[WIP][1.12.x] MethaneMaker: Adds more fuel types to Kerbal Atomics

[dangaffa]

dangaffa/MethaneMaker: Adds new fuel types to KerbalAtmoics (github.com)

Changelog: 

V 0.1: Adds Methane, Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen, and Water configs to Kerbal Atomic engines (not LOx augmented ones yet). Also adds these fuels plus LH2 to SSPX cargo containers, and to (hopefully) all cryo tanks

Future updates: 
LOx augmented engines, at least with Methane
BDB nuclear engines
J2 Methalox  update for BDB:
Correcting config names

[Nachtgeist789]

Excellent mod. This is a very underrated aspect of nuclear rocketry.

[JadeOfMaar]

Hi there @dangaffa. I admire your shared interest in nuclear rocketry involving propellants other than Hydrogen but I have a few things to point out:

1. Nertea specifically intended for the SSPXr cargo containers to not serve as fuel tanks. (I asked him at some point while learning to write the resource switching configs and control the decal switching properly through them.) That's what the fuel tanks mod, CryoTanks is for.
2. Since you're building upon Rational Resources, I'd rather you didn't try to reinvent Rational Resources Nuclear Family. All that you have to do is make proper additions to RRNF's opt-in config, test it so KSP has no issues, then send me your changes and everyone can enjoy BDB support.
3. You're re-uploading Nertea's mods and bundling my mods (in part or in whole, and as they are in your GameData folder) and treating them as components of your mod? That's very bad practice and may lead to various kinds of trouble.
4. Methalox NTR sounds like a nice idea... but it's probably a big waste or has no real advantage over anything else in practice. I don't believe any research group has actually given any thought to it. Hydrolox NTR likely only exists because it's very convenient (at some cost to the life of the engine) and is absolutely necessary when a typical Hydrogen NTR needs a momentary thrust buff. A well-made methane NTR will grant both great thrust and decent Isp and have no need for Oxygen to be pumped into it. Methane by itself has decent density and isn't very fussy so tankage won't be a nightmare, and any single propellant option is easily very nice once you can get a good high core temperature and good propellant flow rate. The in-game stock NERVA, and by it, any stockalike NTR mod is balanced, are crippled, which is why you feel the need for LOX augmentation in general. IRL NTR concepts after the original NERVA do not have the cripple factor in them (mass flow is no longer a problem) and would have quite decent thrust once they emerge.

In short, I'd appreciate for you to reduce your mod and the contents of its GitHub repo to just your fuel config for the SSPXr cargo parts, and rename this mod to match, as the current name "MethaneMaker" doesn't fit a mod that doesn't provide for methane production.

Edited May 3, 2023 by JadeOfMaar

[dangaffa]

15 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Hi there @dangaffa. I admire your shared interest in nuclear rocketry involving propellants other than Hydrogen but I have a few things to point out:

1. Nertea specifically intended for the SSPXr cargo containers to not serve as fuel tanks. (I asked him at some point while learning to write the resource switching configs and control the decal switching properly through them.) That's what the fuel tanks mod, CryoTanks is for.
2. Since you're building upon Rational Resources, I'd rather you didn't try to reinvent Rational Resources Nuclear Family. All that you have to do is make proper additions to RRNF's opt-in config, test it so KSP has no issues, then send me your changes and everyone can enjoy BDB support.
3. You're re-uploading Nertea's mods and bundling my mods (in part or in whole, and as they are in your GameData folder) and treating them as components of your mod? That's very bad practice and may lead to various kinds of trouble.
4. Methalox NTR sounds like a nice idea... but it's probably a big waste or has no real advantage over anything else in practice. I don't believe any research group has actually given any thought to it. Hydrolox NTR likely only exists because it's very convenient (at some cost to the life of the engine) and is absolutely necessary when a typical Hydrogen NTR needs a momentary thrust buff. A well-made methane NTR will grant both great thrust and decent Isp and have no need for Oxygen to be pumped into it. Methane by itself has decent density and isn't very fussy so tankage won't be a nightmare, and any single propellant option is easily very nice once you can get a good high core temperature and good propellant flow rate. The in-game stock NERVA, and by it, any stockalike NTR mod is balanced, are crippled, which is why you feel the need for LOX augmentation in general. IRL NTR concepts after the original NERVA do not have the cripple factor in them (mass flow is no longer a problem) and would have quite decent thrust once they emerge.

In short, I'd appreciate for you to reduce your mod and the contents of its GitHub repo to just your fuel config for the SSPXr cargo parts, and rename this mod to match, as the current name "MethaneMaker" doesn't fit a mod that doesn't provide for methane production.

Alright, so this makes me feel dumb, let’s go down the list I suppose: 
 

1) Alright, fair, honestly adding hydrogen and methane was just a broad application of what I was already doing with the other fuels, and I didn’t know that Nertea had reservations about those two specifically. Will probably still keep the specialty semi-cryo fuels as configs though, as they will likely help ship designs. 

2) Gosh I wish that I had known your extra existed before I put in a day or so calculating all these values. Seriously, I truly don’t know why I didn’t look it up *before* doing it, but I didn’t, and clearly wasted a fair bit of time on it lol. I’d love to make additions if I could to RRNF, specifically like you said for BDB components, along with any other nuclear engines kicking around my gamedata, but that’ll be in the coming days. 

3) Yeah…at best I should at least add an additional disclaimer on the readme, though ideally I’d remove them completely (I had to modify SSPX and cryotanks to add in the resources I wanted, ideally I’d figure out how to plug into them separately, but I’ll strip them down to what I need and ditch the rest)

4) I may still try to add Methylox into RRNF, if you haven’t already, as I feel like it’d be a cool addition to ships that need to entirely make ascent themselves. Things like a nuclear Starship may benefit from the extra thrust of ascending directly, but first I should actually get it in the game before seeing if it makes balanced enough rockets

And yeah, the name was originally because this was to make methylox versions originally of the BDB J2 engines, I just reused it for this without thinking that people might believe it’s more about making methane, rather than making engines methane-powered. Again, this mod hasn’t been made with the smartest decision making skills. I’ll rename the mod, keeping it to adding new configs to SSPX and CryoTanks, and I’ll instead try to contribute to RRNF. Thanks for the input.

 

[ssd21345]

Excellent mod that I had been waiting for a long time. I would try it after you able to fix mod bundling issue (to save troubleshoot headache lol)