KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[raxo2222]

21 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Indeed, we could allow the radiator max temperate follow radiator temperature, that way, if you radiators max temperature increases, the maximum part temperature should follow. If you put the same part in a space place, it would effectively do the same.

 

That would be pretty awesome way to reenter - you just would glide at 5 - 10 pitch and let atmosphere slow you, even if you heat up to 3000 K - 3500 K. And land, when you still are 500 - 1000 K hot.

And are there any materials that could hold together at 3500 K for long time?

 

Edited May 18, 2016 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

11 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

That would be pretty awesome way to reenter - you just would glide at 5 - 10 pitch and let atmosphere slow you, even if you heat up to 3000 K - 3500 K.

And are there any materials that could hold together at 3500 K for long time?

 

 graphite can heat up to 3700 K before it melts. I though the tiles under the space shuttle was also mad of this material

the is also some stuff  called "tantalum hafnium carbide" (4215 K) , which can be put into a ceramic tile

I though the space shuttle use high temperature tile but it turn out the tiles of the space shuttle can only heat up to 1260 C.

Strangly, nobody is interested in using it to product space place, on the other hand, there are some ideas of using it in nuclear engines, allowing it to reach higher temperatures

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Table]

The quantum singularity reactor, it looks exactly like the 3.75M ISRU.

just a suggestion, but maybe you can change the model?

[ShadyAct]

9 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

What bug?

I referred to my installation giving me 44% for the radius modifier when the sizes match as a bug. I'm not a programmer so I may be using the wrong terminology.

[Rushligh]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

 graphite can heat up to 3700 K before it melts. I though the tiles under the space shuttle was also mad of this material

the is also some stuff  called "tantalum hafnium carbide" (4215 K) , which can be put into a ceramic tile

I though the space shuttle use high temperature tile but it turn out the tiles of the space shuttle can only heat up to 1260 C.

Strangly, nobody is interested in using it to product space place, on the other handle, the are some ideas of using it in nuclear engines, allowing it to reach higher temperatures

did i hear something about even higher hear nuclear engines

also, just a though, you might want to consider making an inline radiator/thermal pipe/PRECOOLER part. yes, precooler. i tried making one my self my sticking the graphine radiator and thermal transfer modules inside the mk4 expansions precooler (and raised its max temp to 2800). it keeps the thermal rocket/thermal jet nice and cool on atmosphere. im not very well versed in all this stuff, but there's something about having an air intake and radiator in the form of a pre-cooler that SIGNIFICANTLY improves the performance of atmospheric thermal jets, also make for nice streamlined SSTOs.

 

 

[SciMan]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Weird, I can't see any difference with the existing code. Are you sure this is the fixed MM script?

I'm sure that's the fixed script, but I just checked my copy of the 1.8.18 zip file and the patch is in fact there as it should be. I guess there wasn't any problem after all.

There's only one bug from my last post that you didn't mention. The Antimatter Collector part has a valid category defined in its config (utility), and I have unlocked it's node in the tech tree.
The problem is that I can't find it in the VAB or SPH part lists unless I use the search box and type in "antimatter collector". None of the custom categories display the part. Furthermore, I can't even find it in the category that it's config says it should be in.

This one's got me stumped. I have no idea what could be causing this. If it's a mistake in a config file, I don't know where I should be looking, or what to look for.

I would really like to be able to find this part quicker, but I guess I could deal with this bug so long as it doesn't get any worse.

Edited May 18, 2016 by SciMan

[Mine_Turtle]

Could anyone give me some hints on how to manage nuclear ramjet, please? I am trying to design a ssto craft around this engine to allow me cheap means of going into orbit, however this part is extremely hot and all of my attempts fail because the part attached directly to the reactor(inline radiator) explodes from internal overheating. I have more than enough radiators to keep waste heat inline, however internal heating prevents me from reaching mach 4 at 25km.

Currently, I have only first heat management tech unlocked. Will unlocking heat techs further the tree help in any way?

One thing I noticed is that reactor temp(2.7k) is equal to part temp, so 2.7k transfers to nearest attached part heating and melting it. Should not reactor core temperature be handled separately from part temp?

