Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[NovaSilisko]

The 10MN charges are too powerful and the 3.5MN ones are kinda wimpy, so I'm augmenting its liftoff capability.

[Canopus]

Some fairings over the shock absorbers would be nice

Edit: oh sorry there already appears to be one, my bad

[nyrath]

For comparison, the 10MN charges achieved a TWR < 1 (I'd guess about 0.8) at full throttle using the craft pictured below.

I modified the 10MN charges, making them 20MN instead:

1.5 kt with 20,000 kiloNewtons = 0.290 tons

bombImpulse = 20000

bombMass = 0.29

This was sufficient to loft my 898 Mg craft (173 Mg payload) to 80 Km LKO using 229 charges, and at about 33% throttle until after the gravity turn.

This seems much more reasonable to me than the huge impulse from the 80MN and insane 400MN charges. 4-6 magazines of 20MN charges gets a reasonable (for Orion) payload to orbit, with an acceleration curve within the approximately right range for Kerbin's atmosphere. Unreasonable payloads use the 80MN charges. Large cities and small continents use the 400MN charges.

I can see retaining the tiny cap-gun 0.88MN charges. It's occasionally handy to have a low thrust option. I could have used some in setting up my Jool aerobrake, where the 3.5MN charges were giving me about 6 m/s change, and I wanted to make some 1 or 2 m/s changes.

I would think that 2MN and 3.5MN are close enough that for gameplay purposes, they're interchangeable. Not sure it's value added to retain both, and unless the 2MN charges have an extreme efficiency advantage, I'll always pick the 3.5's.

The reason for the 2MN is because I was modeling historical designs. As you point out, they are pretty interchangeable with the 3.5MN. I do believe I will remove the 2MN. Mainly because each of these magazine types is saddled with a 3 megabyte texture map, and I haven't figured out how to re-use a texture map across several parts. Yet.

This does bring up the question of fuel density. The mass of the devices is scaled as realistically as possible for each charge (barring the 20's, which I just guessed at). However, there are the same number of devices in the 2MN magazine as the 80MN and 400MN magazines. Making their fuel density much different.

Fuel mass is critically important to mission design and engine/fuel selection. But volume is also important. The way things are balanced right now, as a mission planner I'd want to use the 400MN charges whenever possible, just so I could send the most ÃŽâ€v with the mission. Not only are the 400MN charges more than 4x as efficient by mass (the 2MN get 25,316 kn/t whereas the 400MN get 108,695 kn/t), they're also 200x as efficient in volume. (you can fit 24,000MN of 400's in one standard size magazine, or 120MN of 2's).

I understand that in reality, much of the device's mass is casing, wiring, conventional explosives, safety, and other inert stuff, and only a small fraction of its mass is blutonium. Meaning that doubling a device's yield doesn't nearly double its mass or volume.

I'm just pointing out that, within the world of KSP, this means we'll always want to use the largest charges we can get away with unless there's some artificial restriction. A 10x400MN magazine still has more than 25 times the potential ÃŽâ€v of a 'standard' 60x2MN magazine. Every time you can use one of those huge charges (and not way overshoot), it's a win.

Update: I mentioned above that achieving LKO takes about 225 of the 20MN charges (4500 MN total impulse, and interestingly about 4500 m/s for ascent). It takes just over 13 of the 400MN charges (I used 14 for 5,600 MN total). More loss to atmospheric drag, and the 14th charge didn't give me a nice pretty circle. But I spent 51.52 tons of 400MN devices vs. 65.25 tons of 20MN devices, and ended up with a higher orbit.

Perhaps when money becomes an actual resource in the game, the cost of the larger charges should scale in the same manner as their efficiency?

The scaling on the nuclear charges is mostly guesswork on my part. The details are sparse because they are still classified (unsurprising for nuclear devices).

The only solid data I have is for the 2MN, 3.5MN, and 80MN charges. I have the yield and the thrust for the 400MN charges, but not the mass. For all the other magazine types I have done a simplistic linear interpolation on the impulse to get a figure for the mass.

