KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[Freekin]

Anyone else have issues with their IR relays installing 1.15.0.8?  Mine don't seem to connect anymore.  Not sure if it's related, but my pivoted infrared mirror in VAB and SPH shows Can Relay Independently as false while the pivoted light mirror shows as true.

Also, is there a way to relay x-rays like the other wavelengths?  Or are they only point to point?

Edited August 24, 2017 by Freekin
Added detail

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, Freekin said:

Also, is there a way to relay x-rays like the other wavelengths?  Or are they only point to point?

 

This is one of the main disadvantages of X-ray, you cannot reflect it like longer wavelengths like visible light. At best you can absorb the x-ray energy (which can be done quite efficiently) and resend it in another wavelength to reach the backside of a planet.

Edited August 24, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

Just now, FreeThinker said:

This is one of the main disadvantages of X-ray, you cannot reflect it like longer wavelengths like visible light. At best you can absorb it and resend it in another wavelength to reach the backside of a planet.

What is shortest wavelength that you can relay?

[FreeThinker]

2 minutes ago, raxo2222 said:

What is shortest wavelength that you can relay?

Far Extreme Ultraviolet Light

[FreeThinker]

Found an interesting video on how to use KSPI parts

 

[BlackMoons]

ISP of all fuels for ATTILA thruster listed as 0, really hard to tell what the true ISP is in flight since it varies hugely from one gas to another (like 2000+ for hydrogen but only 400 for xenon at sea level..). Also no listing for xenon but xenon is a selectable fuel.

Also, the part description says max 20MW, but the VAB description says max 10,000MW?

 

Also, Shielded Multiwavelength Diode laser transmitter does not respect its 'Power capacity' Although maybe that is just for receivers. (Wall power can exceed power capacity)

Edited August 24, 2017 by BlackMoons

[Khalkion]

15 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

ISP of all fuels for ATTILA thruster listed as 0, really hard to tell what the true ISP is in flight since it varies hugely from one gas to another (like 2000+ for hydrogen but only 400 for xenon at sea level..). Also no listing for xenon but xenon is a selectable fuel.

Real current ISP is always written in Part Action Menu (right click on th engine).

[BlackMoons]

14 minutes ago, Khalkion said:

Real current ISP is always written in Part Action Menu (right click on th engine).

Not in the VAB for the ATTILA thruster as my screenshot shows. and that makes it much harder to design as I have to make a ship with a dozen fuels to figure out what one is decent. (Methane seems pretty good, high ISP+thrust.. ammonia also seemed OKish. Xenon had pathetic ISP but 2x thrust..)

Edited August 24, 2017 by BlackMoons

[BlackMoons]

Why would one use the thermal ramjet over the thermal turbojet?

They both seem to perform the same functions, but the thermal turbojet gets 2x the thrust from the same input power (in atmospheric mode, tested up to 300m/s or so..), same ISP (given a thermal receivers 3300k core temp), and the thermal turbojet works from a standstill where the thermal ramjet needs high speed.

Does the thermal ramjet produce more thrust above a certain speed then the thermal turbojet?

Edited August 24, 2017 by BlackMoons

[BlackMoons]

Is there some reason Arcjet and resistorjet RCS require 70MW+ in operation on methane for 24KN of thrust? And won't work on liquids only gases?

That seems a little excessive for 24KN of manuvering thrust when the same amount of power could give me a few 1000KN of thrust on basically any other engine..

Sure you didn't misplace a decimal? The only kinda ship that would have that power to mass would be a warp ship.

Basically not worth using if I needed 100MW+ of power to use a couple of them continuously and have to keep a large supply of gases since if I ran out during docking.. that'd be bad. Especially considering nothing that produces power/etc on your ship is going to be efficient it seems like it would be simple to find some waste heat to gasify any cyrogenic liquids as needed.

Also very weird that the inline arcjets come with liquid tanks but can't even use the liquid in those tanks.

(Screenshot taken with inf fuel+inf electricity on, since otherwise my electricity would run out nearly instantly as that ship 'only' has a 3.75m trialpha reactor)

Edited August 24, 2017 by BlackMoons

[BlackMoons]

'OBEK-500 Blanket Photovoltaic array' is twice as heavy, twice as costly, half the receive area, produces 20% less EC then 'Blanket Photovoltaic Solar Power receiver' unlocked at same tech node.

'Blanket Photovoltaic Solar Power receiver' also appears in 'Advanced beam power' and 'Advanced photovoltaic materials' (though might be due to me updating my game after buying it there and you moving it)

 

 

[FreeThinker]

 

2 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Why would one use the thermal ramjet over the thermal turbojet?

