KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[DoubleUU]

12 hours ago, ss8913 said:

 

here's a pic of that ship I was referencing... there's 3, kinda 4 stages here.. the very bottom is an antimatter powered disposable thermal launch rocket stage that can get this whole thing to orbit with authority.  Up from that is a kontainer of materialkits needed to inflate the hab ring.  Above that and hard to see here is the lander probe that it comes with by default, and above that is the main ship.  I've opened the OPT cargo bays so you can see what's inside, plus the two dorsal docking ports near the cockpit.

That's huge!  Very cool.

[FreeThinker]

8 hours ago, ss8913 said:

@FreeThinker I noticed that the resistojet RCS modules now allow CompressedAir as a resource - but I can't find any way to generate this resource.  Just putting intakes on the craft doesn't do it... is there a new air compressor part that I'm not seeing?

I was planning to add it to some parts but I forgot all about it. Will fix it next version

[FreeThinker]

On 1-3-2017 at 1:39 PM, ss8913 said:

 

Well that a remarkable design to say the least. I have a few questions

In the middle, below the ring I think I see an open cycle gas core reactor. I assume this reactor is for stanby power and to charge the Quantum Singuality Reactors.

First, I was wondering why you choose this reactor when you could have used an  aneutronic Tri Alpha Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor , which uses very little power when standby and thanks to it a neutron property has long lifetime.

Second, why do you need 2 quantum singuality reactors. It's hard for me to see what size they are but why not scale them up? Or was the 20m diameter too small for you?

Third, aren't those umbrella radiators slowing you down like crazy making the vessel unstable?

 

[ss8913]

4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Well that a remarkable design to say the least. I have a few questions

In the middle, below the ring I think I see an open cycle gas core reactor. I assume this reactor is for stanby power and to charge the Quantum Singuality Reactors.

First, I was wondering why you choose this reactor when you could have used an  aneutronic Tri Alpha Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor , which uses very little power when standby and thanks to it a neutron property has long lifetime.

Second, why do you need 2 quantum singuality reactors. It's hard for me to see what size they are but why not scale them up? Or was the 20m diameter too small for you?

Third, aren't those umbrella radiators slowing you down like crazy making the vessel unstable?

 

because any fusion reactor requires external power for plasma heating, so I use a long-life fission reactor.  I'm actually kind of confused as to why a QSR can't power itself in that regard after it's started.. I should only need the fission reactor to *start* the fusion reactors, in my opinion, but you know more about this stuff than I do... can you explain why this is?
One of those things wasn't sufficient to power a warp drive of that size at > 1.00c - so I'm using two.  Also for design redundancy.  I didn't want to increase the weight any more, either, and a 20m weighs more than those 2 put together and puts out significantly more wasteheat.
The umbrella radiators are only an issue in the atmosphere.  The only time this thing is in the atmosphere is when it's being launched, and the disposable launch stage has more than enough thrust to overpower the drag (seriously this thing accelerates at 3g from launch, at 4700t).

It's technically SSTO capable; remove the launch stage and those plasma engines will get it off the ground and into orbit, but then I've burned a ton of fuel and need to send up a resupply ship, so I just added the disposable launch stage at the bottom to get around that.  Building it in orbit is also possible but getting 1.5 *million* materialKits into orbit and docked with the factory is also a bit of an issue, so the launch stage also gets around *that*.

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, ss8913 said:

 I'm actually kind of confused as to why a QSR can't power itself in that regard after it's started.. I should only need the fission reactor to *start* the fusion reactors, in my opinion, but you know more about this stuff than I do... can you explain why this is?

 

1

1

Well one key characteristic of Tiny black holes is that you need to continuously feed them or they dissipate. Sometimes, like when your in orbit for standby operations, you just need to minimize power output, to minimize resource consumption or when you want to conserve propellant by drifting to your destination. The Tri Alpha, thanks to it inertial fusion characteristic can deliver power on demand at lower levels or non at all and therefore can conserve the maximum amount of fuel. Combined with the fact that it doesn't embrittle itself very much, they can literally run for ages.

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, ss8913 said:

One of those things wasn't sufficient to power a warp drive of that size at > 1.00c - so I'm using two.  Also for design redundancy.  I didn't want to increase the weight any more, either, and a 20m weighs more than those 2 put together and puts out significantly more wasteheat.
 

 

 

2

Note that tweakscale allows you to rescale to any size within it range, so also between 10m and 20m. Also note that due to it mass scaling (exponent 2.5), a single reactor scaled to the right size is more efficient then 2 separate reactor with an equivalent combined power output. In other words, the bigger, the more mass efficient they become...

Edited March 3, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Sweetie bot]

Hello everyone!

