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

[RoverDude]

Oh I would not even look at MechJeb for these (or KER) given the engines kinda do their own thing

[smjjames]

Hm, is the medusa supposed to not function in atmosphere?

Edit: It keeps retracting in atmosphere, okay....

Edit2: Tried going full thrust outside of atmosphere and BOOM, hello kraken!

Edited September 27, 2015 by smjjames

[RoverDude]

Hm, is the medusa supposed to not function in atmosphere?

Edit: It keeps retracting in atmosphere, okay....

Edit2: Tried going full thrust outside of atmosphere and BOOM, hello kraken!

Correct, it is not supposed to function in atmosphere

And don't just hit max throttle, odds are your ship can't handle that much force being put on it. Ease up to it, and note than in the streams the highest I got the throttle was 60%.

[smjjames]

Anyways, bug: You can't surface attach anything to the pulse unit magazines. I was trying to put struts between magazines to try and do some reinforcement.

[RoverDude]

Anyways, bug: You can't surface attach anything to the pulse unit magazines. I was trying to put struts between magazines to try and do some reinforcement.

Not a bug.

You can surface attach TO them with struts, but they intentionally do not allow stuff to be surface attached directly to them.

[FreeThinker]

Release is out, see OP

Whoa, a real medusa propulsion engine, that surly is a first. One question, are you going to call the the mod Nuclear Engines? It seems to contain only nuclear pulse engines, or are you planning to add additional nuclear engines as well?

[rabidninjawombat]

Whoa, a real medusa propulsion engine, that surly is a first. One question, are you going to call the the mod Nuclear Engines? It seems to contain only nuclear pulse engines, or are you planning to add additional nuclear engines as well?

As far as i know the only other planed addition was a Mini-Mag Orion , which is a bit different than pulsed engines, but you probably know that FreeThinker

[RoverDude]

Yep, the mod is going to be called Nuclear Engines. Starting with the three mentioned on the tin.

[EladDv]

The Medusa feels concept is somewhat weird to me- you will just fly through the center point of a nuclear detonation 100s of times this must have a some effects on the crew

[Herr Doktor Strangemember]

Dear Kod....BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Seriously this is a beast, I had my ship hitting 270g at roughly 66% throttle, Kerbin to Jool in 32 days with an incredibly sloppy transfer and circularize at Jool. Total dV used was around 200,000 m/s, and that was only 4% of my fuel I think, game crashed before I could return.

Ok I'm much calmer now...

Animation with pusher plate needs to be somehow linked to bomb detonation rate. I keep wanting to say that this is OP, but it's Orion, which is by definition the most OP of OP drives. I'll play more, but now I want to make an asteroid tug with Medusa and play 3D snooker with a bunch of Class E's.

[optimusjamie]

Hell yeah! (The F'thp will feel our wrath!)

Funny. I was thinking the same thing!

[RoverDude]

So the funny bit is trying to synchronize physics frame rate, animation frame rate, and particles. The engine is on a roughly 1.25 second cycle with the bombs going off ever 0.25 seconds (which is roughly timed to the propellant sparks you see simulating the canisters, and the animation of the lower pressure plate. So very little can be done to sync all of these up so they are precise.

[smjjames]

How come it's intentional that you can't surface attach stuff to the magazines? The engines i'm fine with since most aren't anyway, but this is a part that could be placed anywhere.

Actual bug report. When the magazine in the engine itself is empty, the engine still runs but doesn't consume any additional fuel. Heck, even if the status says flameout and out of fuel and there is absolutely no fuel on the craft, the engine still produces thrust.

[Nothalogh]

Dear Kod....BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Seriously this is a beast, I had my ship hitting 270g at roughly 66% throttle, Kerbin to Jool in 32 days with an incredibly sloppy transfer and circularize at Jool. Total dV used was around 200,000 m/s, and that was only 4% of my fuel I think, game crashed before I could return.

Ok I'm much calmer now...

Animation with pusher plate needs to be somehow linked to bomb detonation rate. I keep wanting to say that this is OP, but it's Orion, which is by definition the most OP of OP drives. I'll play more, but now I want to make an asteroid tug with Medusa and play 3D snooker with a bunch of Class E's.

The best part is, it can be built with 1950s technology

[MatterBeam]

Just going through the config files, I want to ask:

-What is BaseCharge?

-What units are used for cartridge yield?

-what are the powerfactor and heatmultiplier multiplying?

[RoverDude]

How come it's intentional that you can't surface attach stuff to the magazines? The engines i'm fine with since most aren't anyway, but this is a part that could be placed anywhere.

Actual bug report. When the magazine in the engine itself is empty, the engine still runs but doesn't consume any additional fuel. Heck, even if the status says flameout and out of fuel and there is absolutely no fuel on the craft, the engine still produces thrust.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v214/smjjames/testity_screenshot_2015-09-27--15-04-23_zpsz39tym2c.png

Again, by design. I don't want greebles all over those charge magazines.