They both seem to perform the same functions, but the thermal turbojet gets 2x the thrust from the same input power (in atmospheric mode, tested up to 300m/s or so..), same ISP (given a thermal receivers 3300k core temp), and the thermal turbojet works from a standstill where the thermal ramjet needs high speed.

Does the thermal ramjet produce more thrust above a certain speed then the thermal turbojet?

Yes at more than 2 mach the ram jet will noticably start to produce more thrust and can continue to speed up. The ramjet will noticably perfotm better on ssto reaching high speed in the atmosphere before flyinh into space. Turbojet is better at give high speed acceleration but will perform less at higher speeds.

[BlackMoons]

2 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

 

Yes at more than 2 mach the ram jet will noticably start to produce more thrust and can continue to speed up. The ramjet will noticably perfotm better on ssto reaching high speed in the atmosphere before flyinh into space. Turbojet is better at give high speed acceleration but will perform less at higher speeds.

Ah ok. Good balance then I like that. Also noticed the turbojet has no stack node under it, so I guess harder to stage a turbojet powered craft then a ramjet powered craft.

[Khalkion]

35 minutes ago, BlackMoons said:

Ah ok. Good balance then I like that. Also noticed the turbojet has no stack node under it, so I guess harder to stage a turbojet powered craft then a ramjet powered craft.

Why do you even want to stage turbojet powevered craft? Its main power starts from the very launch, so if you have one with you, you want to use it from the very begining. Stock turbojets don't have stack node too i think just for this reason. 

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Is there some reason Arcjet and resistorjet RCS require 70MW+ in operation on methane for 24KN of thrust? And won't work on liquids only gases?

That seems a little excessive for 24KN of manuvering thrust when the same amount of power could give me a few 1000KN of thrust on basically any other engine..

Sure you didn't misplace a decimal? The only kinda ship that would have that power to mass would be a warp ship.

The amount of power is realy the amount of power needed for the that kind of performance  and not some decimal mistake. It is stock and other mods that give the wrong idea you can generate kilo newton from a few kilowatt. In reality the Dawn Ion engine thrust is just 90 mili newton, not killo newton!. Please let that sink in fist. In this regard, an electric engine producing 24 kilo netwon, which is about 266 times as powerful is actually very powerful for an electric engine.

2 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Basically not worth using if I needed 100MW+ of power to use a couple of them continuously and have to keep a large supply of gases since if I ran out during docking.. that'd be bad. Especially considering nothing that produces power/etc on your ship is going to be efficient it seems like it would be simple to find some waste heat to gasify any cyrogenic liquids as needed.

Well  the RCS Arcjet and Resistojet work both in power or unpower mode, the difference will be the effective Isp. Unpowered it perforce similar to a regular RCS. When sufficiently powered, it can perform twise (resistojet) or quaduple(arcjet) as good. It will switch automatically between powered and unpowered mod. The difference can be heard in the pitch.

2 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Also very weird that the inline arcjets come with liquid tanks but can't even use the liquid in those tanks.

Good point, I will adres that

Edited August 24, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

(Screenshot taken with inf fuel+inf electricity on, since otherwise my electricity would run out nearly instantly as that ship 'only' has a 3.75m trialpha reactor)

This is what Super capacitors are for, allowing you to do short bust of RCS at high Isp

[BlackMoons]

Timberwind exhaust no longer has alpha blending..? renders as huge quads

[FreeThinker]

3 hours ago, BlackMoons said:

Basically not worth using if I needed 100MW+ of power to use a couple of them continuously and have to keep a large supply of gases since if I ran out during docking.. that'd be bad. Especially considering nothing that produces power/etc on your ship is going to be efficient it seems like it would be simple to find some waste heat to gasify any cyrogenic liquids as needed.

Wait a second, are you running in NF mode? I just realized, the is no powerMultiplier applied to the RCS engine, which means they require a lot more power then they should

[raxo2222]

Wonder when @FreeThinker will add message reminding, that mod is in NF compability mode, when Near Future mod is installed.

[BlackMoons]

48 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

The amount of power is realy the amount of power needed for the that kind of performance  and not some decimal mistake. It is stock and other mods that give the wrong idea you can generate kilo newton from a few kilowatt. In reality the Dawn Ion engine thrust is just 90 mili newton, not killo newton!. Please let that sink in fist. In this regard, an electric engine producing 24 kilo netwon, which is about 266 times as powerful is actually very powerful for an electric engine.

