KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[Uberns]

@FreeThinker and @WaYa Thank you both for such a quick reply!  That was very helpful.  Especially giving an example and mentioning the differences in what propellants each can use gave me some insight on your thought process when designing ships with these parts.  

[Mekan1k]

So... anyone have an imgur link that exhibits all the neat parts in this pack? Yes, I want to see pictures... Mainly because I really want to see them.

[SchwinnTropius]

Minor graphical issue, non-gamebreaking:

Upon leaving my career save to exit game, KSPI leaves a residual icon on the start screen.

Just figured I'd point it out. If there is a better place to mention it, I can report it there.

Thank you for this awesome mod!

[Charon Moloch]

9 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

@Uberns  The main purpose of the thermal/nuclear ramjet or turbo are its ability to use atmosphere as a unlimited resource for propulsion. If used properly it can vastly reduce the amount of propellant needed to get into orbit, and allows you land or launch on any planet with a sufficiently thick atmosphere. This can be especially be a boon on very thick atmosphere planets, like on Venus/Eve but it can also be used in gas giants.

Personally I like the idea of putting things in orbit with the help of a huge first stage powered by ground lasers/microwave that has water as fuel, and this game lets me explore how that would work. Tough if I use tweak scale to make them bigger than 10 m and input about 10 GW of power thermal nozzles kind of break and refuse to work...

Now if only I could make a completely solar water rocket, without lasers or gyrotrons that would be awesome. I still haven't figured out what's so special about antennas that have "is mirror" as true.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Charon Moloch

[The Destroyer]

So I've been trying to use the magnetized targeted fusion reacotr as an engine source. I got it working once, not sure how. It's only producing 2 MW of power instead of 1GW, and have no idea what I'm doing wrong :-/

 

EDIT: After doing some googling, reactors are scaled down to be compatible with NFE, right? That would explain MW instead of GW... the engine works just fine with a pebble bed, producing 5MW of thermal power. So maybe it's just that my reactors aren't good enough yet to even turn the damn engine on? (0kN)

 

EDIT again: So, it works in sandbox, but only if I have a charged particle electric generator on it. But it doesn't produce any charged particles... 

Edited December 14, 2016 by The Destroyer

[FreeThinker]

Version 1.11.8 for Kerbal Space Program 1.2.2

Released on 2016-12-14

• Fixed space in filename which should solve a cashing problem with Module Manager
• Fixed ability to relay on phased array, mirrors and linked relay ready parts when linked
• Fixed Part Description by georgethejournalist
• Fixed Science Generators by corhydrae
• Deleted some obsolete files

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[NuclearNut]

I was reading a book and it had an idea that made me think of this mod.

In the book there is a particle accelerator called the circimsolar particle accelerator.  It, as it's name describes, wraps around the sun, in this case it is located at around Jupiter's orbit.  Because space is a near perfect vacuum the accelerator is composed simply of a series of space stations containing the relevant equipment to accelerate the hadrons to high speeds, no vacuum chamber needed.  This allows the device to accelerate particles to extremely high speeds.

I think that a particle accelerator of that type would make an awesome addition to the mod, as well as adding some larger engineering requirements for warp drives to the game, though I do not know how realistic such a device would be.

[FreeThinker]

On 15-12-2016 at 6:40 AM, NuclearNut said:

I was reading a book and it had an idea that made me think of this mod.

In the book there is a particle accelerator called the circimsolar particle accelerator.  It, as it's name describes, wraps around the sun, in this case it is located at around Jupiter's orbit.  Because space is a near perfect vacuum the accelerator is composed simply of a series of space stations containing the relevant equipment to accelerate the hadrons to high speeds, no vacuum chamber needed.  This allows the device to accelerate particles to extremely high speeds.

I think that a particle accelerator of that type would make an awesome addition to the mod, as well as adding some larger engineering requirements for warp drives to the game, though I do not know how realistic such a device would be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting concept, and I agree with you that a circum solar system particle accelerator would indeed be interstellar "worthy" endeavor. But instead of a circumvent at Jupiter, it would make more sense to circumvent it at a distance halfway between the sun and mercury as it allows it to be fully powered by the sun itself (see my 50 GW solar power sat station). Now the question is, what would be the benefit be? Although the potential for a science experiment would be great in itself, it would be largely irrelevant as there would be many ways of gaining science. Now the collision of particles at many time the power of the LHC might give us access to physics that are currently simply out of our reach. At the moment I can think of 2 things, miniature black holes and Exotic matter. The miniature black hole would be useful to initiate the (existing) quantum singularity reactor and the exotic matter would be a fuel source for the alcubiere warp drive. Currently they just require a lot of power to get started, but how these substances or effects are actually created was essentially handwavium. A Circum Solar Particle Accelerate might make it more realistic. It would be a nice stepping stone for the player to overcome, before you can warp to another solar system, you first need to build a quantum singularity reactor and breed enough exotic matter to make the jump ..

