KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[Mine_Turtle]

On 5/12/2016 at 2:10 PM, FreeThinker said:

Regarding being able to select He3 and Antimatter in the VAB, I intended to make them cost high amount of Prestige

Would it be possible to make those resources cost prestige and money? This way it would be expensive to load those resources in VAB(unless you grind a lot of contracts) but can earn money from mining them yourself.

[FreeThinker]

The problem of expansive resource is that it's a double edge sword.

Spoiler

the high cost of Antimatter it can be abused to make a lot of money. Simply put  a big antimatter collection in space, collect it for several weeks and bring the antimatter back to base for a lot of profit.

So I rather lower the cost and replace it by a low limited renewable resource, like prestige or science

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Mine_Turtle]

2 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

The problem of expansive resource is that it's a double edge sword.

  Hide contents

the high cost of Antimatter it can be abused to make a lot of money. Simply put  a big antimatter collection in space, collect it for several weeks and bring the antimatter back to base for a lot of profit.

So I rather lower the cost and replace it by a low limited renewable resource, like prestige.

AM collection is a late game tech and in my opinion investing time and money into mining infrastructure should be rewarded. Besides, there are enough methods(which available even earlier than you have access to AM) to abuse recover mechanics with resource collection and EL.

Probably, a better alternative would be to have special contracts for AM delivery. AM would cost prestige to buy so it is not possible to abuse it to generate money, but you can still benefit from AM collection by accepting AM delivery contracts.

[TheTaleteller]

8 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

The problem of expansive resource is that it's a double edge sword.

  Reveal hidden contents

the high cost of Antimatter it can be abused to make a lot of money. Simply put  a big antimatter collection in space, collect it for several weeks and bring the antimatter back to base for a lot of profit.

So I rather lower the cost and replace it by a low limited renewable resource, like prestige or science

Whats if i harvest antimatter in space and land it down at the KSC, would it gain science or prestige?

[FreeThinker]

6 minutes ago, TheTaleteller said:

Whats if i harvest antimatter in space and land it down at the KSC, would it gain science or prestige?

Well Idealy, the antimatter would be put into a deposit, which you are free to use whenever you fill the Antimatter tank in the VAB

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[TheTaleteller]

1 minute ago, FreeThinker said:

Well Idealy, the antimatter would be put into a bank, which you are free to use whenever you fill the Antimatter tank in the VAB

Sounds interesting, is such a system possible with KSP? I thought money is the only "resource" accountable when building ships.

[FreeThinker]

5 minutes ago, TheTaleteller said:

Sounds interesting, is such a system possible with KSP? I thought money is the only "resource" accountable when building ships.

Actualy, there once was a mod which specificly did why I describe

 

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

double post

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[TheTaleteller]

4 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Actualy, there once oce a mod which specificly did why I describe

 

I like that idea. Have you considered to contact BobPalmer, because USI has a system called Planetary logistics, storing harvested resources in a virtual Warehouse, exchangeable between outposts. That sounds pretty much like the idea of storing resources on other planets in this tread. Would be cool to implement a generic storage solution instead of reinventing similar wheels all over the place.

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, SciMan said:

I see a different way of collecting He3, and it doesn't involve the surface of a planet at all.

I'm sure you're aware of the fact that the Sun's "solar wind" is mostly charged particles, right? The Moon has He3 in it's top layer of regolith because it's been deposited there by the solar wind. This ends up meaning that the Moon (and by extension, the Mun) would be one of the worst places in the solar system to get He3. It would be much easier to collect He3 on Moho's surface.

However, there's an even easier way to collect He3 around the inner planets of the solar system. Setting up a craft with a large scoop using a magnetic field created by a superconducting coil) in close orbit around the Sun would allow direct collection of He3 from the solar wind, and doesn't involve moving kilotons of regolith to get a few kilograms of He3. Basically the same idea as the antimatter collector, but the rate of collection depends only on the craft's distance from the Sun and the size of the magnetic field coils. Because the coil is a superconductor, the only power required while in use is to keep the superconductors cooled, but that would be minimal (less than 100kw).

