SM Fission Fragment Rocket

[SasquatchM]

Introducing the SM Fission Fragment Rocket!

It has poor thrust, it is massive, it can not be refueled after launch, no addition fuel tanks are possible, you have to provide it with a source of electricity and it generates a truly frightening amount of waste heat.

Why would you possibly want it??

500,000 Isp.

Now, before all the purists get all ornery with me, go read this.

If some of you people would be kind enough to try this out (make sure to use the included heat shield) and give me some feed back, I would appreciate it. I am considering lowering the Isp and increasing the thrust, probably by a factor of 2 for both if I do.

Spaceport download link is embedded in the photo.

Have fun.

[Mekan1k]

Ok. Wow. I applaud you man. With this, you could build a long-range ship, but switch out the engine assembly when it starts to run out of fuel.

[Devo]

I have no problems with totally overpowered parts, half of mine are too.. heck I had to get my engines up to 2000isp just to get my 100 tonne beast off the ground..

I like the glass housing on the engine, io mean if you are gonna go sci-fi, why not do it in style

nice job man

[SasquatchM]

I have no problems with totally overpowered parts, half of mine are too.. heck I had to get my engines up to 2000isp just to get my 100 tonne beast off the ground..

I like the glass housing on the engine, io mean if you are gonna go sci-fi, why not do it in style

nice job man

The fun thing is that the engines are actually less efficient Isp wise than the real engines are projected to be. With the second version of the engines they think they can get upwards of 1,000,000 Isp. My real concern is: Are they fun? Hence considering changing up the Isp and thrust.

As far as the glass, I am not a talented enough modder to make a visible magnetically focused area that varies with thrust, so, semi-transparent permanently lit glass.

[Devo]

The fun thing is that the engines are actually less efficient Isp wise than the real engines are projected to be. With the second version of the engines they think they can get upwards of 1,000,000 Isp. My real concern is: Are they fun? Hence considering changing up the Isp and thrust.

As far as the glass, I am not a talented enough modder to make a visible magnetically focused area that varies with thrust, so, semi-transparent permanently lit glass.

Check out the emissives tutorial, might come in handy

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25023-Emissive-tutorial

[hoojiwana]

Check out the emissives tutorial, might come in handy

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25023-Emissive-tutorial

And you set up a throttle-response in the config by doing something like this:

MODULE
{
      name = FXModuleAnimateThrottle
      animationName = colorAnimation
      dependOnEngineState = True
      responseSpeed = 0.5
}

That is taken directly from the stock Ion config, as an example.

Edited April 20, 2013 by hoojiwana

[SasquatchM]

OMG. Guess what I am going to be playing with tonight??

[SasquatchM]

Well, I think I need to make a very basic engine and play with the emissives. There are just too many bits to this particular one and after changing some of the textures and adding emissives and animations KSP freezes.

[Scotius]

Very cool looking engine. I've downloaded it, and will give it a spin when i get to my gaming rig. I'm kinda sad it can't be refueled, but i have an idea for hybrid engine: just run a stream of regular fuel through the heat shield It will both cool it, and provide some additional thrust. I'm jesting of course, but on the other hand it could be useful for quick maneuvers etc.

[SasquatchM]

Oddly enough there is a FFR version that does use a liquid fuel as a type of afterburner, sort of, in like a 22:1 ratio

[Scotius]

Fission-fragment rocket is a very hot idea , but have you heard about Fusion Driven Rocket? This puppy can get the ship to Mars in 30 day.

http://msnwllc.com/Papers/FDR_JPC_2012.pdf

Here's the link. It's good to see smart people working on something other than big, chemicals burning rockets to get us to other planets.

[SasquatchM]

Here's another interesting one: the nanoFET

[czokletmuss]

How can I calculate the delta-V? MechJeb shows nothing

[SasquatchM]

Ya, this breaks MechJeb's display. It will get you where you need to go, it just takes a long time.

[Scotius]

Nano-FET looks interesting. If it really can be scaled up into hundreds of kilowatts range it might be a good thruster for station-keeping. Rival for VASIMR? Maybe, but considering that AdAstra is almost ready to test their engine in space, and nano-FET is still mostly theoretical it won't be anytime soon. And spraying LEO with clouds of nanotubes might not be a good idea. Outside of magnetosphere solar wind will take care of them, but inside? I hope it will not turn into another idea that is great on paper, but doesn't work well in RL.

[SasquatchM]

More importantly i can;t really think of a good way to model it in KSP.

Also, can anyone confirm that you can not use both throttle and heat emissives on a single part in KSP? I can get the throttle glows around the reactors and the magnetic field to change, but when I do the heat emissives no longer work. I seems like there is only one sort of parent animation in unity, with the others linked to it, but I have no idea how to use them then

[Scotius]

Meh. Engines that don't produce beautiful pillar of flame, or at least pretty glow are not worth modelling Anyways - i've been reading more about Dusty variant of FFR. It might be a good idea to make it when we get resources update, and blutonium with it. Of course if blutonium is useable as a fuel/consumable for NERVAs and RTGs, and not only as component in building process. SM FFR II could use modest amounts of blutonium as a fuel, just like Dusty uses fissionable dust. It could have slightly increased thrust, to compensate for necessary fuel's weight. What do you think?

[SasquatchM]

I don't see why not, but I'll have to do a bit more research

[Riley Evan]

Interested in seeing where you go with this one.

[Boosterspice]

OOHHH! SHINY! This will be the backbone of my interplanetary fleet! Awesome work, monster

[Scotius]

Yesterday i took this engine for a spin. First to the Mun orbit, then to Minmus, then i landed on Minmus and returned to Kerbin's orbit. This entire trip hardly put any dent in thorium supplies FFR definitely is better than any amount of Ion engines, and allows for nice weight savings due to lack of fuel tanks. But: its thrust is kinda puny - to transfer from Kerbin to Mun's orbit i had to do five burns at periapsis, capture into Mun's orbit took about 7 minutes of burn. Captures on interplanetary journeys, where you have to bleed off some 2000 m/s and more will take even longer. Another issue is size of heat shield - it forces you to do some creative engineering to fit more than one engine on the ship. So, definitely not overpowered. Could have used a bit more thrust...but then, which engine wouldn't?

[SasquatchM]

Perhaps I will make up an "afterburner" version as well that will use LiquidFuel as well to provide more thrust, but, obviously ther are the weight and size penalties that go along with it.

maybe even xenon or monopropellant

[Scotius]

"An afterburner, the physical implementation of this thrust increase, injects an inert gas into the FFRE exhaust beam." So, it should be xenon - which will limit engine's power. Xenon tanks aren't that big - you'd have to stack a lot of them to get continuous burn. And then weight increase would slow you down anyway SM, can you make afterburner mode toggleable? By using action groups for example. It would allow for using afterburner only for energy-intensive maneuvers, and normal mode for trajectory modifications, circularising orbits etc. Y'know - things that we have plenty of time for

[SasquatchM]

Probably. I could also make much bigger Xenon tanks

[SasquatchM]

Updated to include the xenon injector as an option add on part to make a type 2 FFR

Again, any balancing suggestions are welcome