[1.12.5] Silly Photon Drives

[Bej Kerman]

28 minutes ago, triple cheeseburger said:

Alright I've updated the mod to change the internal names of the engines, so this should prevent any conflicts with other mods. Unfortunately this will probably break any ships you have that currently use engines from this mod, I suppose you could remove the engines in the editor before updating and re-add it once you've got the new version of the mod.

Would doing a search and replace on existing saves and vessels not be quicker?

[Vesuvius]

On 12/1/2023 at 7:16 AM, triple cheeseburger said:

Alright I've updated the mod to change the internal names of the engines, so this should prevent any conflicts with other mods. Unfortunately this will probably break any ships you have that currently use engines from this mod, I suppose you could remove the engines in the editor before updating and re-add it once you've got the new version of the mod.

Even after reinstalling with this update, the 1.25 and 5m drives won't load, i've check the log file and can't find anything that should do this besides this message for every drive (0.625m included) "[ERR 19:17:15.278] Texture 'SillyPhotonDrives/Parts/Engine/white' not found!", but the 0.625m drive still exists if this somehow was keeping the 1.25 and 5m drives from loading, any other ideas?

[WarriorSabe]

On 11/27/2023 at 1:51 PM, triple cheeseburger said:

Reflecting gamma rays produced by the annihilation poses a challenge… A gamma ray mirror, and one with a good enough efficiency to not instantly turn to plasma from the heat of the reaction, is not something we currently know how to make

While this is true, and in fact there's good reason to believe such a thing to be impossible (at least with anything like normal matter), there is actually a workaround.

If you design your drive right, you won't even *need* the mirror - there's a conceppt out there called laser-core antimatter (LCAM for short), that uses an immense z-pinch initiated by both electrons and positrons to compress the proton-antiproton reaction to a degenerate state (not quite as hard as you might think since they attract each other, but still pretty tricky), which then forbids annihilation modes that don't produce gamma rays. It is thought that it would actually function as a lasing medium in that state, producing a gamma ray laser beam, and given a seed laser to guide it, would not need any mirrors or anything as it's already a tight beam.

However, the drive would likely still use a huge amount of power to run the z-pinch (which actually would require small particle accelerators, though something like a small wakefield accelerator could probably do it without being all that big), as well as the massive magnets and seed laser (which only serves to initiate lasing properly, and so doesn't need to be too big either), and you'd likely not really be able to harness the antimatter reaction for that power since it's basically 100% going out the back.

[Skyliumc258]

this is amazing, any plans on making a simple daedalus drive mod? (not requesting u to do so). the existing mod involing that were either too heavy or quality is too low

[M - Kerbonaut]

8 hours ago, Skyliumc258 said:

this is amazing, any plans on making a simple daedalus drive mod? (not requesting u to do so). the existing mod involing that were either too heavy or quality is too low

Have a look at Sterling Sytems. It simmilar complex as FFT

[JadeOfMaar]

12 hours ago, Skyliumc258 said:

too heavy

If the engine is properly sized and powerful then its weight is not a problem. That's natural. The problem is you're trying to launch it from Kerbin's surface. There are some things that just must be built/spawned/cheated in orbit.

[triple cheeseburger]

Minor update with some bugfixes, tweaks, and added support for VAB Organizer.

Silly Photon Drives v1.0.2

VAB Organizer support:

• Photon Drives now get their own custom "Photon Drives" subcategory when using VAB Organizer.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug with the mesh of the 5m engine's 3.75m mount.

Other tweaks:

• Simplified the collision mesh for all engines.

• Adjusted how the multimode engine setup on the 5m engine works, such that CommunityResourcePack is no longer a hard dependency. If you do not have CRP the antimatter mode will not be available, with CRP it will be available.

• (Though you'll still want FFT & CryoTanks for actually providing tanks for storing antimatter and liquid hydrogen.)

[triple cheeseburger]

Slightly larger update, with balance tweaks, increased customisation options, and new Waterfall Plumes!

Silly Photon Drives v1.1.0

Part Balance Changes

PX-01 "Aura":

• Cost: 35,250 (Previously 48,250)
• Entry Cost: 170,000 (Previously 125,130)
• Thrust: 0.073 kN (Previously 0.03 kN)
• Mass: 0.15 tons (Previously 0.09 tons)
• TWR: 0.05 (Previously 0.033)
• Input power: 55 kW (Previously 59 kW)

PX-02 "Zenith":

• Cost: 125,500 (Previously 176,500)
• Entry Cost: 406,000 (Previously 323,541)
• Thrust: 0.317 kN (Previously 0.224 kN)
• TWR: 0.054 (Previously 0.037)
• Input power: 190 kW (Previously 395 kW)

PX-10 "Omega":

• Cost: 875,000 (Previously 1,059,000)
• Entry Cost: 3,440,000 (Previously 1,419,177)
• Thrust: 10.898 kN (Previously 3.771 kN)
• Mass: 13 tons (Previously 9.25 tons)
• TWR: 0.085 (Previously 0.041)
• Input power: 4,950 kW (Previously 5,950 kW)

PX-10 "Omega" Antimatter Mode:

• Thrust: 54.488 kN (Previously 26 kN)
• TWR: 0.427 (Previously 0.281)
• Isp: 3,057,032.3 seconds (Previously 30,570,323 seconds)

Added System Heat configs

PX-01 "Aura"

• Loop temperature: 350 K
•  Waste heat: 33 kW (55 kW input power, 40% thermal efficiency)

PX-02 "Zenith"

• Loop temperature: 350 K
• Waste heat: 95 kW (190 kW input power, 50% thermal efficiency)

PX-10 "Omega" (Electric mode)

• Loop temperature: 350 K
• Waste heat: 1,683 kW (4,950 kW input power, 66% thermal efficiency)

PX-10 "Omega" (Antimatter mode)

• Loop temperature: 1,600 K
• Waste heat: 8,415 kW (4,950 kW input power, 66% thermal efficiency)

For the larger engines, you may want to download Heat Control which adds larger and more efficient types of radiators adapted for removing large quantities of heat.

Improved Customisation Features

• There's a new "spd_Settings.cfg" file in the mod folder. From here you can easily tweak the thrust and power usage of the engines in the mod with a single value. This config has been adapted from Near Future Propulsion, so credit for this config goes to that. This setting config also has an option to fiddle with the Isp of the antimatter photon drive mode, if you wish to do so.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where the Zenith's Waterfall configs were duplicated in the configs.
• Fixed an issue where EngineCoreGlow effects were ignoring their textures and were just using pure white instead.
• Fixed an issue with the VAB Organizer configs.

Minor tweaks

• The Waterfall plumes for all engines have been revamped and improved.
• Optimised the meshes of the EngineCoreGlow effects.
• Increased the amount of the 'Radiation Pressure' resource stored and produced in the engines by a factor of 10, in order to reduce the chance of the engines consuming too much Radiation Pressure when the thrust multiplier is set to very high values.
• Reduced the animation rate on all EngineCoreGlow effects to 1/10th their previous speed.

Updated relations

• Added Heat Control to Suggested
• Added System Heat to Supports

Edited September 19 by triple cheeseburger
Formatting tweak

[Alpha_star]

https://i.imgur.com/pbE8PUE.png

New plumes are simply fantastic.