Edited May 19, 2016 by Mine_Turtle

[Starwaster]

9 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

 graphite can heat up to 3700 K before it melts. I though the tiles under the space shuttle was also mad of this material

the is also some stuff  called "tantalum hafnium carbide" (4215 K) , which can be put into a ceramic tile

I though the space shuttle use high temperature tile but it turn out the tiles of the space shuttle can only heat up to 1260 C.

Strangly, nobody is interested in using it to product space place, on the other handle, the are some ideas of using it in nuclear engines, allowing it to reach higher temperatures

Just having a high melting point is not enough to make a suitable protection system for a space plane. You have to take into account its other thermal properties and other properties. (conductivity, specific heat, density, etc) 

Can it be made into a lightweight material? Remember that in everyone's space programs today, you have weight considerations. Increasing space plane mass means decreasing its payload. (THC is about 7x denser than silica glass that the shuttle tiles were made of. Just comparing raw materials here, not final product)

And did you check the price tag on the material you're talking about? Just to manufacture it: $9,540/kg. That's almost as much as to manufacture and install shuttle tiles per m². (which works out to about ~$562 per kg of shuttle tile)

So you've got price and most likely mass working against you and you still don't really know if it's a suitable TPS material. It's probably something better off being used as engine components.

 

[FreeThinker]

8 hours ago, Mine_Turtle said:

Could anyone give me some hints on how to manage nuclear ramjet, please? I am trying to design a ssto craft around this engine to allow me cheap means of going into orbit, however this part is extremely hot and all of my attempts fail because the part attached directly to the reactor(inline radiator) explodes from internal overheating. I have more than enough radiators to keep waste heat inline, however internal heating prevents me from reaching mach 4 at 25km.

Currently, I have only first heat management tech unlocked. Will unlocking heat techs further the tree help in any way?

One thing I noticed is that reactor temp(2.7k) is equal to part temp, so 2.7k transfers to nearest attached part heating and melting it. Should not reactor core temperature be handled separately from part temp?

The rediator techs unlocks more advanced radiators and allows them to reach higher temperatures, but it does not affect precoolers.

The nuclear turbojet has build in cooling functionality which should the air intakes attached to the reactor cool.  Could you post a pic of your vessel?

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Mine_Turtle]

56 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

The rediator techs unlocks more advanced radiators and allows them to reach higher temperatures, but it does not affect precoolers.

The nuclear turbojet has build in cooling functionality which should the air intakes attached to the reactor cool.  Could you post a pic of your vessel?

Sure, here is the link: http://imgur.com/a/FRPZo

As you can see on the first picture the nuclear ramjet is attached to inline radiator. During take-off and initial climb the air flow is not high enough for the ramjet to work at full power, so the reactor core temperature is manageable. However, once I reach high altitude and speed reactor starts working at full power and reaches its specified core temperature of 2.7k. The way heat mechanics work is the internal temperature of reactor/engine transfers to the adjacent part, which is inline radiator. Radiator is unable to radiate(there is almost no convection at high altitude) 600MW so it slowly melts down.

I have checked if similar issue exists with reactors in general. Quick test on runway with AM reactor, showed that adjacent parts are not heated at all while reactor is able to produce GW of power. Moreover, only ramjet has parameter "Core Temp", while AM reactor does not. And this core temp is equal to part internal temp(you can see it in right-click menu if you enable temperature parameters in debug menu).

It is definitely not the problem with engine precoolers as though engine does overheat it overheat slower than radiator melts down and my plane splits in half.

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, Mine_Turtle said:

Sure, here is the link: http://imgur.com/a/FRPZo

As you can see on the first picture the nuclear ramjet is attached to inline radiator. During take-off and initial climb the air flow is not high enough for the ramjet to work at full power, so the reactor core temperature is manageable. However, once I reach high altitude and speed reactor starts working at full power and reaches its specified core temperature of 2.7k. The way heat mechanics work is the internal temperature of reactor/engine transfers to the adjacent part, which is inline radiator. Radiator is unable to radiate(there is almost no convection at high altitude) 600MW so it slowly melts down.

I have checked if similar issue exists with reactors in general. Quick test on runway with AM reactor, showed that adjacent parts are not heated at all while reactor is able to produce GW of power. Moreover, only ramjet has parameter "Core Temp", while AM reactor does not. And this core temp is equal to part internal temp(you can see it in right-click menu if you enable temperature parameters in debug menu).

