Nerva; we would need to preserve that approximate engine density (or mess with ISP, but i'm ignoring that.)

Which would need to be a cylinder massing 15,000kg. Assuming a 2.5m diameter form factor. A 19.23 Cubic Meter engine would need to be 3.9m in height.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/images/9/9e/X200-32_FT.png

This form factor, and mass; is met by a Rockomax X200-32 fuel tank; with 270LF/330Ox removed from it.

That's sort of insane for a 300 kN thrust engine. You're pretty much flying an 81% full Rockomax X200-32 as deadweight.

There's documents out there that describe such an engine (333 kN). I'm not sure about its mass but its dimensions would be 8.74m x 2.99m. I'd speculate that its mass would be 9-12 tons including external shielding. (based on a 66 kN version whose dimensions were given 4.7m x 1.4m at 6.7 tons. Including shield)

Do a search for

NASA Technical Memorandum 107071

AIAA-93-4170

if you're interested. There's others out there too.

[Rocketfeline]

Nuclear powered RCS is a nope.

I would like 6.25 or a 2.5 nuclear rocket engine. I feel my probes need to be out longer in the solar system.

[Red Iron Crown]

No, even Nerv doesn't belong in stock game.

Why not?

[clivman]

Why not?

Because it is way overpowered- KSP is easy enough already.

[Red Iron Crown]

Funny, a lot of people have complained about it being nerfed into uselessness with the changes in 1.0 (worse TWR, heat management concerns). IMO it's reasonably well balanced now, useful in some but not all situations.

Perhaps you find KSP easy, I'd imagine most players do not find it so at first, especially in stock. I certainly found it difficult.