Excelent idea. This actualy give a real reason to travel into a very low solar orbit besides power and science collection

Just now, TheTaleteller said:

I like that idea. Have you considered to contact BobPalmer, because USI has a system called Planetary logistics, storing harvested resources in a virtual Warehouse, exchangeable between outposts. That sounds pretty much like the idea of storing resources on other planets in this tread. Would be cool to implement a generic storage solution instead of reinventing similar wheels all over the place.

Intresting, I didn't knew that.

[TheTaleteller]

3 hours ago, SciMan said:

However, there's an even easier way to collect He3 around the inner planets of the solar system. Setting up a craft with a large scoop using a magnetic field created by a superconducting coil) in close orbit around the Sun would allow direct collection of He3 from the solar wind, and doesn't involve moving kilotons of regolith to get a few kilograms of He3. Basically the same idea as the antimatter collector, but the rate of collection depends only on the craft's distance from the Sun and the size of the magnetic field coils. Because the coil is a superconductor, the only power required while in use is to keep the superconductors cooled, but that would be minimal (less than 100kw).

I like that as well. Since we are pretty close to the sun, would it be an option to harvest the solar heat for power generation? I imagine an umbrella radiator sized collector in front, a thermal generator in the middle and cooling radiators on the back.

[FreeThinker]

I wonder of how many He3 particles can we actualy collect this way in a square meter. Also besides He3, you are probably much more likely to collect protons. which in itself isn't so bad as well as it is essentialy hydrogen, which is usefull to get into that low orbit in the first place (besides a solar sail). Still keeping it cooled so close to the sun, will be a big chalange.

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[TheTaleteller]

5 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

I wonder of how many particles can we actualy collect this way. Also besides He3, you are probably much more likely to collect protons. which in itself isn't so bad as well as we can turn into hydrogoen, which is usefull to get into that low orbit in the first place (besides a solar sail)

Well we could imagine directing solar protons towards a tritium target. Another way would be to get Kerbals a little step higher on the Kardashev scale. Like with building really huge solar collectors, harvesting its energy and breeding fusion elements like He3 by pure power.

[FreeThinker]

7 minutes ago, TheTaleteller said:

Well we could imagine directing solar protons towards a tritium target. Another way would be to get Kerbals a little step higher on the Kardashev scale. Like with building really huge solar collectors, harvesting its energy and breeding fusion elements like He3 by pure power.

Actual He3 could theoreticly be created by  p-D Fusion. The problem is collecting it before it fuses with the Deteurium or Iteself. At least the ideal crosssection of p-D fusion is much differnt from D-He3 fusion 

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[SciMan]

A logical offshoot of warp-drive research is gravity manipulation in a more general sense. This has quite a few practical applications, one of which is creation and control of black holes.

Black holes lend themselves to several practical applications of interest to a space program. Of primary interest are Power generation, elemental transmutation, and reactionless propulsion.

Power generation using a black hole is perhaps easier than constructing an Alcubierre warp drive. Matter is fed into the event horizon, and energy is output as Hawking radiation. The smaller the black hole, the higher the power output, and the faster mass must be fed into the event horizon to prevent the black hole from evaporating completely, however gravity manipulation can control the power output independently of the input mass flow rate, which allows accurate control of both the mass of the black hole and the power output. More details here

A particle accelerator is ideally suited to the task of turning lighter elements (such as Hydrogen) into heavier elements by colliding them at high energies. The environment around a black hole is ideally suited to such a task, as the accretion disk is already basically an uncontrolled particle accelerator. So long as the accretion disk and the singularity at the center can both be controlled, the transmutation of hydrogen into any known elemental isotope becomes possible at a rate that makes it economical to do so, especially if the heavier elements are in short supply. More details here

Reactionless propulsion is already covered by the Alcubierre warp drive, as well as the Quantum Vacuum Plasma thruster, however the QVP thruster relies on largely unrelated phenomena to generate thrust.

What I'm trying to get at with all of this, is that I believe that the existence of the Alcubierre warp drive implies the existence of the knowledge needed to create two new parts. Naturally they belong at the end of the tech-tree right along with the warp drives, as they use similar physics to operate:

1. A "Singularity reactor" of higher mass and power output than an Antimatter reactor of the same size, consuming LqdHydrogen fuel, and power is output as 100% charged particles.
2. A "Singularity converter" that converts LqdHydrogen into many other resources, with a possible balancing factor of being relatively inefficient and power hungry. The Particle accelerator model could be used for this purpose.

