KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[FreeThinker]

Hello

The fusion reactors seem to be missing their fuel switches and the charged particle generator seems to have the wrong efficiency in the description.

http://imgur.com/a/OrmrN

Fusion reactors cannot switch fuel mode until upgrade. The Efficiency rating is indeed wrong

[Trigger1112]

Fusion reactors cannot switch fuel mode until upgrade. The Efficiency rating is indeed wrong

This was in sandbox mode so they should already be upgraded. Also, should the plasma thruster only work in quantum vacuum mode?

Edited July 7, 2015 by Trigger1112

[FreeThinker]

[h=2]Version 1.2.6 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4[/h] Released on 2015-07-07

• Fixed Temperature Radiators
  
• Upgraded CRP to 0.4.3
  

[Hazelnut]

How do you upgrade the Thermal Electric Generator? I've looked everywhere, although not read all 188 pages of this thread so apologies if it's already been answered.

[pvtstash]

Hey all!

Love this mod, but I'm having an impossible time with beamed power, plasma thrusters, and overheating since v1.0.2. I've gone as far as uninstalling and reinstalling the game and starting from scratch to resolve, but every time I activate a microwave tranceiver to receive power for the plasma thruster my heat spikes in about 5 seconds and the ship shuts down. These were working fine pre v1.0.2.

I get the same result no matter which radators I use regardless of atmospheric presence. I've launched smaller versions of the one below into orbit and used the deployable radiators all the way up to huge with max tweakscale size with no visible change. Quantum vacuum and liquid fuel both OH at the same rate.

Installed Mods:

Chatterer .0.9.5

Infernal Robotics 1.0.17.0

KSPI-E 1.2.6 (Tried 1.1.21, 1.2.3 as well)

MechJeb 2.5.3.0

TweakScale 2.2.1

Here's a throwaway ship just to test heating using liquid fuel. I max out 3 seconds after liftoff and heat seems to go down at the same rate as if I have no radiators on. Ideas?

Thanks!

[Profit-]

Version 1.2.6 for Kerbal Space Program 1.0.4

Released on 2015-07-07

• Fixed Temperature Radiators
  
• Upgraded CRP to 0.4.3
  

YAY!

They were kinda weird.

- - - Updated - - -

How do you upgrade the Thermal Electric Generator? I've looked everywhere, although not read all 188 pages of this thread so apologies if it's already been answered.

highTechElectricalSystems

[Profit-]

Landed at Vall.. It lands a lot nicer without an atmosphere. Also a nice shot of Jool in the background.

* this mod is awesome =)

Edited July 8, 2015 by Profit-

[FreeThinker]

Hey all!

Love this mod, but I'm having an impossible time with beamed power, plasma thrusters, and overheating since v1.0.2. I've gone as far as uninstalling and reinstalling the game and starting from scratch to resolve, but every time I activate a microwave tranceiver to receive power for the plasma thruster my heat spikes in about 5 seconds and the ship shuts down. These were working fine pre v1.0.2.

I get the same result no matter which radators I use regardless of atmospheric presence. I've launched smaller versions of the one below into orbit and used the deployable radiators all the way up to huge with max tweakscale size with no visible change. Quantum vacuum and liquid fuel both OH at the same rate.

Installed Mods:

Chatterer .0.9.5

Infernal Robotics 1.0.17.0

KSPI-E 1.2.6 (Tried 1.1.21, 1.2.3 as well)

MechJeb 2.5.3.0

TweakScale 2.2.1

Here's a throwaway ship just to test heating using liquid fuel. I max out 3 seconds after liftoff and heat seems to go down at the same rate as if I have no radiators on. Ideas?

http://i.imgur.com/IIi6elt.png?1

Thanks!

Radial radiators aren't exactly top of line for radiators. They are crude early available radiators mainly mend for atmospheric usage or to lose solar radiation. They are not suppose to handle the Gigawatts received from microwave transmitter networks. The thermal helper ever gives you a big hint. It van only handle 53 MW. That just enough to allow a small fission reactor to run idle.

Microwave power networks can be incredibly powerful but the the main limiting factor for spacecraft is waste-heat management. You have to install larger, more effective radiators otherwise you will burn to a crisp in a matter of seconds or not going anywhere very fast.

