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Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

nyrath

By nyrath
in KSP1 Mod Development

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redteddy23

redteddy23

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Yes, different sized nukes are not the problem. Figuring out a user interface to allow section is a problem. How does one code those little pop-up windows that appear when you right-click on a part?

I was trying to work it out for myself but this is exam week so I had to put it on the back burner... I did make a little collection of links to the githubs for some of the best mods by the best modders though, so have a look.

https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2

https://github.com/r4m0n/KSP_DeadlyReentry

https://github.com/vXSovereignXv/CrewManifest

https://github.com/taraniselsu?tab=repositories

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nyrath

nyrath

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god, there is no finesse in this "engine", 1 nuke is knocking my orbit around like the ship's made of paper. ammo selector for different yield devices would be a nice feature down the line

Yes, even the weakest has a kick like a mule. In your honor, I'm adding another type of nuke, one with one-quarter the power of the standard one. Probably cannot lift the ship into orbit, but much better for fine maneuvering.

I was trying to work it out for myself but this is exam week so I had to put it on the back burner... I did make a little collection of links to the githubs for some of the best mods by the best modders though, so have a look.

https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2

https://github.com/r4m0n/KSP_DeadlyReentry

https://github.com/vXSovereignXv/CrewManifest

https://github.com/taraniselsu?tab=repositories

Thanks! I'll give them a look over.

OK, redteddy23, the key seems to be [KSPEvent]

Do a search on that term in the AddOnDevelopment forum for some details

I stuck this into my engine plug in as a test, just to see if I can get a menu to appear. It works. Right click on the engine and you'll see a menu that says UKAF ORION PULSE DRIVE Deactivate Magazine with a button. Click the button and it changes to Activate Magazine.

        [KSPEvent(active = false, guiName = "Activate Magazine", guiActive = false, category = "Thrust Control")]
        public void Activate_Magazine() {
            Events["Activate_Magazine"].active = false;
            Events["Activate_Magazine"].guiActive = false;
            Events["Deactivate_Magazine"].active = true;
            Events["Deactivate_Magazine"].guiActive = true;
//                do something here
        }

        [KSPEvent(active = true, guiName = "Deactivate Magazine", guiActive = true, category = "Thrust Control")]
        public void Deactivate_Magazine() {
            Events["Activate_Magazine"].active = true;
            Events["Activate_Magazine"].guiActive = true;
            Events["Deactivate_Magazine"].active = false;
            Events["Deactivate_Magazine"].guiActive = false;
//               do something here
        }

Edited by nyrath
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TheCardinal

TheCardinal

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Footfall is a 1985 science fiction novel written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell. Earth uses a ship such as described here to defeat the invading enemy.

The direction of travel of the ship is managed by steampropulsion and launching the drive-bombs off-center. "Finer" adjustments to the acceleration are made by the distance at which the drive-bombs are exploded. (only one type of drive-bomb was used). The further the bomb is away, the less push it has.

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RoboRay

RoboRay

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Footfall is a 1985 science fiction novel written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell. Earth uses a ship such as described here to defeat the invading enemy.

The direction of travel of the ship is managed by steampropulsion and launching the drive-bombs off-center. "Finer" adjustments to the acceleration are made by the distance at which the drive-bombs are exploded. (only one type of drive-bomb was used). The further the bomb is away, the less push it has.

Yes, steam boilers for RCS, on an atom-bomb propelled spacecraft. I loved Footfall. It's a fantastic place to start for anyone who hasn't read any of Niven's work, as it's a stand-alone story. Seriously, it's a must-read.

I'd forgotten how they varied the acceleration by delaying the detonations... that could really simplify things and only require one type of bomb in the magazines. I wonder if the plugin could read the throttle setting and set the delay based on that.

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nyrath

nyrath

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Footfall is a 1985 science fiction novel written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell. Earth uses a ship such as described here to defeat the invading enemy.

