[1.12.x] Near Future Technologies (September 6)

[Nertea]

14 hours ago, tsaven said:

Haha, well I'm likely on 1.3.1 for a while now.  I've got so many mods that are hacked into working together that I want to put some time into actually playing the game for a while, rather than constantly writing MM configs to make things work properly. 

Maybe mid next year once mods are caught up, then I'll think about looking at 1.5.

Oh, I mean your reactor power-per-kg can improve with the newer balance numbers that you're migrating to - no need to go all the way to 1.5.

[Moofrog]

On 11/4/2018 at 11:50 PM, AmpCat said:

That's exactly my point. I give myself a target TWR so I won't get bored doing a 5 minute burn (much less hours or months). The lithium engines allow me to make an ion engine craft that gets close to enough thrust to not be boring. I really never use ion engines otherwise.

Does anyone know if its possible to have the spacecraft burn its engine synthetically while not in physics mode or in scene but in background via plugin or mod? How difficult would that be?

On 11/5/2018 at 8:32 PM, dresoccer4 said:

 

cool ship! i agree, i think folks should share more of their designs. helps us to crowd source ideas and best practices. it's all good to reinvent the wheel each time but to each their own! XD

Looks awesome! I have Universal Storage and Deepfreeze, too. Insteaf of USI Im using TAC and really liking it. How easy was it for you to get this spacecraft into space/orbit? I havent come far. May I ask what type of game you play? Sandbox, Science Mode or Career mode? I think im getting sick of career mode and too bad those two Budget mods are behaving kind of buggy for me.

[JH4C]

3 minutes ago, Moofrog said:

Does anyone know if its possible to have the spacecraft burn its engine synthetically while not in physics mode or in scene but in background via plugin or mod? How difficult would that be?

One has to assume that, as this is such an annoyance when making longer trips in KSP, if it was possible it would have been done by now.

[Moofrog]

4 minutes ago, JH4C said:

One has to assume that, as this is such an annoyance when making longer trips in KSP, if it was possible it would have been done by now.

Well DynamicBatteryStorage handles your electricity and PersistentRotation handles your Rotation. So maybe its possible just not as feasible, or finally a reason for me to take on modding, as in learning to create a mod. Im contemplating. Normally Im too lazy.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Moofrog
syntax

[sturmhauke]

14 minutes ago, JH4C said:

One has to assume that, as this is such an annoyance when making longer trips in KSP, if it was possible it would have been done by now.

My gut feeling is that it's possible but computationally expensive. There's already a lot of math involved (Lambert's problem) to calculate a transfer window with instantaneous change in velocity. For this idea to work the solver would also have to account for the change in the craft's mass, TWR, trajectory...

[NHunter]

24 minutes ago, JH4C said:

One has to assume that, as this is such an annoyance when making longer trips in KSP, if it was possible it would have been done by now.

Didn't KSPIE have burn-in-full-timewarp engines? To quote one of the guides to KSPIE.

Quote

MAGNETIC NOZZLE

This engine use charged particles and needs Hydrogen to work, so it needs a good reactor producing Charged Particles to provide thrust. It will work only in the vacuum of space. To note that the ISP of the engine change depending on throttle.  Lower the thrust, higher the ISP, so it's very useful for long range probes, to a near star too, in theory, thanks to the ability to accelerate during TimeWarp at low throttle.

Not sure if it is indeed so, but...

[AmpCat]

47 minutes ago, Moofrog said:

Does anyone know if its possible to have the spacecraft burn its engine synthetically while not in physics mode or in scene but in background via plugin or mod? How difficult would that be?

Looks awesome! I have Universal Storage and Deepfreeze, too. Insteaf of USI Im using TAC and really liking it. How easy was it for you to get this spacecraft into space/orbit? I havent come far. May I ask what type of game you play? Sandbox, Science Mode or Career mode? I think im getting sick of career mode and too bad those two Budget mods are behaving kind of buggy for me.

I almost always play career mode. I like the limitations and challenges of having to do missions to earn money or science to get to greater things. However, with so many tech and part mods, I increased the base rate for rewards to keep up with the expanded tech tree and more expensive parts. Otherwise I'd have to grind pointless missions to get funds to do much later on.

This one was fairly easy, actually. But I'm also using one more mod for the original booster, and that's @JadeOfMaar's Spice and Aerospace mods. They have some electrically augmented aerospikes that make this easier. Though @Nertea's nuclear aerospikes play a similar role (they're just in another tech tree I hadn't gotten to yet). Then with autostruts carefully used, it wasn't a problem. Because it runs off lithium, the spacecraft picture isn't actually all that heavy. I probably should have doubled the lithium tankage. It has over 5k dV though, that should be enough to get to Duna and back. If not.. keep the Kerbals in deep freeze and launch a refueler!

@Nertea, I noticed you're listing a dropbox link now. Is there an easy with DropBox, perhaps, to just download all of your mods at once? It can be a lot of work keeping them all up to date sometimes (yes, I know we don't have much room to complain, given how much it takes to maintain all those mods). 