- - - Updated - - -

Landed at Vall.. It lands a lot nicer without an atmosphere. Also a nice shot of Jool in the background.

http://s13.postimg.org/e1yo3o46f/image.png

* this mod is awesome =)

Nice picture. You discovered the Large Radiator main advantage as landing equipment on airless moons. They are indeed very nice for this purpose as they provide a wide base making landing easy

Edited July 8, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Profit-]

And a quick Hello from Tylo as long as I am on a roll... You can see in this one I had some damage on landing as the microwave receivers have fallen off (Mechjeb does not land correctly any longer so I have been bringing them in by hand), thankfully I have 1.2 Kg of anti-matter which should be enough for a couple hundred years of operations at current rates.

Yes, The large radiators are really nice as landing gear and stabilizers. I use them to support the ship on Kerbin before take-off as well.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Profit-

[ss8913]

OK I have found more info on the catastrophic instantaneous overheating/exploding. I have taken to using the 'ignore max heat' alt-f12 cheat until Squad figures out what's wrong with the heating model; until then here's what I know (it's easier to debug with that cheat on since you can see what's actually causing the problem instead of a giant fireball and dead kerbals which is what you get otherwise):

1. There is a problem mixing the stock radiators and the KSP-I-E radiators. Most of the time, activating both will cause a spontaneous overheat+explosion of multiple parts. Sadly the Mk2 cargo bays qualify as heat radiators. This isn't always the case and is exacerbated by docking such a craft with another such craft, ie, my Mk2 spaceplane to my orbital factory, all of which are using KSP-I-E radiators and reactors and other parts.

a. Behavior with heat cheat turned off - upon docking and realigning of the camera to the now-docked combined craft, the Mk2 cargo bay (which is a radiator itself) will explode "due to heat" according to F3 and the plane falls apart.

b. Behavior with heat cheat turned on - cargo bay immediately spikes to 2x maximum temperature (using critical temp display mod). All surrounding parts immediately spike to similar temps within 1-5 seconds. Advancing time to, say, 100x for a couple of seconds clears the issue and it does not happen again upon returning to normal time.

2. There is a problem when using 'Advanced Jet Engine' with KSP-I-E - it completely breaks the air breathing capability of the thermal turbojet. This is just an informative heads-up, I don't really expect this to be solved since AJE tries to rework how all air-breathing engines work, and this is just a side effect of that.

3. If you accidentally throttle up a TTJ that's still set to air breathing mode, it'll flame out. Switching it to closed cycle mode and then increasing throttle will often cause it to explode.

4. If you use TCA (Throttle Controlled Avionics), any time the thrust limiter for any engine (TCA balances thrust to keep you going straight) hits 0, the engine will overheat and explode instantly, even if it wasn't even hot before. Setting thrust limiters to 0 manually, with the TTJ running or not, does not cause this behavior. This also happens with thermal rockets. I'm not sure if this is an interstellar issue or a TCA issue, but it does NOT seem to happen with non-Interstellar engines.

[pvtstash]

Radial radiators aren't exactly top of line for radiators. They are crude early available radiators mainly mend for atmospheric usage or to lose solar radiation. They are not suppose to handle the Gigawatts received from microwave transmitter networks. The thermal helper ever gives you a big hint. It van only handle 53 MW. That just enough to allow a small fission reactor to run idle.

Microwave power networks can be incredibly powerful but the the main limiting factor for spacecraft is waste-heat management. You have to install larger, more effective radiators otherwise you will burn to a crisp in a matter of seconds or not going anywhere very fast.

- - - Updated - - -

Nice picture. You discovered the Large Radiator main advantage as landing equipment on airless moons. They are indeed very nice for this purpose as they provide a wide base making landing easy

Thanks for the tip. I've been using KSPI since v.90 and have set up several microwave networks in the past using all types of radiators (except for the large radiator shown above) without the heating problems I'm seeing today. Has the heat dissipation been drastically changed since ksp v1.0?

I'll have to give these a try. My main issue with them to this point has been the size and drag on liftoff. Anyone have tips on getting components into space without burning up in the atmosphere on ascent from Kerbin?

[ss8913]

@pvtstash - use procedural fairings.

[Suvhater]

I would like it if the DT Vista engine was functional in the atmosphere, is there someway I can edit this in?

