KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[FreeThinker]

Could you post some pictures?

[raxo2222]

VASMIR is nice if you want to fly to moon in less than one day.

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[ss8913]

Could you post some pictures?

sure - anything you'd specifically like to see?

[Kielm]

Hi FreeThinker,

I've just reached an endgame state in a KSPI game and thought I'd offer some feedback.

First off, great work on it, I really appreciate the new flavour of reactor/thruster dynamics that (while keeping in the spirit of the original mod) provides a much wider range of TWR/ISP options. Excellent stuff.

A few things I've noticed:

1. While resource generation/accumulation occurs in the background, consumption does not. I'm sure you're aware of this already, but it does mean that in some situations (particularly fusion reactions), you can get pretty much unlimited fuel out of a reactor as long as it's not your active vessel. I'm not even sure I want this to be changed, as it's saved my neck quite a few times!

2. I had some real issues using the warp drives. Not operating them in-game, but getting the correct models to work. Some of the attachment nodes in the models are inverted (attaching items to the top of a 2.5m WD results in the attached item being stacked underneath the node). Some still use the regolith resource conversion module (no longer included in USI mods as it's now stock). There are two folders for warp drives, one in the electrical folder and one in the engines folder, and even using the supplied patch some still appear in the "Experimental Rocketry" Tech node. As I use USI's Warp Drive, I eventually got frustrated and deleted both folders and stuck with the USI WD. The resource consumption is off, but the effect is the same.

3. I made use of Hydrolox quite a lot instead of plain Hydrogen, and when electrolyzing water with the ISRU Refinery I appeared to get twice as much Hydrogen as Oxygen. As far as I'm aware, the yield should be about 8 parts Oxygen to 1 part Hydrogen. This caused me a little confusion when attempting to refuel Hydrolox and ending up with a large oxygen debt, but not too much bother as clearly, Hydrogen can be used instead

Research and Tech was a little ambiguous, and there was some confusion over what tech nodes upgrades which components to what degree (if that even makes sense).

That aside, what did I do?

- I made a Mk2 SSTO with a fusion turboject, that only exploded once or twice, and came in VERY handy for transporting urgent, small amounts of resources or kerbals to/from the orbiting station.

- Fusion powered thermal rockets, with Hydrolox to blast into orbit and Hydrogen for the rest of the way, helped take care of most of the logistics within the Kerbin system.

- More fusion powered thermal rockets to capture Asteroids, to mine for Karborundum and other resources.

Although I've finished the tech tree, I'm using the Outer Planets Mod so I still have a lot of exploring to do, and lots more KSPI stuff to experiment with

Next up I'm going hunting for resources (including antimatter) around this new system, and probably setting up a remote base or station in the best spots. Thanks again!

[raxo2222]

Here is my SSTO going back from moon. It can't perform normal reentry after all - need to brake like there was no atmosphere.

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At least I landed on same continent.

[Nansuchao]

Why a landing like this? Those airbrakes in the front sure don't help, but the plane seems more or less balanced for a normal reentry.

[raxo2222]

Why a landing like this? Those airbrakes in the front sure don't help, but the plane seems more or less balanced for a normal reentry.

It overheats too easily - I use RSS.

Also airbrakes flipped my spaceplane when going at high speed, so I deployed them on landing

[Cosmonauth]

Okay, when it comes to Spaceplanes, or SSTO design, Ill show this one:

It's single Thermal Turbojet engine powered SSTO with Liquid N2 scoops. This craft can reach Kerbin orbit and go back FOR FREE. (if u manage to get it back to KSC). It refuels via scoops, so I don't even have to pay for fuel =_=

For now this thing is not really efficient, I made it for orbital operations like satellite deployment, or rescue missions.

I still have to unlock VASIMR in my career, so this craft waiting for my Duna mission returns with a bunch of science, to get those green kheroes back to Kerbin ground safely, since my interplanetary ship doesn't have any descend module that able to survive Kerbin reentry

[Nansuchao]

It overheats too easily - I use RSS.

Also airbrakes flipped my spaceplane when going at high speed, so I deployed them on landing

I saw that you use RSS, but the plane seems pretty stable. Probably with the correct periapsis, a little more Yaw control and RCS you'll be able (if you want) to re enter normally.

