[1.0.5] TAC Life Support v0.11.2.1 [12Dec]

[KerbMav]

Another method is hibernation. Don't freeze someone, but instead put them in a forced coma and slow down the metabolism to a crawl.

The body would still age I think and I do not know if the cells would "live slower".

But the effects of a prolonged coma are dangerous by themselves.

slightly more believable than cryonics where we still don't have a method to avoid the tiny blood vessels in the brain from being damaged by water's phase transition expansion.

Actually its the water in every single cell - every defrosted a strawberry?

Multi-generational ships would be the way to go - but practical for an only month-long trip to a neighbouring planet? If it were a one-way trip, the crew would need the means to maintain themselves at the destination anyway. So why not built the ship with everything needed to sustain the crew on the voyage and then landing the ship as a whole or at least the different compartments to establish a permanent base/settling.

[JordanL]

The body would still age I think and I do not know if the cells would "live slower".

But the effects of a prolonged coma are dangerous by themselves.

A coma isn't really a viable way to deal with space travel. However, when your metabolism is slowed, your individual cells on average do age slower in some ways, but not in others. The rate of chemical reactions within cell processes has more to do with temperature than anything (which is why warm-blooded creatures depend so much on constant body temperatures and have higher metabolisms than cold-blooded creatures).

Actually its the water in every single cell - every defrosted a strawberry?

Multi-generational ships would be the way to go - but practical for an only month-long trip to a neighbouring planet? If it were a one-way trip, the crew would need the means to maintain themselves at the destination anyway. So why not built the ship with everything needed to sustain the crew on the voyage and then landing the ship as a whole or at least the different compartments to establish a permanent base/settling.

For RL missions to Mars, that's actually one of the ideas being proposed by some scientists. Send perhaps 1-2 dozen people who are going one way, have them set up a base, and if we ever have the ability to send them back in their lifetimes that's a bonus, but otherwise their mission for the rest of their lives is set up all the infrastructure so that no one else will ever have to do a life-time mission to Mars.

[Krevsin]

Well, I know quite a few people who'd be willing to take a one-trip way to mars and if need be give their life in the name of human exploration and science.

[JordanL]

Well, I know quite a few people who'd be willing to take a one-trip way to mars and if need be give their life in the name of human exploration and science.

Well now you know one more. I think some people really say it flippantly, but I've actually thought about it. I would give everything else in my life up for that or something like it. I think that if I was given the chance for a 1 day space flight and then I'd die, I'd have to seriously consider it.

Suffice to say, KSP is basically my crack.

[Wheffle]

There have been some fairly plausible plans (if not expensive) submitted for round trips to and from Mars. Something involving sending the return pod first, unmanned, and using some kind of process to self-refuel on the surface of Mars. The crewed pod would use a counter-weight (usually a spent stage) to get some centripetal artificial gravity going on while it's headed to Mars. I'm not an expert on astrophysics, so I don't know if any of the proposed ideas for radiation shielding are viable. I've heard that a small shielded compartment is enough when solar flares are detected, and the astronauts would just have to voluntarily take the cosmic radiation, which would raise their risk for cancer by a few percentage points or something. I keep hearing conflicting opinions about that.

One of the reasons I love TAC is having to plan for missions like that. Kerbals can't sit on Duna stranded indefinitely and wait for a rescue ship. I guess Kerbals are more resistant to radiation, and that's OK with me... not sure if I'd enjoy that level or realism.

[WafflesToo]

I think I may have stumbled onto a bit of a problem here...

I sent a small 'space station" (okay, three guys in a crew tank) into orbit to see how they fared, how long supplies lasted with the recyclers, whether the recyclers worked when I wasn't looking (they don't BTW), etc.

The problem is when I leave to look after another mission and come back I find the electric charge is completely depleted. The only thing I can think of is the life support and the recyclers keep drawing power when I'm not looking BUT the solar panels don't generate charge. Does this sound about right?

I'm wondering if a fix can be found for this somehow or it's going to spoil my future plans of establishing outposts.

[Patupi]

The body would still age I think and I do not know if the cells would "live slower".

But the effects of a prolonged coma are dangerous by themselves.

As Jordant said, the cells do slow down, altering how we age. Since it's never been done to a person there is debate on how much it would affect aging overall, but it's still a viable idea. And yes, putting someone in a coma is pretty dangerous. Not being able to wake someone up at the other end would kind of defeat the object

Actually its the water in every single cell - every defrosted a strawberry?