It is definitely not the problem with engine precoolers as though engine does overheat it overheat slower than radiator melts down and my plane splits in half.

Understand that the number of air pre-coolers must exceed or match the number of air intakes, exceptions are radialy attached intakes which count for half and the air intake directly connected to a nuclear turbojet/ramjet. In the picture, I noticed the top air intakes are missing air pre-coolers. I therefore expect overheating and the plane to break up at high speed

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

13 hours ago, Table said:

The quantum singularity reactor, it looks exactly like the 3.75M ISRU.

just a suggestion, but maybe you can change the model?

You are correct, it is the same model. My plan is to give the KSPI IRSU Refinary another model, most likely the stock ISRU model. The KSPI Resource collectors will move to the stock drills.

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Mine_Turtle]

55 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Notice the number of air intakes must exceed or match the number of air intakes , exceptions are radialy attached intakes which count for half and the air intake directly connected to a nuclear turbojet. In the picture, I notice the tope air intakes are missing air coolers. I therefore expect overheating and the plane to break up at high speed

According to part description it should have a built in precooler, so I have tried to close other intakes. Same result.

I have unlocked shock cones and stock precoolers and tried flying with them. Same result - inline radiator overheats because of engine and plane splits in half.

You can have a look at my plane and her flight here: http://imgur.com/a/49HyJ No matter how many precoolers I have the engine keeps overheating and melting attached parts. Conduction flux to radiator is around 3.8kW

Note: I have double checked parts and I do not have any other intakes except those 4 intakes with precoolers and one in the engine. As I understand in this configuration engine should not overheat at all. But it does.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Mine_Turtle

[FreeThinker]

44 minutes ago, Mine_Turtle said:

According to part description it should have a built in precooler, so I have tried to close other intakes. Same result.

I have unlocked shock cones and stock precoolers and tried flying with them. Same result - inline radiator overheats because of engine and plane splits in half.

You can have a look at my plane and her flight here: http://imgur.com/a/49HyJ No matter how many precoolers I have the engine keeps overheating and melting attached parts. Conduction flux to radiator is around 3.8kW

Note: I have double checked parts and I do not have any other intakes except those 4 intakes with precoolers and one in the engine. As I understand in this configuration engine should not overheat at all. But it does.

Wait a second, I see the inline radiator has a maximum temperature of 1250K. Of cource this part will overheat and rip your vessel in halp. The question is, why is it only 1250K while it should at least be double.

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[theunbeliever]

Got a couple of bugs for you.  At least two of the KSPI-E engines won't vector with yaw controls.  They'll vector with pitch/rotate controls, but won't respond to yaw.  I had the problem in .17 and just updated to .18 with no improvement.  So far I've had the problem with the Thermal Launch Nozzle and the Closed-Cycle Gas Core engine.  Very hard to launch rockets with this issue.  I tested this on a development build with no other mods and still had it.

The other bug has something to do with TweakScale.  I wanted to see if I could make a small plasma engine plane, so I used TweakScale to size down a molten salt reactor + thermal generator to 1.25 meter size, switched propellent to liquid fuel and launched it.  Engine on, receiving MW, but won't use fuel or provide thrust.  The exact same setup works if I scale the reactor/thermal generator to their starting size.  The scaled-down plane works with the ATTILA thruster.  This bug is localized to my in-progress save.  I don't really know anything about editing save files, though.  Is there any advice you might give to fix this? Or should I post this to another section of the forum?

Please tell me if there's any other information you need from me that might help.

[Mine_Turtle]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

Wait a second, I see the inline radiator has a maximum temperature of 1250K. Of cource this part will overheat and rip your vessel in halp. The question is, why is it only 1250K while it should at least be double.

That's a good question, however increasing radiators internal temp limit is not going to solve the main issue of engine overheating. Even if radiator can match temp parameter, temperature is going to spread and overheat next adjacent part. In fact there was a simple mk2 decoupler instead of inline radiator, which overheated even faster.

