KSP Interstellar Extended Support Thread

[Bishop149]

On 11/17/2018 at 10:42 PM, Bishop149 said:

. . . my Convert-o-tron 250's thermal efficiency sticks rigidly to 19%, which is rubbish. . . 

Whats going on? 

Ok I worked this one out myself.

Its tweakscale, DON’T scale convert-o-trons, it messes them right up.

[FreeThinker]

On 11/17/2018 at 8:47 PM, Wiowt said:

1.Where can i use solar wind?

2

 

Solarwind which is a mixture of ionized gases which can be converted into resource by the ISRU Refrigerator, which simply adds electron and splits the gasses by cryogenic separation.  Solarwind can be found in the regolith of airless moons, in the interstellar medium, in the radiation belt or as a high-speed stream directly from the sun. Solar wind mainly consists of hydrogen and helium and trace elements from several ions. When collected with a Magnetic scoop, the hydrogen can be used with the Bussard fusion for fusion propulsion and the helium is used to sustain the magnetic scoop.

[FreeThinker]

On 11/17/2018 at 8:47 PM, Wiowt said:

@FreeThinker

2.Where can the store enough antimatter? It is consumed by reactors in few seconds(i used particle trap)

1

Storage of antimatter is by definition hard due to is the ability to annihilate itself when in contact with normal matter.  There are several methods of storage, Electrostatic Particle trap, magnetic Rings, Bose-Einstein Condensates and in a Diamagnetic container.  Electrostatic Particle traps have the lowest density, Magnetic rings have higher density but are bulky. Bose-Einstein Condensates allow for significantly higher densities by it performance is linked to electronic techs nodes. Diamagnetic container offers the higher densities but mainly for antiproton antimatter and it is very sensitive to overheating and gee-force effects.

On 11/17/2018 at 8:47 PM, Wiowt said:

@FreeThinker

3.What should i do to make  free electron laser produce positrons?

3

Simply provide it with a lot of electric power (MJ)

Edited November 19, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Wiowt]

Just now, FreeThinker said:

Storage of antimatter is by definition hard due to is the ability to annihilate itself when in contact with normal matter.  There are several methods of storage, Electrostatic Particle trap, magnetic Rings, Bose-Einstein Condensates and in a Diamagnetic container.  Electrostatic Particle traps have the lowest density, Magnetic rings have higher density but are bulky. Bose-Einstein Condensates allow for significantly higher densities by it performance is linked to electronic techs nodes. Diamagnetic container offers the higher densities but mainly for antiproton antimatter and it is very sensitive to overheating and gee-force effects.

Simply provide it with a lot of electric power (MJ)

I have another problems.

Vista doesnt have plume(without realplume), daedalus and vasimr have troubles with plume(with real plume)

[FreeThinker]

On 11/17/2018 at 8:47 PM, Wiowt said:

4.Where can i use antimatter fusion, antimatter and positron reactors? They have very high power and need a lot of radiators.

2

Where? for Antimatter Fusion, most suitable vessels would the multi-role, multi-mission SSTO vessels where you need a lot of thrust and delta-v like mission to Eve. For getting even the heaviest vessel launched or keep them suspended positron antimatter is the most powerful. For interstellar travel, beam core antimatter reactor using antiprotons has the highest potential performance.

On 11/17/2018 at 8:47 PM, Wiowt said:

@FreeThinker

most engines have input power limit(most effisient engines(bussard end daedalus) dont scale with reactor power at all)

4

The Bussard and Daedalus create their own fusion any only need external power to produce the fusion.

On 11/17/2018 at 11:42 PM, Bishop149 said:

Related Question: What are the upgrade techs for radiators, I have thus far worked out

• Heat Management - Introduces Titanium Rads.
• Nanolathing - Graphene upgrade
• Adv. Heat Management - Introduces Graphene Rads.
• Exotic Rads. - Graphene upgrade
• Extreme Rads- Graphene upgrade

My Rads were MkIII, I just researched Nanolathing. . . . still MkIII, am I missing something?

1

Those are indeed all tech but non-graphene radiators only have 3 tech upgrades so Mk3 sounds correct

Edited November 19, 2018 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

On 11/6/2018 at 8:05 AM, Omeran said:

2. I tried landing my large Daedalus-based ship on Tylo (because, why not?) and noticed that even though it doesn't have any atmosphere, the ISP goes down when getting very low (i.e. <10km). Why is that?