Yup, every single cell, but the main problem is the tiny blood vessels in the brain. Most of the blood vessels in the body would survive freezing/thawing, and there have been methods proposed that could save the cells themselves due to the water inside them, but I don't believe anyone's found a substance (that isn't toxic in some what at least) that could be added to blood that can counter the expansion/contraction problem in arteries... an in the brain that is a problem that can't be solved by careful, slow freezing/thawing. Even a slight freeze will burst the smallest blood vessels there and give people aneurysms.

Multi-generational ships would be the way to go - but practical for an only month-long trip to a neighbouring planet? If it were a one-way trip, the crew would need the means to maintain themselves at the destination anyway. So why not built the ship with everything needed to sustain the crew on the voyage and then landing the ship as a whole or at least the different compartments to establish a permanent base/settling.

True, on short journeys... not so much of a generation Travelling to Eeloo on the other hand... OK, still not generational, but getting there. And yeah, not much different from conventional space ships with full lifesupport. You just have to consider making people comfortable for very long periods, beyond the life support necessary. I'd say making sure there is more space would make do from a KSP point of view

[immelman]

"Thanks. The support can were done by Regex so I don't really want to go messing with them. The simplest solution I have for right now is to just delete the *.TGA files for the containers.

I'll see if I can get Regex's permission and package the whole texture pack together under the correct format.

Done and done. All of the textures should be the correct format now so installation should be a breeze "

Thank you for doing this, the new textures look great

Edited December 7, 2013 by immelman
Did not reference post

[rosenkranz]

I think I may have stumbled onto a bit of a problem here...

I sent a small 'space station" (okay, three guys in a crew tank) into orbit to see how they fared, how long supplies lasted with the recyclers, whether the recyclers worked when I wasn't looking (they don't BTW), etc.

The problem is when I leave to look after another mission and come back I find the electric charge is completely depleted. The only thing I can think of is the life support and the recyclers keep drawing power when I'm not looking BUT the solar panels don't generate charge. Does this sound about right?

I'm wondering if a fix can be found for this somehow or it's going to spoil my future plans of establishing outposts.

^^^^ Very much this. I've lost two full station crews so far. I thought it was something I did when I lost the first crew (thought I forgot to turn on the recyclers). The second crew though, this is exactly what happened. As soon as the ship loaded everybody was dead and no electric charge. Of course once the ship loaded the batteries immediately started charging. The recyclers arn't very useful if that is how it's going to be

[WafflesToo]

Did some more checking, and the recyclers on units that are not being actively controlled are indeed working BUT power generation is not. So what's happening is the batteries go dead and then the recyclers quit...

Doesn't matter too much since your Kerbals die if they go without power for 2 hours anyway.

I haven't tried RTGs to see if it makes any difference... gimme a minute.

EDIT-

Nope, RTGs don't work either and that's definitely what is happening. This... is a problem.

Edited December 8, 2013 by WafflesToo
finished the experiment

[Beetlecat]

Did some more checking, and the recyclers on units that are not being actively controlled are indeed working BUT power generation is not. So what's happening is the batteries go dead and then the recyclers quit...

Doesn't matter too much since your Kerbals die if they go without power for 2 hours anyway.

I haven't tried RTGs to see if it makes any difference... gimme a minute.

EDIT-

Nope, RTGs don't work either and that's definitely what is happening. This... is a problem.

Shoot -- this will be a problem in all manner of space station and planet base scenarios. I'm sure a solution to simulate power generation when a craft is not the active vessel will be discovered. But you're right. At the moment it makes it difficult to use without swapping all around to make sure the active ship is getting power. :I

[TaranisElsu]

I have been working on fixing bugs and other issues, and have had some time to test it, so I think Release 0.6 is now ready. This is still a Work In Progress (WIP) though.

Download: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/tac-life-support/

Changes since v0.5:

• Fixed issue with EVA'ing before launch
  
• Fixed issue with turning off resource flow. All calculations and estimates will ignore any parts with resource flow turned off.
  
• Added a placeholder part that can extract Oxygen from IntakeAir. You will need an Intake part to get the air. Only works on Kerbin and Laythe because those are the only two that have Oxygen in their atmospheres.
  
• Added a placeholder part that splits Water into Oxygen and Waste (hydrogen).
  
