KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[herman]

what does mechjeb say VAB versus launched?

It is most likely working off of the 'default' ISP in the .cfg, 32000/36000 ASl/Vac. The ISP once launched is a function of that .cfg ISP and the specifics of the reactor setup. the dusty plasma supplies the lowest ISP of all the relevant reactors, I think.

Mechjeb says 36k dV in VAB, 9600 at full throttle, and almost 1 million at ~5% throttle. But even at full throttle the thrust is very very low.

My real problem is I'm having a lot of trouble, even with some of the mid-range reactors, building ships that substantially outperform stock nuclear ships. The documentation I can find on this version of interstellar isn't quite enough for me to get it .

[FreeThinker]

The magnetic nozzle is actually incredible powerful, it can reach very high ISP at decent thrust levels. It wouldn't be obvious until you can accelerate time and automate course corrections. Then you you will find you can virtual reach any place in Kerbin Solar system, with very little fuel. Realistically, it's the only kind of propulsion (beside Vista) which could realistically bring us to a neighbor star. You probably need a long time to speed up do a decent proportion of light speed, but at least it would not require astronomical amounts of fuel.

[raxo2222]

The magnetic nozzle is actually incredible powerful, it can reach very high ISP at decent thrust levels. It wouldn't be obvious until you can accelerate time and automate course corrections. Then you you will find you can virtual reach any place in Kerbin Solar system, with very little fuel. Realistically, it's the only kind of propulsion (beside Vista) which could realistically bring us to a neighbor star. You probably need a long time to speed up do a decent proportion of light speed, but at least it would not require astronomical amounts of fuel.

Plasma thrusters with quantum vacuum mode doesn't use any fuel though. You just need few tons of antimatter, if you are using 9 antimatter reactors to power 10m plasma thruster

[FreeThinker]

Plasma thrusters with quantum vacuum mode doesn't use any fuel though. You just need few tons of antimatter, if you are using 9 antimatter reactors to power 10m plasma thruster

quantum vacuum mode if possible is balanced by the fact that it requires very high technology, magnetic nozzles on the other hand are available much earlier.

Edited May 27, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Mighty1]

I looked at the heat management system mod - it is just a bunch of MM patches using stock stuff. I am going to knock together a similar thing that will tack those modifications onto the KSPI radiators.

EDIT:

Uploaded to KerbalStuff:

https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/850/Stock%20Heat%20Management%20for%20KSPI

I added an ablative shielding module to the circular radiator, and gave it 1 unit of LqdNitrogen. It will ablate the LqdNitrogen and cool itself if it rises above 300 kelvin. use fuel lines from a LqdNitrogen tank to supply it. To turn it off, lock the LqdNitrogen resource on the radiator.

This is exactly what was needed. Great work. Thanks.

[FreeThinker]

I looked at the heat management system mod - it is just a bunch of MM patches using stock stuff. I am going to knock together a similar thing that will tack those modifications onto the KSPI radiators.

EDIT:

Uploaded to KerbalStuff:

https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/850/Stock%20Heat%20Management%20for%20KSPI

I added an ablative shielding module to the circular radiator, and gave it 1 unit of LqdNitrogen. It will ablate the LqdNitrogen and cool itself if it rises above 300 kelvin. use fuel lines from a LqdNitrogen tank to supply it. To turn it off, lock the LqdNitrogen resource on the radiator.

Intresting concept, I will integrate the radiator changes and make it dynamic depending on techlevel, meaning upgraded radiators will have increased emissiveConstant and heatConductivity

Edited May 27, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Thorbane]

Sometimes I wonder if KSPI-E is played at all. For instance, today, I did a basic test run with the microwave receivers and I immediately made 2 observations. A: line of sight, doesn't work for planets (like Kerbin) and B: Transmitters/Relays in the atmosphere do not suffer any amount of penalty. This means there is no point of building a energy station in orbit and no point of building a relay network. Problem A might be a result of the KSP 1.0 changes but problem B is strange as the KSPI Wiki mentions it specifically. Has no one ever noticed this? Anyway, I fixed both issues. Transmitterers in the atmosphere are now also effected by the same penalty you receive when the microwave-receiver is in the atmosphere. This means putting your Atmospheric power station on the top of the mountain will pay off.

Some of us are still working on getting our 1.0 Career Mode saves up to the level where we can use most of the stuff.

- - - Updated - - -

Plasma thrusters with quantum vacuum mode doesn't use any fuel though. You just need few tons of antimatter, if you are using 9 antimatter reactors to power 10m plasma thruster

If your hauling 9 AM reactors around, you're probably better off mass wise just using a Mag nozzle and a lot of fuel.

[FreeThinker]

If your hauling 9 AM reactors around, you're probably better off mass wise just using a Mag nozzle and a lot of fuel.

According to wikipedia, a Quantum Vacuum thusters of 50W produces 50 Micro Newton of thrust. Assuming we can scale this up lineary, it would require at least 1GW power to produce 1 KiloNewton of thrust).