 

Not sure, but the most likely explanation is that it received too little power to achieve full fusion ignition, causing less fusion power to be produced and therefore reduce the isp.

23 minutes ago, Wiowt said:

I have another problems.

Vista doesnt have plume(without realplume), daedalus and vasimr have troubles with plume(with real plume)

I intend to fix and improve the plume effects of these engines next release

[FreeThinker]

On 11/10/2018 at 8:31 PM, Mcglin250 said:

Ok so here is a question then. Why does the positron antimatter reactor never run at full power when attached to a thermal or plasma engine? I know the engines themselves can only take so much but if you were running more than one engine on the reactor it could run at a higher powe.

1

Well the reason is that the mechanism is different depending on the type of connected nozzle . In KSPIE1.20.12 this still applies to the  Toroidal Aerospike nozzle and thermal turbo/ramjet nozzle but the Thermal Nozzle can now make 100% use of all reactor power. Just make sure it is properly cooled with radiators otherwise it will blow up due to overheating.

KSPIE Version 1.20.12 is now available for  KSP 1.3.1, KSP 1.4.5 and KSP 1.5.1

Released on 2018-11-18

• Added Electric Power requirement to Plasma Nozzle
• Added Isp throttle to Plasma Nozzle when connected to charge particle capable reactor
• Added Pure Fusion rocket mode to Discovery Magnetic Confinement Fusion Engine
• Added ability of Thermal Nozzle to use both Plasma and Thermal Power
• Balance: Increased overheating effect to Open Cycle Gas Core
• Balance: Increased Maximum Isp Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor to 7000s
• Balance: reduced Buoyancy threshold on Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor by 50%
• Balance: reduced maximum Power Positron antimatter
• Balance: reduced wasteheat produced by Plasma nozzle
• Fixed throttle acceleration effects on reactors
• Fixed lack of gee-force effect on reactor during timewarp
• Fixed instabilities of gee-force effect on reactors
• Fixed instabilities of overheating on reactors

Edited November 19, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Wiowt]

Where Zpinch can be used? It has very large size and average twr. But intakes look funy))

[Bishop149]

@FreeThinker If I'm running KSP 1.4.5 whats the best way to apply updates?

I ask because you seem to routinely (and very helpfully) release updates for several versions at once and I'm wondering what the difference is, and which CKAN will apply if I choose to use that.

Is CKAN clever enough to realise I'm running 1.4.5 and apply the appropriate version?

CKAN lists the latest update as follows: 1.20.12.1, Max. KSP version 1.5.1

[FreeThinker]

35 minutes ago, Bishop149 said:

@FreeThinker If I'm running KSP 1.4.5 whats the best way to apply updates?

I ask because you seem to routinely (and very helpfully) release updates for several versions at once and I'm wondering what the difference is, and which CKAN will apply if I choose to use that.

Is CKAN clever enough to realise I'm running 1.4.5 and apply the appropriate version?

CKAN lists the latest update as follows: 1.20.12.1, Max. KSP version 1.5.1

I don't know exactly, I uploaded for both  KSP 1.3.1, KSP 1.4.5 and KSP 1.4.5,  but it is up to CKA to intall the correct version. It CKAN doesn't support lower than 1.5.1 support, you can always download the and install the latest version manually.

[FreeThinker]

2 hours ago, Wiowt said:

Where Zpinch can be used? It has very large size and average twr. But intakes look funy))

Its an jack of all trades SSTO fusion engine which operates both in space with average isp and in atmospheres on unlimited intake air , something that is quite unique in KSPIE

Edited November 19, 2018 by FreeThinker

[strudo76]

2 hours ago, Bishop149 said:

@FreeThinker If I'm running KSP 1.4.5 whats the best way to apply updates?

I ask because you seem to routinely (and very helpfully) release updates for several versions at once and I'm wondering what the difference is, and which CKAN will apply if I choose to use that.

Is CKAN clever enough to realise I'm running 1.4.5 and apply the appropriate version?

