KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[FreeThinker]

23 minutes ago, Khalkion said:

Yep, I'm playing carreer with Interstellar(and about ~80 mods else) for may be 2 months now?.. Am I wrong and I don't actually need the relays?

No it is perfect valid strategy, but I would have recommended a Free Electron Laser (instead of a diode laser array) for this vessel as it would have allowed you to be a lot more flexible because it would have enabled transmission  in shorter wavelength (like ultraviolet), allowing you transmit power to Eve or Duna effectively

Edited September 10, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Khalkion]

At the point when I was building it FEL had worse efficiency than diode laser in Long Infrared. And now I'm planning to launch solar power and Short Soft X-ray transmitter (or may be a little shorter, according to my calculations I need something about 1,67E-10 for reach Kerbin with 1m aperture of transmitter and 5m spot-size. Right now I don't have any big dish for X-ray diapason, so I have to use just the laser with its small aperture). 

Also I'm thinking about building some sort of adapter? relay. So I could use my old network for longer distances without rebuilding it. Something that can recieve in my current Infrared and than retransmit in shorter wavelengths. But I hadn't tried it yet and I think I will need a lot of radiators and lost most of the power in transmission. Or is there any way of relaying power in different wawelength without first recieving and then trasnmitting it?

Edited September 12, 2017 by Khalkion
worth != worse >.<

[FreeThinker]

removed because 1.16.0.0 contains a critical bug which causes KSP to crash on load

Edited September 12, 2017 by FreeThinker

[tomf]

Is there configuration (a MM patch?) that would make the KSPI-E specific resources like nitratine show up in scansat?

[FreeThinker]

4 hours ago, tomf said:

Is there configuration (a MM patch?) that would make the KSPI-E specific resources like nitratine show up in scansat?

The stock surface scanner has the ability to scan for nitratine

Edited September 11, 2017 by FreeThinker

[Khalkion]

23 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

removed because 1.16.0.0 contains a critical bug which causes KSP to crash on load

I've already succesfully launched 5 or 6 times with it in place...

[FreeThinker]

41 minutes ago, Khalkion said:

I've already succesfully launched 5 or 6 times with it in place...

the CTD appears to happen when attempting to launch a vessel with radiators

[tomf]

On 9/11/2017 at 9:42 PM, FreeThinker said:

The stock surface scanner has the ability to scan for nitratine

I know, but that isn't really what I'm after , I would like to be able to see concentrations in a nice map view so I can plan where to put all the sections of my base.

[Khalkion]

40 minutes ago, tomf said:

I know, but that isn't really what I'm after , I would like to be able to see concentrations in a nice map view so I can plan where to put all the sections of my base.

Do you know, that you can toggle resource overlay in map view (both in flight and in tracking station) to see resource concentrations on scanned bodies? While it looks like SCANsat doesn't have resource definition for nitratine (I think it because CRP doesn't have it too), stock resource overlay works fine for it.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Khalkion

[Gnillits]

I'm relativ new to this mod, so my question could be realy dumb, but i can't find any answers with google so:

How can I produce Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer using an "All in One IRSU Refinery"?
There should be enough power on my ship, because there is a "Molten Salt Reactor" on it with "Thermal Electric Generator" attached to it. I also have an "IFS Cryongenic Tank" with Liquid Water in it which is attached to the IRSU and a empty "Rockomax X200-32" which is also attached to the IRSU.  
The Tanks are also attached with External Fuel Ducts to the IRSU...

Any idea to what am I doing wrong? Or is it just impossible to do this? 

[Hacki]

1 hour ago, Gnillits said:

How can I produce Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer using an "All in One IRSU Refinery"?

You cant. 

The all-in-one refinery only processes interstellar specific resources. 

You can add the ability by rewriting the config file for the ISRU though. Or you use engines that use interstellar fuels. 

[Hacki]

Okay, today i have a question..

 

How is the Magnetohydrodynamic Electric Generator supposed to work? 
 