[Hazelnut]

highTechElectricalSystems

Thank you. Unfortunately I couldn't afford the 1500 science cost tonight because I spent the 5k science last night trying to figure out which node would upgrade it - I thought I had saved first, but nope. All useful stuff. :-)

Spent tonight trying to gather science in the Kerbin system (I could easily time accelerate and get it, but I don't like doing it unless it's just a few days between manoeuvres etc) by doing something rather silly. I made a science SSTO (plane) with lab (mk2 from a mod), 2 mk2 Rapier likes, and a NERV. It's a bit of a pig to get into orbit, and of course much less practical than a rocket launched craft would be. It has 6 impact probes as well and for them to be useful I need to land it on the Mun & Minmus. So tonight it was landing on the mun.. on the wheels.. with 4 puffs as the VTOL - just enough to kill a couple m/s after going horizontal. Managed it on my 5th attempt after mastering the action key setup for switching between engines. I was very pleased when I landed, moved the camera and realised I was on a 30 degree slope of a crater - not sure how that happened. Was sliding sideways down it too. Enabled steering and got it down into the crater. Silly, but fun. Ended up with 500 science from Mun.

[ss8913]

@Hazelnut - since you're using KSP Interstellar, why not put thermal turbojets on that science SSTO? Best SSTO engine *ever*.. by far.

[scharlesc]

The Vista Inertial Fusion engine no longer works in the atmosphere in this latest version. It use to in fact a test rocket I built to test it in the atmosphere no longer works though I changed nothing on it. Is this intentional?

[Nansuchao]

Yes it is intentional, based on the real Vista engine. Too much dangerous to be used in atmosphere.

[Hazelnut]

@Hazelnut - since you're using KSP Interstellar, why not put thermal turbojets on that science SSTO? Best SSTO engine *ever*.. by far.

Because of the weight of the reactors basically, and the fact that I can't use them once in vacuum so becomes dead weight. Having the 500+ kN of thrust when I need it from the MATTOCK's is very useful, even if not for long due to having less Ox onboard - mostly it's got LF only tanks. Mostly I use the NERV for the 800s ISP, but at 80kN it's not for quick changes of velocity. Switching on the high thrust for a few seconds helps tremendously when doing stupid stuff like landing on the mun.

Edited July 9, 2015 by Hazelnut

[GrafZahl]

Hi

I started in 1.0.4 a new career with KSPI. One of my first Satellite Model seems to have a waste heat issue and I wonder if everything fine here.

The satellite has two 1x6 solar panels and two expandable thermal control systems (small).

The Interstellar Thermal Mechanics Helper shows me a total heat production of 1.64KW and a radiator maximum dissipation of 18.07KW.

So everything is fine, right?

However in the space the waste heat slowly increases (very slowly) over time. I would expect, that due to the enormous headroom of the radiators, there will not be any waste heat increase.

Is there something wrong?

Edit:

Also some more numbers. When I look at the flying satellite then I can see:

The solar panels produces together on full sunlight the calculates 1.64KW and when I look at the radiators, in the same time they radiate 0.044 MW. So I would not expect that the waste heat is increasing. But it very slowly increases (below 0.01, since I cannot see the number).

Edit2:

Ah and here another number: All the time at the radiators the number "power convected" is 0.00MW.

Edited July 9, 2015 by GrafZahl

[Weywot8]

Hi

I started in 1.0.4 a new career with KSPI. One of my first Satellite Model seems to have a waste heat issue and I wonder if everything fine here.

The satellite has two 1x6 solar panels and two expandable thermal control systems (small).

The Interstellar Thermal Mechanics Helper shows me a total heat production of 1.64KW and a radiator maximum dissipation of 18.07KW.

So everything is fine, right?

However in the space the waste heat slowly increases (very slowly) over time. I would expect, that due to the enormous headroom of the radiators, there will not be any waste heat increase.

Is there something wrong?

Edit:

Also some more numbers. When I look at the flying satellite then I can see:

The solar panels produces together on full sunlight the calculates 1.64KW and when I look at the radiators, in the same time they radiate 0.044 MW. So I would not expect that the waste heat is increasing. But it very slowly increases (below 0.01, since I cannot see the number).

Edit2:

Ah and here another number: All the time at the radiators the number "power convected" is 0.00MW.

I wondered about that a bit before checking the underlying physics. Basically, the radiator has to get hot enough to radiate out the amount of heat put into it, the hotter the radiator the more heat it can get rid of. So waste heat will build up asymptotically until it reaches a certain point when input = output.