The direction of travel of the ship is managed by steampropulsion and launching the drive-bombs off-center. "Finer" adjustments to the acceleration are made by the distance at which the drive-bombs are exploded. (only one type of drive-bomb was used). The further the bomb is away, the less push it has.

Yes, I had forgotten about that.

Now I fear that the USAF design I am using as a model will be severely damaged if the bombs are detonated off-center. The Michael from Footfall used a hemispherical pusher plate, not a flat one like the USAF.

(I know this because once I worked with Aldo Spadoni to make a Blender mesh of the Michael. Unfortunately the mesh cannot be released until certain third parties give their permission)

However, varying the detonation distance to reduce the thrust is a good idea. I will look into it.

The main drawback (in the real world) is that weapons grade plutonium is so expensive that it would be criminal to waste it on a large bomb detonated at a distance, when it would use so much less plutonium to instead just use a smaller bomb. Having said that, in the Kerbal universe, the price of various items has no effect, so who cares? It is true that the smaller bombs have significantly smaller mass, but when you are dealing with such an over-powered propulsion system this is not a major concern.

From my standpoint, it will be far easier to code a thrust level in the plugin by varying the detonation distance instead of trying to vary the detonation frequency.

Quick skim of Footfall

I think from the part I read that they did NOT detonate the bombs off-center in order to do thrust vectoring. My reading indicates it was done because their RCS was damaged and the ship was in a spin. The bombs were launched off center in order that they would be on-center when they arrived at the detonation point.

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nyrath

nyrath

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@ nyrath i have a question about the Michael. What are those tower like things that sit on the pusher plate? And what functions did the shuttles had?

There are two types of towers: tall and short.

The tall ones contain the propulsive nuclear bombs. The launcher is at the bottom edge of the hemispherical pusher plate.

The short ones contain "spurt bombs". These are bomb-pumped gamma-ray laser weapons.

The spurt bombs are "Excaliber" style bomb-pumped lasers without the bomb.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Laser_Cannon--Bomb-Pumped_Lasers

Instead of having an integral bomb, the Michael uses non-shaped charge propulsion bombs. The excess gamma rays from the propulsive bomb detonation is capable of pumping quite a few spurt bombs. The Michael dumps a few spurt bombs, the spurts RCS aims them at the enemy ships, the Michael detonates a propulsive bomb, the Michael undergoes acceleration, in the brief moment before they are consumed by the fireball the spurt bombs are pumped and fire a gamma-ray laser beam at the enemy ships.

The Space Shuttles, the stove-pipe fighters, and the main batteries from the Battleship New Jersey are because the Michael's purpose is to destroy the alien Bussard Ramjet starship and free Earth.

The diagram is here

http://www.up-ship.com/apr/michael.htm

created by Aldo Spadoni president of Aerospace Imagineering

http://www.freewebs.com/knownspace/gal1.htm

http://www.linkedin.com/in/aldospadoni

Was it launched in a single stage?

Yes. It had to be. The alien Busard Ramjet starship and a horde of combat spacecraft were in orbit. If it was launched in pieces, the combat ships would destroy the pieces before they could be assembled.

Instead, the people of Earth made the Michael under a dome to hide it. It made it into orbit in a few minutes, then proceeded to attack the surprised combat ships. Then it started chasing the Bussard Ramjet, which was frantically running away.

I'm afraid I'm spoiling the novel, but you might consider reading it anyway. Footfall by Niven and Pournelle is arguably the best "Alien Invasion" novel ever written.

Edited by nyrath
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RoboRay

RoboRay

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I'm afraid I'm spoiling the novel, but you might consider reading it anyway. Footfall by Niven and Pournelle is arguably the best "Alien Invasion" novel ever written.

Honestly, anything Niven and Pournelle collaborate on turns into the defining work of whatever genre or situation they're writing about. Top notch.

Was it launched in a single stage?