[Bishop149]

3. I made use of Hydrolox quite a lot instead of plain Hydrogen, and when electrolyzing water with the ISRU Refinery I appeared to get twice as much Hydrogen as Oxygen. As far as I'm aware, the yield should be about 8 parts Oxygen to 1 part Hydrogen. This caused me a little confusion when attempting to refuel Hydrolox and ending up with a large oxygen debt, but not too much bother as clearly, Hydrogen can be used instead

Not quite sure how you figure that, the formula of water is H2O . . . twice as many Hydrogen atoms as Oxygen, therefore you will always get 2 units of Hydrogen for every one unit of oxygen from electrolysis of pure water, the ratio can shifts if other electrolytes are added to the water.

I know far less about what happens if you pass Hydrolox through a thermonuclear engine but I would assume it burns . . . which would be the exact opposite reaction Hydrogen and Oxygen would recombine back into water in a ratio off 2:1.

Now (another) question from me:

Is uranium mining broken? Tested it last night once it became apparent my power hungry Minmus water mine (pics below) was burning up its reactor fuel quite quickly! Landed in a hotspot (off center but definitely in it) with a refinery + empty tanks of every Uranium resource I could find, started mining and nowt happened. What resources does the miner extract (or what is it meant to), also I can't get uranium tetrafluoride ammonolysis to work.

Would be nice to be able to mine and convert replacement reactor fuel in situ, any plans to overhaul this system?

Edited August 6, 2015 by Bishop149

[FreeThinker]

Now (another) question from me:

Is uranium mining broken? Tested it last night. . . . landed in a hotspot (off center but definitely in it) with a refinery + empty tanks of every Uranium resource I could find, started mining and nowt happened. What resources does the miner extract (or what is it meant to), also I can't get uranium tetrafluoride ammonolysis to work.

Would be nice to be able to mine and convert replacement reactor fuel in situ, any plans to overhaul this system?

Yes it is broken, I need to fix and eventualy replace it with stock resource gathering. If only I had more time.

- - - Updated - - -

3. I made use of Hydrolox quite a lot instead of plain Hydrogen, and when electrolyzing water with the ISRU Refinery I appeared to get twice as much Hydrogen as Oxygen. As far as I'm aware, the yield should be about 8 parts Oxygen to 1 part Hydrogen. This caused me a little confusion when attempting to refuel Hydrolox and ending up with a large oxygen debt, but not too much bother as clearly, Hydrogen can be used instead

Weird, from my understanding, it would be expecting the opposite which means you produce more Oxygen than Hydogen that can be used for Hydrolox (which runs hydrogen rich). You could verify yourself in the ISRU screen the exact amount of water mass/s used with the amount of Hydrogen + Oxygen. Exces Oxygen is a bigger problem than excess Hydrogen which can be used for many applications. At least in the next update, you can use the Oxygen as a propeland in the MPD thruster, this will be aunique selling point for the MPD in comparison to the VASIMR.

Edited August 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

Okay, when it comes to Spaceplanes, or SSTO design, Ill show this one:

http://i60.tinypic.com/fum3qu.png

It's single Thermal Turbojet engine powered SSTO with Liquid N2 scoops. This craft can reach Kerbin orbit and go back FOR FREE. (if u manage to get it back to KSC). It refuels via scoops, so I don't even have to pay for fuel =_=

For now this thing is not really efficient, I made it for orbital operations like satellite deployment, or rescue missions.

I still have to unlock VASIMR in my career, so this craft waiting for my Duna mission returns with a bunch of science, to get those green kheroes back to Kerbin ground safely, since my interplanetary ship doesn't have any descend module that able to survive Kerbin reentry

Your SSTO is probably the best looking I have seen yet. I would only have replaced the replaceable radiator by static radiators on the wings, but perhaps that will negatively influence the flight characteristics.

Btw, where is the reactor located? I guess it's somewhere inside the main body.

Edited August 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[ABZB]

Yes it is broken, I need to fix and eventualy replace it with stock resource gathering. If only I had more time.

hmmm - how are you considering doing that? Are you going to add KSPI drills or modules?

Looking at the stock drill, the surface resource extraction module has a field for resource-extracted:

ResourceName = Ore

and for what resource is used to drill, just a simple:

		INPUT_RESOURCE
		{
			ResourceName = ElectricCharge
			Ratio = 15
		}

For my own current game (I am using the New Horizons pack) I added several converters to the stock ISRU to pull the basic KSPI (all regularly minable stuff) from Ore, at reasonable rates.