CKAN lists the latest update as follows: 1.20.12.1, Max. KSP version 1.5.1

Usually you'll see the version that will be installed in the "latest version" column where CKAN lists all the mods. In the mod info area, it might say something like "Max KSP ver: 1.5.1 (using mod version X)", and if you're running a previous version of KSP, the latest version column will show a different value to X if it will install a version specific to your KSP version.

At least that's how I think it works.....

[FreeThinker]

KSPIE Version 1.20.13 is now available for  KSP 1.3.1, KSP 1.4.5 and KSP 1.5.1

Released on 2018-11-19

• Balance: decreased acceleration Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor
• Balanced: decreased minimum throttle Open Cycle Gas Core Reactor
• Fixed ability of LANTR engine to use LFO fuel modes
• Fixed fuel consumption stock resources in thermal engine during timewarp

[emiliofloris]

I recently ran into the conflict between Interstellar and Near Future, and took some time to understand the compatibility problems, especially the relative performance of NF and KSPI-E nuclear reactors.

As far as I understand, the main issue is that NF and KSP stock employ a little gremlin whose only function is to transfer heat from a colder to a hotter reservoir, without expending any additional energy. This puts KSPIE at a disadvantage because thermodynamic processes are modeled more accurately, requiring the generator's cold bath to be in thermal equilibrium with the radiators.

A problem in comparisons is that KSPIE uses a completely different energy scale. In NF, EC/s is directly equated to Watts. Reactor output lies in the few MW range, and electric engines are modeled with more or less realistic parameters in terms of mass and power consumption. KSPIE, without the NF patch, uses GW-scale reactors scaled down in size to fit into the KSP framework. Taking the example of a Tokamak, the KSPIE version has a mass of slightly more than 20 metric tons, and a power output of 2-10 GW_th. This results in a power/weight ratio of approximately one thousand times more than optimistic estimates for future ground-based commercial reactors, the ITER reactor currently under construction has a weight of 23,000 metric tons and an expected power output of 500 MW. This is quite a mismatch, and leads to inconsistencies.

Radiators in the uncorrected version are essentially assumed to be perfect black bodies with a power emission of 5.7x10^-8 W/m² x T⁴. Their area is increased by a factor of 2, and then again by 60%. The first factor of two is in my opinion incorrect, because the nominal area shown in the description already appears to account for the two-sidedness. I checked the large folding graphene radiators, and they seem to have an extension of 7x10m = 70m², the description says 140 m², and the area displayed in the KSPIE VAB tool is 448 m². I am not quite sure if the factor of 1.6 is due to physics (three-dimensional structure of surface?) or simply rebalancing.

Regardless of whether the factor of 3.2 should be applied or not, it seems to be the case here that reactor output per unit mass is vastly higher than it would be in the real world, while the radiators are modeled in agreement with reality, at least to the order of magnitude. In practice this means that outsized amounts of radiators are required to achieve reasonable generator efficiencies, further putting KSPIE at a disadvantage compared to NF. The solution in my opinion lies in using the downscaled (patched) power outputs and requirements, along with treating the radiators as black bodies with nominal area. I tried this in my own version (1.4.5/1.20.13) by replacing %areaMultiplier = 0.01 with %areaMultiplier = 0.3125 in Patches/USI_NF_Mode.cfg. The result is shown in the picture, for a 30 MW_th (nominal) pebble bed reactor with an eta_max=0.48 thermal generator and eight large folding graphene radiators. At equilibrium, power output is 7.48 MWe, resulting in a power-to-mass ratio of approximately 320 W/kg if radiators and the generator are included. For comparison, NF reactors are in the general range of 200-250 W/kg, Molten Salt without any upgrades is something like 30 W/kg, and the Tokamak starts around 100 W/kg if the 2 MW needed to sustain the fusion process is subtracted (but gets better quickly). The bottomline is that this configuration appears to be reasonable and competitive, and it might be worth considering to use it as default.

Two more comments: First, I noticed that the thermal generator has a different mass depending to which reactor it is attached. Could this be included in the description? Or is there a table somewhere on a forum/wiki? Second, the hot bath for the Tokamak has a temperature of 160,000 K, so efficiency (which I assume is simply eta_max*(1-T_cold/T_hot)?) is always very close to the maximum, as long as the radiator can handle the excess heat. This seems unrealistic for a heat engine, where the generator would not operate directly on the plasma, but rather by means of a secondary cycle. And there is of course the question of whether a Tokamak could be scaled down arbitarily, but that I suppose is where some corners should be cut generously.