Things get even more complicated because of propellant variations. You will note that the 2MN and the 3.5MN charges are both 1 kiloton. They both have 2 kg of plutonium. The difference is that 3.5MN has 90 kg of tungsten propellant (total mass 141kg) and the 2MN has 34.3 km of tungsten propellant (total mass 79kg). The 3.5MN charge has a higher thrust but a lower specific impulse compared to the 20MN charges.

All the rest is guesswork on my part.

I'm still trying to digest these graphs into something useful. (from http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/ev1n5.htm )

[nyrath]

NovaSilisko, your work is stunning! I love the cargo bay.

Actually it reminds me a little of a scene from the James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice", when the rocket from Spectre eats the Gemini.

NovaSilisko "The 10MN charges are too powerful and the 3.5MN ones are kinda wimpy"

It looks like you have it covered with those nifty strap-on solid rockets. But if you need a nuke that is in-between, a 6MN charge would have a mass of about 0.143 tons per charge (according to my flimsy interpolation).

Would you happen to know how to re-use the same texture map on different parts? Freaking texture maps for the magazines are 3 megabyte each, that gobbles up too much RAM.

I've also failed to manage to make FlagDecals work. I take it they work like making a decal in Blender 3D? You use a Blender "empty" (similar to a Unity transform) to mark where you want the decal to be applied on the mesh model. Is this how FlagDecals work?

I tried adding a transform to my model in Unity, named it "flag1", and positioned it on my model with the transform's green Y axis perpendicular to the surface of the model. I added to the model's part.cfg file a MODULE { name=FlagDecal textureQuadName=flag1 }

But alas no flag appeared. Neither did it when I made the blue Z axis perpendicular.

Edited June 8, 2013 by nyrath

[s20dan]

Here's the Orion Class - Broad sword on her semi-successful test mission to Duna.

It was semi-successful because as it turns out mission control sent us off with the wrong payload

[nyrath]

Here's the Orion Class - Broad sword on her semi-successful test mission to Duna.

It was semi-successful because as it turns out mission control sent us off with the wrong payload

Oh, s20dan, you are an artist of spacecraft design! That's gorgeous!

[Canopus]

Yes they look very sleek. Almost too sleek for my taste How do you even control this thing? It looks so massive.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Canopus

[NovaSilisko]

I tried adding a transform to my model in Unity, named it "flag1", and positioned it on my model with the transform's green Y axis perpendicular to the surface of the model. I added to the model's part.cfg file a MODULE { name=FlagDecal textureQuadName=flag1 }

But alas no flag appeared. Neither did it when I made the blue Z axis perpendicular.

It has to be a mesh. Just a transform won't do anything.

[s20dan]

Oh, s20dan, you are an artist of spacecraft design! That's gorgeous!

Thanks, your mod is very inspirational. And seeing these things propelled by giant atomic explosions is hilarious

Yes they look very sleek. Almost too sleek for my taste How do you even control this thing? It looks so massive.

Hehe, yeah I guess they are unnecessarily sleek but they are good for aerobraking wth deadly re-entry, whatever way round FAR decides it should fly

As for control they just use a LOT of RCS, although this last design is more efficient with RCS.

There was a documentary posted in this thread and something they mentioned in that documentary was how the original designers threw the rule book out the window with regards to weight savings, as the engine was that powerful they needed a massively heavy craft to correctly utilise it.

I tried to follow that philosophy.

[nyrath]

Thanks, your mod is very inspirational. And seeing these things propelled by giant atomic explosions is hilarious

Ain't it though? There is something Rube Goldberg about a nuclear propulsion system that is a glorified firecracker under a tin can.

It has to be a mesh. Just a transform won't do anything.

Thanks!

But in the meanwhile, it belatedly dawns on me that I have committed the sin of hard-coding the names in the engine pop-up window. Translation: if some other user wants to create a new size of magazine, they will not be able to add the appropriate name to the pop up menu. Bad programmer! Bad! Bad! Have you forgotten everything you've learned about data-driven design?

There will be a short interlude while I fix this little problem.

[NovaSilisko]

How feasible would it be to set up the parts to use the normal unity animation system, instead of animating the pusher plate through code? That'd be a lot easier to work with I think, plus you could animate the bottom section of the plate as well.

