Unkel's research labs - Solar wind collector

[Chant778]

So the other day half way through an inexplicably boring class of statistics I had an idea something along the lines of "Surely you could collect all those shiney charged particles with a charged funnel and throw them out the back provided you have electricity and some big magnets"

Then I thought of Kerbal Space Program and decided it was time for me to make my first mod, a kinda ion engine that fuels itself through the solar wind collectors, and uses an electromagnetic propulsion drive. It'd move very slowly, but would be perfect for tiny little probes, and with enough power you could use a little fuel to go at some quite noticeable speeds; mass*velocity, a little of one and a lot of the other works both ways.

And here my journey begins, first mod.

First of all I'm gonna get some modelling done as I'm still slightly unsure on how to make new resources...

My plan for the solar wind collector is simple, just an air intake that only collects the resource outside of the atmosphere of any given planet.

Now, my coding skills are good but not great, so I'm gonna need a little advice on how to create new resources and plugins, a link to a tutorial on how to do this would be great if possible thanks.

I'll start the modelling later today, I'll keep updating with renders every now and then.

Aesthetics:

For the drives' engine flare I'm going to mix the particle exhaust from a SRB and a small flame from a liquid fuel engine, already managed to test that much.

Update 1:

Resource working absolutely great, engine and fuel tank models still WIP, gonna be a while still.

Edited May 2, 2013 by Chant778

[Fyrem]

The solar sail / collector would have to huge.

[Chant778]

The solar sail / collector would have to huge.

That's the plan, large and folding

[EndlessWaves]

Resources are simply defined in config files (text files) in the Resources folder, create a new one named something.cfg and use the same structure as the one with the default resources.