KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[ss8913]

MechJeb's attitude control window shows CoM/CoT/CoL during flight.

 

@FreeThinker - flight in FTL from Kerbin to Duna.. I've been all the way around this planet at low warp, my exit speed is 14400 m/s, and I can only get a variance of a few tenths of a m/s, no matter where I position the craft in the gravity well... does this just require a deeper gravity well than Duna can provide?

To add strangeness to strangerness... every time I fly from Kerbin to Duna, regardless of their positions relative to each other or to Kerbol, it's always around a 14400 m/s exit speed.  So, I thought, let me try the old way of using the sun's gravity to circularize.. great, so I did that and as soon as I warp away from the sun, the craft is now incapable of holding a heading - more specifically, under FTL, any time any significant control input is given, the thing veers suddenly and violently off course by about 40 degrees or so and I have to drop it out of warp to get it pointed back in the right direction.  If I don't it will start tumbling out of control.  Doesn't matter if the controls are from MechJeb or from manual input.  Flies fine out of FTL and flew fine *in* FTL until I tried to use the sun for gravity braking... very odd.

Edited August 8, 2017 by ss8913

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, ss8913 said:

MechJeb's attitude control window shows CoM/CoT/CoL during flight.

 

@FreeThinker - flight in FTL from Kerbin to Duna.. I've been all the way around this planet at low warp, my exit speed is 14400 m/s, and I can only get a variance of a few tenths of a m/s, no matter where I position the craft in the gravity well... does this just require a deeper gravity well than Duna can provide?

A deep gravity well helps a lot yes, but also the higher your warp drive power to mass ratio, the closer you should be able to get to gravity well. What was your Wartp to Mass ratio on the vessel you used?

[ss8913]

Just now, FreeThinker said:

A deep gravity well helps a lot yes, but also the higher your warp drive power to mass ratio, the closer you should be able to get to gravity well. What was your Wartp to Mass ratio on the vessel you used?

about 2.4 to 1.

[FreeThinker]

1 minute ago, ss8913 said:

about 2.4 to 1.

Well that's not terribly high. But I never said the current balance is final either, perhaps it s an idea to make the gravity breaking also be affected by proximity, I already used it for determining the maximum warp speed.

[DrScarlett]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

The Center of Mass, Center of Lift and Center of trust looks something like this in game:

Interesting, I see a couple more things than MechJeb (what I have been using) gives me. I'll check it our. Thanks  

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, DrScarlett said:

Interesting, I see a couple more things than MechJeb (what I have been using) gives me. I'll check it our. Thanks  

Hey, I was wondering, why do you have several electrostatic antimatter containment devices on your vessel? Did you know that if you want to transport antimatter in abundance, the Diamagnetic anti hydrogen container stores it far higher density

This 1.25m container stores a levitating antihydrogen ball of ice almost 13.2 kg, which antimatter in the form of hydrogen.

this extreme form of storage it is based on diamagnetism.

Do notice that it does not like excessive high gee forces (>10 G) and temperature(>1000 K)

Notice the size of the ball grows with the amount of antihydrogen in the container

The mass of the container can be reduced in the  VAB by reducing gee force and temperature tolerance

Edited August 8, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Khalkion]

I decided to try timberwind engines and faced up to constant log spam with them 

[ERR 15:08:38.206] Module FlatFNRadiator threw during OnUpdate: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at FNPlugin.FNRadiator.ColorHeat () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at FNPlugin.FNRadiator.OnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Part.ModulesOnUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

Every timberwind engine generates this message a few times a sec.

I'm using 1.15.0.4 KSPI-E with 1.3 KSP.

PS I looked through timberwind cfg file and found thermalAnim = RadiatorRadialHeat ( in MODULE { name = FlatFNRadiator), if i delete it then log spam stops, but animation of active egngine becomes weird...

