parts [1.12.x] 'Project Orion' Nuclear Pulse Engine

[RoverDude]

Sorry, thats not what i meant. I am saying that 10% trottle produce more trust than 100%. Consumption is higher, but trust is lower.

If I understand correctly, pulses trust is not cumulative, it might have something to do with the powercurve. I think that if a pulse happen at the peak of the curve of the previous one, it will simply interrupt it and start from 0.

Odd - will take a look

[NuclearNut]

I don't want to be harsh, but my english kinda bad... Sorry if my answer is a bit blunt.

Producing a NERVA would be "easy" compared to building a nuclear weapon. The level of precision for machined part doesn't need to that high. To produce a modern bomb, you need high precision for everything, cable, electronics etc. These thing require other rare material, some of them are even less common than high quality uranium. Reprocessing fuel is also "easy" compared to geting new fuel, because it doesn't require to dig literaly thousand of tons of rocks to just to get few Kilo of Uranium. And you will still need to enrich it... and that take allot of energy to do. All these operation require huge infrastructure, manpower and time.

Barrel bomb would indeed be the easiest solution, that we agree on. But you won't get anything stronger than few dozens of kilotons, and its a heavy, unefficient and a unsafe design.

I think that if we ever colonise Mars, nuke will be one of the last thing that we can produce localy.

Dont worry, you were not harsh at all, you were honest. Yes, a nuclear bomb requires high precision cable, electronics, and other such things, but due to the electronics production facilities in the UKS mod that presumably are capable of producing transistors and electronic equipment of sufficient quality to make a PC with, you should at least be able to make the low quality electronics used in the detonation systems on the older nuclear weapons. The big problem is, of course, getting the explosives in the right configuration, but from what I understand that should not be a horribly complex problem to solve with 3d printing, and lastly the uranium for plutonium production does not need to be enriched unless you are using a uranium gun bomb, this is because graphite is a sufficiently efficient moderator to . It should also be noted that uranium deposits in Canada run up to a few percent uranium by mass, and the UKS mod already has uranium mining and processing, thus giving us the fuel we need already in the mod. The only problems in the mod it appears are explosives manufacture, alloy manufacture, and of course the fact that you would need a new and specialized reactor to provide the plutonium production, assuming you were building it off planet.

All in all, I agree with your statement that nuclear explosives are probably the last thing we would have to ship from earth to mars if we were to set up a colony there, and if you were to have to put it in a specialized reactor that only produces around enough material for three bombs a day and weighs twenty or so tonnes, add a reprocessing facility, and then possibly explosives manufacturing as well, it would not be an easy thing.

Fun fact: Uranium mining is what I often do for money in career, mine uranium in mass semi-automated mining facilities, process it into enriched uranium, load containers with it on an orbital container ship, transport it back to Kerbin, and watch the money come in. It is a really profitable solution, and ironically the exact one I have for most my strategy games.

[percyPrune]

Yeah, given these are direct thrust there's just no way for those tools to get a real reading

Fair enough. Although I might try to bodge up your Mk1 drive system with your Mk2 gimbal & ablator oil for personal use. I like to see numbers before I launch

[RoverDude]

I assume by Mk1 you mean the 0.0.1 release? If so any numbers you saw there were also a total 100% lie.

[percyPrune]

a total 100% lie.

Interesting. I shall re-install 0.0.1 and try some long burns!

[Mikki]

I have just discovered that replacing "Stock Fuel Switch" with "FSFuelSwitch" breakes my existing careercrafts, meaning that all LFO tanks show LF then... I guess its not possible to further use Atomic rockets mod with an existing Stock Fuel Switch install, my modding-fu is almost worthless...

Reverting to 0.0.1 seems somehow, is it possible to tweak somehow the config of the Magazine?

Solved!

After removing Tweakscale, all fuelswitch mods and reinstalling Stock Fuel Switch only the Magazine options became available. Somehow its Tweakscale blocking Stock Fuel Switch mod.

