Buzzard Intake

[Mekan1k]

Hey Everyone! In the spirit of Kerbal I have been trying to design an engine that has negative fuel consumption, and has a higher negative fuel consumption in atmosphere than in space.

This way you could have a relitively small ship burn out to , say, Eve, Jool, or Duna, and use aerobraking to refuel, as well as slow down.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or tell me how to do such a thing? I keep failing at getting a re-fueling engine.

If you want me to place a zip of the project so far on the site, just say so. I'll let people know if this goes anywhere.

EDIT: Also, is there a manual for creating these sorts of mods? If so, where is it?

EDIT2: here is a picture of the code so far. By the way- it does not work yet. Please Help:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]34521[/ATTACH]

Edited October 9, 2012 by Mekan1k

[Nibb31]

If you're going to be making cheat parts, why not just fix yourself a fuel tank with fuel=1000000 ?

[Mekan1k]

Because it is not a cheat part.

I want to build a mod that lets you collect fuel from space, just like a buzzard ramjet intake would. It would have incredibly slow fuel generation in space, and high fuel generation while in atmosphere. It would be incredibly useful for interstellar travel, as you could send out a relatively small craft out into the kolar system, and use planets and muns as refueling stations if they have sufficient mass.

EDIT: sorry, sufficient atmosphere, not mass. Duna, Eve, Jool, and one or two of Jool's muns might have enough atmosphere to use for this.

Edited October 9, 2012 by Mekan1k

[SunJumper]

Bussard ramjets only work if the scoop is about 50km wide. As for regen in an atmosphere, you'd need to add your own fuel tank part and engine part, but even then, you'd need to write a mod to exclude all bodies except for Jool and maybe Laythe.

[Tommygun]

One other thing to consider with the Bussard ramjet is that they need to be traveling between 1 to 6 percent of the speed of light to start working.

It would take a long time to get up to speed and there is nowhere to go in the small system we have now.

I think you would be better off in KSP to modeling an air scoop to be used with a NERVA engine.

The NERVA engine should have a lower Isp to reflect that it's using unrefined mixed gas and not pure hydrogen.

Maybe 400 to 600 Isp? You could even have an ice miner to turn water ice or other frozen liquids into steam for a NERVA engine.

[Mekan1k]

A magnetic scoop would be viable- and the intake could be minute (I am basing this concept off of the Thesius in Blindsight, by Peter Watts), as the primary part of the intake would be magnetic. Also, Within a solar system is ideal for a Buzzard Magnetic ramscoop, as there is a higher gas constant around stars and planets than in interstellar space, meaning that if you were going to, lets say, Duna, and you got the scoop into orbit, you could use the thin atmosphere on Duna as an aerobraking medium and as an easy way to refuel the ship if you wanted to go out farther into the kolar system.

Any yes, a ship would either need a nuclear engine or a antimatter--matter engine to get the heat necessary to do that, but since most interplanetary rockets in KSP end up using the nuclear engine anyway, I don't really see the issue.

EDIT: Also, the Ganjin in Manifold Space , by Stephen Baxter, use buzzard intakes as both in-solar and interstellar engines, but they work inefficiently at interstellar travel, due to the relitive scarcity of atoms outside of the solar systems.

Edited October 9, 2012 by Mekan1k

[Mekan1k]

Concept for ramscoop idea: (Search quantum over the document).

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Theseus

[Mekan1k]

I just wanted to make an engine act as a fuel intake- It would be a simple, non-game-breaking part, and yes, I would be hooking it up to nuclear engines for interstellar trips anyway.

[Hyratel]

well, you could make it work on Eve and make it take in Xenon, to supply Ion thrusters

[Mekan1k]

Idealy, I would build this so that it collected, say, Kethane, and you would be able to convert that into fuel.