[ISE]

Four Thermal Ram Jet Nozzles give me my favorite new SSTO rocket  

[ss8913]

8 hours ago, ISE said:

Four Thermal Ram Jet Nozzles give me my favorite new SSTO rocket  

powered by which reactors?  You can lift a couple thousand tons pretty easily with a 5m tank of hydrazine, a 5m antimatter reactor, a 5m charged particle generator, and a 5m thermal launch nozzle.  I use that basic design as a launch vehicle for space stations (one launch, big fairings!) ... Can use a thermal ramjet nozzle as well, add some intakes to the side and even save some fuel

What are those landing legs from, though, I must have them...

 

Side note - @FreeThinker - on my last post I edited it as you were replying to the original... I added some other issues I was having with FTL about it responding incorrectly to steering input after warping near the sun which is bizarre yet reproducible pretty reliably..  no idea what could possibly be causing it.. logs are clean.

[Khalkion]

2 minutes ago, ss8913 said:

What are those landing legs from, though, I must have them..

I suppose they are from Kerbal Reusability Expansion.

[BlackMoons]

On 2017-08-07 at 7:57 AM, Ciro1983811 said:

Zubrin gives a sample NSWR configuration. It uses as fuel/propellant a 2% (by number) uranium bromide aqueous solution. The uranium is enriched to 20% U²³⁵. This implies that B² = 0.6136 cm^-2 (the material buckling, equal to vΣ_f-Σ_a)/D) and D = 0.2433 cm (diffusion coefficent).

 

 

I am sorry but what is 2% (by number)? 2 is a number sure.. but 'by number' is not a valid way to make a ratio of two items.

You can have by mass or by volume, maybe even by atom count.. but 'by number' is meaningless.

[Ciro1983811]

22 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

 

I am sorry but what is 2% (by number)? 2 is a number sure.. but 'by number' is not a valid way to make a ratio of two items.

You can have by mass or by volume, maybe even by atom count.. but 'by number' is meaningless.

i know, that's how it is written, i suppose 2%wt

[DrScarlett]

On 8-8-2017 at 10:19 AM, FreeThinker said:

Hey, I was wondering, why do you have several electrostatic antimatter containment devices on your vessel? Did you know that if you want to transport antimatter in abundance, the Diamagnetic anti hydrogen container stores it far higher density

 

Nope, didn't know. Thank you!

[ISE]

8 hours ago, ss8913 said:

powered by which reactors?  You can lift a couple thousand tons pretty easily with a 5m tank of hydrazine, a 5m antimatter reactor, a 5m charged particle generator, and a 5m thermal launch nozzle.  I use that basic design as a launch vehicle for space stations (one launch, big fairings!) ... Can use a thermal ramjet nozzle as well, add some intakes to the side and even save some fuel

What are those landing legs from, though, I must have them...

 

Side note - @FreeThinker - on my last post I edited it as you were replying to the original... I added some other issues I was having with FTL about it responding incorrectly to steering input after warping near the sun which is bizarre yet reproducible pretty reliably..  no idea what could possibly be causing it.. logs are clean.

Each thermal ram jet nozzle is powered by its own 1.25 M Anti Matter reactor of course  and the nozzles are also sized down to 1.25 M as well. There is also a thermal to electric generator connected to the other side of the anti matter reactor. Am currently using liquid fuel only because its the only fuel I can use at the moment inside NFLV tanks. But I know there are diffrent fuels that could double the thrust too 

 

The landing legs came from KRE, its my go to for good looking reusable parts  

Edited August 9, 2017 by ISE

[ss8913]

6 hours ago, ISE said:

Each thermal ram jet nozzle is powered by its own 1.25 M Anti Matter reactor of course  and the nozzles are also sized down to 1.25 M as well. There is also a thermal to electric generator connected to the other side of the anti matter reactor. Am currently using liquid fuel only because its the only fuel I can use at the moment inside NFLV tanks. But I know there are diffrent fuels that could double the thrust too 

 

The landing legs came from KRE, its my go to for good looking reusable parts  

liquidfuel is actually pretty good in there.  However you should know that 4x 1.25m TRJ + 4x 1.25m antimatter reactors is approximately equal to a single 2.5 variant of each.. which is the default size.  May be able to lower part counts that way.