[nyrath]

How feasible would it be to set up the parts to use the normal unity animation system, instead of animating the pusher plate through code? That'd be a lot easier to work with I think, plus you could animate the bottom section of the plate as well.

I'm not sure. Originally it was done with the normal unity animation system. Then when I implemented the heat emission animation, I could not figure out how to run both animations independently of each other. Both animations affect the pusher plate.

The only solution I could find was to use the unity animation for the heat emission, and animate the pusher plate with code. Keeping in mind that I started to learn how to write KSP mods less than a month ago, and that I am a total novice who really does not know what I am doing.

[Tommygun]

Ain't it though? There is something Rube Goldberg about a nuclear propulsion system that is a glorified firecracker under a tin can.

It has a very 1950's SciFi feel to it.

Now that I think about it, maybe it needs nuclear powered steam motors to land with.

[NovaSilisko]

I'm not sure. Originally it was done with the normal unity animation system. Then when I implemented the heat emission animation, I could not figure out how to run both animations independently of each other. Both animations affect the pusher plate.

The only solution I could find was to use the unity animation for the heat emission, and animate the pusher plate with code. Keeping in mind that I started to learn how to write KSP mods less than a month ago, and that I am a total novice who really does not know what I am doing.

That's the thing - the overheat animation wouldn't really be affecting the pusher plate. It's just the material being animated.

[Mekan1k]

Here it is spitting out a 3m tank from KW

Please let us play with this!!! It looks perfect!

[kahlzun]

In my mind, the Orion basically needs a "rough", "normal" and "fine tune" charge, scaled to the payload.

Experiment Log 914

Name: ███████, supervised by Professors ███████ and ███████

Date: 09/06/2013

Total Items: Four (4) functional miniature "Orion" Nuclear pulse 'rockets'

Input: One (1) model rocket as described above.

Setting: 1:1

Output: An identical rocket, where the radiation symbol has changed color to 'blue'

Input: One (1) model rocket as described above.

Setting: Rough

Output: 4 seperate piles of metal. Testing shows amounts equal to those in the model. ███████ suffered radiation burns and required hospitalisation, when attempting to ███████ one of the piles, which was later confirmed to be U-235 in a semi-critical state.

Input: One (1) model rocket as described above.

Setting: Fine

Output: A model rocket of a different design. Closer examination shows it to be a functional, miniature NERVA rocket.

Input: One (1) model rocket as described above.

Setting: Very Fine

Output: ███████ launched out of the room, injuring several staff as well as tearing a hole of diameter ███████ through a structural steel wall.

Later analysis of security footage shows the ███████ thrust, appears to show quantum energy being ███████ for thrust.

Edited June 9, 2013 by kahlzun

[OdinYggd]

Fascinating.

Using I think it was around a thousand of the biggest nukes offered, I had a vessel that went from the launch pad to a velocity of 575km/s at 100km over the sun.

Alas using this at all makes my system very laggy, and it has a rather large disadvantage in that it is such a huge solution.

But as soon as I come up with a reliable method to work around the phenomenal mass of the thing, I'll probably start building KSP-style torchships around this powerplant.

[Der Kosmos]

http://i.imgur.com/vNsln1g.png

Amazing. Now all we need is to add in the weapons mods and we can make this

498 nuclear missiles launched from 90 VLS cells, three 5 inch naval guns, six re-entry gliders, and four 20mm CIWS guns.

Edited June 9, 2013 by Der Kosmos

[nyrath]

Amazing. Now all we need is to add in the weapons mods and we can make this

498 nuclear missiles launched from 90 VLS cells, three 5 inch naval guns, six re-entry gliders, and four 20mm CIWS guns.

What did I tell you NovaSilisko? I said given your wonderful Orion design, it was just a matter of time before somebody noticed its resemblance to the legendary Orion Battleship. I purposely did not mention the battleship on this forum, but it only delayed it a couple of days.

That, boys and girls, is the Orion Battleship. You can read about it on my website here

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php#id--Project_Orion_Battleship

It has about 500 twenty-megaton "city-killer" warheads, three 5-inch Naval cannon turrets, six hypersonic landing boats, a few 20mm close-in-weapons, and six hardpoints containing the dreaded Casaba Howitzer (a directed energy weapon that shoots spears of nuclear flame, a weaponized version of the pusher charges).

