Who would want a larger Ion?(This one bugs me in designing my Ion ships!)

[Arugela]

I currently use Ion alot. I use it for my interplanetary travels(I used it before the 1.0 release patch). I have always used them. But to do so on my larger ships I need to make a weird array based on a medium AI circle/drone core(the one you can start with with full functionality) and I put 8x(1x1) parts(If I'm not mistaken) around the outside and sink them down and move 8x Ion plus a middle one until I get a 33 Ion engine array. As you can imagine this is annoying. And as the game cannot do certain things with 4-8x of an alreayd complex array this makes making multiple of these and making peoper shortcuts rather annoying. and as Ions are very fun to play with I'm wondering who else would like a next size up Ion engine? And what stats should it have?

I can get a 33 Ions on the size of the next engine(The same size as a nuclear engine!). That is 66thrust. I think it should be around 50 thrust so it's not as good per area but use the same Ion to make the small larger Ion engine fuel wise to the New Big Ion container what the smaller one is to the 700xenon tank. And maybe a little less or more efficient electric wise. Probably less as it has less thrust. Maybe for it's size it uses the same elctricty as the 66 I can fit on a small area. Or it has the same base electric per thrust. Somewhere around 220/s? Not sure on the weight. I'll get a more specific proposale once I get in game and post it. Compare the weight of the two devices. It should probably be a little lighter as the new bigger xenon tanks are heavier compared to the 700 ones.

I would love the larger Ion and stick like 2- 4 of them on a nice 50t ship for space travel! 8) Ion would be fun to use then. Or can you not replenish Xenon gas yet? I would still use one regardless. Saves other fuel for takeoff and landing procedures. Maybe use it for first flights and the Nuclear engine for return after the ship is lighter!

Edit: And it would hopefully have a node on the end like normal ion thrusters so I can stick stuff on the end. I always build onto my ion engines!

The engine in this slide show weighs exactly 9.0t with the extra parts and 8.25t with just 33 ion engines. So a 50 thrust engine could weigh around 5-8t with 6t being about even per thrust with a little off for it's trouble.. Also twice that of a nuclear engine!

http://s1262.photobucket.com/user/PicsMe101/slideshow/KSP

It would be what the wiki calls a small part. The same as a nuclear and most engines.

If I were to make a guess at the stats:

Size: Small

Weight: 6t?

Thrust: 50

Xenon Gas: 12/s(slightly more efficient than the smaller ion per thrust)

Electricty: 250/s (250 is a little less efficient per thrust)

ISP: ?(ASL)-?(VAC)

Stats of engine block in picture:

Ion engines: 33

Weight: 9t (8.25t if only engines)

Thrust: 66

Xenon Gas: 16/s(approx.)

Electricty: 288/s(approx.)

ISP: 100(ASL)-4200(VAC)

I imagine it would look just like the small one but bigger. Would explain how it gets less thrust as it has a bigger circle in the middle possibly. While mine is stacked.

Edit2:

BTW, a proportional engine would be this: (@25x)

Size: Small

Weight: 6.25t

Thrust: 50

Xenon Gas: 12.5/s

Electricty: 218.5/s

ISP: 100(ASL)-4200(VAC)

Edited August 28, 2015 by Arugela

[clivman]

If power usage scales correctly it would use an enormous amount of electricity. So no. Vasmir is better.

[Arugela]

You'd be shocked how much power you can get to one of these! 8p

There are still massless parts with electricity right?!

[clivman]

You'd be shocked how much power you can get to one of these! 8p

There are still massless parts with electricity right?!

Not since 1.0

[Coyote27]

The logical starting point would be 3x the mass, 3x the thrust, 3x the power usage, and identical Isp to the small ion engine. Add a node to the bottom for decouplers. Then go from there if you feel a need to change anything, but you'd have something that's balanced to start out with.

[clivman]

The logical starting point would be 3x the mass, 3x the thrust, 3x the power usage, and identical Isp to the small ion engine. Add a node to the bottom for decouplers. Then go from there if you feel a need to change anything, but you'd have something that's balanced to start out with.

9x the power usage 9x the mass 3x the thrust.

[Arugela]

My suggestion up top is like a hair more efficient on the xenon gas(A very small hair) to go with the slightly heavier new xenon tanks. And more expensive on the elctricity to compensate. I dont think you can afford multiples off the original drive and be usable. It needs to be similar or it would not be capable of doing anything. It already is basically a deep space only drive. So it only is there to get from point a to point b from orbit or even after leaving orbit.

