The KSP Interstellar Proxima Centauri Challenge

[pmborg]

Ok, in that case is in the wrong part of the ship because the ship will break with engines at retrograde, I will remove it then.

 

[FreeThinker]

2 minutes ago, pmborg said:

Ok, in that case is in the wrong part of the ship because the ship will break with engines at retrograde, I will remove it then.

 

no you don't have to worry about that, the force will bet aplied to the center of mass. the scoop is not just the visible part, it will will stretch many kilometers onto space create a huge magnetosphere with the north pole at the scoop

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

I will think now about other details like:

• life support
• bring the monster to orbit

I have a kinda crazy plan:

• Make a "small" ship with a factory with bunch of engineers to construct this monster in orbit
• use "Jool" as a "Gas station"
• Start the journey

[pmborg]

For today I am done

Thanks a lot for your support and great ideas (@FreeThinker)

I managed to do something now more feasible, to take this mosnter from Kerbin.

 

1-Talking about takeoff weight:

• Original takeoff-weight Ship: "Daedalus_and_Bussard-v2_2-record" 147,857 t
• Zero-fuel-weight version: "Daedalus_and_Bussard-v2_2-empty" 11,277 t
• The factory to transport all tools and build this baby: "OrbitFactory-v1_3" 10,051 t

Seams quit a big payload to transport!

But once the big baby "5millionDv-v3_0" also have 10,714 t and fly very easy... I am more confident.

2-Talking about ship cost:

• Original takeoff-weight Ship: "Daedalus_and_Bussard-v2_2-record" 73,527,053K funds
• The factory cost 600,437K funds

Once getting the fuel on "Jool" is almost for free...

 

3-Factory Image:

 

 

[FreeThinker]

@pmborg Damn, can't wait on the final report. Are you going to make a video from it all? Here is a idea for a title, The final frontier!

Edited August 11, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

That title fits very well: "The final frontier"

• I have done, a patch to the "Orbital Factory", because of GroundConstruction mod just allow 6 Kerbals of 5 stars.
• This factory allow now 24 engineers inside of 5 stars.

A video, sure but have to divide it parts:

|"The final frontier"|

Chapter "The Factory": (24 engineers)

• takeoff
• orbit about 150km
• deploy
• construction (work)

Chapter "The Rescue: (24 engineers)

• Land Safely/Cheap the 24 engineers  (not done yet)

Chapter "Going to a Gas Station":

• Intercept Jool
• @at minimum altitude 80km
• Refuel
• orbit about 250km (work)

Chapter "Start Journey: to Alfa Centauri"

• The First Stage (not done yet)

Chapter "Living in the Stars"  

• Land
• Deploy Factory
• Construct House
• Use Scientific Car with all Scientific experiments working
• Leave all 6 Kerbals over there with infinite life support (work)

 

 

 

 

[FreeThinker]

@pmborg  Notice, when traveling to the  Gas Station, you might want to consider using the Kebstein drive as a first stage. It runs on Deuterium (used for Ultra Dense Deuterium Fusion), has high isp (500000s) and thrust and would allow you entire vessel to push you vessel from low space to Jool. You just need someting else to blast yourself into space, after that the Kerbstein can take over.

Edited August 11, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

2 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Notice, when traveling to the  Gas Station, you might want to consider using the Kebstein drive as a booster. It runs on Deuterium and would allow you entire vessel to besst you vessel from low space to Jool. You just need someting else to blas yourself into space, after that the Kerbstein can take over.

Yes I love that engine, but Kerbstein don't work on atmosphere and Jool basically is a dense atmosphere.

This ship was there doing the refuel to test the Idea, worked better than i thought:

[FreeThinker]

7 minutes ago, pmborg said:

Yes I love that engine, but Kerbstein don't work on atmosphere and Jool basically is a dense atmosphere.

Yes I know, it pretty much function like the Deadalus but at lower isp but higher thrust to weight and runs of a cheap accesable fuel. It would therefore be ideal as first stage booster to get your vessel to the pump and get out of the kerbin system.

Edited August 11, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

I will break the gravity force of Jool to Zero, at vertical axis to that will not be a problem I think.

I used the Scaled NV-GX, with almost zero used from tanks, to go from 80km altitude to 250 km.

Scooping and using and abusing of LH2

[FreeThinker]

6 minutes ago, pmborg said:

I used the Scaled NV-GX, with almost zero used from tanks, to go from 80km altitude to 250 km.