As to the problem of how to get protons to collide with Deuterium to create He-3, Particle accelerators seem to be ideal for this task.

As for producing antimatter, the particle accelerator is, again, the most likely and most realistic choice.

Edited May 13, 2016 by SciMan

[FreeThinker]

17 minutes ago, SciMan said:

A logical offshoot of warp-drive research is gravity manipulation in a more general sense. This has quite a few practical applications, one of which is creation and control of black holes.

Black holes lend themselves to several practical applications of interest to a space program. Of primary interest are Power generation, elemental transmutation, and reactionless propulsion.

Power generation using a black hole is perhaps easier than constructing an Alcubierre warp drive. Matter is fed into the event horizon, and energy is output as Hawking radiation. The smaller the black hole, the higher the power output, and the faster mass must be fed into the event horizon to prevent the black hole from evaporating completely, however gravity manipulation can control the power output independently of the input mass flow rate, which allows accurate control of both the mass of the black hole and the power output. More details here

A particle accelerator is ideally suited to the task of turning lighter elements (such as Hydrogen) into heavier elements by colliding them at high energies. The environment around a black hole is ideally suited to such a task, as the accretion disk is already basically an uncontrolled particle accelerator. So long as the accretion disk and the singularity at the center can both be controlled, the transmutation of hydrogen into any known elemental isotope becomes possible at a rate that makes it economical to do so, especially if the heavier elements are in short supply. More details here

Reactionless propulsion is already covered by the Alcubierre warp drive, as well as the Quantum Vacuum Plasma thruster, however the QVP thruster relies on largely unrelated phenomena to generate thrust.

Intresting, a black hole reacor that turns any matter into energy and matter into heavier atoms.

But how to create the mini black hole? or would that be part of the reacor.

For eample The reacor would first need a high amount of power to charge (like a Alcubierre warp drive) , then create a smal black hole which can be used to warp space, (like Alcubierre warp drive) then used to convert matter into power or convert matter into more desirely atoms, like Helium3 or Tritium.

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[SciMan]

I have updated my previous post with more details.

For now, I think it would be easier to keep the various functions separate, and I have both an "In-universe" as well as a practical reason for doing so.

In universe, a warp drive is manipulating the gravity around the ship, the reactor is manipulating the gravity around a tiny black hole, and the converter is manipulating the gravity around both a tiny black hole and it's accretion disk. The converter is a physical add-on to the reactor, and the warp drive's control systems are geared to a totally different purpose.

Practically, it would probably be quite complex to code one part that could do everything.

As for when the black hole is created, I'm of the opinion that the game mechanics of operating a black hole reactor are nearly identical to operating a fusion reactor, because a small amount of power is required to keep the singularity from evaporating or exiting the reactor.

Additionally, the converter is more of an add-on to the reactor (like a thermal or charged-particle generator) than it is a totally independent part. To function, the converter would have to be attached to a black hole reactor, and would consume a large portion of the reactor's power output (as charged particles) when active.

The limitation of the converter would be that it can only convert things into single elements, not chemical compounds. In other words, the converter could not convert anything to LqdWater, Hydrazine, LqdFuel, but it can convert to XenonGas or EnrichedUranium. If you wanted a chemical compound, you'd have to use more than one black hole converter to create the component elements, and then assemble those elements using the ISRU processors. This is obviously much more complex and expensive, but the option does exist.

Edited May 13, 2016 by SciMan

[gary85]

22 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Have you tried reverting the order of air intakes?

didnt work.

[SciMan]

13 minutes ago, gary85 said:

didnt work.

My usual method of making an air-breathing spaceplane using KSPI-E is to use exactly ONE air-breathing engine, mounted to the centerline of the craft. You can't have an assymetric flameout if there's only one air-breathing engine on the craft.

I've found that so long as I match the size of the atmospheric engine and the reactor, I only need one airbreathing engine to get up around 20-25km.

If I have need for propulsion that has higher specific impulse in space, I'll mount a pair of plasma thrusters (in symmetry) to the craft, similarly to where you have your thermal turbojets placed.