 I like play in  the career mode, and I like make thing both cheep and Multifunctional.

Afther continuous development for the Solid Core ，I was figout this engile have some  real high  cost performance than other, And it's very light

One basic NTR engine with Thermal generator， two mid-size radiator and two Arc engine. Than I  get a Transporter That  Have 10000m/s DV but only cost 35000!

This Transporter also have ability to work in high trust or high isp.  And the work mass just some Hydrogen and oxygen, that easy refill by water ice. 

Because the High TWR I can also use it as lander just need add some landing leg.

If you need more, just add more work mass or advanced electric propulsion system.

http://imgur.com/z85V2t0

It mean I can just use the base NTR to get every plant   [was that to OP?]

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Sweetie bot
Change pic

[DoubleUU]

The reaction animation in my QSR's is black.  Isn't it supposed to be blue?

I'm also having some issues setting up a beamed power network.  I have a satellite transmitting 20GW using a Gyrotron and a large multi-bandwidth dish transceiver.  I have another satellite with just a Gyrotron and another large multi-bandwidth dish transceiver which is orbiting just a few km from the power satellite.  If I activate the receiver I get a bunch of power and it shows I'm connected to satellites 1/2 (I have a ground power station too).  If i deactivate the receiver and link for relay it shows satellites connected 0/2 and I'm getting no power input.  Am I doing something wrong?

Edited March 3, 2017 by DoubleUU
Clarity

[FreeThinker]

10 hours ago, DoubleUU said:

The reaction animation in my QSR's is black.

 

No, black holes are perfect black bodies, but perhaps I don't fully understand, could you post a screen dump?

[DoubleUU]

4 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

... could you post a screen dump?

 

Sure.  This is an image of a QSR running from earlier in this thread with blue squigglies:

 

 

This is what my running QSR looks like with black squigglies which are hard to make out (imgur always makes my images really dark, not sure why) but clearly they are not blue:

 

P.S.  I'm just curious but why doesn't the Tri-alpha scale past 5m?  I had expected I would need a 10m reactor to start a 10m QSR but obviously this works.

Edited March 3, 2017 by DoubleUU

[FreeThinker]

24 minutes ago, DoubleUU said:

 

Sure.  This is an image of a QSR running from earlier in this thread with blue squigglies:

 

 

This is what my running QSR looks like with black squigglies which are hard to make out (imgur always makes my images really dark, not sure why) but clearly they are not blue:

 

P.S.  I'm just curious but why doesn't the Tri-alpha scale past 5m?  I had expected I would need a 10m reactor to start a 10m QSR but obviously this works.

The first picture looks perfectly as it should be, the darkness second picture is probably caused by shadows

[DoubleUU]

39 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

The first picture looks perfectly as it should be, the darkness second picture is probably caused by shadows

That's what I thought, the first picture is what it should look like but it doesn't.  The second picture doesn't look nearly as dark on my PC.  I've tried to lighten it up.  The moving animated lines are black not blue.  Here is a brighter picture in direct sunlight:

 

EDIT:  Here's an animated .gif: http://imgur.com/a/RdZZb

 

 

 

Maybe I'm missing a texture file somehow?

Edited March 3, 2017 by DoubleUU
Added gif

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, DoubleUU said:

That's what I thought, the first picture is what it should look like but it doesn't.  The second picture doesn't look nearly as dark on my PC.  I've tried to lighten it up.  The moving animated lines are black not blue.  Here is a brighter picture in direct sunlight:

 

EDIT:  Here's an animated .gif: http://imgur.com/a/RdZZb

 

 

 

Maybe I'm missing a texture file somehow?

 

Seems more like some graphics engine / graphics driver issue. What kind of videocard do you have?

[DoubleUU]

3 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Seems more like some graphics engine / graphics driver issue. What kind of videocard do you have?

 

GTX 1080 with the latest drivers (updated about a week ago) on Windows 10 64-bit.

 

[brygun]

Hello,

 

Im trying to sort out an issue with mods Im new too of which this is one. If there is a better thread please direct me there.

 

The particular issue has to do with the sudden loss of Liquid Hydrogen while in high time warp. The fuel tank being used is an "Interstellar Liquid Fuel Tank X24". I am not sure if it is from this mod. I am also using Interstellar fuel switch and a cyrogenic engine. My craft has had a few power arrangements that show good levels of electrical power even in high time warp. Then suddenly I get a slew of loss of liquid hydrogen even though the electical power is still showing okay. We are talking about losing 75% or more of the tank contents making the mission a no-go. One ship configuation had deployed solar panels while today's test had an Umbra Space  Industries nuclear reactor for power humming along. In both cases I was at the keyboard seeing electcial power bar was staying high while the liquid hydrogen wiffed away.

