Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[nyrath]

Cant download it from the link can you put it on spaceport?

err, I did not want to put it in the spaceport until all the bugs were worked out. Send me a PM and we will figure out how to email it to you.

I was surprised how well this played with mechjeb. Only real issue is the lack of accuracy, having an binding key for shutting down the orion entirely would help as you could shift to chemicals then you was at end of burn.

I almost managed to land at Minmus with an 1200 ton payload on my first try

Good job!

Gotta figure out how to make the mod work with action keys. Trouble is the variable number of types of magazines.

[magnemoe]

err, I did not want to put it in the spaceport until all the bugs were worked out. Send me a PM and we will figure out how to email it to you.

Good job!

Gotta figure out how to make the mod work with action keys. Trouble is the variable number of types of magazines.

As I see, action keys and a way to transfer charges is the only things missing.

As for Eve blutonium mining one Eve, Eve SSTO is trivial with this, only issue is that you need to beef up the chemical engines for landing some to not take out the base unless you use balloons.

[tntristan12]

Just downloaded the mod, and I must say it is impressive! I probably won't use it since I don't feel like I've earned the ability to SSTAnywhereIWant yet... But I would *love* to see this get implemented in some form in the game as very late-game technology for interstellar travel. I don't see that happening any time before v1.0 though.

[MinerEdgar]

Is Nova going to release this? or is it his own little toy?

[Canopus]

Is Nova going to release this? or is it his own little toy?

I very much hope so

[princess venus]

I very much hope so

Why not ask him?

[CoriW]

Something I was wondering about this mod is if it would be at all possible to have it so that you can not fire any nuclear pulses if your too close to the ground? In reality this would not happen because it there would be no room for the charge to move away before it exploded, meaning it would explode right on the pusher plate. That would damage the pusher plate, no?

I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to do this, for example MechJeb can tell you your true altitude from the ground and can also restrict your throttle. This means that it should be possible to check your true altitude, and if that value is too low, restrict the throttle from allowing the engine to fire a pulse. Now this would be an issue if somebody wanted to use liquid fuel rockets to lift the vessel high enough for the nuclear pulses to have proper clearance, so would it then instead be possible to have it check if the Orion was activated and if so deactivate it if the true altitude was too low?

Just an idea for a bit more realism. I think it would be cool to use a bunch of SRB's to get your ship to an altitude suitable for the Orion to take charge.

EDIT: Sorry if this has been suggested before, but reading through 631 posts would take forever...

Edited June 20, 2013 by CoriW

[Canopus]

Why not ask him?

He said that he has some problems with it

[Canopus]

Just an idea for a bit more realism. I think it would be cool to use a bunch of SRB's to get your ship to an altitude suitable for the Orion to take charge.

Do it with liquid boosters:

[Der Kosmos]

Something I was wondering about this mod is if it would be at all possible to have it so that you can not fire any nuclear pulses if your too close to the ground? In reality this would not happen because it there would be no room for the charge to move away before it exploded, meaning it would explode right on the pusher plate. That would damage the pusher plate, no?

I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to do this, for example MechJeb can tell you your true altitude from the ground and can also restrict your throttle. This means that it should be possible to check your true altitude, and if that value is too low, restrict the throttle from allowing the engine to fire a pulse. Now this would be an issue if somebody wanted to use liquid fuel rockets to lift the vessel high enough for the nuclear pulses to have proper clearance, so would it then instead be possible to have it check if the Orion was activated and if so deactivate it if the true altitude was too low?

Just an idea for a bit more realism. I think it would be cool to use a bunch of SRB's to get your ship to an altitude suitable for the Orion to take charge.

EDIT: Sorry if this has been suggested before, but reading through 631 posts would take forever...

Not realistic at all sadly. The whole advantage of an Orion drive is that it's a cheaper way to put heavy payloads into orbit. If you use chemical rockets as the first stage, the orion drive and it's nukes become dead weight. The resulting monstrosity is now more expensive and less effective than either chemical or Orion drives by themselves.

[Canopus]

Not realistic at all sadly. The whole advantage of an Orion drive is that it's a cheaper way to put heavy payloads into orbit. If you use chemical rockets as the first stage, the orion drive and it's nukes become dead weight. The resulting monstrosity is now more expensive and less effective than either chemical or Orion drives by themselves.

Well the NASA Orion was to be launched Suborbital/Orbital, in one or multiple pieces, on the Saturn V

Edited June 20, 2013 by Canopus

[magnemoe]

Do it with liquid boosters:

Why drop the boosters, they are handy if you want to do small maneuvers or land.

[Canopus]

Why drop the boosters, they are handy if you want to do small maneuvers or land.

They are empty

[CoriW]

Not realistic at all sadly. The whole advantage of an Orion drive is that it's a cheaper way to put heavy payloads into orbit. If you use chemical rockets as the first stage, the orion drive and it's nukes become dead weight. The resulting monstrosity is now more expensive and less effective than either chemical or Orion drives by themselves.

