KSP Interstellar Extended Continued Development Thread

[FreeThinker]

12 hours ago, dankis said:

Or, how about moving last FEL upgrade to the same science node as Wakefield engine?

What might be an idea is that the wakefield engine is upgraded with improved Isp with "ultra-high energy physics"

Edited July 18, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Eleusis La Arwall]

4 hours ago, dankis said:

I have to disagree with you. 

At first, I would like to mention that we are talking about tech levels parallel to warp drives, super powerful, compact antimatter reactors and man-made, controlled black holes.

Actually, there are papers regarding developement of not only relatively small, but table-top hard X-Ray FELs.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0168900295013288

https://www.intechopen.com/books/free-electron-lasers/laser-driven-table-top-x-ray-fel

TL,DR Not only small, but tiny X-Ray FELs are possible, but we need to develop Wakefield accelerators.

How about Wakefield accelerator tech increasing maximum power of FEL?

 

You are right. I read about the wakefield accelerators and I'm still baffled. Haven't found a single benefit for the Linac over WFA. WFA is cheaper in production, cheaper while running, offers more efficient energie conversion (in the undulator), higher puls-frequency and of course smaller by 3 orders of magnitude. Also the energydeviation of the electrons in the electron-beam is much lower, resulting in shorter undulators.
All in all the WFA renders the linac useless for powertransmission in space IMO.

Only thing I haven't found a paper/source on was the total "wall to beam" energy conversion rate.

However I'll start a new model for a pivotable, WFA powered FEL.

[FreeThinker]

Yep, technology always marches on. What might be top notch today, is probably hopelessly deprecated tomorrow. A famous example is the mainframe computer, which used to require the room of an entire building. Today that same computer power fits in our pocket. That's an extreme example but I guess to a large degree the same would be true of particle accelerators which currently have ridiculous large dimensions. But even if this was inescapable, I believe the KSP gives us enough creative license to stretch reality a bit. But if a part in real life is huge, it shouldn't mean you can shrink it down to the size of Kerbal, it should still be huge by KSP standard. The existing FEL, therefore has correct in it dimension to represent the real life counter part. KSPI uses a similar reasoning to VISTA and Daedalus engine which in reality are more than ten times as big. But as soon as part becomes too large to fit in the VAB, you doing it wrong in my opinion

Edited July 18, 2017 by FreeThinker

[trias702]

I think there might be a bug in the latest KSPI-E for KSP 1.3. Specifically, it is with the part "InlineRadiatorWrap"; whenever I add this part to a vessel in the VAB, and then leave the VAB and return later, (for example shutdown the game and restart) I notice that I cannot select this part anymore. I cannot click on it, remove it, move it, or in any way interact with it in the VAB. I have never seen this happen with any other parts across any mods. A quick search of the forums seems to indicate this problem is caused when a part lacks a collision mesh in Unity, although that might not be the exact issue here.

Can anyone else confirm if they get this issue as well?

[Eleusis La Arwall]

I've recycled most of the undulator and particle source into the new FEL turret model

Model is a 2.5 m part that is 8.8 m high, has a 360° rotateable turret and the FEL itself can rotate from 130 to -130° along the pivot point.

[FreeThinker]

It appears X-ray lasers are much more practical than I originally imagined, especially if you put in the larger context of Future technologies

Beam Name	Wavelength	550 sci	1000 sci	1500 sci	2250 sci	4000 sci	10000 sci
		specializedScienceTech	longTermScienceTech	scientificOutposts	highEnergyScience	appliedHighEnergyPhysics	ultraHighEnergyPhysics
X-band Microwave	250 mm	60	75	90
Ka-band Microwave	85.65499 mm	55	70	85
W-band Microwave	31,89281 mm	52	68	82
D-band Microwave	22 mm	50	65	80
Long Infrared	11 μm	45	60	75
Short Infrared	2,200 μm	35	50	70
Near Infrared	1,050 μm	30	45	65
Red Light	700 nm	25	42	60
Yellow light	600 nm	23	40	58
Green Light	500 nm	20	38	56
Near Ultra Violet	400 nm	17	36	53
Middle Ultraviolet	300 nm	14	34	50
Far ultraviolet	200 nm	10	30	47
Vacuum Ultraviolet	110 nm		25	34	44
Near Extreme Ultraviolet	35 nm		17	28	41
Far Extreme Ultraviolet	13 nm		10	24	38
Long Soft X-ray	4 nm			20	28	35
Middle Soft X-ray	1 nm			15	24	32
Short Soft X-ray	300 pm			10	20	29
Near Hard X-ray	100 pm				16	21	26
Middle Hard X-ray	30 pm				13	18	23
Far Hard X-ray	10 pm				10	15	20