Is it supposed to be a brayton cycle thermal generator, charged particle generator, or do both? 

As it is its apparently using the charged particle power as an input, but then runs the thermal generator code on that - the output power is dependent on the wasteheat builtup and the efficiency goes down quickly. 
I tried to use it with the stellerator fusion reactor, stuck 90GW worth of radiators on it and the efficiency barely scratches 30% 

Doesnt appear to be useful in its current state - but perhaps i'm doing something wrong again.. 

 

 

 

[Khalkion]

44 minutes ago, Hacki said:

How is the Magnetohydrodynamic Electric Generator supposed to work? 
 

Is it supposed to be a brayton cycle thermal generator, charged particle generator, or do both? 

As I understand it - it can utilize all power from mixed type reactors, but works like thermal generator. So if total power of some fusion reactor is 3 GW, where 20% is charged particles, then Magnetohydrodynamic Electric Generator will work with all 3 GW while thermal generator will take only 2.4 GW. And then these numbers will be reduced by thermal efficiency in both cases.

However I have no problem with bringing MEG to 50+% thermal effficiency. Of course thermal helper doesn't show these numbers, but in flight they are achievable. May be it is time to delete or redo thermal helper, as it becomes more and more confusing for newcomers with each update.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Khalkion

[FreeThinker]

17 hours ago, Hacki said:

Okay, today i have a question..

 

How is the Magnetohydrodynamic Electric Generator supposed to work? 
 

Is it supposed to be a brayton cycle thermal generator, charged particle generator, or do both? 

As it is its apparently using the charged particle power as an input, but then runs the thermal generator code on that - the output power is dependent on the wasteheat builtup and the efficiency goes down quickly. 
I tried to use it with the stellerator fusion reactor, stuck 90GW worth of radiators on it and the efficiency barely scratches 30% 

Doesnt appear to be useful in its current state - but perhaps i'm doing something wrong again..

11

The Magnetohydrodynamic Electric Generator is technically a reverse plasma accelerator which converts moving ionised plasma to directly into power. In KSPI this is implemented as a thermal electric generator which significantly less sensitive to waste-heat buildup compared to the regular thermal power generator, allowing it to achieve significantly higher efficiency.

In order for MHD power generation to be possible the reactor must be capable to heat up a medium to high enough temperatures that it becomes fully ionized. Reactors which are currently able of doing this are the Open Cycle GasCore, This Fission Fragment Reactor and the Plasma Jet Magneto Inertial Fusion Reactor

The reason that the stellarator efficiency does not benefit from the the MHD generator is because the default power output (D-T fusion) produces hot lithium which is not plasma and therefore not benefits from the potential improved MHD efficiency. I do however have some plans to count charged particle energy as fully ionised allowing reactor like the Stelleratorand Spherical Magnetic Confinement reactor to still benefit from the improved efficiency of the MHD. Still a direct energy converter will  allow improved performance still when possible

Edited September 15, 2017 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

Why there is big time discrepancy of time remaining between alternative resource display and reactor resource consumption display?

I limited max dynamic pressure in mechjeb to 35 KPa so plane doesn't burn and/or fall apart.

 

Suggestion: can all engines on atmospheric mode use Advanced Jet Engine mods performance calculations if this mod is present?

What about atmospheric composition having impact on thrust and ISP of engines running on air/compressed air if compressed air supply is small enough?

Another bug report -  some parts doesn't check if RSS is present:

 

It seems like it doesn't matter how big ISRU refrigator is, intake air -> compressed air conversion speed is determinated only by intake area, dynamic/static pressure and possibly density.

https://imgur.com/a/S8b0Q

 

It doesn't even matter how big and or how many intakes are!

https://imgur.com/a/GQuiu

https://imgur.com/a/mbVRs

This means tiniest aircraft can go even to 50 - 60km of altitude on turbojet compressed air and big planes will get starved at 10 - 20 km!

