Balloon Tank Fuel storage

[Guest doughbred]

The Balloon tank is a form of fuel storage that uses internal pressure to keep it\'s shape, while storing fuel. As fuel is depleted, it is displaced by nitrogen. In turn it can break easily without any external covering. Does anyone think this should be implemented into the game, or as a mod?

The reason why I ask this is because I seen a part while viewing a video that appears to be a bunch of spheres stacked inside a cage. Does this mean that this means of fuels storage has already been made as a mod, or am I looking at something else.

Should it be used, almost all of it\'s weight would be fuel. Or not since it has to be kept under pressure by stored fluids.

[Accelerando]

Maybe as a joke part. The spheres inside cages you\'re talking about are actually a fairly common feature of realistic spaceship designs. The skeletal frame (the cage) lends structure and support to the ship without adding too much mass, which would beget the use of more fuel and so on. The spheres themselves are hard metal, the same vessels that are used to store fuel/propellant in more Earthly rockets -- only now exposed to the elements.

[ultrasquid]

Elastic bladder fuel tanks have a history in early aircraft design, as they provide fuel pressure from any angle without requiring a mechanical pump. There are, of course, limitations to how well this works, but it\'s a cheap way to pump fuel in small airplanes.

[Guest doughbred]

Elastic bladder fuel tanks have a history in early aircraft design, as they provide fuel pressure from any angle without requiring a mechanical pump. There are, of course, limitations to how well this works, but it\'s a cheap way to pump fuel in small airplanes.

are those the ones in the game mod?

[ultrasquid]

are those the ones in the game mod?

No, they are not.

NovaSilisko has an inflatable habitat module in his BACE collection, so the animation can be done, but that item is not a fuel tank.

There are spherical and domed-cylinder tanks included in the Kosmos collection, among others. These shapes are ideally suited for containing compressed/liquified gases, but they do not reduce in size as they are depleted.

You are requesting a new part that combines features of these.

[CellPunk]

Ever seen a balloon in space? It\'s not possible in real life, but might be possible to create in KSP.

[Guest doughbred]

The balloon we are speaking of is called a balloon, but it really isn\'t. It has also been used before in the Centaur rocket stage.

[ultrasquid]

Balloons indeed can and have been put in space. The first communication satellites were giant aluminized mylar balloons called Passive Reflectors.

I\'ve been hoping for a PCR module to throw into orbit, but that\'s not what we\'re talking about here.

[nebfer]

The early Atlas rockets used what the OP is talking about, basically the structure of the rocket is not strong enough to support it\'s own weight if it was unpressurized. The advantage being a slightly higher fuel to weight ratio, but at the cost of requiring the rocket be pressurized at all times.

Now days most rockets are built with enough strength to do away with this.

In game this could be simulated with a fuel tank having a slightly higher fuel load per a given tonnage but at the cost of being very weak...

[RC1062]

Ever seen a balloon in space? It\'s not possible in real life, but might be possible to create in KSP.

(Just because no one else has explicitly said it: Balloons filled with helium burst because the balloon isn\'t strong enough to withstand the pressure of the gas inside. It is simply a material issue rather than a design issue.)

[Wyrm]

(Just because no one else has explicitly said it: Balloons filled with helium burst because the balloon isn\'t strong enough to withstand the pressure of the gas inside. It is simply a material issue rather than a design issue.)

Provided you fill the balloon with only the smallest amount of helium, an ordinary balloon can easily hold against the interior pressure in space, provided that the balloon\'s skin can survive in the space environment at all. The equilibrium is where the pressures of the outside atmosphere and the back pressure of the balloon\'s skin at a certain extension is equal to the gas pressure within — and in a vacuum, the outside atmosphere is at (nearly) zero pressure. Party balloons aren\'t really able to generate much back pressure — the fact that you can blow one up to bursting with your unaided lungs is testament to that. In space, they wouldn\'t be able to store any appreciable amount of gas. You would have to go to materials that are able to maintain a larger back pressure to do that.