I'm also changing the idea to just 250 electric. It's only fair it gains a little xenon for a larger ammount of electricity.

[Red Iron Crown]

Xenon Gas: 12/s(slightly better than the smaller ion per thrust)

ISP: 100(ASL)-4200(VAC)

These two are contradictory.

9x the power usage 9x the mass 3x the thrust.

Pointless, who would ever use such a part? The idea is to have a single part cluster of three ions to reduce part counts.

[Arugela]

These two are contradictory.

Pointless, who would ever use such a part? The idea is to have a single part cluster of three ions to reduce part counts.

Good point. I didn't think of that. I'll have to try to recalculate it.

On that point. Anyone good at translating ISP? The wonderful people at KSP didn't think to fully lable everything. Nor the wiki. I don't know what they are in.... Don't have the energy to figure it out either. 8\

I also should have added a yes and no about if you actually use Ion. that would have helped the poll tremendously!

Edited August 27, 2015 by Arugela

[Torquemadus]

NASA have said that they want to develop solar electric propulsion for use in their Asteroid Redirect Mission proposal and to haul cargo on future Mars missions (solar electric propulsions is slow, so you wouldn't want it for crewed spacecraft). Therefore it isn't unreasonable for such a propulsion system to appear in KSP.

Bigger ion engines would give Squad another excuse to implement a small nuclear reactor in the game. This would allow use of nuclear electric propulsion on outer solar system missions!

[Arugela]

If you don't add this to the game I will have to build one of these again. And you don't want me building one of these again!! ><

Let alone it's bigger brother with 333+engines!! *leers*

BTW, I could stand that bad boy on end and fly it like a vplane!! 8D

I think this hits an important note about space planes. Waistfulness is the luxury of space planes... The bigger and more waisteful the more cool it is! it takes brains to be efficient. It takes guts to strap 100 uneeded engines with jet fuel to your behind!! ><

Edited August 27, 2015 by Arugela

[clivman]

These two are contradictory.

Pointless, who would ever use such a part? The idea is to have a single part cluster of three ions to reduce part counts.

Then it's an ion cluster rather than a larger Ion. If it is a cluster I am okay with it.

[Arugela]

The engine I built was an ion cluster. Why are you against a larger ion engine?

My point was to make one Ion engine that is the same diameter as the nuclear and jet engines. What is wrong with that?

[clivman]

The engine I built was an ion cluster. Why are you against a larger ion engine?

My point was to make one Ion engine that is the same diameter as the nuclear and jet engines. What is wrong with that?

As I said earlier, 9x the weight, 9x the Electric charge, 3x the thrust. A prebuilt cluster (1.25m) Would be only 3x the weight and have 3x the power consumption while still having three times the thrust

[Arugela]

Do you understand that is unusable. The point is to remove parts count so you can use it on slightly larger vessels like MK1's. I currently use 33 engines plus stuff to stick it together to produce 66 thrust for an MK1 vessel with one of these engine clusters. I could have one with one part that has almost the sameproportions that gives as in my example 50 thrust for the same basic weight ratio.

If you simply scaled it up it would be @ 25x:

Size: small

Weight: 6.25t

Thrust: 50

Xenon Gas: 12.15/s

Electricity: 218.5/s

I just modified it a little.

I could go back to:

Xenon Gas: 12/s

Electiricty: 220/s

I think the small change in weight is a nice bonus. Gives a reason to use it over the smaller on besides parts count. And I guess 12.15 isn't a big difference than 12. You could call it a shorthand and say it has the same ISP.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Arugela

[NoMrBond]

NASA have said that they want to develop solar electric propulsion for use in their Asteroid Redirect Mission proposal and to haul cargo on future Mars missions (solar electric propulsions is slow, so you wouldn't want it for crewed spacecraft). Therefore it isn't unreasonable for such a propulsion system to appear in KSP.

Bigger ion engines would give Squad another excuse to implement a small nuclear reactor in the game. This would allow use of nuclear electric propulsion on outer solar system missions!

If you're going to scale up size/power, then perhaps step up to VASIMR (~10x the power requirements but produces 45x the thrust) instead of simply having larger Ion drives (mN of thrust for thousands of W)

That would need balancing to fit inside the game but that's hardly rocket sci... wait, ahem, it's doable, yes, doable.

[Arugela]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_thruster

"The thrust produced by a Hall thruster varies depending on the power level."