Edited September 15, 2017 by raxo2222

[lBoBl]

Is there a way to make lithium hydride in any ISRU refinery ? According to wikipedia, IRL that would be treating treating lithium metal with hydrogen at high temperatures (600°C). This doesn't sound like too much of a complicated process, however I don't see it in the ressource flowchart of the OP. I'll try to check in the game if it's anywhere, but if not I think that it would be a great addition for future updates, now that we have kerbstein drives

[lBoBl]

Now that we have this Kerbstein drive to play with, I would expect a lot of people to have made Expanse themed vessels. So, this is my attempt, using scaled up B9 HX parts and radiators... The Kanterbury !

It has 8*7.5m Kerbsteins + a 10m scaled up one, it weighs definitely over 8000t (I think even more actually) with full cargo and fuel tanks. For those familiar with The Expanse TV series you'll propably just know the Canterbury as an ice hauler, but it was originally designed to bring colonists to the outer planets and allow the colonization of the Belt shortly after the invention of the Eptsein drive. And this is exactly what I'm using it for (except I'm not colonizing mainly the belt but rather the outer planets). It carries nearly three thousand tons of building material and has orbital building capabilities as well as long-term accomodations for up to 30 kerbals (more than 100 can stay for a short period).

Obviously, since it's based on The Expanse, it has no warp-drive but instead, it has Δv. More than 10 000 m/s !

I'm just kidding it has 1.2 million

This, and the possibility to thrust during time-warp make it incredibly fun to play with. And since the gigantic hull and most of the radiators are condensed to one giant welded part, it doesn't even lag too much ! I just love it and I've been dreaming to do something like this in KSP for a very very long time. I don't know why but warp drives just don't appeal to me as much as overpowered but newtonian based thrusters. It's not even a realism thing because the torch drives we see in The Expanse seem to be so efficient in every way (isp, thermal, electric) that they are in some ways hardly more realistic than an Alcubierre Drive, but I guess I just don't like to go from point A to point B without having to pay attention to what's in between.

So, I'm currently using this perfect ship as an orbital base for kolonization. I get it if some of you don't like the oversized, overpowered aspect but anyways, here are the pics :

Spoiler

 

[FreeThinker]

A new beta is available 1.15.1.8 which can be downloaded from here

Changelog

* updated IFS to 2.9.3

* added Part Localization (by @Eleusis La Arwall)

* added Localization for Reactor part module

* Fixed Thermal Receiver overheating when no thermal power usage

[icecold951]

I have an issue here, I think I've mentioned before. If you go into warp, then leave the ship for a long trip, it might not remember you are in warp. That leaves you at extreme velocity going through normal space. Any fix for this, to at least slow the ship back down? I do wish they could get it to remember if you are already in warp or not.

[FreeThinker]

A new beta KSP Interstellar Extended 1.15.1.9 can be downloaded from here

Changelog

* Added Deployable Antimatter Magnetic Trap  (by Spacemouse)

* Balance: Reduced mass magnetic traps

* Balance: Magnetic Traps now require power to function and can be disabled

* Fixed loss of resources in Cryo Storage  when build in space (unverified)

[raxo2222]

Is intentional, that antimatter reactors use 20x less antimatter for same perfomance of electric generation/thermal power?

That is if antimatter lasted for one day now it lasts for 20 days at same energy usage.

Also energy production in interstellar heat mechanics helper shows incorrect energy production levels for MFC fusion reactor.

https://imgur.com/a/ZNhgs

Also it would be nice if there was all in one fusion tank for testing purposes, that is containing H, D, T, He3, Li6, Li7 and Boron.

Are any other elements used in fusion?

 

Comparison between Kerbstein and Daedlius, both 5m sized.

5m Daedalus engine take 200 MW of power while Kerbstein engine takes 11 GW of power.