 

I am currently suspecting that in high warp the game code sequence of liquid hydrogen is firing off every X clock ticks while the electrical power update is every Y clicks. Thus if Y is much greater than X there would be times on the short clock ticks electrical power would be computed as depleted yet on the Y click it sees enough power so keeps the user interface bar up high.

 

Any suggestion on how to resolve this, or if this should be in a different thread, are appreciated.

[Nansuchao]

3 minutes ago, brygun said:

Hello,

 

Im trying to sort out an issue with mods Im new too of which this is one. If there is a better thread please direct me there.

 

The particular issue has to do with the sudden loss of Liquid Hydrogen while in high time warp. The fuel tank being used is an "Interstellar Liquid Fuel Tank X24". I am not sure if it is from this mod. I am also using Interstellar fuel switch and a cyrogenic engine. My craft has had a few power arrangements that show good levels of electrical power even in high time warp. Then suddenly I get a slew of loss of liquid hydrogen even though the electical power is still showing okay. We are talking about losing 75% or more of the tank contents making the mission a no-go. One ship configuation had deployed solar panels while today's test had an Umbra Space  Industries nuclear reactor for power humming along. In both cases I was at the keyboard seeing electcial power bar was staying high while the liquid hydrogen wiffed away.

 

I am currently suspecting that in high warp the game code sequence of liquid hydrogen is firing off every X clock ticks while the electrical power update is every Y clicks. Thus if Y is much greater than X there would be times on the short clock ticks electrical power would be computed as depleted yet on the Y click it sees enough power so keeps the user interface bar up high.

 

Any suggestion on how to resolve this, or if this should be in a different thread, are appreciated.

I guess your issue is related to not have an Interstellar reactor on board. The tanks needs MW of power to keep the fuel at cryogenic temperatures.

[DoubleUU]

7 minutes ago, brygun said:

Hello,

 

Im trying to sort out an issue with mods Im new too of which this is one. If there is a better thread please direct me there.

 

The particular issue has to do with the sudden loss of Liquid Hydrogen while in high time warp. The fuel tank being used is an "Interstellar Liquid Fuel Tank X24". I am not sure if it is from this mod. I am also using Interstellar fuel switch and a cyrogenic engine. My craft has had a few power arrangements that show good levels of electrical power even in high time warp. Then suddenly I get a slew of loss of liquid hydrogen even though the electical power is still showing okay. We are talking about losing 75% or more of the tank contents making the mission a no-go. One ship configuation had deployed solar panels while today's test had an Umbra Space  Industries nuclear reactor for power humming along. In both cases I was at the keyboard seeing electcial power bar was staying high while the liquid hydrogen wiffed away.

 

I am currently suspecting that in high warp the game code sequence of liquid hydrogen is firing off every X clock ticks while the electrical power update is every Y clicks. Thus if Y is much greater than X there would be times on the short clock ticks electrical power would be computed as depleted yet on the Y click it sees enough power so keeps the user interface bar up high.

 

Any suggestion on how to resolve this, or if this should be in a different thread, are appreciated.

 

I think maybe you're lacking in Mega-joules causing abysmal ISP in your cryo engine??  Probably wrong since I'm kinda new with this mod too but I don't think the USI reactors I don't think produce MJ which is required by stuff in Interstellar.  It can be confusing.  To avoid mixing the two part sets I try to make sure I use the filters so I only see the KSPI parts that way I don't grab reactors from USI on accident.  A bit less necessary now that I'm more familiar with the two part sets but still helps.

 

Of course, I could be completely wrong but I have observed having issues like this when using the USI reactors with KSPI parts.  I think maybe if you try using one of the KSPI reactors instead that will solve your problem.  Maybe.  I'll stop typing now.

 

EDIT: Or maybe it's just that the USI parts are behaving oddly.  Still could be because of mixing the parts but I should've stayed out of it.

Edited March 3, 2017 by DoubleUU
Clarity

[brygun]

Ran a few time warp tests. It is only when the time warp moves toward 20,000 that the problem occurs.

 

In terms of the suggestions for using the  Interstellar Reactor: Would the lack of that not show up as a lack of electrical power?

 

In terms of the ISP mentioned: Note the engines are NOT in use at the time this is happening. The ship is coasting when, under certain time warp, the liquid hydrogen wiffs out of the tanks even though power appears to still be present.

 

Or is it that the reactors from that mod work on the same "hidden" clock tick as the cyro fuel tanks?

