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

RoverDude

By RoverDude
in KSP1 Mod Releases

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Coneshot

Coneshot

Posted
Posted
On 12/11/2015 at 1:09 PM, Ryan949 said:

This is what I'm getting: http://imgur.com/2rmyYf7
As you can see both reactors stay at room temp and aren't producing any xenon gas (mind the tweak-scale) or electric charge

I'm getting the same thing.

On 12/12/2015 at 10:29 PM, RoverDude said:

The reactors are underutilized, so they automatically lower load to what you actually are using.

I made a test rig to see if I could "utilize" the reactor a bit more (around 20 ion thrusters with a ton of reaction wheels which used around 245 EC/s) and no change in temp and no electric charge produced...  pretty sure I'm derping here, but any advice to get them going would be awesome!

 

BTW besides the reactor hiccup, this is quickly becoming my favorite mod!

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goldenpsp

goldenpsp

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, kurdain said:

No.

First post in this thread said to "Post bugs and what not" so I did!

True, and that was all well and good when the thread was started, as this mod didn't have a github repo yet.  At this point however I'd bet good money that without a github issue your bug will get missed.

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LitaAlto

LitaAlto

Posted
Posted
On 2/3/2016 at 6:32 AM, Gaultesian said:

I do believe LitaAlto is using this centrifuge mod: DarkSideTechnology

Cheers.

@RoverDude -- @Gaultesian is 100% correct. It's in alpha still and I really hope he puts in a decent IVA, but it works pretty nicely.

I've got plans to expand the fleet. That ship is the Zephyrus, intended as a transport for the inner planets. I've already started working on the Boreas as an outer-planet exploration craft, and plan on the Notos as a first-responder craft and the Eurus as a hauler.

After that, there's still a dozen or so Greek wind gods left, so.... :D

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flashboy2001

flashboy2001

Posted
Posted
On 24 September 2015 at 6:27 PM, RoverDude said:

2mCyvrT.png

Includes a 5m USAF Orion as well as a 5m Medusa variant.

Note that this is a pre-release - you can pick it up on KS here:

https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/1175/Nuclear%20Rockets

Post bugs and whatnot :D

I have download the mod but it's not working is there a set way to download or some thing cause none of the engines are showing up

 

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damerell

damerell

Posted
Posted
On 21/02/2016 at 4:06 AM, SpaceMouse said:

Hey, I assume this was discussed or looked up in development, i want to set up my own custom 'fuel' config with a small number of non-nuclear pulse magazines. would anyone know what the power/explosive ratio might be compared to say the NPU-250's?

Assuming (and I have not seriously examined any of these assumptions) that
a) the existing nuclear magazines have realistic performance;
b) most of the mass of the magazine is bombs not bomb-handling, shielding, or other infrastructure; and
c) conventional explosive shaped charges can be made to provide similar amounts of shove per Joule

The practical maximum yield of fusion bombs is 6 kilotonnes TNT / kg. This figure is not very well-cited, but the American B-41 bomb appears to have yielded about 5/6 of that figure. That's about 3 * 10^13 J/kg (for the practical maximum). Dyson's proposed interstellar missions used bombs at 1/6 that yield, 5 * 10^12 J/kg, or 1/5 the yield of the B-41. I'm going to wildly guess that we have to increase the mass of a conventional explosive by about the same factor of 5 to produce a useful shaped charge for Orion purposes, so the only relative factor is energy density.

TNT has an energy density of about 4 MJ/kg and goes bang when you want it to. Other explosives have higher energy densities but may also have undesirable characteristics (eg nitrogylcerine goes bang if you look at it funny, dynamite sweats nitroglycerine in storage) but I'm going to generously assume the demands of a space programme can produce a conventional explosive with the 7.5MJ/kg energy density of dynamite but that is entirely suitable otherwise.

This suggests that a magazine full of conventional explosives provides about 2.5 x 10^-7 times as much shove as one full of fusion bombs, or in other words, it's probably not worth it; even if you have the pusher plate already you are probably better off spending the mass of a conventional-bomb magazine on a very high Isp non-nuclear drive like an ion or photon drive.

(There's a potential objection here that I've compared the energy density of a complete fusion device with that of a lump of TNT. The energy density of the fusible matter alone is much higher. However, firstly, you need the complete device to make the explosion whereas the lump of TNT needs little help, and secondly this objection only makes the potential performance of conventional explosives worse.)

I would have edited the previous post to say "do point out my hilarious order-of-magnitude error", but as happens half the time at random, the new forum won't let me edit it.

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SpaceMouse

SpaceMouse

Posted
Posted

Wow, thank you for the in depth reply. I'll have to test when i get home later. Even at the lower energy density, i think there might still be a practical use. At least for lighter craft. It doesn't take anywere near a full magazine to achieve orbit with the NPU250s even a small magazine at a heavier weight should be enough to achieve orbit.... or just clear 5he atmosphere really for that matter.

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damerell

damerell

Posted
Posted

Well, you are talking about a factor of 25 million. If the craft is light enough that it can achieve orbit on conventional explosives alone, I find it hard to suppose that it shouldn't dispense with the Orion pusher plate altogether.

There's a temptation to try and get Orion into orbit without irradiating the landscape. The trouble with that is Orion is only attractive because of the combination of good TWR and good Isp, and the good TWR only really matters when you're irradiating the landscape. Once you've decided to go to orbit by some other means, you might as well use some other engine with good Isp, bad TWR, but that isn't so inherently massive and prone to exciting failure modes.

There's a sort of edge case here where you want to land somewhere like Eve which is hard to take off from but where it's acceptable to irradiate the landscape - but even then, I'd stick a bunch of conventional rocketry under Orion rather than try to feed conventional explosives to the pusher plate.

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  • 2 weeks later...
NuclearNut

NuclearNut

Posted
Posted
On 3/6/2016 at 8:54 AM, Tangle said:

@daniel l., you could've looked 7 posts above you. It's github, which isn't KSP-dedicated and is sometimes annoying (hey, I don't like manually typing /releases), but is also very very useful for mod development.

Ooops, thanks for telling me.

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smjjames

smjjames

Posted
Posted (edited)

Release notes on 0.1.3? Unless I beat you to it.

KSP-AVC said there was an update, but the releases still shows 0.1.2, not 0.1.3.

It's possible that it's a false positive or something, it's done that a few times with other stuff before.

Edited by smjjames
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