 

Edited December 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

Regarding the circum solar system particle accelerate, I found an interesting article https://disipio.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/why-dont-we-build-a-particle-accelerator-orbiting-the-sun/

Does anyone understand it?

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Regarding the circum solar system particle accelerate, I found an interesting article https://disipio.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/why-dont-we-build-a-particle-accelerator-orbiting-the-sun/

Does anyone understand it?

I mostly know about this paper and the contents, but this idea, while fascinating, has two big flaws:

- the vacuum of space it's not so vacuum, we're talking about 3/5 atoms per cubic centimeter, more around the sun;

- such a structure needs an immense work to be built and a monstrous amount of energy in order to operate.

In order to achieve better data, it would be easier in all ways to build one in a high solar orbit, ideally over Pluto, or as alternative, as someone suggested in the past, around Charon,  to be used from a base on Pluto itself. In that way you'll have much less interferences, less energy requirement and a lower gravity to fight.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Nansuchao

[FreeThinker]

9 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

I mostly know about this paper and the contents, but this idea, while fascinating, has two big flaws:

- the vacuum of space it's not so vacuum, we're talking about 3/5 atoms per cubic centimeter, more around the sun;

- such a structure needs an immense work to be built and a monstrous amount of energy in order to operate.

In order to achieve better data, it would be easier in all ways to build one in a high solar orbit, ideally over Pluto, or as alternative, as someone suggested in the past, around Charon,  to be used from a base on Pluto itself. In that way you'll have much less interferences, less energy requirement and a lower gravity to fight.

 

 

 

 

1) I know space isn't fully empty, but I expect the odds that our relativistically accelerated protons hit dust or solar particles (at solar minimum) are very low.

2) Near the sun we can generate a lot of power (see recent solar power sat example)  and beam them to the solar particle accelerate hubs if they are near enough. Pluto is simply too far way for that.

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

The energy production is surely easier near the Sun, but the interferences due to the gravity and the hydrogen plasma will strongly interfere with any scientific experiment.

I agree that in a high orbit you need to provide energy in a different way, but you need much much less of it and a smaller accelerator. 

This argoment was vastly discussed in the '90s, with great sustainers of the solar collider and others of the Pluto one. At the end, for technical difficulties about a massive construction around the Sun, it was stated the the Pluto option was better (ideally talking of course, as far as I know no one plan to build one in the next decades).

[FreeThinker]

32 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

The energy production is surely easier near the Sun, but the interferences due to the gravity and the hydrogen plasma will strongly interfere with any scientific experiment.

I agree that in a high orbit you need to provide energy in a different way, but you need much much less of it and a smaller accelerator. 

This argoment was vastly discussed in the '90s, with great sustainers of the solar collider and others of the Pluto one. At the end, for technical difficulties about a massive construction around the Sun, it was stated the the Pluto option was better (ideally talking of course, as far as I know no one plan to build one in the next decades).

 

What about a more intermediate solution, build the solar particle accelerator between  Mercury and Venus. That should solve the gravity and interference problem and near enough to be powered by the sun (which is in low solar orbit)

[Nansuchao]

Ideally you need an inclined orbit, to have less eclipses as possible, and it will require a huge amount of energy to fight the interferences from the gravity and the magnetic field of the sun and the two close planets. It will not be an ideal solution, but it can be done.

[FreeThinker]

Just now, Nansuchao said:

Ideally you need an inclined orbit, to have less eclipses as possible, and it will require a huge amount of energy to fight the interferences from the gravity and the magnetic field of the sun and the two close planets. It will not be an ideal solution, but it can be done.

 

How would the gravity fields and magnetic fields of these planets be a problem?  At relativistic speed, gravity should hardly be a problem and only venus has a significant magnetic field. Even if they had any effect, an inclined orbit should fix the problem for most of the time.

[Nansuchao]

Yes, most of the time you'll have not so much issues. For the gravity, the size of the ring matters. Higher speed, bigger ring, bigger interferences. 

An highly inclined orbit will be enough.

[FreeThinker]

8 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

Yes, most of the time you'll have not so much issues. For the gravity, the size of the ring matters. Higher speed, bigger ring, bigger interferences. 