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Moofrog said:

Does anyone know if its possible to have the spacecraft burn its engine synthetically while not in physics mode or in scene but in background via plugin or mod? How difficult would that be?

I use MJ, which automatically controls the throttle, so I just open a browser window and do other stuff.   If you don't use MJ, you could use KAC and set an alarm to pause the game a minute or two before the end of the burn.

[Moofrog]

3 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I use MJ, which automatically controls the throttle, so I just open a browser window and do other stuff.   If you don't use MJ, you could use KAC and set an alarm to pause the game a minute or two before the end of the burn.

I have MJ too. And in scene mod you can have 4x physics warp running while burning no problem. Most of the time 5 minute burns are no problem. I was just wondering about those special engines or propulsion types like ion thrusters or solar sails which have a perpetual burn rate and are on all the time. My question was specifically for out of scence burns. So I have a vessel I set its burn to like 1 hour. I  change the scene go to the space center and in the background the vessel does its burn. Ofc in real life even BEPI Columbo just does 5-10 minute burns as far as I know and uses gravity assists. So yeah I think longer burn times might even be not as efficient really, especially if you want to use Hohman Effect? Thanks @Sturmhauke for bringing up the Lambert equation And of course all the calculations are done here on Earth with supercomputers and then a mission profile is loaded onto the onboard computer. Thats atleast how I think rocket launches still work today. Thanks for sharing your interest!

[Nertea]

6 hours ago, Moofrog said:

Does anyone know if its possible to have the spacecraft burn its engine synthetically while not in physics mode or in scene but in background via plugin or mod? How difficult would that be?

On 11/5/2018 at 11:32 AM, dresoccer4 said:

Nothing clean enough to recommend, unfortunately. PersistentThrust used to exist.

4 hours ago, Moofrog said:

Ofc in real life even BEPI Columbo just does 5-10 minute burns as far as I know and uses gravity assists.

Haha, no... Check this paper: http://issfd.org/ISSFD_2014/ISSFD24_Paper_S6-5_jehn.pdf. It will do burns on the order of 200 days at a time. 

5 hours ago, AmpCat said:

@Nertea, I noticed you're listing a dropbox link now. Is there an easy with DropBox, perhaps, to just download all of your mods at once? It can be a lot of work keeping them all up to date sometimes (yes, I know we don't have much room to complain, given how much it takes to maintain all those mods). 

I've been doing Dropbox as a backup distribution method for a while. It doesn't make it any easier to update a common package when one submod is updated.

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by Nertea

[Vahnskir]

On 10/25/2018 at 12:29 AM, Nertea said:

Working through some minor bugfixes for these mods. Most should be done shortly except NFSpacecraft, which is under heavy dev to bring it to 1.0 state.

1.0 state includes 6 new pods and facelifts for the others....

Is that a cheeky little PPTS pod I see in there? Glad to see that thing get some love

[Kablob]

 

8 hours ago, Vahnskir said:

Is that a cheeky little PPTS pod I see in there? Glad to see that thing get some love

Yup, the PPTS pod is the four-man one and it's my favorite of the batch tbh.

[Moofrog]

10 hours ago, Nertea said:

Nothing clean enough to recommend, unfortunately. PersistentThrust used to exist.

Haha, no... Check this paper: http://issfd.org/ISSFD_2014/ISSFD24_Paper_S6-5_jehn.pdf. It will do burns on the order of 200 days at a time.

I remember. I think it still exists for 1.2.2. and 1.3.1 but not sure. Wanted to try out a clean RO install anyways again soon.

Also I stand corrected. The Thrust-To-Weight Ratio is ridicously low its ~7.39 * 10 ^ -6 or 0,00000739 or say 1 : 135,264 !

So I guess the 200 days burn time you take from one of the tables/figures?

[JH4C]

17 hours ago, NHunter said:

burn-in-full-timewarp engines

Burning while timewarping is one thing. Burning while not flying the ship is another entirely, and that's what they were asking about.

[AmpCat]

12 hours ago, Vahnskir said:

Is that a cheeky little PPTS pod I see in there? Glad to see that thing get some love

And on the bottom center, there's two very similar looking pods. I only have one of those. Is there a variant of it coming out? Or just two images of the same pod?

Personally, I like the more curved pods, like the two in the bottom center, and the middle center. I'd love a squat 3.75m one of those! I find the plain cone shapes a little boring these days.

Also, a little 'hack' I've started to use, that some people may not have thought of. If you use the NFElectrical smallest fission reactor size to power your vessel, it's less than 300kg, doesn't cost much, and provides more power than several large solar panels. And even at night or way out in the depths of Jool. Only requires a minimal amount of radiators, too. Just a quick 'Kerbal Life Hack'.