[ISE]

32 minutes ago, ss8913 said:

liquidfuel is actually pretty good in there.  However you should know that 4x 1.25m TRJ + 4x 1.25m antimatter reactors is approximately equal to a single 2.5 variant of each.. which is the default size.  May be able to lower part counts that way.

That was my first initial rocket, single Engine and single Reactor... but landing it with TCA or MJ became an issue cuz I only had one engine, it's a lot easier to maneuver a landing with more than one engine for computers.  

[FreeThinker]

11 hours ago, ISE said:

Each thermal ram jet nozzle is powered by its own 1.25 M Anti Matter reactor of course  and the nozzles are also sized down to 1.25 M as well.

1

Although this would work, unless it is needed for symmetry balance, I would advise using a single engine instead because it offers more compact power and reduced mass cost

Edited August 10, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, ISE said:

That was my first initial rocket, single Engine and single Reactor... but landing it with TCA or MJ became an issue cuz I only had one engine, it's a lot easier to maneuver a landing with more than one engine for computers.  

Oh, I didn't knew that was actually feasible. Did you actually land that beast vertically after launching anything into orbit?

11 hours ago, ISE said:

Am currently using liquid fuel only because its the only fuel I can use at the moment inside NFLV tanks. But I know there are diffrent fuels that could double the thrust too 

2

what is so special about NFLV tanks you really have to use them?

Edited August 10, 2017 by FreeThinker

[ISE]

13 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Oh, I didn't knew that was actually feasible. Did you actually land that beast vertically after launching anything into orbit?

what is so special about NFLV tanks you really have to use them?

Indeed I did land her  NFLV cargo bays are in the rocket, so i wanted to keep the same style all the way around the rocket. KRE trunk, legs, etc looked really good with it too. I might make a modular fuel tanks cfg for the NFLV part so I can maybe use methane  Amd ya part count might be a lil high, but it keeps my rocket from tipping over during return landing. I did successfully launch a couple probes and station modules into orbit.  Also at the moment I have the perfect amount of thrust, just enough so that max thrust just barely burns it to a crisp instead of going the speed of a bat out of hell.

Edited August 10, 2017 by ISE

[ArmchairPhysicist]

On 8/5/2017 at 10:15 AM, Abstract_Kerman said:

Sorry about not responding in a while. The issue is that when i activate the engine my throttle goes all the way to 0 and wont budge from zero.

Not sure if this was answered already, but I'll try anyway. I don't want to come across as insulting your intelligence, not my intent, but kerbstine engines are vacuum only. No kerbstine launchers. 

It also might be software, it can happen if the mod didn't download fully or norton gets trigger happy and kills a file (looking at you firespitter.dll). You might want to try wiping you mods and reinstalling. Dig around to make sure the dependency hell didn't kill you.

On 8/7/2017 at 6:03 PM, DrScarlett said:

Are you using TCA at all?

Thank you, @FreeThinker, for your encouraging words!

 I understand you are trying to up the challenge - I appreciate that. However, disregarding the fact that this thing wasn't purposed for travel to other bodies, if I consider the mun landing proposal, I have to put serious question marks to it.

• First, along the lines of what @Nansuchao said, it can already transfer to, and land on the Mun. I just land it on its ass on the Kerbstein. See below  Using rotating VTOLs for that introduces a complication that seems impractical.
• For using the thermal jets in a rotating fashion I would have to put them near the CoM, or use two pair or them, which would move the CoM way back again, giving me an unbalanced plane. if you want me to make a VTOL based on thermal jets that can rotate the engines, I can try that, but giving it wings as well is weird hybrid mixture.
• Second, using the thermal jets in a non-atmospheric environment (rotating or otherwise) doesn't make much sense to me. I would have to haul more propellant to the Mun.

