KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[Cosmonauth]

I don't think energy utilization is the way to use vista. I tested it yesterday in figured that it requires 4 upgraded Huge Radiators (55-60GW) -as FreeThinker mentioned somewhere in this tread, and it will fly well in vacuum. I got to orbit with this design:

It was a little tricky due retracted radiators, but still possible. As you can see, there are 6 regular radiators for power core, just enough for green numbers in VAB Thermal Helper. Then I added 4 huge ones and that is how I got vista stabilized.

Ability to build efficient SSTO was my point to play Interstellar mod. Yes it was too easy in 0.25, and I agree in needs some balance changes. I still want to be able to use it in the atmosphere and in vacuum as a universal engine, with reasonable reduction of efficiency based on atmosphere density.

I found this document about Vista on the internets, hope it may be usfull somehow. https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/239979.pdf

Edited June 16, 2015 by Cosmonauth

[Nansuchao]

I found this document about Vista on the internets, hope it may be usfull somehow. https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/239979.pdf

This document is becoming famous... :-)

[FreeThinker]

This document is becoming famous... :-)

There are some intresting parts which should make your hairs raise, like this statement:

In order to reduce the flux of neutrons to a level between 3x108 and 3x109 MeV-neutrons m–2s–1to avoid hazardous radiationexposures to astronauts, VISTA must be at least 8,000 to 36,000 km from exposed personnel.

It has a minimum safe distance of 8000KM !!! this means you need to travel more than 3 times the distance of the Mun to get in at a safe stance!!!

fortunatly life at kerbin can continue as

There is no hazard for terrestrial beings, however, because theatmosphere is roughly seven neutron mean free paths thick. Further study is required to evaluate the

hazard for high-flying aircraft

But there remains the problem of size, because the real Vista is 250 Meter Wide!!! Do you know how big that is? How are you supposed to get such monster into space? The only thing I can think of is to assemble it in space.

Edited June 16, 2015 by FreeThinker

[ABZB]

There are some intresting parts which should make your hairs raise, like this statement:

It has a minimum safe distance of 8000KM !!! this means you need to travel more than 3 times the distance of the Mun to get in at a safe stance!!! It would only need orbit Kerbon with engines active once in Low Orbit to sterialize all off Kerbin (except for the poles). Make no mistake, this is weapon of mass dustruction!! A more appropiate name would be planet file sterializer.

Fortunatly this is only true for the full size version , which is 250 Meter Wide!!!

Wouldn't the atmosphere protect the groundlings? I doubt the Vista has *quite* enough energy to strip away the atmosphere....

[Nansuchao]

IRL you're completely right and that's one of the reason why, probably, we'll never see a VISTA. Also if just used far from the Earth (not Kerbin) it will be too dangerous for every planet. Also a atmosphereless planet will be hazarded from such engine. This IRL.

In KSP Vista is a marvelous engine, able of fantastic things. It's probably the only engine in all modding world, able to take-off from Kerbin, land on Eve and return back to Kerbin without many worries...

[ABZB]

IRL you're completely right and that's one of the reason why, probably, we'll never see a VISTA. Also if just used far from the Earth (not Kerbin) it will be too dangerous for every planet. Also a atmosphereless planet will be hazarded from such engine. This IRL.

In KSP Vista is a marvelous engine, able of fantastic things. It's probably the only engine in all modding world, able to take-off from Kerbin, land on Eve and return back to Kerbin without many worries...

Near earth, the biggest problem would be that the vista would kill orbiting beings, and probably also damage satellites... (such as your com network in-game).

If you are sufficiently far away, the inverse square law is your friend.

[Khalkion]

Magnetic nozzles have scaleFactors = 0.625, 0.875, 1.25, 1.875, 2.5, 3.25, 5.0, where 3.25 looks weird.

[ABZB]

Magnetic nozzles have scaleFactors = 0.625, 0.875, 1.25, 1.875, 2.5, 3.25, 5.0, where 3.25 looks weird.

that should probably be 3.75, I imagine

[Nansuchao]

Near earth, the biggest problem would be that the vista would kill orbiting beings, and probably also damage satellites... (such as your com network in-game).

If you are sufficiently far away, the inverse square law is your friend.

I think that if NASA or someon else would like to build a VISTA, they have to activate it far, far and really FAR from Earth and deactivate it FAR from every other planet. Someone is studying a way to eliminate the neutrons hazard from a similar engine, making it close, with a shield for neutrons.

For now, you'll probably not kill every kind of life on Earth, but environment and life sure will not thank you.