A upgraded 2.5m AntiMatter reactor, would be able to produce about 94 GW electric power and therefore produce 94 kN of thrust with Quantum Vacuum thusters

Note however that a 2.5 Plasma thruster is capped at 10 GW, meaning you need 10 Thusters to harness the full power

Magnetic Noozles on the other hand are not capped, but for optimal performance, the combined radius surface area of magnetic noozles should match the radius surface area of the reactor. This means you can use 4 x 1.25m magnetic nozzles with a single 2.5m reactor, which can me an Anitmatter reactor which produce 80% changed particles. Note that thermal noozles and magnetic noozle no longer need to be connected directly to the reactor. Therefor you could connect an antimatter both to a charge partige generator, thermal generator, and several magnetic nozzles at the same time. It should allow you to lauch a huge rocket directly from the surface and switch to magnetic nozzle once in suborbit. Another advantage of magnetic noozle that is often overlooked is that they produce much less waste heat compaired to Plasma Thusters. On the other hand, Plasma thrusters can be used with Microwave Powered, magnetic noozles always need a reactor that can produce chaged particles.

Edited May 27, 2015 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

According to wikipedia, a Quantum Vacuum thusters of 50W produces 50 Micro Newton of thrust. Assuming we can scale this up lineary, it would require at least 1GW power to produce 1 KiloNewton of thrust).

A upgraded 2.5m AntiMatter reactor, would be able to produce about 94 GW electric power and therefore produce 94 kN of thrust with Quantum Vacuum thusters

Note however that a 2.5 Plasma thruster is capped at 10 GW, meaning you need 10 Thusters to harness the full power

Magnetic Noozles on the other hand are not capped, but for optimal performance, the combined radius surface area of magnetic noozles should match the radius surface area of the reactor. This means you can use 4 x 1.25m magnetic nozzles with a single 2.5m reactor, which can me an Anitmatter reactor which produce 80% changed particles. Note that thermal noozles and magnetic noozle no longer need to be connected directly to the reactor. Therefor you could connect an antimatter both to a charge partige generator, thermal generator, and several magnetic nozzles at the same time. It should allow you to lauch a huge rocket directly from the surface and switch to magnetic nozzle once in suborbit. Another advantage of magnetic noozle that is often overlooked is that they produce much less waste heat compaired to Plasma Thusters. On the other hand, Plasma thrusters can be used with Microwave Powered, magnetic noozles always need a reactor that can produce chaged particles.

Well down side of bigass rocket is need for USI 5m SAS

Edit: OMG apparently 16 5 meter sized antimatter reactors can produce more energy per second, that humanity currently consumes!

Thats how much humanity consumes electricity per year! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28power%29#terawatt_.281012_watts.29

Edited May 27, 2015 by raxo2222

[mrsolarsail]

FreeThinker, I got your message, but couldn't reply.

I can try to make low thrust engines during timewarp work. Basically, the solar sail force model multiplies the acceleration by the time step size and adds that to the current velocity. It then updates the vessel's orbit to the current position and the updated velocity. The only additional pieces are to get the current throttle setting and to update the mass over the time step. I can just use the rocket equation at constant thrust over the duration of each time step to calculate the change in mass.

It will take a bit more effort, but I think I can make it work with the solar sail navigation planning tool. I just need to make it more generic, so that a slightly different force model can be plugged in and used. I think I'd also like to plug in different reference frames as well, since the cone/clock system is pretty sail-specific.

[FreeThinker]

FreeThinker, I got your message, but couldn't reply.

I can try to make low thrust engines during timewarp work. Basically, the solar sail force model multiplies the acceleration by the time step size and adds that to the current velocity. It then updates the vessel's orbit to the current position and the updated velocity. The only additional pieces are to get the current throttle setting and to update the mass over the time step. I can just use the rocket equation at constant thrust over the duration of each time step to calculate the change in mass.

It will take a bit more effort, but I think I can make it work with the solar sail navigation planning tool. I just need to make it more generic, so that a slightly different force model can be plugged in and used. I think I'd also like to plug in different reference frames as well, since the cone/clock system is pretty sail-specific.

Alright, I will await your changes with anticipation

[herman]

The magnetic nozzle is actually incredible powerful, it can reach very high ISP at decent thrust levels. It wouldn't be obvious until you can accelerate time and automate course corrections. Then you you will find you can virtual reach any place in Kerbin Solar system, with very little fuel. Realistically, it's the only kind of propulsion (beside Vista) which could realistically bring us to a neighbor star. You probably need a long time to speed up do a decent proportion of light speed, but at least it would not require astronomical amounts of fuel.

Thanks for the reply! So my incredibly small acceleration is intentional?

This looks like a great mod, I just don't quite have the time to figure everything out from scratch.

It would make this mod much more accessible if there were some reference craft designs posted to demonstrate some of the main technologies.

[cicatrix]

Is there a way to cool down a thermal nozzle? I've built an otherwise awesome ship (AM reactor + Thermal Generator + Thermal nozzle) but it overheats very quickly. Radiators do not help at all, from what I gather they dissipate only waste heat and I cannot attach anything to the nozzle itself radially to take the heat away. Is it by design?

