Heating and Cooling

[XrayLima]

I recently saw a post regarding the thermal behavior of LV-N engines which got me looking at modding an engine to behave correctly, temperature wise.  Turns out that that isn't so easy, at least for a newbie like me.  So I started to wonder, could I create a simple 'Heater' with basic on/off thermstat that consumes EC to get my head around how heat works in KSP? Has anyone seen one out there, is this already a thing?

This led to more questions!  What controls the minimum temp that radiators will cool a ship down to?  Is there an internal preset?  How could I modify this?   Could a heater and  a TCS create a conformable internal temperature window for my Kerbals? Is this even possible?  I can barely program, and creating my own PartModules is a pretty vertical learning curve, so thoughts and suggestions are seriously welcome!!

[Streetwind]

3 hours ago, XrayLima said:

 So I started to wonder, could I create a simple 'Heater' with basic on/off thermstat that consumes EC to get my head around how heat works in KSP?

The first thing you need to understand about heat in KSP is that we're pretty much exclusively interested in getting rid of it. There is no partModule that exists solely for the purpose of creating heat. It's always a biproduct of some other process. So in order to have a heater that pumps out heat for Ec, you would have to code a custom partModule to do it. But why would you do that, when you could simply fly down to Moho and have all your parts heat up for free?

 

3 hours ago, XrayLima said:

What controls the minimum temp that radiators will cool a ship down to?  Is there an internal preset?

Yes, this is a value in the config file, easily changed with Module Manager. Defaults to 400 Kelvin.

Well, I thought it was, anyway. But after looking at the wiki I'm not so sure anymore. *headscratch*

 

3 hours ago, XrayLima said:

Could a heater and  a TCS create a conformable internal temperature window for my Kerbals?

No. Kerbals do not respond to heat or temperature in any way. You'd need to write a mod to make them vulnerable to extreme temperatures first.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Streetwind

[swjr-swis]

3 hours ago, XrayLima said:

could I create a simple 'Heater' with basic on/off thermstat that consumes EC

Yes, you could. You could use the ion engine, remove the need for Xenon so it only uses EC, and add a high heatProduction value, turning it into an electric heater (place two facing away from each other so the tiny thrust cancels out, or remove thrust altogether).

A second option may be to basically negate the values for the radiators and turn them into 'heatsoakers' - I'm not 100% sure about this one without having tried it, but I think with some judicious use of minus signs and making the sunAllignmentOffset face the sun instead of going edge-on, they could be made to soak heat and conduct it into the core instead of the other way around. I am writing this as I am getting ready to go out the door, or I would try it myself.

 

1 hour ago, Streetwind said:

No. Kerbals do not respond to heat or temperature in any way. You'd need to write a mod to make them vulnerable to extreme temperatures first.

Hmm, yes and no.

Kerbals inside command pods or crew compartments do not respond to heat, because as far as the physics simulation goes, the Kerbals 'disappear' as soon as they enter the craft. So they can be in a command pod and survive 1000+ K core temps, as long as the part itself doesn't blow up.

But Kerbals do have a temp limit of just under 1000 K, and will disintegrate into a grey puff of ash when they surpass that limit. Case in point - try reentry with a Kerbal in an external command seat and keep it exposed to the heat.

Edited February 27, 2018 by swjr-swis
quick thinking = quick errors

[Streetwind]

Yeah, but he was talking about internal temperatures

 

Good point about the ion engine though. Engines with exclusively massless propellant don't have thrust, which makes this actually work.

[Azimech]

ModuleEnginesFX can be added to any part, a thrustTransform is not needed. You can let it consume any resource you like and produce both heat or cold. Want to produce cold? Just give it a negative value.

[qzgy]

Just now, Azimech said:

Want to produce cold? Just give it a negative value.

Oooh, Kerbal Freezer Foundations!

This seems going against thermodynamics, just producing cold.

Edited February 27, 2018 by qzgy

[Azimech]

3 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Oooh, Kerbal Freeezer Foundations!

If I ever decide to finish my ship mods, I configured a rocket engines to work as a firehose, using seawater and electricity. Stuff like range, FX etc can all be configured.

A negative heat value is also the core of my piston engines mod, this way I could create sensors for my ignition system.

See: no coding needed.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Azimech

[DAL59]

7 hours ago, Streetwind said:

No. Kerbals do not respond to heat or temperature in any way. You'd need to write a mod to make them vulnerable to extreme temperatures first.

Kerbalism

[FleshJeb]

5 hours ago, Azimech said:

ModuleEnginesFX can be added to any part, a thrustTransform is not needed. You can let it consume any resource you like and produce both heat or cold. Want to produce cold? Just give it a negative value.

This changes my Junos-as-air-breathing-generators considerably. Originally, I just divided the thrust by 10, divided the ISP by 10, and multiplied the elec by 7.

[mattinoz]

12 hours ago, Streetwind said:

The first thing you need to understand about heat in KSP is that we're pretty much exclusively interested in getting rid of it. There is no partModule that exists solely for the purpose of creating heat. It's always a biproduct of some other process. So in order to have a heater that pumps out heat for Ec, you would have to code a custom partModule to do it. But why would you do that, when you could simply fly down to Moho and have all your parts heat up for free?