Power req.: K - 11 GW, D - 0.2 GW

Mass: K - 50 tons, D - 72 tons

Fuel: K - Li7+H, D - He3+D

ISP: K - 500 000s, D - 1000 000s

Thrust: K - 3700 kN, D - 600 kN

Power: K - 1850 GW, D - 600 GW (ISP*Thrust)

Q factor: K - ~168, D - 3000

 

Kerbstein is much more powerful than Daedlius it seems.

https://imgur.com/a/AjjHI

Antimatter Initiated reactor has nice punch.

 

Antimatter reactor has even more concentrated power.

https://imgur.com/a/SKTfE

 

QSR: Highest power to mass ratio. Engine here is like 90% of ships mass.

https://imgur.com/a/Xph6F

BTW QSR is bugged - it always run at 100%, so it creates a lot of wasteheat, and even more if you set manual throttle to 100%.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2017 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

9 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

Is intentional, that antimatter reactors use 20x less antimatter for same perfomance of electric generation/thermal power?

That is if antimatter lasted for one day now it lasts for 20 days at same energy usage.

That doesn't sound right, how did you test?

9 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

Comparison between Kerbstein and Daedlius, both 5m sized.

5m Daedalus engine take 200 MW of power while Kerbstein engine takes 11 GW of power.

Power req.: K - 11 GW, D - 0.2 GW

Mass: K - 50 tons, D - 72 tons

Fuel: K - Li7+H, D - He3+D

ISP: K - 500 000s, D - 1000 000s

Thrust: K - 3700 kN, D - 600 kN

Power: K - 1850 GW, D - 600 GW (ISP*Thrust)

Q factor: K - ~168, D - 3000

 

Kerbstein is much more powerful than Daedlius it seems.

 

Well yes, but the Daedalus is  a second generation fusion engine while the Kerbstein is a 4th generation fusion engine.

[Maelstrom Vortex]

Anyone have any ideas what might be going on here?

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/175877562

The entire stream is a diagnostic as to why my power grid went down between patches. Working literally as of last night, stopped today. I have suspicions ranging from:

Transmitters are actually transmitting from the satellites on the far-infrared wavelength relating to the last bug.. to atmospheric absorption is now out of alignment with its broadcast band to atmospheric absorption rates for long infra-red have changed.. though FT says he hasn't changed anything major other than how radiators are functioning.

I suspect it may be related to the quirk caused by the far-infra red incrementation in the tech tree, but have no way to confirm.

Interstellar Extended Power Grid Crash diagnostic stream. Diagnostic begins about 23 minutes at first aircraft deployment after re configuring the thermal shuttle.

I did everything I could to eliminate user error as the cause.. let me know if I missed something as sometimes a third eye is needed.

Edited September 19, 2017 by Maelstrom Vortex

[raxo2222]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

That doesn't sound right, how did you test?

Well yes, but the Daedalus is  a second generation fusion engine while the Kerbstein is a 4th generation fusion engine.

First I built minimal spaceship with just probe core, antimatter fuel+reactor, charged particle generator and radiators.

When I use magnetic nozzle it uses antimatter at same rate as before you changed antimatter reactor to be 20x more powerful with magnetic nozzle.

When I use it with electricity using engine or thermal engine, then it uses antimatter at 1/20th of old rate.

 

QSR is bugged too - it ALWAYS runs at full power.

Lets say we have 1000 GW QSR. If its power limiter limiter is at 100%10% then it always produces 1000/100 GW of power, even if demand is much lower

 

Can you add to ISRU intake air->compressed air capacity meter?

So we could know when ISRU refrigator is getting starved from air.

In low atmosphere you need much lower intake area than in higher atmosphere.

Can we have exclusive air compressor/refrigerator part, that is lets say 5x-10x longer than your standard refrigerator?

 

What is third gen fusion engine? Vista?

 

What is it LiterVolume resource? It appeared when I used shortest cargo tank.

https://imgur.com/a/2N6DE

 

 

Edited September 19, 2017 by raxo2222

[Maelstrom Vortex]

I checked for a facing factor issue, but the beamed relay sat is high in the sky above KSC and the facing factor at runway is still 0 for newly deployed mark 1 receivers?