[MatterBeam]

Is there a way to cool down a thermal nozzle? I've built an otherwise awesome ship (AM reactor + Thermal Generator + Thermal nozzle) but it overheats very quickly. Radiators do not help at all, from what I gather they dissipate only waste heat and I cannot attach anything to the nozzle itself radially to take the heat away. Is it by design?

Stock wings act as radiators. Otherwise, you can use HeatControl from Nertea.

[cicatrix]

Stock wings act as radiators. Otherwise, you can use HeatControl from Nertea.

The problem is cfg:

heatConductivity = 0.01

and you cannot attach anything to it except for the stack connection node.

[profit]

Here are screenshots of the radiators acting weird, and topping out earlier than they should.. Most of the time they work but, here are 2 times I caught them getting stuck. 1584.2K seems to be the magic number.

- - - Updated - - -

I have one other breadcrumb... When these craft have their microwave receivers on, they have the bug, as soon as I press the hotkey to switch them to relay's it goes away. If I activate the receivers again the bug immediately reappears and the radiators jump to the lower temperature and lower heat dissipation.

Receiver on -> Capped at 1584.2

Relay on -> Acts correctly

Receiver back on and relay off-> Capped at 1584.2K again and heat dissipation falls significantly

[ss8913]

One other thing about heat - it seems to go up significantly with more *soot*. Is there a way to clean the engines? I think it would be nice to have a way for an Engineer kerbal to, maybe with the help of some supplies of one form or another, get out and clean the thing. Got back from Sarnus with 70-80% soot and barely could make enough thrust to land at Kerbin due to overheating

[FreeThinker]

Is there a way to cool down a thermal nozzle? I've built an otherwise awesome ship (AM reactor + Thermal Generator + Thermal nozzle) but it overheats very quickly. Radiators do not help at all, from what I gather they dissipate only waste heat and I cannot attach anything to the nozzle itself radially to take the heat away. Is it by design?

In the next patch will improve overheating, and make it occurrence dependent on he performance of available radiators ...

- - - Updated - - -

One other thing about heat - it seems to go up significantly with more *soot*. Is there a way to clean the engines? I think it would be nice to have a way for an Engineer kerbal to, maybe with the help of some supplies of one form or another, get out and clean the thing. Got back from Sarnus with 70-80% soot and barely could make enough thrust to land at Kerbin due to overheating

The best way to clean it is to use either water or CO2 (cleaning mode) at low throttle . Also note any clean (non carbon) propellant will gradually errode it.

Edited May 28, 2015 by FreeThinker

[aeonlu]

Any idea what mightbe going on here? I have no buttons at all after installing.

[ABZB]

http://s22.postimg.org/mif22tx1d/Screenshot_1.pngAny idea what mightbe going on here? I have no buttons at all after installing.

do you have a probe or a command module? you can't use almost all UIs in KSP without one

[aeonlu]

do you have a probe or a command module? you can't use almost all UIs in KSP without one

I just checked. It will work fine with a crewed command pod, but not with a probe core. Weird

[FreeThinker]

I just checked. It will work fine with a crewed command pod, but not with a probe core. Weird

Ah, seems you found youself a real bug! here have some rep

[Profit-]

For some reason I do not seem to be getting a relay depth greater than one.... I have a fleet of relay's in orbit of Kerbin but they do not relay to one another as far as I can tell.

[KerbinDriveYards]

I want to install this mod but don't have the memory left to run the entire thing, so I would like to use just the redone seismometer experiment from this mod. However the definitions and configurations for it seem to be spread between multiple places in the WarpPlugin folder. What files need to be kept in order to use the experiment?

I'm also interested in using the solar sail, what files do I need to keep for it?

Will I still have to deal with the WasteHeat mechanic with just the folders necessary to run the seismometer and sail?

And finally are any of the other included plugins (FilterExtensions, Community Resource Pack, etc.) necessary to use these two parts of the mod?

Sorry for all the questions, but I really want to get at least part of this mod in my career! Great work by the way, lots of really impressive additions to the game in this mod!

Edited May 29, 2015 by KerbinDriveYards

[Aaron Also]

Any suggestions on adding in the alternate warp drive models found here and here

I have downloaded them and looked over the CFG's there is quite a lot more info in the new models and I was afraid to break something if I just copied and pasted it into this old file.

RESOURCE

{

name = ExoticMatter

amount = 0

maxAmount = 20000

}

MODULE

{

name = ModuleAnimateGeneric

animationName = t2

startEventGUIName = Change State

endEventGUIName = Change State

}

MODULE

{

name = AlcubierreDrive

effectSize1 = 6.2

effectSize2 = 2.4

upgradedName = Advanced Field Geometry

originalName = Standard Field Geometry

upgradeCost = 100

}

}

This the bulk of the CFG for the alternate model and is missing several MODULEs in comparison to the CFG files for the current models. In fact the current ones don't even refference a MODULE name = AlcubierreDrive. I"m guessing I would have to keep the MODULE name = ModuleAnimateGeneric since this model has an unfloding animation tied to it. But, can I just copy and paste the rest of the info from the current CFG file?