[FreeThinker]

Well this radiation is not my biggest concern. We can hand wave that away assuming all Kerbal electronic are shielded and kerbals are smart enough to hide behind some kind of shield. My real issue how to achieve inertial fusion in the first plane. The Vista is supposed to sent small pellets at the back which are then hit by multiple lassers creating a fusion reaction. Trying to hit multiple tiny pellet that fly in vacuum is difficult enough, achieving the same in an atmosphere at high speed would be much harder if not impossible as it would create all kinds of unpredictable atmosphere flows at the back. This is why I think is is justified to make Vista a Vacuum only engine.

- - - Updated - - -

Magnetic nozzles have scaleFactors = 0.625, 0.875, 1.25, 1.875, 2.5, 3.25, 5.0, where 3.25 looks weird.

Good find

Edited June 16, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Psitticine]

OK, apparently, I'm a bit of a pinhead because I can't figure out how to store the hydrogen peroxide coming out of the anthraquinone process. My end goal, probably fairly obviously, is running the results through the peroxide process to get some hydrazine to potentially refuel RCS thrusters once I'm actually doing more than testing this on the launch pad. I can't seem to find a tank to contain it though. What am I missing here? I did some searching but didn't come up with any hits aside from run-throughs of the processes involved.

[FreeThinker]

OK, apparently, I'm a bit of a pinhead because I can't figure out how to store the hydrogen peroxide coming out of the anthraquinone process. My end goal, probably fairly obviously, is running the results through the peroxide process to get some hydrazine to potentially refuel RCS thrusters once I'm actually doing more than testing this on the launch pad. I can't seem to find a tank to contain it though. What am I missing here? I did some searching but didn't come up with any hits aside from run-throughs of the processes involved.

Congretulations, you actualy the first one who notice it. I will add it as an obvious propellant. It would be easiest if I add it to the existing interstellar tanks

[Svm420]

Is there any chance of this mod converting to use the stock resource system? As in using that to distribute and interact with the resources KSPI:E uses. Not anytime soon mind you just if it is possible. Thnaks!

[Psitticine]

That certainly works for me - thanks for the quick response!

[Khalkion]

If we are talking about ISRU - a question about scalling power requirements with NFT. Reactors, engines, radiators and so on use 0.002/500 multipliers, but sciencelab and refineries have 0.02. For example to start antimatter production I need 100 MW and unupgraded antimatter reactor provides only 80 MW (and then efficiency of generators, radiators and so on).

[FreeThinker]

If we are talking about ISRU - a question about scalling power requirements with NFT. Reactors, engines, radiators and so on use 0.002/500 multipliers, but sciencelab and refineries have 0.02. For example to start antimatter production I need 100 MW and unupgraded antimatter reactor provides only 80 MW (and then efficiency of generators, radiators and so on).

Well first creating antimatter with an antimatter is a bad idea as the processes has an ifficency of only 1%, which means you will burn much more antimatter than you create. Second, I recall there is no minimum power requirement, but I might be mistaken. I might need to tweak it a bit

[Khalkion]

It was just an example for better clarity. I'm talking about that now there are different proportions for NFT and wihtout NFT. With presence of NFT we relatively need 10x more power than without NFT. As reactors provide 1/500 of their origianl power while sciencelab and isru require 1/50 of their original requirements.

It is right at the bottom of USI_NF_Mode.cfg

@PART

[*]:HAS[@MODULE[interstellarRefinery]]:NEEDS[NearFutureElectrical|SETI]:FOR[WarpPlugin]

{

@MODULE[interstellarRefinery]

{

%powerReqMult = 0.02

}

}

and so on.

[Profit-]

@FreeThinker : Earlier you were talking about antimatter and magnetic field strength. It is my understanding the field strength is important, but equally important is the velocity of the magnetic field lines. This means a planet rotating 5X as fast would have (if my understanding is correct) 5x the generated antimatter for the same field strength. Also (If once again I am understanding it correctly) small black holes rotating very fast (Their smaller size when they collapse is like pulling your arms in on a merry-go-round which gives them extreme rotation speeds) have piles of antimatter in their magnetic fields because of the speed they spin at.

[Profit-]

Something went a little wrong with AI Cores, When they send science data back, it says you transmit X data but you receive 0 science. (I will investigate later if this is a display bug or you actually get no science.)

* It is not every time, It seems like you are allowed to send it once. Still investigating.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Profit-

[FreeThinker]

Something went a little wrong with AI Cores, When they send science data back, it says you transmit X data but you receive 0 science. (I will investigate later if this is a display bug or you actually get no science.)