By analogy, imagine a tall tin can with a hole at the bottom. Pour in water from the top. If the hole is really big compared to the rate of water being poured in, no water collects. As the hole gets smaller, water collects until enough pressure builds up to force water through the hole at an equal rate it is poured in. Now change

• water = heat
  
• can volume = radiator and total craft waste heat storage
  
• hole = radiators ability to radiate heat (surface area, emissivity constant & all that jazz)
  
• pressure = radiator temperature
  

I'll happily trust that FreeThinker has gotten waste heat storage "right" for all the radiator parts, i.e. all parts store enough waste heat to allow radiators to get to max operating temperature/max radiating ability before anything explodes from overheating. Most everything in KSPI-E sticks to some real world physics/counterpart as a basis although those gigantic black radiators are structurally very Kerbal IMO.

[Nansuchao]

In if the VAB you had green number on the Thermal Helper, you can be more or less sure that you'll be ok in flight. When you begin to use Fusion Power, it'll be almost impossible to have 0 as waste heat. But you radiators will keep the balance and make your ship go safely.

[GrafZahl]

Hi Weywot8 and Nansuchao,

thanks for that hint.

Yes you are right, that makes absolutely sense. If the radiators not hot, they will not radiate any waste heat. I also looked up in the code for the radiator and here I can also see, that the stored waste heat in inside the formula.

Best regards,

GrafZahl

[Profit-]

There is still a nagging bug with the radiators and microwave receivers.... This does not happen every time, but....

Here is a radiator while two microwave receivers are active, it's temp is limited and causes reactors to overheat:

Here is the same radiator after I disable reception in all but one reciever. Notice it's temp increases sharply and it is dissipating far more heat *ironically it does not SAY it is, it just is...

Further information:

Even though it SAYS it is dissipating the same amount of heat, when two receivers are active, even when I activate one that is receiving 0 watts of power because it is facing the wrong way, waste heat skyrockets upward.

Even though in the second picture it says it is dissipating less heat, and even though the receiver was not receiving any energy that shut down, waste heat was falling significantly.

- - - Updated - - -

For some reason you can not start an antimatter engine with a kerbol. Kinda inconvenient when you disabled it but you run out of power because of a heat spike and your antimatter tanks go unpowered as well...

On a side note though.. The bright flash in an antimatter explosion is a nice touch.

* the above craft is 40 million Kerbin dollars without antimatter... The prices of some of the components seem a bit excessive, especially when scaled up. (Although I guess for a 1100 ton Singe Stage to Anywhere in the solar system and beyond it is not bad)

- - - Updated - - -

Edited July 10, 2015 by Profit-

[Profit-]

I also believe the calculation that displays thermal dissipation has a bug in it. You can see here I should have 15290.76 Gigawatts of thermal dissipation according to my radiators (I have 4 of each for 8 total), however my heat levels are rising and you can see I do not have near that many gigawatts of power available to make that much heat. (The thermal tool inside the VAB does match the actual heat dissipation though with 292 GW at 3500k dissipation)

Edited July 10, 2015 by Profit-

[pvtstash]

There is still a nagging bug with the radiators and microwave receivers.... This does not happen every time, but....

Here is a radiator while two microwave receivers are active, it's temp is limited and causes reactors to overheat:

http://s16.postimg.org/clsmq3acl/image.png

Here is the same radiator after I disable reception in all but one reciever. Notice it's temp increases sharply and it is dissipating far more heat *ironically it does not SAY it is, it just is...

http://s23.postimg.org/ul2pobswr/image.png

Further information:

Even though it SAYS it is dissipating the same amount of heat, when two receivers are active, even when I activate one that is receiving 0 watts of power because it is facing the wrong way, waste heat skyrockets upward.

Even though in the second picture it says it is dissipating less heat, and even though the receiver was not receiving any energy that shut down, waste heat was falling significantly.

- - - Updated - - -

For some reason you can not start an antimatter engine with a kerbol. Kinda inconvenient when you disabled it but you run out of power because of a heat spike and your antimatter tanks go unpowered as well...

On a side note though.. The bright flash in an antimatter explosion is a nice touch.

* the above craft is 40 million Kerbin dollars without antimatter... The prices of some of the components seem a bit excessive, especially when scaled up. (Although I guess for a 1100 ton Singe Stage to Anywhere in the solar system and beyond it is not bad)

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks for looking into this some more. This is the same behavior I've recently observed.

I was activating all 4 tranceivers as receivers via groupings on a plasma engine relay satellite until I could switch to relay mode when I got my craft into position. I disabled 3/4 manually and I was able to manage the heat. As soon as I enabled 2 receivers it overheats in seconds even with 200+ GW of radators. This is true whether I'm parked on the launchpad, in atmosphere or in space.

I've started digging through source on GitHub, but I have a long way to catch up on the whole mod. Maybe I'll get lucky.