For a true release, I would think that the following should be done, in order to have variety among planets without ridiculously large menus or parts.

1) Add a few new Ore types, with each type being proccessable into a different 'class' of products - for example, one type would be needed for metals, say for example lithium, Aluminium, & Uranium, one for the various gases generally extractable from rock (say CO(2), O2, H2...), one for the very light elements for fusion (H2 (again), He3, He4, the new Boron thing, I guess, maybe lithium here also or only...).

There might be sufficient CRP ore-types to satisfy this in the first place...

This way planets with explicit resources can have or not have various (surface) resource classes in various amounts, and Global_Resource nodes can throw those in randomly for any planet packs.

2) Add [stock] modules to the stock drill to extract the different ore types

3) Add [in-code? KSPI] modules to the KSPI ISRU to extract the various elements from the various ores.

4) Add scansat support for the ores

5) The 2.5 meter and the 3.75 meter ISRUs would now be the same, so to re-differentiate them, perhaps the 3.75 one can be given a bonus to its processing.

I guess I could do all of those relatively easily, except for 3), as that would presumably be part of the KSPI pop-up window.

If you confirm that this plan sounds good, I could get to work on the rest of them

[FreeThinker]

VASMIR is nice if you want to fly to moon in less than one day.

http://imgur.com/a/8yWio

Nice tech demo

The VASMIR can rightfully be said the be the jack of all trades as it can fullfill a wide variable of missions, but it is not best solution for specialised tasks. Every Propulsion method has it's pro's and cons, non is superior to the other in every way, they all have their purpose.

- - - Updated - - -

hmmm - how are you considering doing that? Are you going to add KSPI drills or modules?

Looking at the stock drill, the surface resource extraction module has a field for resource-extracted:

ResourceName = Ore

and for what resource is used to drill, just a simple:

        INPUT_RESOURCE
        {
            ResourceName = ElectricCharge
            Ratio = 15
        }

For my own current game (I am using the New Horizons pack) I added several converters to the stock ISRU to pull the basic KSPI (all regularly minable stuff) from Ore, at reasonable rates.

Perhaps you can send me what you have, then I can integrate it into KSPI

Edited August 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

Thanks

Looks like Vista has nice 6 digit ISP if you burn as slow as you can:

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So what are specializations, that each engine type excel at?

Thermal Nozzle: Heavy lifting.

Thermal Turbojet: Atmospheric exploration.

Atilla: honestly don't know lol - it had high trust, but low ISP. Maybe first generation electrical engine?

MPD: Good for high DV budget missions.

VASMIR: Even higher ISP than MPD and probably can go to Venus/Titan and back with atmospheric scoops.

Quantum Vacuum - Emergency/efficiency mode for MPD.

Magnetic nozzle - orbital operations.

VISTA - same as above but with higher efficiency.

Right?

Edit: MPD engine can be resized to 20 meters. Is that intentional? This big engine can consume up to 51.2 TW of power....

Edited August 6, 2015 by raxo2222

[yafeshan]

KSPI-E engine types are quite balanced. you can build a really versatile vessel with them. That low thrust Vista deltaV was a thing since it was introduced first time. My favorite is thermal turbojet. It has no rival for atmospheric flight and if you can supply enough power that engine can reach LKO with a little extra fuel. It has awesome ISP considering its thrust potential.

[ABZB]

uploaded to my dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8613vowon38jpf/KSPIISRU.cfg?dl=0

EDIT:

The above is my stock-ISRU integration patch for KSPI.

Edited August 6, 2015 by ABZB

[Kielm]

Not quite sure how you figure that, the formula of water is H2O . . . twice as many Hydrogen atoms as Oxygen, therefore you will always get 2 units of Hydrogen for every one unit of oxygen from electrolysis of pure water, the ratio can shifts if other electrolytes are added to the water.

I know far less about what happens if you pass Hydrolox through a thermonuclear engine but I would assume it burns . . . which would be the exact opposite reaction Hydrogen and Oxygen would recombine back into water in a ratio off 2:1.