* It is not every time, It seems like you are allowed to send it once. Still investigating.

possibly you only allowed to send it once por each biodome.

[Profit-]

possibly you only allowed to send it once por each biodome.

That was my first thought, but it did not use to be like that and unlike other experiments when done in the same biome it says it is going to give science.

[GreeningGalaxy]

Freethinker:

I've been playing with this for a few days, and I like it - definitely come a long way since I last used it - but there are a few rather irritating bits and bugs:

-Reactor output units seem to have been renamed from gigawatts to megawatts, without actually changing the amount of useful work the given reactor's output can do in a given time. For instance, a reactor claiming to put out 6 MW of thermal power still results in connected thermal rockets to put out 6 GW of thrust power. Is this to improve compatibility with Near Future Technologies?

KSPI and NFT use very different models - KSPI goes for "extremely high power generation, but realistic conversion" while NFT is more "more feasible power generation, but energy not conserved in conversion." The two are pretty fundamentally incompatible. From what I've heard from Nertea, he's not interested in changing NFT's model to KSPI's, and in my professional opinion, KSPI is much better without NFT's model.

-There are still some inconsistencies with thermal rockets putting out too much thrust power for their input; it looks to me like there might be an addition where there's supposed to be a subtraction somewhere (32 gigawatts of reactor makes 36 gigawatts of thrust, things like that - maybe should be 32 gigawatts of reactor making 28 gigawatts of thrust?)

-Reactors no longer show their percent usage. That was useful, I'd like to see it again if possible.

-Not sure how I feel about the generator types being split into two separate parts. I guess it would work well enough if the thermal generators didn't weigh incredible amounts when scaled up.

-Reactor scaling doesn't seem to work past 3.75 meters - a 5 meter reactor still makes the same amount of power in flight as a 3.75 meter one.

-The VISTA engine overheats instantly when scaled up to very large sizes.

-Thermal rockets don't lose Isp in the atmosphere, and lose negligible thrust.

-Thermal rockets don't seem to be listening to the WarpPluginSettings.cfg MaxThermalNozzleIsp value - it still seems capped around 3000. That's fine by me, especially with the new charged particle AM reactors and magnetic nozzles, but just so you know.

-Large fusion reactors seem to lack a "cold start" capability - I've had them shut down due to overheating, never to turn on again. In the past, hyperediting the megajoules resource to full has been a fix for this, but that doesn't work anymore either; the resource level just reverts to zero instantly after being set.

Thanks for maintaining this mod, by the way!

[Profit-]

Freethinker:

-Reactors no longer show their percent usage. That was useful, I'd like to see it again if possible.

You can see it on their control panel, but I agree.

-Not sure how I feel about the generator types being split into two separate parts. I guess it would work well enough if the thermal generators didn't weigh incredible amounts when scaled up.

Thermal Generators are VERY heavy. They have spinning turbines and heat transfer plates and coolants, and they just would weigh a metric .... ton. If anything I think they are lighter than they should be.

-The VISTA engine overheats instantly when scaled up to very large sizes.

Dont worry, this is going away.... As soon you will NOT be able to use it in the atmosphere.

-Large fusion reactors seem to lack a "cold start" capability - I've had them shut down due to overheating, never to turn on again. In the past, hyperediting the megajoules resource to full has been a fix for this, but that doesn't work anymore either; the resource level just reverts to zero instantly after being set.

They will not start on electric charge. In order to get them to start you need another energy source, let it build up and have enough spare power in megajoules for one complete cycle. You can use a kerbal to jump start them somehow supposedly now.

[cicatrix]

I've been meaning to ask this for a long time now, it was probably mentioned alredy. When I select a KSPI part in VAB or SPH (radiators, engines, etc) there is a significant 'freeze' (about 3-4 seconds) before the part actually appears. Same happens when I detach them or change their symmetry number. Nothing like this happens with other parts. Is there any way to get rid of this lag and what is causing it?

[Profit-]

Just to show it off, here is my SSTO Interstellar Ship (it needs a boost from ground reactors because of no antimatter). It can reach any planet, and come back, have not landed it yet. It is more stable and easier to launch than most of mine somehow and has a crew capacity of 34 with a full compliment of station science experiments, KSP ones, and the things to do them. 1107 tons with 160 tons of fuel (nitrogen), that has about 80% left after launch thanks to the radial atmosphere scoops.