The solution I see(if this is an actual problem and not my misunderstanding of game mechanics) is make nuclear ramjet(and other nuclear jets) to behave similar to stock parts. Most parts in the game have internal temp in the range of 1k+-250. Engine should only start heating when at high air speeds unless you have precoolers, similar to how rapiers or sabres behave. However, the engine has nuclear reactor as well which should be governed by waste heat mechanics. So, basically, you have two separate temperatures for the part: internal temp, which depends on air speed and is governed stock heat system, and core temperature, which does not affect(or affects once you do not have enough radiators to remove waste heat) internal temperature and is governed by waste heat mechanic. This would make sense from the perspective of game mechanics: you have a real engine part  with stock heat and a virtual reactor part with waste heat, managed by radiators, and unless you have enough of them and waste heat reaches maximum limit, the reactor is not going to increase internal temperature of the engine part. From physics perspective it should make sense as well: engine and reactor parts are connected only through pipe where cold-hot air circulates. Reactor has shielding which is connected to radiators and unless those radiators cant handle the heat the engine part should not get heated by reactor core.

See this picture for reference:

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, theunbeliever said:

The other bug has something to do with TweakScale.  I wanted to see if I could make a small plasma engine plane, so I used TweakScale to size down a molten salt reactor + thermal generator to 1.25 meter size, switched propellent to liquid fuel and launched it.  Engine on, receiving MW, but won't use fuel or provide thrust.  The exact same setup works if I scale the reactor/thermal generator to their starting size.  The scaled-down plane works with the ATTILA thruster.  This bug is localized to my in-progress save.  I don't really know anything about editing save files, though.  Is there any advice you might give to fix this? Or should I post this to another section of the forum?

Please tell me if there's any other information you need from me that might help.

Weird, I don't understand what might be wrong but you can help me find out by making a few screens with the info screen open. specificly the reactor part itself and KSPI power screen

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

26 minutes ago, Mine_Turtle said:

That's a good question, however increasing radiators internal temp limit is not going to solve the main issue of engine overheating. Even if radiator can match temp parameter, temperature is going to spread and overheat next adjacent part. In fact there was a simple mk2 decoupler instead of inline radiator, which overheated even faster.

Well the radiator job is find the hotest part and keep it cool. If the radiator is allowed to have a higher maximum temperature, overheating issues elsewhere, including simple mk2 decoupples should get less op a problem

[Mine_Turtle]

Another question I have: what is the purpose of reactors apart for generating extreme amount of power for propulsion. Most of energy consumers in the game operate in the range of kW with the exception of some KSPI ISRU processes requiring up to 50MW. Even counting UKS colonies modules one upgraded nuclear reactor is enough to power most of components in the game, so great reactor potential is wasted unless used for propulsion. 

Would it be possible to make an option to increase power requirements for some modules like stock ISRU or even collaborate with authors of other mods(like UKS or Remotech) to increase power requirements for parts or even add upgraded version of existing parts that have better characteristics but have insane power requirements(like entire system antenna with 0 delay or super ISRU). Right now the new singularity reactor feels limited in usefulness.

[FreeThinker]

32 minutes ago, Mine_Turtle said:

Another question I have: what is the purpose of reactors apart for generating extreme amount of power for propulsion. Most of energy consumers in the game operate in the range of kW with the exception of some KSPI ISRU processes requiring up to 50MW. Even counting UKS colonies modules one upgraded nuclear reactor is enough to power most of components in the game, so great reactor potential is wasted unless used for propulsion. 

Would it be possible to make an option to increase power requirements for some modules like stock ISRU or even collaborate with authors of other mods(like UKS or Remotech) to increase power requirements for parts or even add upgraded version of existing parts that have better characteristics but have insane power requirements(like entire system antenna with 0 delay or super ISRU). Right now the new singularity reactor feels limited in usefulness.