It's true that water is 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen, but by mass, the atomic weight of hydrogen is ~1, and oxygen is ~16. As it is a 2:1 ratio this becomes 2:16, or 1:8. So in number of molecules, you're right, but as oxygen is 16x more massive than hydrogen, you would get far more oxygen (by mass) from this reaction.

Put another way, an exaggerated water atom could be represented by two golf balls and one bowling ball.

@freethinker, I will double check my water electrolysis tonight and confirm either way

[FreeThinker]

Thanks

So what are specializations, that each engine type excel at?

Thermal Nozzle: Heavy lifting.

Thermal Turbojet: Atmospheric exploration.

Atilla: honestly don't know lol - it had high trust, but low ISP. Maybe first generation electrical engine?

MPD: Good for high DV budget missions.

VASMIR: Even higher ISP than MPD and probably can go to Venus/Titan and back with atmospheric scoops.

Quantum Vacuum - Emergency/efficiency mode for MPD.

Magnetic nozzle - orbital operations.

VISTA - same as above but with higher efficiency.

Right?

Edit: MPD engine can be resized to 20 meters. Is that intentional? This big engine can consume up to 51.2 TW of power....

More or less Correct , but notice the ATILA is much more efficient than the VASIMR at low ISP . ATILA is 89% efficient while VASIMIR is only 30% efficient . This effectively means that ATILA has almost 3 times the thrust (and 3 times less wasteheat) as VASIMR and is also significantly smaller lighter. Atilla is also available early, and requires less power than it's more advanced succesors. They can be used for some resious heavy lifting if you got the power.

Also notice Magnetic nozzle have the advantage that it doesn't require amount large wasteheat management and won't kill any nearby crew on other vessels

Edited August 6, 2015 by FreeThinker

[Trolllception]

How should the mod be used with MK2 parts and interstellar fuel types? Do I need to use the circular interstellar tanks included or is there a way to fuel my mk2 body with hydrazine for example? I have interstellar fuel switch and the core installed. Or is there a mod pack which contains compatible mk2 fuel tanks?

[FreeThinker]

Thanks

Looks like Vista has nice 6 digit ISP if you burn as slow as you can:

http://imgur.com/a/uJuRu

Do notice, it doesn't take into account the fuel mass required for electric power. So the reals Isp will be significantly less at higher Isp.

[Bishop149]

It's true that water is 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen, but by mass, the atomic weight of hydrogen is ~1, and oxygen is ~16. As it is a 2:1 ratio this becomes 2:16, or 1:8. So in number of molecules, you're right, but as oxygen is 16x more massive than hydrogen, you would get far more oxygen (by mass) from this reaction.

Put another way, an exaggerated water atom could be represented by two golf balls and one bowling ball.

@freethinker, I will double check my water electrolysis tonight and confirm either way

Ah I see, are you suggesting that the relative masses in KSPI-E are incorrect? That the resulting Hydrogen masses more than the Oxygen?

The electrolysis of water should not change the mass of your vessel, the water should mass exactly the same as the resulting Hyrdogen and Oxygen, are you noticing this isn't the case?

[Cosmonauth]

Your SSTO is probably the best looking I have seen yet. I would only have replaced the replaceable radiator by static radiators on the wings, but perhaps that will negatively influence the flight characteristics.

Btw, where is the reactor located? I guess it's somewhere inside the main body.

as you can see, there are two cargo bays. First (lesser one), is pure utility: it contains science equipment, life support, small payload, etc

second (bigger one) is where reactor and generator located.

[Weywot8]

Now (another) question from me:

Is uranium mining broken? Tested it last night once it became apparent my power hungry Minmus water mine (pics below) was burning up its reactor fuel quite quickly! Landed in a hotspot (off center but definitely in it) with a refinery + empty tanks of every Uranium resource I could find, started mining and nowt happened. What resources does the miner extract (or what is it meant to), also I can't get uranium tetrafluoride ammonolysis to work.

Would be nice to be able to mine and convert replacement reactor fuel in situ, any plans to overhaul this system?

You could try using the appropriate MKS/OKS drill part in the meantime. I think they use the same CRP uranium resource but happy to be corrected.

[FreeThinker]

as you can see, there are two cargo bays. First (lesser one), is pure utility: it contains science equipment, life support, small payload, etc

second (bigger one) is where reactor and generator located.

Interesting, could you open it up so I can take a better look inside and post some pictures?