 

Edited May 13, 2016 by SciMan

[gary85]

21 minutes ago, SciMan said:

My usual method of making an air-breathing spaceplane using KSPI-E is to use exactly ONE air-breathing engine, mounted to the centerline of the craft. You can't have an assymetric flameout if there's only one air-breathing engine on the craft.

I've found that so long as I match the size of the atmospheric engine and the reactor, I only need one airbreathing engine to get up around 20-25km.

If I have need for propulsion that has higher specific impulse in space, I'll mount a pair of plasma thrusters (in symmetry) to the craft, similarly to where you have your thermal turbojets placed.

 

it worked prefectly in 1.1 i got this issue after last update. and plasam thrusters are to weak for me im using vista engine

[SciMan]

I'd still center-mount an air-breathing engine, and if you really need the Vista you could probably mount one on either side of the centerline the same way I mount plasma engines. Of course this does end up making a much larger plane, but that just means more places for fuel tanks.

Unfortunately you might be stuck with a rather major redesign of the tail section of your spaceplane. I don't see any way around it that both avoids an asymmetric flame-out and uses the vista engine.

Edited May 13, 2016 by SciMan

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, SciMan said:

I have updated my previous post with more details.

For now, I think it would be easier to keep the various functions separate, and I have both an "In-universe" as well as a practical reason for doing so.

In universe, a warp drive is manipulating the gravity around the ship, the reactor is manipulating the gravity around a tiny black hole, and the converter is manipulating the gravity around both a tiny black hole and it's accretion disk. The converter is a physical add-on to the reactor, and the warp drive's control systems are geared to a totally different purpose.

Practically, it would probably be quite complex to code one part that could do everything.

As for when the black hole is created, I'm of the opinion that the game mechanics of operating a black hole reactor are nearly identical to operating a fusion reactor, because a small amount of power is required to keep the singularity from evaporating or exiting the reactor.

Additionally, the converter is more of an add-on to the reactor (like a thermal or charged-particle generator) than it is a totally independent part. To function, the converter would have to be attached to a black hole reactor, and would consume a large portion of the reactor's power output (as charged particles) when active.

The limitation of the converter would be that it can only convert things into single elements, not chemical compounds. In other words, the converter could not convert anything to LqdWater, Hydrazine, LqdFuel, but it can convert to XenonGas or EnrichedUranium. If you wanted a chemical compound, you'd have to use more than one black hole converter to create the component elements, and then assemble those elements using the ISRU processors. This is obviously much more complex and expensive, but the option does exist.

Actually, with some small modifications, I can use the exciting Fusion  part-module to act as Black Hole Reactor. Since the KSPI Reactor has already a mechanism to convert  input resources into output resource, it's just a matter of defining a list of fuel modes which convert a specific resource into thermal heat and return small percentage as another resource with a higher mass number

I was thinking:

1:Hydrogen  @ 1% fuel efficiency   => (m * 1% * c)  99% CP + 49% Hydrogen+ 49% Tritium

2: Hydrogen + Tritium  @ 19% fuel efficiency   => (m * 1% * c) 81% CP + 20% Hydrogen +  20% Tritium  + 40% Helium3

4: Hydrogen  + Helium4  @ 30% fuel efficiency   => (m * 1% * c) 70% CP + 20% Hydrogen  + 30% Lithium +  30% Tritium

5: Lithium + Helium @ 43% fuel efficiency  => (m * 1% * c) 57% CP + 14% Hydrogen  + Lithium + Helium + 14% Boron

6: Hydrogen + Carbon @ 60% fuel efficiency => (m * 1% * c) 40% CP + 10% Hydrogen + 10 Tritium + 20% Nitrogen

7a: Nitrogen  + Hydrogen @ 63% fuel efficiency  => (m * 1% * c) 37% CP (10% Hydrogen  + 10% Tritium  + 17% Oxygen)

7b: Nitrogen + Lithium + @ 63% fuel efficiency  => (m * 1% * c) 37% CP + 10% Hydrogen  + 10 Tritium  + Lithium +  Neon

8 Oxygen + Helium4   @ 65% fuel efficiency => (m * 1% * c) 35% CP (Oxygen + Helium4 + Neon)

9 Actinides + Oxygen @ 89% fuel efficiency => (m * 1% * c) 11% CP + 2% Anticides +   2% Uranium + 2 Thorium + 2% Plutonium

It will the ultimate recycle and fuel producer

 

 

 

Edited May 13, 2016 by FreeThinker

[SciMan]

That's kind of what I was intending, but my intent was for the black hole reactor to only produce power, in the form of Charged Particles.