If this is true should it have low thrust in atmosphere like other engines? I get the impression they recorded these Specific impulse values on the ground. Should they really be that low in gravity?

"Compared to chemical rockets, the thrust is very small, on the order of 83 mN (0.60pdl.) for a typical thruster operating at 300 V, 1.5 kW. For comparison, the weight of a coin like the U.S. quarter or a 20-cent Euro coin is approximately 60 mN (0.43pdl.). As with all forms of electrically powered spacecraft propulsion, thrust is limited by available power, efficiency, and specific impulse."

How accurate is this compared to the games engine?

And is that ISP value for the xenon or the electricity. Somsething about the game wiki makes me think it's the electricity...

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/IX-6315_%22Dawn%22_Electric_Propulsion_System

[TABLE]

[TR]

[TD=colspan: 2]Electricity required[/TD]

[TD] 3.666 âš¡/s[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD] 0.087 âš¡/s[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Couldn't they let you get full thrust in atmoshphere/gravity from this by increasing the electical intake or something?

Edited August 28, 2015 by Arugela

[NoMrBond]

The NSTAR ion engine on the DAWN spacecraft makes 90mN (->0.09N or ->0.00009 kN), the in-game PB-ION makes 2kN, which makes it slightly over 2.2 million times more powerful.

KSP would need to support on-rails thrust (so craft could accelerate for the necessary days/weeks/months without being focused) before the thrust levels could be reduced to anything even vaguely realistic though

[passinglurker]

The NSTAR ion engine on the DAWN spacecraft makes 90mN (->0.09N or ->0.00009 kN), the in-game PB-ION makes 2kN, which makes it slightly over 2.2 million times more powerful.

KSP would need to support on-rails thrust (so craft could accelerate for the necessary days/weeks/months without being focused) before the thrust levels could be reduced to anything even vaguely realistic though

might as well just have stock implement hyper edit when you use ion engines (if the craft has enough dv it will disappear and reappear the appropriate amount of time later in the appropriate place with the appropriate amount of fuel missing) same result as on-rails-long-burn-autopilot but a whole lot simpler.

[Kuu Lightwing]

I think that if we need high thrust high ISP engine, it should be a gas core NTR, like one from Atomic Age mod.

ion engines are already way too powerfull for the sake of gameplay, so no need to stretch that even further. leave them in their niche of probe propulsion.

[clivman]

I think that if we need high thrust high ISP engine, it should be a gas core NTR, like one from Atomic Age mod.

ion engines are already way too powerfull for the sake of gameplay, so no need to stretch that even further. leave them in their niche of probe propulsion.

Realism is still more important than gameplay. Ion engines belong, but with lower(on rails) thrust

[Jouni]

As I said earlier, 9x the weight, 9x the Electric charge, 3x the thrust. A prebuilt cluster (1.25m) Would be only 3x the weight and have 3x the power consumption while still having three times the thrust

I don't understand your reasoning.

Power consumption is proportional to the product of thrust and Isp. If you increase thrust by increasing propellant flow, you get 3x the thrust for 3x the power. If you increase thrust by increasing exhaust velocity, you get 3x the thrust and 3x the Isp for 9x the power.

[Arugela]

Realism is still more important than gameplay. Ion engines belong, but with lower(on rails) thrust

Yea, it is a bit silly the only engine that can't use time warp is the one that should have it the most. If anything it should be the only one that can use it during burn!

Even if you do sacrifice to use them largescale you have to content a lot of weight as tradeoff. So there is no harm in that gamedesign. You pay to use Ion on anything larger than a probe. You just end up using a different designs trying to figure out how to use everything efficiently and making sure the fuel weight pays off per given usage. Which I'm not good at doing yet btw! 8) I'm still experimenting to figure it out. But that is hard with the parts count and the fact I have to refigure the game out now that I just started replaying it. Particularly since I like to make ships that are 1000+ parts...

Edited August 28, 2015 by Arugela

[clivman]

I don't understand your reasoning.

Power consumption is proportional to the product of thrust and Isp. If you increase thrust by increasing propellant flow, you get 3x the thrust for 3x the power. If you increase thrust by increasing exhaust velocity, you get 3x the thrust and 3x the Isp for 9x the power.

Making a cluster increases propellant flow, making a larger engine increases exhaust velocity.

[Red Iron Crown]

Yea, it is a bit silly the only engine that can't use time warp is the one that should have it the most. If anything it should be the only one that can use it during burn!

? Ions work as well as any other engine in physical timewarp.