An highly inclined orbit will be enough.

 

 

 

Indeed and If we use the particle accelerator station also as beamed power relay stations, we can also increase the Apoapsis to be 10 AU, which would increase the potential energy

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

1 minute ago, FreeThinker said:

Indeed and If we use the particle accelerator station also as beamed power relay stations, we can also increase the Apoapsis to be 10 AU, which would increase the potential energy

I agree

[FreeThinker]

13 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

I agree

Now that I think of it, we could create a solar power beamed energy Grid by a combination of highly elliptical orbits and spherical orbits, it would allow us to electrify the entire solar system.  The highly elliptical orbit relay station would get power into a high solar orbit while the elliptic orbit distributes the power to nearby planets, like earth.

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

This is exactly what I try to achieve every time I unlock the beam power in my saves. The problem is that, in the last few KSP versions, having a large number of ship in flight will kill the game, completely. Few days ago I had to delete a beautiful save cause with 50 ships in flight (and no debris) the game freezes every couple of scene change.

If you think about uncrewed missions, manned ones, comsats and beam power sats, 50 isn't a huge number. So, that can be a huge issue.

[FreeThinker]

7 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

This is exactly what I try to achieve every time I unlock the beam power in my saves. The problem is that, in the last few KSP versions, having a large number of ship in flight will kill the game, completely. Few days ago I had to delete a beautiful save cause with 50 ships in flight (and no debris) the game freezes every couple of scene change.

If you think about uncrewed missions, manned ones, comsats and beam power sats, 50 isn't a huge number. So, that can be a huge issue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting, and this was for stock parts only?

A potential problem might be related to how beamed network is calculated, it can potentially become very heavy (exponentially). perhaps we can run this in a separate thread or smooth calculation out over multiple calculation cycles

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

1 minute ago, FreeThinker said:

And this was for stock parts only?

A potential problem might be related to how beamed network is calculated, it can potentially become very heavy (exponentially). perhaps we can run this in a separate thread or smooth calculation out over multiple calculation cycles

This will be probably a good idea, and cut the number of beam power sat needed will be useful too.

The game suffer the same without mods or with, it just change the number of ships available and obviously the computer used.

My pc isn't a beast but it's an average one, but with 50 ships in flight the game was unplayable. 

You can try with hyper edit to deploy some dozens of ships all around the Kerbol system and see how the performances change.

0-10 flights, also on heavy modded install, the game runs smooth after hours of play with many scene changes and launches.

Then it will slowly begin to go worst.

In the past I had something like 30-40 beam power sat, to have GWs in every corner of the system, but now this will not be possible anymore.

[Charon Moloch]

Where do I report bugs? this are the mods I have installed:

 http://imgur.com/yuFetuo[/img]

 the latest interstellar version was installed by removing the old directory's and adding the new version, I'm sorry I can't tell you the versions of all the other mods, as far I can tell they are up to date.

To start, the "Arcjet RCS service tank" crashes the game if I right click it after I launch it, even if I don't touch the settings.

The "Tri Alpha Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor" uses a resource "Hydrogen" in the Lithium 7 fusion that I can't find a tank for.

 I know this is probably a tweak scale problem but that mod hasn't been update in 2 years, but the "Shielded dome laser beam transmitter" if scaled up gives negative mass numbers.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Charon Moloch

[FreeThinker]

8 minutes ago, Nansuchao said:

This will be probably a good idea, and cut the number of beam power sat needed will be useful too.

The game suffer the same without mods or with, it just change the number of ships available and obviously the computer used.

My pc isn't a beast but it's an average one, but with 50 ships in flight the game was unplayable. 

You can try with hyper edit to deploy some dozens of ships all around the Kerbol system and see how the performances change.

0-10 flights, also on heavy modded install, the game runs smooth after hours of play with many scene changes and launches.

Then it will slowly begin to go worst.

In the past I had something like 30-40 beam power sat, to have GWs in every corner of the system, but now this will not be possible anymore.

 

 

 

mm, perhaps we can compensate; put 4 beamed power relay ships in the same orbit an KSPI pretents intermediate vessels, allowing near lossles beamed power transmission. This should allow you to construct network without insane amount of vessels. the same would hold for the solar particle accelerate.Just getting 4 vessels in the same orbit should be enough of a chalange.

Edited December 15, 2016 by FreeThinker

[Nansuchao]

A very good idea.

As soon as I have time and I understand deeply how the beam power works now, I'll try to replicate the launch routine you suggested a while ago and I was able to have once, back in 0.90.