Drill and ISRU heating

[Rematog]

Squaded again! I've got a mining ship on Ike set up for refueling my Duna lander and one at Kerbin to re-fuel missions in LKO before heading out, plus an asteroid catcher and an now unused old one on Mun. NOW, the mining takes forever with hot drill and I have to turn the ISRU on and off. Why does Squad think we want to be HVAC designers in a rocket game!!! So my question is, what can be done to my existing ships, or do I need to trash all four of my existing mining ships and build new ones and launch them to the planet systems they serve...... I'm thinking the "solution" is to limp along with what I've got in place, finish one last planned Duna landing, then quit playing.... I really hate having to re-do a whole bunch of work because I didn't put radiators on things when I launched them three months ago (real life time).

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This is not the firstime the game I was in was messed up by update changes. I restarted Career mode from scratch when Beta came out. Jeb was on way back from Jool in atomic rocket, midflight 55% of fuel un-usable (can't use Oxy in atomic rocket motor anymore) and it's just not worth efforts, plus all science on ship lost even if I rescue him from way big orbit he could make with 45% fuel left (and mass of all that Oxy to boot!). Not to mention that half my science gone.

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PS, the lines are because I don't seem to be able to get Paragraph (return) to work in this forum.

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If I do build new mining ships, any suggestions what radiators are needed on drill and full size ISRU? Edited November 12, 2015 by Rematog

[sardia]

You could use kis and kas mod to attach radiators to your ship. Hope it helps

[SlashTen]

Do your mining ships have a docking port? You could dock a little probe with some radiators. The new radiators draw heat from everywhere on the ship. Put a docking port on both sides of the probe, and you will still be able to dock to other ships.

[fourfa]

If I do build new mining ships, any suggestions what radiators are needed on drill and full size ISRU?

I've been testing this today. Full size ISRU, fed by six drills, on an 9% ore patch on Minmus, with Level 4 engineer (don't have Level 5 in career yet). Six Gigantor solar panels with their passive radiators didn't do squat. One medium-size Thermal Control System was close - the ISRU starts cold and low efficiency, gets to 100% efficient at 1000K, then overheated to around 1100K and 65-73% efficiency (nighttime and daytime, IIRC). So I'm guessing two of those medium TCS will be enough to stay on 100%, for part count of 2 and 0.5T mass. Maybe one medium and 2-3 smalls, for part count 3-4 and mass 0.35-0.4T.

One thing that surprised me - I'm used to solar panels clipping through each other and cargo bays without problems - the extending TCS radiator caused some hellacious explosions when intersecting with both solar panels and cargo bay doors. Use caution in placement and test on the launchpad.

Didn't look at drill temps. Is that a thing now?

[mabarry3]

If you add too many thermal control systems, is it possible to keep a drill or ISRU always lower than full capacity since it can't heat up to optimal temperature?

[cantab]

You could just not update to 1.0.5.

[Rematog]

fourfa, thank you. I remember the drill having a very high temp and if memory serves, it's eff. went down too. If I keep playing and replace my mining ships, I'll try the med with a small. Has anyone done this yet. By the way, anyone know why I can't use return to create a new paragraph in this forum anymore???

[Claw]

If you add too many thermal control systems, is it possible to keep a drill or ISRU always lower than full capacity since it can't heat up to optimal temperature?

It will always be able to heat to at least it's target temp. The current temp and target temp is annotated in the right click menu. (For example: 500K / 500K)

If I keep playing and replace my mining ships, I'll try the med with a small. Has anyone done this yet. By the way, anyone know why I can't use return to create a new paragraph in this forum anymore???

It's supposed to be about two small radiators for a drill, and maybe four for the miniISRU. Though I've noticed that if you have lots of hot parts, you can get away with fewer radiators than if you added each individually. i.e. 6 drills don't seem to require 12 small radiators.

About the enter key, must be something with your browser. Did you change or update recently?

Cheers,

-Claw

Edited November 12, 2015 by Claw

[Rematog]

Claw; Still using Internet Explorer 10. Work computer, IT doesn't upgrade much. THANKS for the drill cooling info. Still wonder why Squad things we all want to work on this. The cooling should be part of the drill/IRSU design.....

[tseitsei]

Still wonder why Squad things we all want to work on this. The cooling should be part of the drill/IRSU design.....

Why would you want to work on designing any spaceship? You can just use stock crafts and download other peoples crafts from this forum.

The game gives us tools and parts to build working effective crafts BUT the game doesnt do it for us. Designing working crafts is big part of the gameplay.