I am fine with going for a VTOL concept, but I would not like to design it for both atmospheric gliding as well as non-atmospheric rocketing purposes. it's either - or. I'm sorry, the whole idea just weirds me out. Maybe you should specify the challenge more clearly? How do you want it to take off? How do you want it to land? In atmosphe? In vacuum?

Now adding FTL that is a challenge. i might take you up on that. If you read earlier with my discussion with @Ciro1983811, we already discussed that. 

 

I did a quick adaptation, add some legs and move the tail plane forward, but I nailed it. Barely. Enter the MunMoth  

Very nice, makes my Starship Two look silly. 

[Spacetourist]

Hi,

This may have already been reported, but i didn't see it in the previous few pages ...

I can't get with the new Vista 10m engine the 7000KN of thrust but only 1200KN as the old 5m model , I have unlocked all the nodes improving the Vista engine.

I use Antimatter Initiated Reactor and charged particles generator on this demo ship.

Thanks!

[ss8913]

So i haven't tried my hyperspace-carrier model since the FTL changes went in, @FreeThinker - you may recall my previous issues using FTL + timewarp in this configuration.  This is like that, but worse.  I'm not using timewarp at all.  Just warping towards duna from Kerbin, with a spaceplane docked to a hyperspace carrier craft.  steering is erratic, won't hold course, it can't go over 20c even with a 7.5:1 warp to mass ratio (plus two 3.75m antimatter reactors/generators *and* a 5m QSR), parts randomly fall off and explode.. etc.  If I fly the hyperspace carrier pod by itself without the docked spaceplane, it works fine.  I'll run some more tests, I'm not 100% sure I can reproduce this but it was a fairly narrow case here with not a lot else going on (ie timewarp).

[DrScarlett]

On 8/8/2017 at 1:19 AM, FreeThinker said:

Hey, I was wondering, why do you have several electrostatic antimatter containment devices on your vessel? Did you know that if you want to transport antimatter in abundance, the Diamagnetic anti hydrogen container stores it far higher density

Hey @FreeThinker,

actually, I have a few questions about this. Maybe you can enlighten me.

• I have a Diamagnetic AM Containment device, not a trap, and it doesn't look like the one you are showing. It does look like it holds much more AM though.
• Can i use the Diamagnetic container to power devices, the same way as the Antistatic containers, or can I only use it for transport?
• I did a bit of testing, build a new tanker, and it looks like I cannot transfer antimatter between the two different types of containment devices i have. That makes using the two types in parallel very impractical.

Edited August 11, 2017 by DrScarlett

[FreeThinker]

9 hours ago, ss8913 said:

So i haven't tried my hyperspace-carrier model since the FTL changes went in, @FreeThinker - you may recall my previous issues using FTL + timewarp in this configuration.  This is like that, but worse.  I'm not using timewarp at all.  Just warping towards duna from Kerbin, with a spaceplane docked to a hyperspace carrier craft.  steering is erratic, won't hold course, it can't go over 20c even with a 7.5:1 warp to mass ratio (plus two 3.75m antimatter reactors/generators *and* a 5m QSR), parts randomly fall off and explode.. etc.  If I fly the hyperspace carrier pod by itself without the docked spaceplane, it works fine.  I'll run some more tests, I'm not 100% sure I can reproduce this but it was a fairly narrow case here with not a lot else going on (ie timewarp).

I could not reproduce it myself so perhaps you could find out  which mods need to be installed before this problem can happen.

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, DrScarlett said:

• I have a Diamagnetic AM Containment device, not a trap, and it doesn't look like the one you are showing. It does look like it holds much more AM though.

This might not be obvious but you can open and close the windows

4 hours ago, DrScarlett said:

• Can i use the Diamagnetic container to power devices, the same way as the Antistatic containers, or can I only use it for transport?

Yes you can use them both to power antimatter reactors

4 hours ago, DrScarlett said:

• I did a bit of testing, build a new tanker, and it looks like I cannot transfer antimatter between the two different types of containment devices i have. That makes using the two types in parallel very impractical.

Good point, I will add a auto converter to allow you to convert between the 2 resources