There aren't many applications that require high amount of power besides propulsion and IRSU. THe only addition I'm planning is that going to add which very high amount of power is the plasma particle accelerator  but I guess that could be considered an IRSU as well. The only other possible application I can think of is powerfull search light to light up the dark side of a moon or high power weaponry. like a big cutting laser to slice up incomming space debris, small astroids or incomming hostile rockets. Of cource, excess power also always be send to other vessels, or perhaps to kerbin for civilian usage. Of cource you have to aim right or you will 'accidenly' microwave a city or forrest

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Mine_Turtle]

20 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

There aren't many applications that require high amount of power besides propulsion and IRSU. THe only addition I'm planning is that going to add which very high amount of power is the plasma particle accelerator  but I guess that could be considered an IRSU as well. The only other possible application I can think of is powerfull search light to light up the dark side of a moon or high power weaponry. like a big cutting laser to slice up incomming space debris, small astroids or incomming hostile rockets. Of cource, excess power also always be send to other vessels, or perhaps to kerbin for civilian usage

Mircowave transmitters can count as cutting lasers, increase power and you can make a tunnel in the moon.

Actually I have an interesting idea: how about matter manipulation?  Since quantum singularity reactor is in the game why not take this one step further and allow matter manipulation: create new matter from existing or even form matter from energy(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_creation)? Matter conversion can be used to change any type of resource into another, specifically it can be used to convert ore/fuel into rocket parts to build ships with EL or convert one type of fuel into another. Alternatively, energy to matter conversion can suit the same purpose but use only GW for that. While somewhat unrealistic and undoubtedly inefficient it can be fun to mine Jool atmo to produce space probes.

 

So, what can be done about my problem with inline radiator and nuclear ramjet? Should I add change the radiator max temp or add more radiators to my design? I already have more radiators than thermal helper suggests.

 

[FreeThinker]

16 minutes ago, Mine_Turtle said:

Mircowave transmitters can count as cutting lasers, increase power and you can make a tunnel in the moon.

Actually I have an interesting idea: how about matter manipulation?  Since quantum singularity reactor is in the game why not take this one step further and allow matter manipulation: create new matter from existing or even form matter from energy(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_creation)? Matter conversion can be used to change any type of resource into another, specifically it can be used to convert ore/fuel into rocket parts to build ships with EL or convert one type of fuel into another. Alternatively, energy to matter conversion can suit the same purpose but use only GW for that. While somewhat unrealistic and undoubtedly inefficient it can be fun to mine Jool atmo to produce space probes.

Well that what the particle accelerator is for, convert light molecules into havier molecules. The exsiting Quantime Singularty Reacor alrady can do this. You can switch to differnt modes which allows you to create heavier molecules from more basic molecules. But I want the Particle Accelerator to specialise in this taks. Give you aa good reason to breing this thing into space

Edited May 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[hirschhornsalz]

The gimbal on the lightbulb engine seems to be locked in the yaw-direction, no matter what the control switch sasy. Is this intentional?

[ss8913]

21 hours ago, Table said:

The quantum singularity reactor, it looks exactly like the 3.75M ISRU.

just a suggestion, but maybe you can change the model?

The description in VAB/SPH also still has the ISRU description

Has anyone had any luck getting the new Throttle Controlled Avionics to work with KSPIE's engines and RCS?  Before 1.1.x, the old version with the much-simpler UI, worked great with KSPIE.  The new version (for either 1.0 or 1.1) does not seem to understand how to balance engines or deal with RCS in most cases.. and sometimes throws RCSWrapper.init exceptions... I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or what.  Anyone else have any luck here?  I've reported this on the TCA thread and sent them logs, but that was a couple days ago and nobody's replied to the thread since, so not sure what's going on.  Making spaceplane ops very difficult though ><

[theunbeliever]

8 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Weird, I don't understand what might be wrong but you can help me find out by making a few screens with the info screen open. specificly the reactor part itself and KSPI power screen

Absolutely.  I'm going to give you a link to a zip file with several screenshots (can't figure out how to upload them here and imgur won't let me upload because file sizes are too big).  The first proves that I have enough radiators, the second is the reactor info window, showing that it's generating power, the third is the thermal generator, fourth and fifth are the engine itself, one after just activating and the other after activating and timewarping a couple hours.  As you can see, the engine has everything it needs, it just refuses to consume fuel for some odd reason.

https://mega.nz/#!npY2haAR!1xHQS7pdRyHrTDW1xNG_lj68z7yJH1Lb5bG2lBpROno

5 hours ago, hirschhornsalz said:

The gimbal on the lightbulb engine seems to be locked in the yaw-direction, no matter what the control switch sasy. Is this intentional?

Glad to see this is not localized to my install.  Try the thermal launch nozzle, has the same problem for me.