My careersave is again fully functional, very happy!

Oh, ablative oil is only stored in the engine?!?... okay!

Edited October 1, 2015 by Mikki

[silversliver]

Well, you now have to configure the engine to the cartridge type you're using, so check that if you haven't already.

If you're still having problems, maybe post the output log?

Roverdude does his testing and development on Linux Mint. Also, you don't need to kill or move (unless you want to keep it for whatever reason) the existing output log file, it overwrites itself every time you launch KSP.

I'm using windows 7 home premium.

Yes I've checked the cartridges types and it is correct.

Here the log file:https://www.dropbox.com/s/trfqsaa29z1rjzg/KSP.log?dl=0

And here the output file:https://www.dropbox.com/s/8eaovtgu130495p/output_log.txt?dl=0

Edited October 1, 2015 by silversliver

[Mikki]

Well i launched a stockish "ORION"- like "Ore prospector" to LKO with 250 type NPUs (More than 10 million Kerbucks, outch!).

Its made wit StockFuelSwitch without Tweakscale (did not work together here).

Lifted from launchpad without chemical booster support, wobbled despite Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, went up slowly by "brute force" ...

Thrust limited to 15%...omg

I guess the craft is still way to light for this propulsion System.

Did not found any glitches or weirdnesses until now, the new propulsion sequence is looking very authentic, great engine (well, THE greatest for sure:wink:). Spacey Lifterparts is coming slowly on my mind... must make bigger vessels in the future.

"Whackjobian cathedrals" for all!

(The LFO tanks are mainly just for maneuvering with vernors... lots of them on the vessel)

Edited October 1, 2015 by Mikki

[Slightlylyons]

Built a simple Orion and took it around the mun. I realized I hadn't brought any recovery equipment. Powered Kerban re-entry, decent, and landing is entirely possible. Though touchdown speed will be anywhere from 1-50 m/s with virtually no ability to fine tune it... and I'm not sure a 100 mph touchdown is a "Landing" but everyone lived.

[subitan]

I couldn't find this in the thread, but kerbalstuff has the ckan icon on the project orion mod by RoverDude, but I can't find it on ckan. Either I'm looking for the wrong thing, or something else is amiss. Should it be on ckan?

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I love it with FTT

http://i.imgur.com/Mmy14JS.jpg

That is freaking awesome.

[RoverDude]

I couldn't find this in the thread, but kerbalstuff has the ckan icon on the project orion mod by RoverDude, but I can't find it on ckan. Either I'm looking for the wrong thing, or something else is amiss. Should it be on ckan?

CKAN elves need to do their work.

[percyPrune]

Re. MechJeb and

any numbers you saw there were also a total 100% lie.

OK RD, you win!

I took a 600t ship for a test flight yesterday. After burning around some manual maneuvering nodes totaling around 40,000m/s dV I only used about 4% of initial fuel load.

In other words, I don't think refueling is going to be a big issue. All I need now is to be able to afford one or two of these babies in career mode. Oh, and afford a better PC so I can handle ships worthy of it without f-r-a-m-e ...... l-a-a-a-g.....

Thanks again for a brilliant mod

[subitan]

CKAN elves need to do their work.

Hmm. Does that mean they will eventually scrape this, or is there a pull request someone could submit that would do the job? I'm willing to help, I just don't know what the process is, and it doesn't seem terribly well documented. :/

[magnemoe]

Built a simple Orion and took it around the mun. I realized I hadn't brought any recovery equipment. Powered Kerban re-entry, decent, and landing is entirely possible. Though touchdown speed will be anywhere from 1-50 m/s with virtually no ability to fine tune it... and I'm not sure a 100 mph touchdown is a "Landing" but everyone lived.

You need secondary chemical engines for fine control. Beaf them up and you can use them to land. Landing gear is another issue, probaly smarter to bring an shuttle

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Hmm. Does that mean they will eventually scrape this, or is there a pull request someone could submit that would do the job? I'm willing to help, I just don't know what the process is, and it doesn't seem terribly well documented. :/

Usually the ks auto ckan entry needs tidy up. Especially if there's more than just one folder and dependencies etc.