The US military could build one of these nightmares today, if there was a role for it and one did not feel constrained about pesky little things like the nuclear test ban treaty.

I would hazard a guess that the battleship looks like NovaSilisko's Orion because both are based on the 4,000 short ton Orion design from the 1960's, as featured in Dyson's book.

I did try to make a 3D mesh model of one of those a long time ago. I lost interest when it got to the hard part of detailing the interior.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/sets/72157623339515955/

Edited June 9, 2013 by nyrath

[nyrath]

That's the thing - the overheat animation wouldn't really be affecting the pusher plate. It's just the material being animated.

Well, the only way I knew how to play a Unity animation in a mod was to use the technique outlined in the post 0.15 code update - PartModule, KSPField, KSPEvent, ConfigNode and PartResource, where the method used by ModuleAnimateHeat was outlined.

You load the frames of the animation into an Animation[] array, you load each frame into an AnimationState, you play the states and store them for latter use, then when you want to make the heat glow you calculate a pseudo-time for the animation and iterate over all the AnimationState feeding the pseudo-time to the AnimationState.normalizedTime.

It may have been faulty implementation on my part, but I could not make this work with two different animations on the same part. I could have the plate move but ModuleAnimateHeat would fail to make a heat glow, or I could have the ModuleAnimateHeat heat glow with no plate movement. But not both at once.

Of course this was with KSP 0.19, I should try it again with KSP0.20.

Since I could not have both animations play, I animated the heat and brute-force manually moved the pusher plate. Which was a shame since I had a much more nuanced animation for the plate movement.

In any event, if you say it should be possible to have two independent animations, I at least know there is some way for me to find.

Edited June 9, 2013 by nyrath

[s20dan]

Please let us play with this!!! It looks perfect!

I agree it really is perfect.. Pretty please?

Does it have the length inside the bay to place an engine at the bottom of that 3m tank?

Wow I had heard about the battleship but have never seen any designs for it, thats incredible.

[TheCardinal]

The engine and cartridges work fine. The only thing i disagree about is the difference in weight of the cartridges. I can imagine that a 15 kt bomb is heavier than a 1 kt bomb, but i can't imagine it to be 25 times the weight.

[kahlzun]

I cant help but feel those cannons are not mounted in optimal positions.. i guess the recoil of a 5 inch wouldn't greatly affect a ship of that mass, but it's not 'centred' enough when I look at it :S

[Canopus]

I cant help but feel those cannons are not mounted in optimal positions.. i guess the recoil of a 5 inch wouldn't greatly affect a ship of that mass, but it's not 'centred' enough when I look at it :S

Firing these things probably doesn't affect the massive Orion and if they do there are still RCS thrusters.

[Der Kosmos]

What did I tell you NovaSilisko? I said given your wonderful Orion design, it was just a matter of time before somebody noticed its resemblance to the legendary Orion Battleship. I purposely did not mention the battleship on this forum, but it only delayed it a couple of days.

That, boys and girls, is the Orion Battleship. You can read about it on my website here

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php#id--Project_Orion_Battleship

It has about 500 twenty-megaton "city-killer" warheads, three 5-inch Naval cannon turrets, six hypersonic landing boats, a few 20mm close-in-weapons, and six hardpoints containing the dreaded Casaba Howitzer (a directed energy weapon that shoots spears of nuclear flame, a weaponized version of the pusher charges).

The US military could build one of these nightmares today, if there was a role for it and one did not feel constrained about pesky little things like the nuclear test ban treaty.

I would hazard a guess that the battleship looks like NovaSilisko's Orion because both are based on the 4,000 short ton Orion design from the 1960's, as featured in Dyson's book.

I did try to make a 3D mesh model of one of those a long time ago. I lost interest when it got to the hard part of detailing the interior.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/sets/72157623339515955/

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz85/winchellchung/covertest2a.jpghttp://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz85/winchellchung/orionbattleshipboxart-600.jpg

Oh, it looks like I miscounted the number of 20mm guns, it looks like 6 or 8 of them now. As for the Howitzers, what exactly do they look like? I hear them mentioned a lot, but never any pictures? Where are they mounted exactly?