In any case, overall I'm very very happy with this mod, although I haven't even got around to really try out all its functionalities. Keep up the good work, and let me know in case I misunderstood and/or inaccurately described something!

 

Edited November 20, 2018 by emiliofloris

[FreeThinker]

10 hours ago, emiliofloris said:

A problem in comparisons is that KSPIE uses a completely different energy scale. In NF, EC/s is directly equated to Watts. Reactor output lies in the few MW range, and electric engines are modeled with more or less realistic parameters in terms of mass and power consumption.

The Common convention is that 1 EC equates to 1 Kilo Watt, but your correct there is a large disparity. This mainly has historical reason but Near Future isn't fully realistic as well because it hides the fact that its electric engines, the main reason these reactors are added, should require at least  2000 times more power to produce the thrust that they do.

[Wiowt]

@FreeThinker

When Zpinch is larger than fuselage, engine sticks out, when it is smaller, intakes are covered by fuselage. Are these intakes necessary?

And how to make vista work in atmosphere? I set "maxAtmosphereDensity" to 1 and tried to change isp in atmosphere("atmosphereCurve"). But engine doesnt work on Kerbin.

Edited November 20, 2018 by Wiowt

[FreeThinker]

11 hours ago, emiliofloris said:

Taking the example of a Tokamak, the KSPIE version has a mass of slightly more than 20 metric tons, and a power output of 2-10 GW_th. This results in a power/weight ratio of approximately one thousand times more than optimistic estimates for future ground-based commercial reactors, the ITER reactor currently under construction has a weight of 23,000 metric tons and an expected power output of 500 MW. This is quite a mismatch, and leads to inconsistencies.

The Tokamak numbers are based on the DT Fusion Tokamak,

Quote

The 2 GWth magnetically-confined reactor shown uses eight poloidal superconducting 30 Tesla coils, twisted into a Tokamak configuration. These weigh 22 tonnes with stiffeners and neutron shielding.

Besides that I'm assuming that future advances high temperature superconductivity will allow these reactors to become much more energy dense

50 minutes ago, Wiowt said:

When Zpinch is larger than fuselage, engine sticks out, when it is smaller, intakes are covered by fuselage. Are these intakes necessary?

Well the idea is that you put the fuselage only in the middle and you take vertically using first air and switch to a stored propellant once in space

but if your interested  I could also add a Z-Pinch engine without any intakes

Edited November 20, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Wiowt]

8 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

 

but if your interested  I could also add a Z-Pinch engine without any intakes

It would be nice!

(But what about vista?)

 

Edited November 21, 2018 by Wiowt

[emiliofloris]

15 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

The Common convention is that 1 EC equates to 1 Kilo Watt, but your correct there is a large disparity. This mainly has historical reason but Near Future isn't fully realistic as well because it hides the fact that its electric engines, the main reason these reactors are added, should require at least  2000 times more power to produce the thrust that they do.

Yes, I got confused with the k twice, 1EC is of course 1kJ (1EC/s  = 1kW), that's just a typo from me, but I completely overlooked the k in the electrostatic thrust. You are right, they are grossly overpowered. It might perhaps be justifiable in terms of time compression, normal ion engines run for months or longer, and that's not easily possible in KSP.

That Tokamak, on the other hand... Fission reactors are working hardware, and the FT reactors have reasonable power/mass ratios compared to prototypes. Assuming that you can achieve a ratio 2000x higher than any current design in the first available fusion reactor is very bold. Personally I would say that the factor of 10-20 in the downscaled version might be more realistic.

By the way, the 1.20.13 InterstellarFuelSwitch seems to kill the fuel tank type selection. Using an old version (from June this year) works ok as far as I can tell.

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, emiliofloris said:

Yes, I got confused with the k twice, 1EC is of course 1kJ (1EC/s  = 1kW), that's just a typo from me, but I completely overlooked the k in the electrostatic thrust. You are right, they manage to. It might perhaps be justifiable in terms of time compression, normal ion engines run for months or longer, and that's not easily possible in KSP.