Well  the RCS Arcjet and Resistojet work both in power or unpower mode, the difference will be the effective Isp. Unpowered it perforce similar to a regular RCS. When sufficiently powered, it can perform twise (resistojet) or quaduple(arcjet) as good. It will switch automatically between powered and unpowered mod. The difference can be heard in the pitch.

Good point, I will adres that

Sure, but its not very consistent with your other engines that produce 5~20KN per MW since the last update. These produce 0.3KN~ per MW. I guess with some supercapacitors (havent really been using those yet since thus far solar panels and nuclear generators had so many MJ there was no point, seems things have less MJ in the current update and supercapacitors have much more use now)

 

5 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Wait a second, are you running in NF mode? I just realized, the is no powerMultiplier applied to the RCS engine, which means they require a lot more power then they should

No, while I have NF electrics installed for the batteries/capacitors, I removed its nuclear engines and the KSPI patch that downscales everything to NF electrics levels, because I like the KSPI engines much better and didn't want other engines muddling things up.

[Freekin]

@FreeThinker Did you mean to disable silicates processing in the ISRUs?

[Hacki]

Did you mean to disable silicates processing in the ISRUs?

 

I'll take the liberty to answer that.. Yes. 
It was replaced by spodumene processing. Spodumene is a lithium rich ore and is the correct process to extract lithium, while silicates dont usually contain lithium. At least not in large enough quantities to justify making it the main source of lithium. 

If that somehow messed up some ongoing savegame of yours, you can re-enable it by opening the file <KSP_INSTALL_DIR>\GameData\WarpPlugin\Parts\Utility\ISRU\ISRU.cfg and un-commenting the lines 346 to 418 (just remove the leading // ) 

[Khalkion]

Did anyone get to make solar powerplants work? I have several problems.

1. Circular Recievers, all 3 of them, are blocked by themselves when I try to use them as solar panels. I think they have wrong definitions for "up" and "down", but I'm not sure. Also Thermophotovoltaic and Rectenna don't remember correct animation and always return to retracted animation (switch scenes/vessels).

2. Blanket Photovoltaic Solar Power Reciever have max temperature of 1100 K. So it's not practical to use for solar power plant, right? and there must be some other role for it, but this reciever looks exactly like big photovoltaic solar panel... Other things from KSPI-E that are capable of solar power have higher max temperature.

3. Stock solar panels are patched by KSPI-E, so they can generate megajoules, but something wrong with them...Multiple panels have different power output, and can't reach equlibrium. And transmitter doesn't like them, its power demand fluctuates and doesn't reach all available supply, also in KSPI helper I see something like 200-300 MW demand, while Diode Laser in PAM shows only 9.7 MW wall to beam power and neither numer is correct ( at least for me, when I see almost no wasteheat and 3.8 theoretical supply)

Edited August 25, 2017 by Khalkion

[FreeThinker]

27 minutes ago, Khalkion said:

2. Blanket Photovoltaic Solar Power Reciever have max temperature of 1100 K. So it's not practical to use for solar power plant, right? and there must be some other role for it, but this reciever looks exactly like big photovoltaic solar panel... Other things from KSPI-E that are capable of solar power have higher max temperature.
 

4

For solar power generation in low solar orbit, use the thermal solar receivers which are specificly designed for this purpose. They function by focusing all solar energy in a thermal molten salt vat which can then be efficiently converted in electric power because it use radiator perpetual to the sun to get rid of wasteheal. Solar cells are not very effective for this purpose at the have trouble getting rid of their wasteheat and a large part of the energy they receive becomes instant wasteheat.

They can also be use as relays

Solar cells big advantage is that they are sensitive in a wide spectrum, which allows them to be used with both infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. The idea is that the transmitter customized it wavelength depending on the distance to the receiving vessel, allowing optimal receive both at the start, during and near the destination.

Edited August 25, 2017 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

48 minutes ago, Khalkion said:

3. Stock solar panels are patched by KSPI-E, so they can generate megajoules, but something wrong with them...Multiple panels have different power output, and can't reach equlibrium. And transmitter doesn't like them, its power demand fluctuates and doesn't reach all available supply, also in KSPI helper I see something like 200-300 MW demand, while Diode Laser in PAM shows only 9.7 MW wall to beam power and neither numer is correct ( at least for me, when I see almost no wasteheat and 3.8 theoretical supply)

3

Notice that solar cells efficiency drop (and fluctuate) as they get higher temperature. Near their overheating temperature, they produce only a fraction of their maximum theoretically received power. THis is not a KSPI feature but a stock feature.  KSPI only reads out the information and displays it. This is the reason why your Utilisation is only 6% everything else is wasted.

Edited August 25, 2017 by FreeThinker