[Technical Ben]

Is fuel type limited on the Orion? I get no fuel flow for some sizes of the pellets.

- - - Updated - - -

No sound files yet. I'm happy with the rest to be honest, given the limitations of what we can do with particle effects.

Differences with the Medusa are noted in the patch notes.

PS, could camera shake be added? (Though optional as it drives me nuts )

Edited October 2, 2015 by Technical Ben

[goldenpsp]

Hmm. Does that mean they will eventually scrape this, or is there a pull request someone could submit that would do the job? I'm willing to help, I just don't know what the process is, and it doesn't seem terribly well documented. :/

How about asking the CKAN people. CKAN is their "mod" afterall.

[Slightlylyons]

You need secondary chemical engines for fine control. Beaf them up and you can use them to land. Landing gear is another issue, probaly smarter to bring an shuttle

Yeah, I need giant landing gear and 30 seconds of retrorocket.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

What?

[RedParadize]

Hi RoverDude

I was wondering, How can I scale up the Habitation Ring? I tryed with both Rescale but it doesn't work. I could try with tweakscale I guess... the thing is I want to give it unique propreties.

If one day you have free time, could you do a huge Habitation ring? With transparent top and plants inside, that would be realy cool.

[NuclearNut]

So, while playing around with this a question formed in my mind that I would like to know the answer to.

How do I calculate how much Delta-V this craft has? I know it is kind of inconsequential, but I would still like to know.

[rabidninjawombat]

So, while playing around with this a question formed in my mind that I would like to know the answer to.

How do I calculate how much Delta-V this craft has? I know it is kind of inconsequential, but I would still like to know.

Alot of maths.. spreadsheets, and calculators probably. It could be done but you'd have to figure out things like how many m/s each charges gives in kerbin atmo etc, etc, etc.

Basically you dont figure it out unless you have feel like doing the work Mechjeb or KER inst setup to handle figuring in this type of propulsion.

[NuclearNut]

I present to you my latest spacecraft created using this mod, the Type 1 OB-16W-3L Duna Class Space Battleship. Weighing in at over 310 tons and carrying the equivalent of over 32.4 Megatons of nuclear explosives, the Duna class is a force to be reckoned with.

Anyway, I had several versions I had to go through to get a design that synergized well with the engine design and was not horribly laggy. The first edition had a mere 16 warheads, but due to poor design choices was incredibly laggy. The ship was restarted, redesignated from "Edward Teller" to "Duna" class and the warhead design was modified so that 27 warheads could be fitted and with minimal lag in space. She was also fitted with three NTRs to allow for fine maneuvering. Among the interesting things I learned was that the SRBs have to weigh more than the actual orion drive to take off of the pad and get to a reasonable safe distance of around 6-10 kilometers dependant upon when you conduct the gravity turn. For your information, the SRB+Duna setup weighed over 800 tonnes, whereas the Duna itself weighs only 310 tonnes.

The main limitation of the ship is her food supply, delta-v is mostly a non-issue in this sanario, however I would like to be able to re-supply her with bombs from a colony as well what I currently can, which is food for the kerbals and fuel for the NTRs.

A bug/problem that appears to occur but is unrelated (I believe) to your mod, is the fact that it lags like hell while in atmosphere, but upon leaving the atmosphere it runs perfectly smoothly.

Edited October 3, 2015 by NuclearNut

[Mikki]

I slapped a "reasonable" Orion-size Vessel with the 500 NPUs together, added some 12 reliants to finetune prograde/ retrograde velocity, and that works very well. The fueltanks are from Necrobones SpaceY parts, lifted with boosters to 15000m from the same pack.

No problems so far, but gimbaling the orion engine looks obsolete in my opinion, the vessel starts to wobble hard despite KJR. I turned it off.