 

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by brygun

[FreeThinker]

9 minutes ago, brygun said:

Hello,

 

Im trying to sort out an issue with mods Im new too of which this is one. If there is a better thread please direct me there.

 

The particular issue has to do with the sudden loss of Liquid Hydrogen while in high time warp. The fuel tank being used is an "Interstellar Liquid Fuel Tank X24". I am not sure if it is from this mod. I am also using Interstellar fuel switch and a cyrogenic engine. My craft has had a few power arrangements that show good levels of electrical power even in high time warp. Then suddenly I get a slew of loss of liquid hydrogen even though the electical power is still showing okay. We are talking about losing 75% or more of the tank contents making the mission a no-go. One ship configuation had deployed solar panels while today's test had an Umbra Space  Industries nuclear reactor for power humming along. In both cases I was at the keyboard seeing electcial power bar was staying high while the liquid hydrogen wiffed away.

 

I am currently suspecting that in high warp the game code sequence of liquid hydrogen is firing off every X clock ticks while the electrical power update is every Y clicks. Thus if Y is much greater than X there would be times on the short clock ticks electrical power would be computed as depleted yet on the Y click it sees enough power so keeps the user interface bar up high.

 

Any suggestion on how to resolve this, or if this should be in a different thread, are appreciated.

Most likely this is a case of power underrun due to high demand durring high warp. What might help is either more stocj bateries or add a kspi super capacitator (and activate it) which will help stabalize power.

Edited March 3, 2017 by FreeThinker

[brygun]

8 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Most likely this is a case of power underrun. What might help is either more bateries or a super capacitator which will help stabalize power.

 

Some ship details: There are 3 power using cyro tanks  "Interstellar Liquid Fuel Tank X24"  which when checked in flight call for 6.6 ec/s. Total about 21 ec/s There is a USI nuclear generator set to over 21/s by itself. There are also solar arrays pulling in a bit of power. Battery capacity is a little over 4,000. There are also capacitors (but you can't access them in time warp).  Electical power always appears to be high.

 

Issue only appears in the high time warp range.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by brygun

[brygun]

Im also using the Ampyear mod

I wonder if it is changing the timing of calculations to no longer line up with the cyro tank evaluations.

 

Edited March 4, 2017 by brygun

[FreeThinker]

41 minutes ago, brygun said:

 

Some ship details: There are 3 power using cyro tanks  "Interstellar Liquid Fuel Tank X24"  which when checked in flight call for 6.6 ec/s. Total about 21 ec/s There is a USI nuclear generator set to over 21/s by itself. There are also solar arrays pulling in a bit of power. Battery capacity is a little over 4,000. There are also capacitors (but you can't access them in time warp).  Electical power always appears to be high.

 

Issue only appears in the high time warp range.

 

 

 

Weird, 4000 should be anough because 6.6 * 10000 / 50 = 1320 < 4000.

 

However, the power consumption of the Cry Cooling is not stable and depends on evironmental effect. It the temperature would rise, power consumption might be 4 times as high, causing electric charge buffer underrun . I still think a super capacitator will be very usefull here.

 

[brygun]

Can you name a suggested part so I can search through it in my parts list? for the "super capacitor" you're mentioning.

 

As it is, which may be an Ampyear thing, the capacitors require the game user to select "discharge capacitor" to provide the power. That is only available in x1 warp, when everything is working fine anyway.

Edited March 4, 2017 by brygun

[brygun]

14 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Weird, 4000 should be anough because 6.6 * 10000 / 50 = 1320 < 4000.

 

However, the power consumption of the Cry Cooling is not stable and depends on evironmental effect. It the temperature would rise, power consumption might be 4 times as high, causing electric charge buffer underrun . I still think a super capacitator will be very usefull here.

 

 

Well at 10,000 its okay. Its somewhere above that when it goes wonkers so this might be the case. The next step in the game is x50,000. Under observation the time warp numbers spin quickly but it is above 20,000. Also there are three tanks involved. Not sure where the /50 comes from in your math (I am curious)

That number becomes 

3  * 6.6 * 20,000 / 50 = 7,920 > 4,000

 

[FreeThinker]

15 minutes ago, brygun said:

Can you name a suggested part so I can search through it in my parts list? for the "super capacitor" you're mentioning.

 

As it is, which may be an Ampyear thing, the capacitors require the game user to select "discharge capacitor" to provide the power. That is only available in x1 warp, when everything is working fine anyway.

 

 

 

Not sure is amp gear is right, my but feeling sais it is wrong. To solve the problem you will need some way of increasing the buffer at time warp, Exactly what part are you using? What I could do is create a simple partmodule which will increase the size of the batteries at time warp. that should solve this problem.

Edited March 4, 2017 by FreeThinker