Perhaps it would be better if the particle accelerator part was repurposed into a "nuclear transmutation ISRU". Originally I wanted the converter to be a separate part that only works with the black hole reactor, but now I realize that a plain old particle accelerator works quite well for the same task so long as it gets enough power.

However, due to the large amounts of power required, the best reactor to supply power to the particle accelerator when it's doing resource conversion would still be the black hole reactor, due to both to the commonality of input resource (everything runs on Hydrogen) and the amount of power required (massive power requirements).

On the other hand, if those reactor modes you were mentioning were producing a small amount of usable energy and a large amount of Waste Heat, that would probably work as well, so long as the mode with Hydrogen input produced a lot of power as charged particles (99-100%) and not much as thermal power (1% or less), and the reactor didn't have much of a penalty for turning charged particle power into thermal power (80+% efficiency for charged -> thermal conversion). In other words it should work very well for producing power, powering a magnetic nozzle, and powering a thermal nozzle.

Edited May 13, 2016 by SciMan

[TheTaleteller]

I see a "little" theoretical problem with a black hole reactor. There may be no real minimum size for a black hole, and small ones  do evaporate due to hawking radiation. However they do it exponentially, and to have one not vanishing in the friction of a second it has to have mass of 1000s tons. Additional black holes at the brink of vanishing seem to get absurdly hot, its like packing Kerbol in the trunk. Given that high mass, its inert moment might get the ship pretty much immovable in classic terms.  Its that way at least in our universe, maybe someone really good in math can calculate the values for the KSP universe with its slower speed of light.

I consider micro black holes as powerful weapons in space battles, however Kerbin seems not to be be scheduled for an invasion fleet soon ;-)

 

[FreeThinker]

24 minutes ago, SciMan said:

That's kind of what I was intending, but my intent was for the black hole reactor to only produce power, in the form of Charged Particles.

Perhaps it would be better if the particle accelerator part was repurposed into a "nuclear transmutation ISRU". Originally I wanted the converter to be a separate part that only works with the black hole reactor, but now I realize that a plain old particle accelerator works quite well for the same task so long as it gets enough power.

However, due to the large amounts of power required, the best reactor to supply power to the particle accelerator when it's doing resource conversion would still be the black hole reactor, due to both to the commonality of input resource (everything runs on Hydrogen) and the amount of power required (massive power requirements).

On the other hand, if those reactor modes you were mentioning were producing a small amount of usable energy and a large amount of Waste Heat, that would probably work as well, so long as the mode with Hydrogen input produced a lot of power as charged particles (99-100%) and not much as thermal power (1% or less), and the reactor didn't have much of a penalty for turning charged particle power into thermal power (80+% efficiency for charged -> thermal conversion). In other words it should work very well for producing power, powering a magnetic nozzle, and powering a thermal nozzle.

Interesting idea. I have adjusted the CP / Heat percentage based one the difference with hydrogen , which would make hydrogen the most efficient fuel and Anticides the least effient (using formula CP% = 1 / sqrt(atomnr))

3 minutes ago, TheTaleteller said:

I see a "little" theoretical problem with a black hole reactor. There may be no real minimum size for a black hole, and small ones  do evaporate due to hawking radiation. However they do it exponentially, and to have one not vanishing in the friction of a second it has to have mass of 1000s tons. Additional black holes at the brink of vanishing seem to get absurdly hot, its like packing Kerbol in the trunk. Given that high mass, its inert moment might get the ship pretty much immovable in classic terms.  Its that way at least in our universe, maybe someone really good in math can calculate the values for the KSP universe with its slower speed of light.

I consider micro black holes as powerful weapons in space battles, however Kerbin seems not to be be scheduled for an invasion fleet soon ;-)

 

Actually, we can actual use this as property. I already use dynamic mass my in the generator. The Black hole reactor would generate a large amount of mass 1000 of ton while active, this means it will not be very effective to using in combination with any Newtonian propulsion, but it still can be used for to power the warp drive.