F-106 Rascal Project? Yes.

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

http://www.f-106deltadart.com/rascal_project.htm

So I was reading up on this delightful little project and wondering if there's an equivalent in KSP... Most notably, the MIPCC engine.

Spoiler

"The key enabling technology that will make suborbital spaceflight possible for the F-106 is the MIPCC (Mass Injection Pre-Compressor Cooling).  The aircraft was called the MIPCC Powered Vehicle (MPV). MIPCC involves spraying water just in front of the J-75 engine's compressor blades as the plane approaches Mach 3. This cools the superheated air in the engine inlet, tricking the engine into thinking it is operating at a lower Mach number. It also increases the density of the flow through the engine, as well as its volume. The result is that the engine produces more thrust the faster it goes. Increased thrust levels of 100%, 200% and 300% are possible, depending on the amount of water being used. This technique also allows the J-75 to operate at much higher altitudes than it was designed for."

I know Interstellar adds a few odd propulsion options but not this one, though the water resource exists. It seems like a pretty simple mod to make, if it doesn't exist already... Basically a water-consuming super-afterburner. I might have to roll up my sleeves and figure something out, unless someone can point me to something similar?

 

Edit: Preliminary work has been done. Github started: https://github.com/SpaceCommanderNemo/RascalEngine

Edited September 13, 2016 by SpaceCommanderNemo

[Van Disaster]

You don't need an afterburner to make water injection work ( water injection works in piston engines too ), but no I'm not aware of any engines which consume water; you'd just have to modify one of the existing multimode ones though.

[ImmaStegosaurus!]

B-47's used RATO bottles and water injection to take off with max fuel and weapons payload, so it has been done in reality to some extent.
 

Spoiler

 

Edited August 30, 2016 by ImmaStegosaurus!

[Van Disaster]

Even some airliners used water injection.

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

So really, it seems like one could write a plugin that would add an injection mode drawing on a water resource that could be applied to all engines?

I only say this because the current stock engine precooler does nothing extra, and I'm not sure of a stock mechanic for a part that would boost the performance of any engine attached to It. Do the B9 sabre engine precoolers do anything I could steal be inspired by the coding work from?

[Van Disaster]

You just need to use the multimode engine module and set one mode up to consume water ( pretty sure you can have one mode use different resources ). You can write modulemanager patches to add modes to all engines, including calculating the new thrust/other variables.

B9 precoolers are just fuel tanks, same as stock.

[DuoDex]

A functional variation of this would be pretty easy to obtain with a bit of .cfg editing, I think. A model of the F-106 engine would make it cooler and more fun, though.

[passinglurker]

@DuoDexHow would it be visualy different from the panther? The fact that the nozzel fans out at idle? 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F-106_Delta_Dart_at_JBLM_air_brake.jpg

Military jet engines all look kinda similar to me >.>

Edited August 31, 2016 by passinglurker

[Van Disaster]

4 hours ago, passinglurker said:

@DuoDexHow would it be visualy different from the panther? The fact that the nozzel fans out at idle?

They should all do that anyway, to keep the idle exhaust velocity down ( and EGT as low as possible, I suppose ). If you watch a jet with a variable nozzle taking off, first thing that happens is the nozzle closes up - if they light the burner it'll open up again.

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

On 8/30/2016 at 7:45 PM, DuoDex said:

A functional variation of this would be pretty easy to obtain with a bit of .cfg editing, I think. A model of the F-106 engine would make it cooler and more fun, though.

Well, there are three ways I'm looking at going with this...

1: plugin for water-injection. Applies to all engines, needs water supply. Simplest (?), cleanest implementation of the concept.

2: engine precooler part. If possible, it would detect/modify attached engines. Since the engine nacelle/precooler already can detect the presence of an intake, maybe I can use that.

3: new engine part. Basically an atmospheric rapier, using water in place of oxidizer to increase operational altitude/speed.

Or maybe all three. I haven't done any modelling in years, so maybe someone is more motivated on that part? I can fiddle with code easy, but building and animating an engine is beyond my ability.

[DuoDex]

3 hours ago, SpaceCommanderNemo said:

Well, there are three ways I'm looking at going with this...

1: plugin for water-injection. Applies to all engines, needs water supply. Simplest (?), cleanest implementation of the concept.

2: engine precooler part. If possible, it would detect/modify attached engines. Since the engine nacelle/precooler already can detect the presence of an intake, maybe I can use that.

3: new engine part. Basically an atmospheric rapier, using water in place of oxidizer to increase operational altitude/speed.

Or maybe all three. I haven't done any modelling in years, so maybe someone is more motivated on that part? I can fiddle with code easy, but building and animating an engine is beyond my ability.

1. Not even a plugin, an MM patch I could probably whip something up for you if you wanted in a few hours (I'm not particularly proficient with MM).

2. Much more complicated, would require some form of a plugin, I think. There might be a mod for that, but I'm not sure what it is.

3. Easy - duplicate or borrow another engine model from another mod, apply your own .cfg, and voila! Just be sure that if you release it you give proper attribution.

[Van Disaster]

1: As we've said previously, ModuleManager can patch exactly what you want into every engine.

2: The engine precooler IS an intake just like the nacelle is, there's no detection involved anywhere & the only crosstalk between parts is resource flow. It's possible to detect & alter other modules but enormously more effort than you need ( especially working out all the edge cases ).