• I found and fixed the bug that Shimmy ran into on his live stream that caused twice as much resources to be consumed when switching vessels. What was happening: when switching between vessels in the Map View, the Flight scene would get reloaded but the old instance of my class was not destroyed until after a new instance was created. For a brief moment, two instances existed and it would consume twice the resources that it should have based on the amount of time since you last loaded the vessel. So if you were gone for 4 hours, it would consume 8 hours of supplies . It's fixed now though !
  
• The consumption calculations and the converters no longer use ElectricCharge while the vessel is unloaded. Unfortunately, the game does not seem to track ElectricCharge very well while the vessel is unloaded. I have seen some strange jumps in the amount on a vessel even without my mod installed. So things will only require ElectricCharge if on the active vessel or anything within the load range (2.4km).
  
• Various other bug fixes.
  

Note that the new converters are not balanced yet (the old ones weren't really balanced yet either). I plan to use the numbers eggrobin gave to better balance the output rates and energy requirements, but I have not had a chance to do that yet.

@Beetlecat and @WafflesToo and @rosenkranz: please try the new version and see if that has the problem that you talked about. It should work better now.

@Jasmir: I will try to recreate that problem when I get a chance.

And thanks @WafflesToo for working on the textures.

Edited December 8, 2013 by TaranisElsu

[ExEvolution]

Thanks for the update, downloaded and installed

[rottielover]

upgrading now

[amo28]

Taranis, did you by any chance include into 0.6 the fix you put into FuelBalancer for button dragging in Linux? I noticed it wasn't in TACLS 0.5.

[scerion]

Hmm, so I installed the latest and tried to get a readout of available life support but no readout is showing in the LS screen?

I just stuck the capsule with two large life support parts and a large fuel tank attached at the bottom and launched, and the LS screen shows no readouts of available food water air and remaining time, I have 3 kerbals in there.

[TaranisElsu]

Taranis, did you by any chance include into 0.6 the fix you put into FuelBalancer for button dragging in Linux? I noticed it wasn't in TACLS 0.5.

Yes, I did.

Hmm, so I installed the latest and tried to get a readout of available life support but no readout is showing in the LS screen?

I just stuck the capsule with two large life support parts and a large fuel tank attached at the bottom and launched, and the LS screen shows no readouts of available food water air and remaining time, I have 3 kerbals in there.

Did you actually launch the vessel? Or was it just sitting on the pad? The mod does not track usage until after the vessel has been launched, not just moved to the launchpad. That way you can time warp until your launch window without worrying about using up all your resources. If you stick a decoupler under it and activate the decoupler, the game will consider the vessel to be launched (assuming it moves at least a little).

[Beetlecat]

Thanks for the update, downloaded and installed

Seconded! Thank you so much for the update.

New versions of the game may throw all of this out of whack, but until then I never cease to be impressed with the creative modding community.

[scerion]

Did you actually launch the vessel? Or was it just sitting on the pad? The mod does not track usage until after the vessel has been launched, not just moved to the launchpad. That way you can time warp until your launch window without worrying about using up all your resources. If you stick a decoupler under it and activate the decoupler, the game will consider the vessel to be launched (assuming it moves at least a little).

I had hit the spacebar, but had not warped time. Will test and get back to you. Thanks!

[scerion]

alright, adding the decoupler and "launching" worked got the readout to display.

Much thanks!

[kiwiak]

Is this possible to refill oxygen containers on laythe or Kerbin?

[seanth]

A thought about the Waste resource

For a different plugin, I was working out the chemistry of breakdown products with the assumption that anaerobic breakdown results in methane(kethane) and O2. In the end I get CH2(OH)2 (Methanedoil) as what "Waste" would be.

CH2(OH)2 --> CO2 + 2H2 <---> CH4 + O2

This fits in really well with Kethane's "Kerbal Unreconstitutionator" part, in that the Kerbals can be rendered to Kethane(methane).

I humbly suggest that the solid Waste produced by Kerbals is methanedoil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanediol)

[TaranisElsu]

Is this possible to refill oxygen containers on laythe or Kerbin?

Yes. You will need an air intake (for jet engines), and the Air Filter part. The Air Filter will filter the oxygen out of the IntakeAir. This only works on planets with an oxygen-containing atmosphere like Kerbin and Laythe. Note that Kerbals will not consume Oxygen while on Kerbin under a reasonable altitude (pressure greater than 0.2 atmo, which is approximately 8km). They will consume Oxygen on Laythe because I am assuming the air is not the right mix for Kerbals to breathe, because of the EVA reports from the surface.

[kiwiak]

Thanks for reply.

[federicoaa]

Any idea to have greenhouses to generate food or recycle air?