This should allow me to put the X-ray Laser at Scientific outpost (1500 sci), making them available at the same level solar collector become available, making an early Dyson sphere powered infrastructure feasible. Note I consider 1000 sci our current state of the art technology

 

Edited July 21, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

Here is the first X-Ray/Ultraviolet receiver made a @silversliver

It will have maximum efficiency with Hard X-Ray

Edited July 19, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Maelstrom Vortex]

That looks excellent.

[BlackMoons]

So, My experience with beamed power tech, using 5m scaled up deployable Microwave phased arrays.

Great for launching a few dozen tons per GW into space using plants dotted around KSC. Make boats (Hydrafoils are my fav) to float some reactors out to sea too.

Relays: Well, with 2GW+ available at KSC, I only ever got about 20MW at the mun, and only about 300MW on the other side of kerbin from the reactors at KSC, Generally using a 2.5m inline thermal receiver but I might have been using something else for those mun tests.

Same test with long IR and 5m scaled up Shielded Diode Laser Beam Transmitters, and I got about 600MW on the other side of the planet (5 relays all around the planet at 500km)

Much more encouraging, Despite the higher claimed atmospheric loss of IR, the distance losses due to focus are MUCH better. I am very much looking forward to vacuum UV tech and Id say X-ray tech is likely the only thing that won't diffuse so badly as to be unusable for moho orbit solar collection.

[BlackMoons]

On 2017-07-17 at 7:27 AM, FreeThinker said:

Holy cow, if refraction becomes better with higher energies, perhaps we can create Terrawatt Hard Gamma ray laser transmitters powered by Antimatter, that would truly be the ultimate in beamed power

Beamed power.. weapons maybe

I would sure hate to be on the receiving end of that. Lets just not think about what that kinda power would do to the poor soul (or even electronics) on the receiving end of it.

For those wondering how much rad to use for a big powerplant.. LOTS!

Also, on kerbin, use those convection rads they are 100x better then other types.

Here is a 6.8GW beam output design.

Note that each one of the above rads is dissipating 619MW of thermal power just to keep everything cool.

PS: this design lifts up outta the water at 30m/s and will travel on its nuclear ramjets at up to 60m/s safely with a top speed of 100m/s. Not bad for a 400ton powerplant that generates its own fuel from the sea water

Meanwhile, in space, this is not NEARLY enough rad! my thermalelectric generator is overheating and im only pushing 335MW beam power! I had to turn my reactor down just to prevent from totally overheating the cooling system and pushing thermal electric generator efficiency down even lower. You really need charged particles and 90% conversion efficiency or insanely huge rads to be able to produce good power in space.

 

Also those wraparound rads suck (But are awesome at glowing red, the only thing they do really well.. that and working at escape velocity through the atmosphere), those huge extending ones dissipate like 50x more!

Edited July 20, 2017 by BlackMoons

[FreeThinker]

16 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Here is a 6.8GW beam output design.

Note that each one of the above rads is dissipating 619MW of thermal power just to keep everything cool.

PS: this design lifts up outta the water at 30m/s and will travel on its nuclear ramjets at up to 60m/s safely with a top speed of 100m/s. Not bad for a 400ton powerplant that generates its own fuel from the sea wate

2

I wonder, how did you get this in the water in the first place?