Wouldn't this be something just built in to crewable parts by their manufactures and not be a separate part to attach. I'd assume a heat pump (as you point out there is always heat to get rid of or something to keep cold on a space craft)  in each part as part of the provided bulk of the part would handle balancing the change in temp internally. In that case it isn't the bulk or the weight that is missing as these parts are heavy and bulky.

The KSP magic here seems to be the lack of EC draw just to keep parts generally serviceable.

Edited February 28, 2018 by mattinoz

[Streetwind]

4 hours ago, mattinoz said:

Wouldn't this be something just built in to crewable parts by their manufactures and not be a separate part to attach.

A partModule is an element in the config file. For example: ModuleEnginesFX. In other words, it's the functionality you add to a part.

[Starwaster]

On 2/27/2018 at 6:56 AM, XrayLima said:

I recently saw a post regarding the thermal behavior of LV-N engines which got me looking at modding an engine to behave correctly, temperature wise.  Turns out that that isn't so easy, at least for a newbie like me.  So I started to wonder, could I create a simple 'Heater' with basic on/off thermstat that consumes EC to get my head around how heat works in KSP? Has anyone seen one out there, is this already a thing?

This led to more questions!  What controls the minimum temp that radiators will cool a ship down to?  Is there an internal preset?  How could I modify this?   Could a heater and  a TCS create a conformable internal temperature window for my Kerbals? Is this even possible?  I can barely program, and creating my own PartModules is a pretty vertical learning curve, so thoughts and suggestions are seriously welcome!!

part.radiatorMax - set it to the temperature you want the part cooled down to divided by the part's maxTemp. Since it is a relative thing, if part.maxTemp ever changes then radiatorMax has to change as well. Real Fuels does this internally for cryogenic resources.

@Streetwind Pretty sure you're correct that nothing deliberately creates heat (since generally nothing wants to be heated up in KSP) but things like drills have a minimum temperature for optimum performance and IIRC the radiator system is capable of moving heat around if there is a surplus of it, so it can move heat to ISRU parts that want it. (drills and converters, etc)

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to mention that Deadly Reentry adjusts Kerbal temperatures to 1086 / 373.15  - 1086 for the suit, 373.15 for the Kerbal itself - this is the boiling temperature of water so if you think about it, it makes sense that they should not go above that temperature internally because all their water tissues are BOILING! (also they will start screaming just before this point....)

Edited March 1, 2018 by Starwaster

[Streetwind]

6 minutes ago, Starwaster said:

Pretty sure you're correct that nothing deliberately creates heat (since generally nothing wants to be heated up in KSP) but things like drills have a minimum temperature for optimum performance and IIRC the radiator system is capable of moving heat around if there is a surplus of it, so it can move heat to ISRU parts that want it. (drills and converters, etc)

Careful, heat is not necessarily created equal. in particular, core heat (produced by ISRU and drills and anything else implementing ModuleCoreHeat) is completely different and separate from the 'normal' heat you get from atmospheric friction, running engines, or being too close to the sun. Radiators even have two distinct operation modes to deal with both of them separately (but you don't see it because they are always on concurrently).

[Starwaster]

1 minute ago, Streetwind said:

Careful, heat is not necessarily created equal. in particular, core heat (produced by ISRU and drills and anything else implementing ModuleCoreHeat) is completely different and separate from the 'normal' heat you get from atmospheric friction, running engines, or being too close to the sun. Radiators even have two distinct operation modes to deal with both of them separately (but you don't see it because they are always on concurrently).

I'm aware of core heat's foibles, including violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, whether accidental or deliberate due to abstraction.

[XrayLima]

Is there a breakdown / tutorial into how KSP uses heat and how that might be modified by other in game parameters?  It seems relatively poorly documented, and what I'm trying to eventually do, seems rather harder than it needs to be.  For example, has anyone got an idea how to introduce a given amount of heat to a part when the throttle is 0% and none when it it is 100% following a  y=1/x  curve when fuel is available.  I'd start with a linear relationship to throttle if it simplified things.  

[Azimech]

6 hours ago, XrayLima said:

Is there a breakdown / tutorial into how KSP uses heat and how that might be modified by other in game parameters?  It seems relatively poorly documented, and what I'm trying to eventually do, seems rather harder than it needs to be.  For example, has anyone got an idea how to introduce a given amount of heat to a part when the throttle is 0% and none when it it is 100% following a  y=1/x  curve when fuel is available.  I'd start with a linear relationship to throttle if it simplified things.  

Without coding that's very hard to do. However, I think it's not impossible.

Take a look at both ModuleResourceConverter and ModuleEnginesFX, those two working together can produce amazing results. It will probably result in some kind of logic circuit using multiple resources. I've been idle for quite some time and I don't have a background in programming however I've already made simple transistors and amplifiers using these, with some more work I should be able to build NOR, NAND and other gates.