It almost makes me think it's unbalanced. Maybe the fission reactors need more economy of scale in their mass and costs. Smaller reactors maybe should be more expensive and heavier per Ec/s compared to larger reactors, etc. Maybe this is already in there. I've not plotted them out.

[Nertea]

3 hours ago, Moofrog said:

So I guess the 200 days burn time you take from one of the tables/figures?

I did a really quick look at one figure which shows the exact look at the EP arcs - one arc is about 2/3 around the earth's orbit, so would take about 2/3 of a year. Super scientific! A better way would be to calculate the mass flow rate of the 4 engines, then divide the total mass of Xe carried. That would get the maximum total burn time. 

1 hour ago, AmpCat said:

And on the bottom center, there's two very similar looking pods. I only have one of those. Is there a variant of it coming out? Or just two images of the same pod?

 

It's a variant, you can toggle between a version with engine nodes and one without with closed engine pods.

1 hour ago, AmpCat said:

Also, a little 'hack' I've started to use, that some people may not have thought of. If you use the NFElectrical smallest fission reactor size to power your vessel, it's less than 300kg, doesn't cost much, and provides more power than several large solar panels. And even at night or way out in the depths of Jool. Only requires a minimal amount of radiators, too. Just a quick 'Kerbal Life Hack'.

 It almost makes me think it's unbalanced. Maybe the fission reactors need more economy of scale in their mass and costs. Smaller reactors maybe should be more expensive and heavier per Ec/s compared to larger reactors, etc. Maybe this is already in there. I've not plotted them out.

There are tradeoffs. The reactor will of course run out of fuel in a few years, it is several times as expensive, and is roughly mass-equal to an advanced solar panel. There are economies of scale as well, the largest 3.75m reactor is about 1.4x as mass-efficient as the smallest one. 

[AmpCat]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

I did a really quick look at one figure which shows the exact look at the EP arcs - one arc is about 2/3 around the earth's orbit, so would take about 2/3 of a year. Super scientific! A better way would be to calculate the mass flow rate of the 4 engines, then divide the total mass of Xe carried. That would get the maximum total burn time. 

It's a variant, you can toggle between a version with engine nodes and one without with closed engine pods.

There are tradeoffs. The reactor will of course run out of fuel in a few years, it is several times as expensive, and is roughly mass-equal to an advanced solar panel. There are economies of scale as well, the largest 3.75m reactor is about 1.4x as mass-efficient as the smallest one. 

I totally missed that variant part. I must investigate! It's one of my favorite pods EVAR.

That's good to know about the reactor balance. Of course the other neat trick is you figure your power consumption (like for interplanetary probes or even small spacecraft), I often need only a fraction of the power. So set the power to around 20%, and you've enough fuel for a couple decades. Or for ships that need a big reactor for engines, I keep it idling at a few percent most of the trip, then only set it to 100% during burns.

Your mods add so much to this game, @Nertea. I'd easily pay the price of an expansion for them.

[AmpCat]

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath, so here it is... approaching the red planet.

Obviously, same ship as before. Successfully thawed my Kerbals and they're doing science missions before being refrozen for a trip back home.Just need to remember to put the reactor in idle this time!

[sturmhauke]

my shuttle orbiter on the back of a jet transport:

Spoiler

coasting to LKO insertion:

Spoiler

deploying a satellite network:

Spoiler

 

[vardicd]

@Nertea and anyone else who may be able to answer this for me. I've only just adopted the Near Future Electrical, and as a first time user I had a question about the behavior of the capacitors added by the mod, once I toggle one on to discharge, Is there a way to stop it after partially discharging, which I'm not seeing, or is it just intended that it fully discharges even if you don't need it to fully discharge?

[Brigadier]

5 hours ago, vardicd said:

@Nertea and anyone else who may be able to answer this for me. I've only just adopted the Near Future Electrical, and as a first time user I had a question about the behavior of the capacitors added by the mod, once I toggle one on to discharge, Is there a way to stop it after partially discharging, which I'm not seeing, or is it just intended that it fully discharges even if you don't need it to fully discharge?

The latter.  The intended behaviour is that capacitors completely discharge once initiated.  You have limited control over the discharge rate, but it cannot be reduced to 0.

[vardicd]

2 hours ago, Brigadier said:

The latter.  The intended behaviour is that capacitors completely discharge once initiated.  You have limited control over the discharge rate, but it cannot be reduced to 0.

Okay. That's what I thought from what I saw and what was happening, but I've been known to miss completely obvious things before, so thought I'd ask.

[Asmosdeus]

Has anyone else encountered a problem with Reactors not being cooling by radiators?

They cool everything else but the reactors just immediately overheat and the temperature load of the radiators doesn't change.

[sturmhauke]

Have you tried reversing the polarity through the dilithium chamber?

[Asmosdeus]

19 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

Have you tried reversing the polarity through the dilithium chamber?

Unfortunately I couldn't find that in the CFG.

I just reinstalled the game with only NF electrical pack and still no joy.