16 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Also those wraparound rads suck

 

Why do they suck? at best I can make them a bit lighter and cheaper, but not much

Edited July 21, 2017 by FreeThinker

[dankis]

18 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Meanwhile, in space, this is not NEARLY enough rad! my thermalelectric generator is overheating and im only pushing 335MW beam power! I had to turn my reactor down just to prevent from totally overheating the cooling system and pushing thermal electric generator efficiency down even lower. You really need charged particles and 90% conversion efficiency or insanely huge rads to be able to produce good power in space.

Use molten salt reactor with thorium fuel. It would increase power output, temperature and thus efficiency.

MSR in uranium fuel mode is unsuitable for electrical power generation in space as main reactor.

Edited July 21, 2017 by dankis

[FreeThinker]

I found an intresting document

http://www.rle.mit.edu/pmg/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Manan_IPC_2016.pdf

It appears phased array in the visible spectrum are just over the  horizon.

Therefore I will the phased array get the ability to function,

This should make it possible to create a network using only phased arrays

[FreeThinker]

Laser Diode, which a specialist Laser generator part,  will receive a large improvement,  they will reach higher efficiency than Free Electron Laser, but are available later and not the full range.

Beam Name	Wavelength	550 sci	1000 sci	1500 sci	2250 sci	4000 sci	10000 sci
		specializedScienceTech	longTermScienceTech	scientificOutposts	highEnergyScience	appliedHighEnergyPhysics	ultraHighEnergyPhysics
Long Infrared	11 μm	55	67	80
Short Infrared	2,200 μm	45	60	75
Near Infrared	1,050 μm	40	55	70
Red Light	700 nm		47	65
Yellow light	600 nm		50	60
Green Light	500 nm		48	56
Near Ultra Violet	400 nm		45	53
Middle Ultraviolet	300 nm		42	50
Far ultraviolet	200 nm		38	48
Vacuum Ultraviolet	110 nm			44	46
Near Extreme Ultraviolet	35 nm			38	44
Far Extreme Ultraviolet	13 nm			34	42
Long Soft X-ray	4 nm				38	40
Middle Soft X-ray	1 nm					38
Short Soft X-ray	300 pm						36
Near Hard X-ray	100 pm
Middle Hard X-ray	30 pm
Far Hard X-ray	10 pm

 

Edited July 21, 2017 by FreeThinker

[BlackMoons]

13 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

I wonder, how did you get this in the water in the first place?

Why do they suck? at best I can make them a bit lighter and cheaper, but not much

Very carefully off the end of the runway at <10m/s! using aircraft landing gear, they will support amazing weight.

Picture with landing gear deployed:

Once into the water they ran great! lifts outta the water at 30m/s and does 60m/s stable and once got it up to 100m/s before things went wrong..

I got one positioned like just into the water and another 40km out. that one you can only get the beam if your like 1.5km up!

 

They (the wrap around rads) suck because they cost a lot more per MW radiated then pretty much anything else, and they hardly have any surface area for the overall cost. Weight is not a factor IMO. They look AWESOME so I often use them on a lot of my designs anyway (how can I resist making part of the rocket glow red!) They are nice for high speed in atmosphere cooling but its so little cool as to be practically non existent other then from stopping your thermal generators from complaining about no rads. 

Actual in flight dissipation from orbit reactor posted previously:

2.28 MW dissipated from thermal wrap around (3.75m)

222MW dissipated from "Thermal Control System(Large) (Resized to 170%)

the rad temp is just around 1000k on both. But I mean I could cover my entire space station in these rads and it wouldn't dissipate as much as a single large thermal control panel. (Spec on a wraparound is 45MW max, large panel is 3500MW according VAB)

Even a small thermal control panel is rated 132MW (3x what a wraparound is rated), and its only just under twice the weight of a full wraparound. Except its also only $450 vs $8000

Sure compairing that against a deployable sucks but the rad panel large, just under 2x the mass of the wraparound again, dissipates 1/2 as much, but only costs $450 vs $8000 and you can fit 2 in the space of a wraparound.