And the magazines have to be reloaded manually,the resource is no_flow.

[_Augustus_]

I'm not moving at all when I throttle up.

[Herr Doktor Strangemember]

The best part is, it can be built with 1950s technology

Yup but in KSP it would be at the start of the tech tree...how crazy is that? If it is placed there, before NERVA, heck before the 2.5m parts, why bother with anything else for propulsion? Only thing I can see in game that would balance it out is cost and maybe a rep hit for using nukes as firecrackers, but even then Freeman Dyson I think said one Orion launch would cause between .1 to 1 fatalities from cancer per launch, so realistically maybe big rep hit for the first launch (much fear) but after the first maybe much less? Even then if we assume later, improved, version of the Orion drive are using fusion instead of fission charges with 90% or higher efficiency the fallout is negligible. So maybe just cost to serve as a reason to develop other engines?

Of course that's if you want to place as 1950's tech.

[smjjames]

Again, by design. I don't want greebles all over those charge magazines.

And the magazines have to be reloaded manually,the resource is no_flow.

Okay, fair enough, I'm using TAC Fuel Balancer to manage it. Also, the bug where the engine still produces thrust even if there is no fuel at all is real.

[meve12]

Can't seem to surface attach onto the Orion engine.

Can you fix this? It makes strapping on side boosters difficult.

EDIT: And maybe separate the tanks from the Orion drive, so we can customize it more easily.

Edited September 28, 2015 by meve12

[Whirligig Girl]

I seem to be missing something. The rocket won't work. I try to turn it on, it's got propellant, and it has thrust, but it just won't work. It doesn't move, explode, or do anything.

EDIT: I'm reasonably certain it is because for some reason USI Tools did not get put in gamedata. Oops.

Wow. These things are FAST. I tried hopping to full thruttle on the launchpad and in less than a second I had been blown to smithereens. Before having been blown to smithereens, my velocity was TWO KILOMETERS PER SECOND. Right off the launchpad! That is insane!

It feels overpowered, but in the RIGHT way. It's like using a monster to pull goods instead of a horse. Sure the monster can pull much more much faster, but it will also try to eat you.

Edited September 28, 2015 by GregroxMun

[smjjames]

Can't seem to surface attach onto the Orion engine.

Can you fix this? It makes strapping on side boosters difficult.

Most engines aren't surface attachable anyway.

[meve12]

Also, the Orion sometimes pistons on it's own. Sometimes in the VAB, sometimes on the pad (with explosive results, in the later case).

And it really, really hates launch clamps.

- - - Updated - - -

Most engines aren't surface attachable anyway.

Maybe, but the Orion's too big to not be surface attachable, as it makes up a substantial amount of the hull surface area on any reasonable(!) spaceship.

- - - Updated - - -

Another bug to report; the animation of the drive seems to be fixed. It doesn't match up with the rate the bombs drop at max throttle.

Edited September 28, 2015 by meve12

[NuclearNut]

Also, the Orion sometimes pistons on it's own. Sometimes in the VAB, sometimes on the pad (with explosive results, in the later case).

And it really, really hates launch clamps.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe, but the Orion's too big to not be surface attachable, as it makes up a substantial amount of the hull surface area on any reasonable(!) spaceship.

Reasonable? You are making reasonable spaceships with an orion drive? You should feel ashamed of yourself, reasonable, safe, and sane are words that should never be in the same sentence as a proper nuclear bomb propelled rocket in KSP.

___________________

Anyway, I was playing with the mod and have came across some oddities, I noted that the Medusa has the same ISP and thrust as the Orion but cannot be used in atmosphere, which makes it kind of redundant. After searching atomic rockets I found that the estimated exhaust velocity (ISP in seconds in brackets) was 490 000 [49 966] to 980 000 [99 932] (your torch drive ain't so torch-y in comparison, eh.), from reading the rest of it I believe it would also have a significantly lower thrust than the orion drive and probably be unusable under high gravity or in atmospheres, such as on the surface of kerbin or it's moons. Now the Orion from what I also gleaned from the atomic rockets site was far more low tech then the Medusa, with the USAF orion having an isp of only 3 354 seconds and a maximum of around 12 232 seconds, either way lower than the 15 000 second in the mod. I hope this helps with your nuclear endeavors.

Edited September 28, 2015 by NuclearNut

[DancesWithSquirrels]

4x detonations per second??? I thought the 4,000 ton reference version topped out at 1x per second, mostly to give the secondary shock absorbers time to rebound and to smooth out the acceleration (my references and books on the project show acceleration max as cycling up and down about two of three G's every second, quite a ride...).