[A_name]

I sent a ship to Mun last night that needs to drill and refuel to get back to Kerbin. It used the new mini Convertotron and mini drill. I had absolutely no issue having to "stop" the converter or anything overheating. I must be missing something, which will no doubt come to bite me in the backside at the least convenient moment.

[fourfa]

None of it is a problem if you're willing to use warp. I agree it's an interesting and semi-realistic design challenge, balancing complexity against efficiency and part count

[fourfa]

Further testing: Radiator Panel (large) looks like the one to use. One per full-size ISRU, one per pair of drills (maybe a little less - one near four drills overheated slowly). Very light (0.05T), no extending deploy, very reasonable EC consumption (just be aware that it's always on, and plan accordingly). Now that I'm reading the tech notes on the parts, this seems like the intended solution.

FYI: I've had some Kraken attacks when coming out of time warp while running the ISRU and drills.

[CorBlimey]

On 13/11/2015, 00:46:21, fourfa said:

Further testing: Radiator Panel (large) looks like the one to use. One per full-size ISRU, one per pair of drills (maybe a little less - one near four drills overheated slowly). Very light (0.05T), no extending deploy, very reasonable EC consumption (just be aware that it's always on, and plan accordingly). Now that I'm reading the tech notes on the parts, this seems like the intended solution.

FYI: I've had some Kraken attacks when coming out of time warp while running the ISRU and drills.

do you have any comments on radiator panels vs. TCS?

[fourfa]

yeah, the medium TCS is 5x the mass, for 1.25x the 'Core Heat xFer' and 5.3x 'Max Cooling.'  It's not yet clear to me the difference between 'Core Heat xFer' and 'Max Cooling,' but if you match the mining equipment 'Required Cooling' with the 'Core Heat xFer' everything seems happy.  To do that for the large ISRU and two drills with two medium radiator panels costs 0.1t of mass and 0.05 EC/sec (note the tool tips show this in EC/min).  With the 2x medium / 1x large TCS it will cost 0.5 / 1.0t, and 0.25 / 0.5EC/sec.  

Either way is handily covered by the 0.75EC/sec of a single RTG (which I almost always have on board for various reasons), and is dwarfed by the 60EC/sec of 1xISRU + 2x large drills.  So I don't consider the electrical side to be a big deal either way, unless you forgot an RTG and found yourself in the dark, out of fuel and unable to start your fuel cells, and stuck.

The static radiator panels seem to pull that heat from great distances on the ship, no matter where they're placed.  I keep reading about only them pulling heat from two components away; I can only say that on the long timescale of mining, it just doesn't seem to matter in practice.  Day, night, warm planet, icy vacuum, also doesn't seem to make a difference.  Re-entry, engine burns, spaceplane ascent etc may be a different matter.

I've also noticed that extendable solar panels will happily clip through cargo bay doors, tanks, or components all day long, over and over.  This looks dumb and unrealistic, but it often happens that you get your cargo bay door deploy limit wrong, hit the wrong action group button, accidentally do something out of order, put deploy cargo bay doors and panels on the same action group, etc.  Do that with solar panels, no problem.  Do that with TCS panels, they will break.  They'll safely clip sometimes, then the next they will detonate your entire ship  (try it and see for yourself).  That can be a mission-ending catastrophe, from doing something routine like hitting the wrong action group.  Just beware, for me those panels seem to be Kraken bait.

I tend to have a lot of kerbals flying around the ship in close proximity, moving science data from place to place, repacking chutes, etc.  I guess I'm not a very good pilot, and I've suffered a lot of broken solar panels and TCS panels from surprisingly slow-moving EVAs bumping the panels.  I no longer put them anywhere near crew hatches or science parts.  But for my own sanity I've almost entirely stopped putting extending panels of any kind on my ships.  Fuel cells arrays have almost the same EC/kg as Gigantors but never break or burn up in atmo and never stop working in shadow or far from Kerbol, and the fuel use in practice is honestly negligible.  Run the numbers and see - if your mission is so close to the margin that fuel cells stealing a couple m/s of delta-V breaks the mission, you might want to revisit the design.

I think that's all the comments I have!

Edited December 12, 2015 by fourfa

[fourfa]

And right after I wrote that, I read about this:

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/6009

Which could explain my observations about the radiator distance from heat sources.  Though I still think that on the days-long timescale of mining, this doesn't rise to the level of 'bug'

[CorBlimey]

thanks. The radiator panel sounds fine then - and fits nicely above/below the ISRU on the ore holding tank.

I am still putting my stock ore mining operations into practice, having used other resource mods in the past instead.