If anything, I would like it *heavier*, somewhat cheaper and MUCH more effective. Right now with its current mass and effectiveness I view it as a visual decoration part that is too expensive to spam so I only use 1 set of them (At an eye watering $32,000 for 4! I could buy 2 mainsail's for that price)

Also im going to say rads in space generally suck because im only getting 1000K rad temp with a 750K cold bath temp at my thermal generator. this reactor might be usable for serious power if the rads actually got anywhere near the rated 2600k. I don't see getting 3k+ max temps on the graphite reactors any kinda upgrade if they won't even go over 1000k before my thermal generators overheat badly.

11 hours ago, dankis said:

Use molten salt reactor with thorium fuel. It would increase power output, temperature and thus efficiency.

MSR in uranium fuel mode is unsuitable for electrical power generation in space as main reactor.

Thorium fuel gives only a month at full power like uranium floride mode. No idea if you can refuel it without EVA. I like the 1+ year lifetime at full power of uranium burnup mode.

Hu, thought thorium had less power. turns out its 1.38X power. Anyway, my problem isent tempature of my reactor or power output, its disippation. My thermal generator has 750k cold bath temp and is operating at 40% efficency, any more reactor output and power output goes DOWN. that reactor is already throttled to 32% on uranium burnup mode.

Also learning that actinides buildup does effect uranium mode (the reactor mentions it affecting thorium mode worse) but burnup mode seems less effected, infact after some buildup uranium burnup mode produces more power then floride mode.

Edited July 21, 2017 by BlackMoons

[FreeThinker]

51 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

They (the wrap around rads) suck because they cost a lot more per MW radiated then pretty much anything else, and they hardly have any surface area for the overall cost. Weight is not a factor IMO. They look AWESOME so I often use them on a lot of my designs anyway (how can I resist making part of the rocket glow red!) They are nice for high speed in atmosphere cooling but its so little cool as to be practically non existent other then from stopping your thermal generators from complaining about no rads.

I agree the cost is way too high, especially considering to other radiator and it performance

[BlackMoons]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

I agree the cost is way too high, especially considering to other radiator and it performance

So how about making them heaver and more effective? maybe the heat transfer mechanism could work better? they do seem to have a lot of surface area and heatpipes. Stock rads are so light its silly and the tanks your attaching these rads to weigh way more then the rads.

I could really get into them being heavier then stock, more effective (there is only so much room on your rather heavy rocket fuel tank/whatever to put these things), and costing say 2x or 3x more then what stock charges for the same amount of dissipation.

Also maybe thermal generators could heat up rads more before becoming totally inefficient? It seems a little weird that my rads are only performing at <10% VAB rated dissipation with my thermal generator already up to 750K cold bath temp and 40% efficiency. increasing thermal input at that point just results in less power out as the thermal generator overheats and less efficiency results in more heat and less efficiency..

I understand you went to a rads work linearly with waste heat system recently, but maybe the math was not completely looked into how that affected thermal nuclear powerplants.

[BlackMoons]

I see now using charged particle generators lets you keep an efficiency regardless of max temp, so you could use your rads to 100%, and only have 10~30% heat dissipation from total power. I guess thermal power generation in space is just too primitive of a tech to really work well.

 

[FreeThinker]

5 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

I see now using charged particle generators lets you keep an efficiency regardless of max temp, so you could use your rads to 100%, and only have 10~30% heat dissipation from total power. I guess thermal power generation in space is just too primitive of a tech to really work well.

 

Yes, this is why aneutronic fusion is the golden ticket, as it allow very high efficiencies for converting fusion power into useful energy, it what might incredible engine like the Epstein feasible, which are at the end of the fusion tech tree

By the way I will be doing a bit of shifting around of high end parts. The Quantum Singularity Reactor will move to Ultra High Energy Physics as it will require Ultra High Energy Physics to create a miniature black hole.