Yep. It was in battle seconds after launch, so that was the only way. The big concern was whether or not the propulsion-bomb feed would actually work. While the first bomb was a given, being preloaded on the ground, the second one would be loaded in flight. And if the feed failed, you were already a mile up.

Edited by RoboRay
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RoboRay

RoboRay

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If you enjoy it, a second must-read by Niven and Pournelle is "The Mote in God's Eye", another alien first-contact novel, but with the star-faring humans dominant this time around. (Or, so they hope.)

Niven and Pournelle mostly write "hard" sci-fi, so it's all well-grounded in reality as we know it, and with (mostly) reasonable extrapolations.

Some other excellent books by Niven are "The Integral Trees" and its sequel "The Smoke Ring." These are the books that gave me an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics.

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nyrath

nyrath

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Yes, but in Footfall, Niven and Pournelle do make some snide comments about the status quo. Along the lines of the scientific advisers to the President saying "Yes, I know the environmentalists start squawking when you say the word 'Nuclear', but this Orion-drive battleship is the only way for us to free ourselves from being the slaves of the aliens. Nothing else will work."

And here is a second vote for The Mote In God's Eye being the best "alien contact" novel ever written. I quote from it extensively in my Atomic Rocket website.

The big concern was whether or not the propulsion-bomb feed would actually work. While the first bomb was a given, being preloaded on the ground, the second one would be loaded in flight. And if the feed failed, you were already a mile up.

Specifically, if your Orion-drive spacecraft is sitting on the launch pad, you fire off a nuke, and the nuke is a dud, there is no problem. You are still sitting quietly on the pad. So you can try again, or stop the mission until you figure out what went wrong with the first bomb.

If your Orion-drive spacecraft has just detonated its first nuke, your ship is a few hundred feet above the ground, and the second nuke is a dud, you have a problem. You better hope you can fire off a third nuke real quick or you are going to create a large crater where your spacecraft augers in.

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RoboRay

RoboRay

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Yes, but in Footfall, Niven and Pournelle do make some snide comments about the status quo. Along the lines of the scientific advisers to the President saying "Yes, I know the environmentalists start squawking when you say the word 'Nuclear', but...

Snide comments, yes, but, not completely off-base, either. There are some very vocal people that are completely irrational about anything with "atomic" or "nuclear" in its name.

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Der Kosmos

Der Kosmos

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If your Orion-drive spacecraft has just detonated its first nuke, your ship is a few hundred feet above the ground, and the second nuke is a dud, you have a problem. You better hope you can fire off a third nuke real quick or you are going to create a large crater where your spacecraft augers in.

IIRC, one problem they saw, was if a dud round failed to go off, the rebound could damage the pusher plate as it gets over-extended. Although the same problem also applies if you just stop the engine, so I assume they would have to fix that issue anyways.

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nyrath

nyrath

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Snide comments, yes, but, not completely off-base, either. There are some very vocal people that are completely irrational about anything with "atomic" or "nuclear" in its name.

Tell me about it (said the author of the Atomic Rockets website). I used to get some savage email.

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nyrath

nyrath

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Someone really complained about the content of your website?

Quite a few, actually. There were those who thought that putting anything nuclear on a rocket would end all life on earth. I do not know if you remember the protests over NASA's Cassini probe

http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/91/32/10_1_m.html

There were those who thought me irresponsible for promoting space exploration when they were of the opinion the money could be better spent on the poor and underprivileged.

And of course there are many science fiction fans who take heated exception to the facts about space fighters

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php#id--Space_Fighters--Efficacy

and the fact there ain't no stealth in space

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#id--There_Ain't_No_Stealth_In_Space

Anyway I have the pop up menu populating properly, but it is not behaving when it comes to deactivating fuel magazines. Yet.

The idea is that each menu entry shows whether that magazine type is feeding the engine or not (the status), along with a button to change the status.

popUpMenus.jpg

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