You might wan to consider to use a KSPIE Timberwind instead, which has T/W of 40 and function well in atmospheres

Edited August 11, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

I don't know that engine I realized that don't appear to me on search box:

[FreeThinker]

@pmborg Its in the KSPIE filter extention  Interstellar part catalog menu

look for "Rotating Fluidized Bed Reactor Engine"

Edited August 11, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

ok, got it thanks, I will take a look into it and consider it as an option in case of thrust need to get out of Jool.

• I believe that I will need all thrust possible based on LH2!
• I believe that a huge amount thrust is needed to start horizontal velocity and and also vertical component

[OOM]

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Yes I know, it pretty much function like the Deadalus but at lower isp but higher thrust to weight and runs of a cheap accesable fuel. It would therefore be ideal as first stage booster to get your vessel to the pump and get out of the kerbin system.

Could you briefly describe what a Kerbstein thermonuclear engine is? I did not find anything on the Internet. Is it theoretically possible to create it in the relatively near future? For I do not use such speculative technologies as the deformation engine and the quantum singular reactor, and here my ignorance of the fact that such a Kerbstein engine makes him collect dust in the parts catalog.

Edited August 11, 2019 by OOM

[pmborg]

I am struggling now to make the "OrbitFactory-v1_4-lifter" stable at ascent once the "Dockable Kit Container" is Huge and heavy and have a lot of limitations of connect things

[pmborg]

|"The final frontier"|

Chapter "The Factory": (24 engineers)

• takeoff
• orbit about 150km
• deploy
• construction (work)

 

I will skip the Factory in space, and activate a simple "plan B" and forget about build in space, bingo on-orbit going to Jool:

Edited August 11, 2019 by pmborg

[FreeThinker]

18 hours ago, OOM said:

Could you briefly describe what a Kerbstein thermonuclear engine is? I did not find anything on the Internet. Is it theoretically possible to create it in the relatively near future? For I do not use such speculative technologies as the deformation engine and the quantum singular reactor, and here my ignorance of the fact that such a Kerbstein engine makes him collect dust in the parts catalog.

Kerbstein  is the Pun name of engine inspired by the  "Rocinante" Epstein Fusion Drive, from the Expanse. The writers never go into technical detail about the engine but based on it performace decribed in the story, several people have attemped to calculate it thrust and isp, one of the more famouse one

To my knowledge a possible way might be Ultra Dense Deuterium Fusion.

Quote

Ultra-Dense Deuterium

Ultra-dense deuterium (UDD) is an exotic form of metallic hydrogen called Rydberg matter. As you can probably figure out from the name the stuff is dense. Real dense. As in 10²⁸ to 10²⁹ grams per cubic centimeter dense. About a million times denser than frozen deuterium.

For our purposes the interesting point is it is about 150 times as dense as your average pellet of fusion fuel when laser-compressed to peak compression. Yes, this means do you not need metric-assloads of laser energy to crush the fuel pellet, a pellet just sitting on the table is already at 150 times the needed compression. It is pre-compressed. All you need is a miniscule 3 kilojoules worth of laser energy to ignite the stuff. That is pocket-change compared to what 200-odd compression lasers require. In fact it is so little that a single laser can handle the job. This results in a vast savings on laser mass and capacitor mass.

The laser pulse has to be quick, so the power rating is a scary 1 petawatt. But by the same token since the pulse is quick, it only require the aforesaid 3 kilojoules of energy.

Since you do not have to compress the fuel you can avoid all sorts of inconvienient hydrodynamic instabilities and plasma-laser interation problems.

You also have virtually unlimited "fusion gain". Meaning that with a conventional IC fusion engine there is a maximum fuel pellet size due to the hydrodynamic instabilities and the geometric increase in compression laser power. With UDD you can make the fuel pellet as large as you want (well, as large as the engine can handle without blowing up at any rate). With other laser intertial confinement fusion, if you make the pellets larger, you have to make the laser array larger as well. Not so with the UDD drive. The fusion gain depends solely on the size of the pellet, you do not have to make the lasers bigger.

An important safety tip: since UDD has such absurdly low ignition energy, there is a statistical change a large number of UDD atoms would undergo fusion spontaneously. This dangerous instability means the spacecraft will carry ordinary deuterium fuel and only convert it into UDD immediatly before use.