1

Well to a fair degree, I manage to make it feasible to work with very low thrust engines, by adding continued thrust durring timewarp and able and recently to stay prograde/retrograde during timewarp. This allows you to spiral out of Kerbin orbit with a few newtons in a matter of a few minutes. I also want to extend this functionality to stay at a target and figured a way to do it off screen. It will initially be added for interstellar engines which need to accelerate for years to get up to speed.

1 hour ago, emiliofloris said:

By the way, the 1.20.13 InterstellarFuelSwitch seems to kill the fuel tank type selection. Using an old version (from June this year) works ok as far as I can tell.

 

Could you be a bit more clear what the problem is?

Edited November 21, 2018 by FreeThinker

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, emiliofloris said:

That Tokamak, on the other hand... Fission reactors are working hardware, and the FT reactors have reasonable power/mass ratios compared to prototypes. Assuming that you can achieve a ratio 2000x higher than any current design in the first available fusion reactor is very bold. Personally I would say that the factor of 10-20 in the downscaled version might be more realistic.

1

Yes I agree many of the fusion engines would really be a lot less powerful, especially the early versions. The problem is the game balance, I want to give the player enough of an incentive to invest in high technologic power solutions. I also try to give a reactor a certain edge over others, so that there is no single reactor is best or worst in all instances, but depend on the environmental conditions and mission profile.  One way I achieve better balance is to make a distinction between engines specialized power production and reactors specialized in propulsion, especially for fusion this becomes a non-trivial matter. 

In the case of the Tokomak, I tried to incorporate most key characteristics of this type of reactor which are, Bulky model, lithium blanket, embrittlement, the potential for many cheap fuels, initially high power maintenance cost, the potential for MHD and direct power generators,  potential isp advantages with plasma and magnetic nozzles. One potential key advantage of fusion engines over Nuclear reactors which are inherently more power dense is that they can be turned off at any moment and it will be safe to go on IVA. 

Edited November 21, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Wiowt]

LF is kerosene?

Does usi (colonisation+ls) fit with kspi?I like habitation mechanics, but these mods provides different sets of resources.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Wiowt

[emiliofloris]

On 11/21/2018 at 3:55 PM, FreeThinker said:

Well to a fair degree, I manage to make it feasible to work with very low thrust engines, by adding continued thrust durring timewarp and able and recently to stay prograde/retrograde during timewarp. This allows you to spiral out of Kerbin orbit with a few newtons in a matter of a few minutes. I also want to extend this functionality to stay at a target and figured a way to do it off screen. It will initially be added for interstellar engines which need to accelerate for years to get up to speed.

Could you be a bit more clear what the problem is? 

I lose the fuel type selection widget, but it must be a conflict with some other mod because with KSPIE-only it works fine. I haven't updated everything to the latest version, so perhaps it's best to ignore the issue unless other people have the same problem.

[FreeThinker]

12 hours ago, Wiowt said:

LF is kerosene?

Does usi (colonisation+ls) fit with kspi?I like habitation mechanics, but these mods provides different sets of resources.

Its a bit unclear/magical what it is, it behaves like Hypergolic propellant but can be created from ores that contain very little nitrogen, it has the density of higher than water, and in nuclear engines, if behaves like hydrogen which is much less dense and cryogenic. For KSPIE I gave it a thermal engine isp of 80% of max isp  (Hydrogen is 100%) and thrust reduction of 20% (it effectively means it has 20% less isp than hydrogen but with the same thrust), and decomposed Isp of 40% (in gas cores), which is very similar to methane/kerosine.

Edited November 23, 2018 by FreeThinker

[Jumberlack]

What is the tech node to upgrade positron tank capacity? I'm using the big one and despite the description saying it should hold 3072 max it only holds 96 in my career mode. In sandbox it has full 3072 capacity like it should.

 

Edit: I did some experimenting and there are five tech nodes to do this, each one doubles the positron tank capacity:

1. High tech electrical systems

2. High power electrical systems

3. Experimental electrical systems

4. Exotic electrical systems

5. Extreme electrical systems

These tech nodes don't say that they affect anything to do with the positron tank, at least for me.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Jumberlack
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