The Alcubiere drives  will instead be to Unified Field Theory as it will require a deep understanding of space time, to control it. It will also no longer boost other techs, which will make it a choice rater than an inevitability

Edited July 22, 2017 by FreeThinker

[BlackMoons]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

Yes, this is why aneutronic fusion is the golden ticket, as it allow very high efficiencies for converting fusion power into useful energy, it what might incredible engine like the Epstein feasible, which are at the end of the fusion tech tree

By the why I will be doing a bit of shifting around of high end parts. The Quantum Singularity Reactor will move to Ultra High Energy Physics as it will require Ultra High Energy Physics to create a miniature black hole.

The Alcubiere drives  will instead be to Unified Field Theory as it will require a deep understanding of space time, to control it. It will also no longer boost other techs, which will make it a choice rater than an inevitability

Yea thats fine. Just minmus/mun science stations are bringing in 2000 science every few months and I only filled them up with data like once (took only a 2~3 biomes of science)

And thats with playing at 50% science reward.. bring on the more techs!

[TronX33]

Hey, although this mod looks really cool, my GameData Folder is already extremely bloated, so I would just like to know, which parts do I need to get the warp drive functional? 

[FreeThinker]

7 hours ago, TronX33 said:

Hey, although this mod looks really cool, my GameData Folder is already extremely bloated, so I would just like to know, which parts do I need to get the warp drive functional? 

Well that not easy as you need several subsystem but I will try to short list

If you want the most powerful combo you need a powerful reactor (Antimatter reactor), a fuel storage tank (Electrostatic or Diamagnetic Antimatter storage tank), a Charged Particle Direct Power Converter to convert the war power into Gigawatts  and a  high temperature some radiators to prevent the whole system from melting (Deployable Fixed Graphene Radiator) and finial any or combination of the Alcubier Warp drives

Edited July 23, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

New science drill,

Step 1: Move to target area

Step 2: Activate Extract Surface sample

Step 3: Profit

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by FreeThinker

[BlackMoons]

VERY NICE DRILL! I always wanted one of those. 100 bonus points for the universal drill menu. Can we have some kinda description of what 'Global 1, Global 2, biome and local' mean?

Judging by the fact some numbers are missing it really confuses me.

Also, I would really love if this drill was like. at least 0.25T, more like 0.5T. ATM probes are stuffed full of stuff that are physicless or 0.005ton parts that won't even eat 1 DV. It would be REALLY REALLY NICE to have a good reason to make bigger probes, or at least a probe with a 0.3~1ton payload instead of like, 0.01tons for every piece of science equipment in existence + 0.2 tons for your goo and science jr.

 

On a related note, have you thought of making some resources more rare? Like, Not on certain planets at all, and generally not overlaping as much with other resources you might want?

Like it seems minmus has basically every resource in the game, and so does duna. Mun is at least missing one of the radioactive resources and I think that is really cool when your landing site makes design decisions for you in terms of IRSU. Id love to have to go to Ike to get some resources to combine with duna's resources to do stuff. Like, Duna having urinate and ike having fluorite.

the vanilla 'ore' in the game is so boring in that respect since every planet has it and it makes everything.

Edited July 23, 2017 by BlackMoons

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, BlackMoons said:

 Can we have some kinda description of what 'Global 1, Global 2, biome and local' mean?

I'm not sure either, I'm trying to get some answer as well, but only fact I can give you is that Global 2 result value is the result of calling with the parameter ExcludeVariance set to true. My best guess it is the average over all celestial bodies that have been seeded. 

1 hour ago, BlackMoons said:

Judging by the fact some numbers are missing it really confuses me.

A missing value means it is 0

1 hour ago, BlackMoons said:

Also, I would really love if this drill was like. at least 0.25T, more like 0.5T. ATM probes are stuffed full of stuff that are physicless or 0.005ton parts that won't even eat 1 DV.

I agree that science part in  Stock are ridiculously light, especially considering what they can actually do which in this case is a full chemical analysis, which is pretty impressive. At least this is actualy you can do, no like those scanners that can magically scan an entire planet chemical composition. That just insane.

Edited July 23, 2017 by FreeThinker