The first stage only has to get it far enough off the ground to make sure that the first pulse has enough clearance. I've seen it said many times that it is vital that you let the charge get some distance before it detonates or it could damage the pusher plate or the ship.

Also wasn't the orion originally supposed to be for traveling long distances across space? That's the point of having a propulsion method with such a high ISP, is that you can get up to a considerable percentage of the speed of light (Possibly 5% or more, I read that somewhere. That's 14,989,622.9m/s), most of the time I've heard or read about this propulsion method it's mentioned as being used for space travel, not getting heavy payloads in orbit. Now it could be used for getting payloads into orbit, but like I mentioned above, you need the initial clearance below the pusher plate in order to fire the first pulse.

[nyrath]

The first stage only has to get it far enough off the ground to make sure that the first pulse has enough clearance. I've seen it said many times that it is vital that you let the charge get some distance before it detonates or it could damage the pusher plate or the ship.

Also wasn't the orion originally supposed to be for traveling long distances across space? That's the point of having a propulsion method with such a high ISP, is that you can get up to a considerable percentage of the speed of light (Possibly 5% or more, I read that somewhere. That's 14,989,622.9m/s), most of the time I've heard or read about this propulsion method it's mentioned as being used for space travel, not getting heavy payloads in orbit. Now it could be used for getting payloads into orbit, but like I mentioned above, you need the initial clearance below the pusher plate in order to fire the first pulse.

True, the USAF 10 meter Orion was designed to have a bomb standoff distance of 23 meters away from the bottom of the pusher plate. But that was designed to be lofted on top of a Saturn V.

However, the original 4,000 metric ton Orion had a pusher plate diameter of 40 meters, and was designed to lift off under nuclear bomb power. No chemical booster involved. Details are sketchy about how they deal with the close range detonation of the first bomb.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but there are other propulsion systems that have higher Isp than the Orion. Like ion drive.

The advantages of the Orion are [1] it has a high thrust, [2] it is one of the few high thrust propulsion systems that also has a high Isp.

If you've ever tried to use the Kerbal ion drive, you can see the advantage. The ion drive uses minuscule amounts of fuel, but takes forever to get anywhere.

But propulsion systems like Orion and closed-cycle-gas-core nuclear thermal rockets excel at boosting massive payloads from the surface into orbit.

[LaydeeDem]

So I finally caved and got the Orion mod. Not wanting to irradiate Kerbin's atmosphere, I sent it up the hard way instead.

Onwards to Duna! Using this as our mission plan:

[nyrath]

Nutt007, nice job! Let us know how the mission turns out.

[Canopus]

Nice one Nutt Btw are you going to continue work on your own Mods?

[Der Kosmos]

Yes I understand it was designed to be lifted using a saturn-V. But the thing is, once you are in space. thrust matters very little compared to ISP. An Orion drive is less necessary in space than it is in liftoff.

As for how the 40m Orion would be launched? I imagine they would dig a really deep hole under it or something so the bomb can be detonated at the right distance.

[nyrath]

But the thing is, once you are in space. thrust matters very little compared to ISP.

I agree with most of what you wrote, with one slight caveat.

For an Earth-Mars mission, ion drives have superior Isp, and thus better delta V. However, they have such low thrust that it takes too long to get up to speed. "Too long" here is defined as "the astronauts will exceed their lifetime cosmic radiation exposure limit before the mission is over".

None of which currently applies to KSP, of course.

Edited June 20, 2013 by nyrath

[Canopus]

Nyrath, would you say that the nuclear saltwater rocket is the propulsion method with the most potential or the closed cycle Gas core NTR?

[nyrath]

Nyrath, would you say that the nuclear saltwater rocket is the propulsion method with the most potential or the closed cycle Gas core NTR?

Depends upon what you mean by "potential."

The nuclear salt water rocket has vastly more thrust and specific impulse than the closed-cycle gas-core NTR.

But while the CCGC NTR just needs lots of engineering, quite a few scientists are skeptical that the challenges of the NSWR can ever be solved.

CCGC NTR just needs to contain some fissioning uranium in quartz tubes without melting.

NSWR has to figure out how to make a pusher plate that can survive a continuously detonating nuclear explosion.

[Canopus]

Depends upon what you mean by "potential."

The nuclear salt water rocket has vastly more thrust and specific impulse than the closed-cycle gas-core NTR.

But while the CCGC NTR just needs lots of engineering, quite a few scientists are skeptical that the challenges of the NSWR can ever be solved.

CCGC NTR just needs to contain some fissioning uranium in quartz tubes without melting.

NSWR has to figure out how to make a pusher plate that can survive a continuously detonating nuclear explosion.

So the nuclear lightbulb is far more achievable, interesting..

[Mekan1k]

The fissioning uranium gas could be contained with solid (nano-printed) diamond, a doable substance within 20-30 years, which would be next-to-indestructible, and have all the properties of the quartz tubes while remaining more resilient and lighter.

[andrew123]

Well, they found out during testing that if the plate was covered in oil, it wouldn't deteriorate.