3: You already have an afterburning engine in the Panther, you don't have to fiddle with the Rapier.

Only issues with 1 and 3 are that your water-injection-mode engine will flame out when it's out of water instead of just carrying on as a normal engine. The only way round that would be to write your own engine module, which isn't a terribly big deal ( given you probably just have to subclass & overload one method ) but again more work.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Van Disaster

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

8 hours ago, Van Disaster said:

2: The engine precooler IS an intake just like the nacelle is, there's no detection involved

actually, the precooler and nacelle do detect if there is an intake attached. In the right-click menu, any operational precooler will list the intake source (internal if it does not detect another), so I know the information is there. I don't think the game does anything with that, but maybe I can use it.

As far as which engine to clone... It doesn't matter if it's a panther or rapier, as long as it has a mode switch that can be altered.

You bring up a good point about fuel supply though. I never thought about that... Does a rapier switch back to air breathing automatically when it runs out of oxidizer? If so, there's probably something there to borrow.

Edited September 2, 2016 by SpaceCommanderNemo

[Van Disaster]

The precooler is an intake, that's all - it's no different to any other intake aside from a little fuel resource, and there's nothing intelligent about the intake module.

The multimode engine module doesn't autoswitch as far as I know, I haven't ever set out to deliberately make it do so though.

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

Okay, I've been seriously working this out in my head and I think I have the function of it conceptualized.

It's been years since I've modded a game (i think when KOTOR II was still hot?), but this should be no problem for getting my feet wet again. I hope to spend my weekend learning module manager and perhaps throw a basic retexture on the parts I want to use...

So here's what I'm envisioning:

0.625m and 1.25m Water Injection Precoolers. Will be small (.5m or 1m long), will not carry resources, must be attached to an air-breathing engine (that's possible, right? Interstellar reactors were like that for a while, are they still?). It checks for water resource presence on the vessel; if yes, adds a button on the engine dialog box for mode switch.

Perhaps I will need another cfg for the engine mode? that way, I can have a consistent visual effect (water injection usually results in black smoke exhaust) across all engines and alter the flameout limitations?

Just using the darpa concept as a base, the system is capable of being used universally. But, they show a possible altered engine bell addition. I don't think this would be possible in KSP, but I could circumvent that with a new engine for it... Down the line... When I know more what I'm doing...

Edited September 9, 2016 by SpaceCommanderNemo
Clarification

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

On 9/1/2016 at 10:22 AM, DuoDex said:

1. Not even a plugin, an MM patch I could probably whip something up for you if you wanted in a few hours (I'm not particularly proficient with MM).

2. Much more complicated, would require some form of a plugin, I think. There might be a mod for that, but I'm not sure what it is.

3. Easy - duplicate or borrow another engine model from another mod, apply your own .cfg, and voila! Just be sure that if you release it you give proper attribution.

Alright, alright... I give up.

At least with the Module Manager route, we're limited to primary and secondary engine modes. I've been scouring the Interstellar Extended and Interstellar Fuel Switch githubs but I can't seem to find the magical code I'm looking for... In fact, the Interstellar engines with many different fuels seem to not even use the normal engine coding, as all I'm seeing where there should be the parameters is "thrustTransform" (But that's only a visual thing, right?).

I think I am stuck going with a plugin of sorts, unless I can somehow rig in four engine modes (as a two-two-mode engine). It seems from my basic understanding of MM that it might be possible... I just don't seem to know how. That and all I've done is slap together some .cfg's with no idea what I'm doing... but I'm throwing it up on github because it seems like a good idea?

https://github.com/SpaceCommanderNemo/RascalEngine

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

8 hours ago, SpaceCommanderNemo said:

"thrustTransform" (But that's only a visual thing, right?).

Nope thrust transform is how the  game knows at what vector to apply the propulsive force and not as importantly visual effects, but not in all cases.  I'm not sure what you consider to be normal coding for KSP engines but it's been a long time since engines thrust vectors where created by x/y/z values in a part cfg.

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

5 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

Nope thrust transform is how the  game knows at what vector to apply the propulsive force and not as importantly visual effects, but not in all cases.  I'm not sure what you consider to be normal coding for KSP engines but it's been a long time since engines thrust vectors where created by x/y/z values in a part cfg.

"normal" for a multimode engine, at least. For example, the interstellar electric engines (that run on hydrogen, he3, xenon, argon, etc) don't have values in the engine file for the fuels. The actual thrust properties are either in a different file or I'm not recognizing it vs. the other engines. Right where most engines would have "multimodeEngine", interstellar engines have "thrustTransform", and not like other engines... maybe I haven't looked into enough electric engines (not my concern at this point, unless they function the same), but I can't seem to find anything special about the Magnetic Nozzle, Hybrid Thermal Turbojet, Thermal Rocket Nozzle, or Launch Nozzle. In fact, the engine files are rather sparse and I'm not seeing the peripheral files in the mod to account for what's making these engines work.

 

Okay, here's what I'm talking about: https://github.com/snjo/Firespitter/blob/master/Firespitter/engine/FSswitchEngineThrustTransform.cs

Is that what I'm looking for? FSswitchEngine or something?

Is what I want to do possible with Module Manager or do I need to get into plugin programming?

Edited September 14, 2016 by SpaceCommanderNemo