The cherry on top of the sundae is UDD fusion does not produce deadly neutron radiation. The reaction is aneutronic. Instead it produces charged muons, which are not only easier to deal with, but also can be directly converted into electricity. Left alone, the muons quickly decay into ordinary electrons and similar particles.

And since deuterium is plentiful in ordinary seawater, you do not have to go strip mining Lunar Regiolith or set up atmospheric scoop operations around Jupiter were you to use a fusion reaction requiring Helium-3.

---

Sounds too good to be true, I hear you say. Well, there are a couple of drawbacks.

The minor drawback is that D-D fusion has a specific impulse (and exhaust velocity) which is about half of what you can get out of D-T fusion or D-He3 fusion. This drastically increases the mass ratio required for a given mission delta-V. Having said that it is still much better than what you'll get out of chemical or fission engines.

source: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fusionfuel.php#udd

The unlimited fusion gain but lower isp kind of matches the Epstein drive perfromance and therefore this might actualy be possible to achieve somewhere in the 23 century.

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by FreeThinker

[OOM]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

Kerbstein  is the Pun name of engine inspired by the  "Rocinante" Epstein Fusion Drive, from the Expanse. The writers never go into technical detail about the engine but based on it performace decribed in the story, several people have attemped to calculate it thrust and isp, one of the more famouse one

To my knowledge a possible way might be Ultra Dense Deuterium Fusion.

The unlimited fusion gain but lower isp kind of matches the Epstein drive perfromance and therefore this might actualy be possible to achieve somewhere in the 23 century.

 

Thanks for the answer. In general, this engine is only suitable for the science-based Star Destroyer. Daedalus and magnetic nozzle in a fusion reactor with the addition of antimatter as a catalyst are the limit of possibilities.

[pmborg]

Hello again,

The InterStellar SpaceShip have now 3 major stages:

1. st Stage is a kind of atmospheric lifter of NV-GX engines & with HoolinganLabs, that will be decoupled after refuel on Jool
2. nd Stage is one Daedalus
3. th Stage is one Bussard

The current version of Ship is working but have some kind of week points that I am trying to solve, in this extreme atmospheric pressure:

I need some kind of big and light tube/structures to replace those

I am going now with "Truss x13" but if there are a better option/suggestion please let me know.

 

UPDATE:

• Is working perfectly now:
• 

 

 

I am now Trying to make a video/demo.

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by pmborg

[doggonemess]

On 8/11/2019 at 6:00 AM, FreeThinker said:

@pmborg  Notice, when traveling to the  Gas Station, you might want to consider using the Kebstein drive as a first stage. It runs on Deuterium (used for Ultra Dense Deuterium Fusion), has high isp (500000s) and thrust and would allow you entire vessel to push you vessel from low space to Jool. You just need someting else to blast yourself into space, after that the Kerbstein can take over.

Dang it! I was going to ask if I could use an Epstein drive. You know, I might just try this anyway, even if it isn't allowed by the rules, just to see what it would be like. Epstein was up to 5% the speed of light before he ran out of fuel. 

[pmborg]

Hello that is nice indeed but, the size and scale of this ship is almost useless with those engines, but I can make a test

• Right now the ship have the power to go 0.38c (38% speed of light) (114M deltaV)
• With a useful payload about 600t.

 

[FreeThinker]

21 hours ago, pmborg said:

The current version of Ship is working but have some kind of week points that I am trying to solve, in this extreme atmospheric pressure:

I need some kind of big and light tube/structures to replace those

I am going now with "Truss x13" but if there are a better option/suggestion please let me know

KSPIE has struss in several length specificly mend for large size constructio. the trick is to use the maximum length to maximize strength

Edited August 13, 2019 by FreeThinker

[pmborg]

15 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

KSPIE has struss structed in several lngth and is vey light for its size. the trick is to use the maximum length to maximize strength

• This problem is solved now

 

Right now I have 2 issues:

• LqdDeuterium is poor this time don't know why... at the first time was kinda rich, I need to have SCAN MAP tools also aboard, I think (or I am missing something... on this version of the ship)
• Dont know why this time I am not converting "automatic" LH2 -> Solid Hydrogen (or I am missing something... on this version of the ship)

SHIP "Daedalus_and_Bussard-v3_2-empty":

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by pmborg

[pmborg]

Yes I made the confirmation "Kerbstein fusion engine" in a ship of this scale is useless.

I gain 60k deltaV, with 4 engines "Kerbstein fusion engine"  scale 40m

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by pmborg