[0.25]KSP Interstellar (Magnetic Nozzles, ISRU Revamp) Version 0.13

[Hughesdylan]

Like i said, i think its both. You can use treeloader to manually load the "Interstellar" or the one i use is that combo of someone and interstellar even without KSPI installed (pretty sure). KSPI does come with its own tree.cfg though. Dunno how that would effect a currently running game though. At worst, you can just copy over the tech tree listed in your save file with whatever tree you want.

[ScallopPotato]

Heh, thats why i made the Bridge Diode for my own game in the above post. It converts 1000EC to 1MJ, although fairly slowly. If you wanted you probably could do something similar in your game. That way you could use Solars to power your lab.

In base KSPI though it's my understanding that the answer is no.

Do you have a link to Bridge Diode?

[Hughesdylan]

Do you have a link to Bridge Diode?

I'm pretty noobish about modding here, its just stuff i've messed around with on my own, and i certainly dont want to hijack this thread. I re-used a couple of SQUAD's textures and models. Are those ok to share i wonder?

[Woopert]

I'm using the one that's just labeled Interstellar Tree. Still not sure if the files for it are in WarpPlugin or TreeLoader. :\

[Hughesdylan]

I'm using the one that's just labeled Interstellar Tree. Still not sure if the files for it are in WarpPlugin or TreeLoader. :\

It's my understanding that once you have a game file, and have loaded a tree with treeloader, it puts that in the save file. So, pretty sure, at that point you dont actually need KSPI or Treeloader anymore?

Edit:

Yeah i just looked. it copies a Tree.cfg into your save file.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Hughesdylan

[undercoveryankee]

It's my understanding that once you have a game file, and have loaded a tree with treeloader, it puts that in the save file. So, pretty sure, at that point you dont actually need KSPI or Treeloader anymore?

Edit:

Yeah i just looked. it copies a Tree.cfg into your save file.

You probably still need TreeLoader's plugin to get the game to read the tree.cfg in your save.

[Kerbonautical]

I'm really confused about the transmitted power. I'm finally getting the hang of the thermal side of things but there's two things about transmission that I don't get. Firstly, I have 2 reactors in orbit at 200k pushing about 60 GW combined. I also have a relay system at 750k. When I launch something from the ground I can only pick up Megawatts of power. What's going on here? I've set up this system three times now and twice I've had this same problem and only once been able to receive GW, but I used the same gear each time.

Secondly when using the thermal helper to build a ship that will exploit the thermal beamed power how do you work around it? I always build something in the green and then they overheat when in use so I'm guessing I'm overheating from the beamed power

[phoenix_ca]

Because aspect angle matters.

[Kerbonautical]

What's a good way to face the satellites then? I have mine facing over the right edge of the planet and the stations facing over the left edge. But I figured during their rotation around the planet they would end up facing the wrong way anyway

[phoenix_ca]

What's a good way to face the satellites then? I have mine facing over the right edge of the planet and the stations facing over the left edge. But I figured during their rotation around the planet they would end up facing the wrong way anyway

Well now I don't understand the question (mostly because, planets being round, there are no edges).

The best way to orient your receivers is pointing directly at the transmission source, be it a transmitter or relay. In the case of thermal receivers that means pointing the side of the thermal receiver at the power source.

[Kerbonautical]

Well now I don't understand the question (mostly because, planets being round, there are no edges).

The best way to orient your receivers is pointing directly at the transmission source, be it a transmitter or relay. In the case of thermal receivers that means pointing the side of the thermal receiver at the power source.

Sorry probably didn't explain that very well, I meant if facing the planet from a distance with the poles in their by-name positions at the equator. They should all be pointed at each other though :/ is there any way to tell how much power should be transferred from vessel to vessel rather than having to stick something on the launchpad to find out?

All of my antenna's say they're at 100% except the ship I'm launching which says around 70%, yet the amount of power received seems relatively weak considering the connection and small distance

[WaveFunctionP]

What's a good way to face the satellites then? I have mine facing over the right edge of the planet and the stations facing over the left edge. But I figured during their rotation around the planet they would end up facing the wrong way anyway

Orientation and size of the array does not matter when transmitting or relaying power. Receivers however have to be pointed at a transmitter or relay, the angle of which determines the percentage of power recieved. Along with other factors.

See the article on the wiki, or the video on power networks linked in my sig.

[Taki117]

If I wanted to add a new mode to the Plasma Thruster, how would I go about doing that? (I use stuff from Near Future Propulsion, which adds Hydrogen, and I would like a Plasma Thruster Mode for it.)

[zapman987]

What do you have to do to get the miners on the refineries to turn on? I only see buttons for thorium and uranium. With that, how do you store those? Ive attached the proper tanks, and its not filling them. Is there no fuel cross feed between the tanks and the refineries?

[WaveFunctionP]

If I wanted to add a new mode to the Plasma Thruster, how would I go about doing that? (I use stuff from Near Future Propulsion, which adds Hydrogen, and I would like a Plasma Thruster Mode for it.)

Liquid fuel is hydrogen.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Liquid fuel is hydrogen.

I think he means the Near Future version which is called "HydrogenGas" and has a ridiculously light mass similar to Xenon

I generally go the other route for the stuff I use from Near Future. Use Module Manager to remap them to use KSPI resources

[phoenix_ca]

Liquid fuel is hydrogen.

Yes but unfortunately Near Future defines a different resource named "HydrogenGas". So it's incompatible with LiquidFuel, unless you (a) change all of the HydrogenGas references in parts to LiquidFuel or ( add HydrogenGas to the Plasma Thruster fuels.

The former is fairly easy with an MM patch, but unless you get more specific and edit each part individually, weird things will happen with the amount and maxAmount values (IIRC it also has a different density value compared to LiquidFuel).

For the thrusters, those are defined in the ElectricEnginePropellants config.

Honestly though, I wouldn't bother with using the HydrogenGas parts from Near Future combined with this mod, as they functionally overlap with a lot of things. Xenon and Argon tanks are definitely worth keeping, and the large batteries are nice.

What do you have to do to get the miners on the refineries to turn on? I only see buttons for thorium and uranium. With that, how do you store those? Ive attached the proper tanks, and its not filling them. Is there no fuel cross feed between the tanks and the refineries?

ThF4, UF4, and UraniumNitride all have ALL_VESSEL flow. It shouldn't matter where you put tanks. Though if having problems you could try using TAC Fuel Balancer for a workaround.

Edited May 12, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[WaveFunctionP]

Yes but unfortunately Near Future defines a different resource named "HydrogenGas". So it's incompatible with LiquidFuel, unless you (a) change all of the HydrogenGas references in parts to LiquidFuel or ( add HydrogenGas to the Plasma Thruster fuels.

Everyone has to reinvent the wheel I guess.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes but unfortunately Near Future defines a different resource named "HydrogenGas". So it's incompatible with LiquidFuel, unless you (a) change all of the HydrogenGas references in parts to LiquidFuel or ( add HydrogenGas to the Plasma Thruster fuels.

Everyone has to reinvent the wheel I guess.

[Tristavius]

So, I promised ages back in two or three separate discussions on He3 extraction to post some pictures of how to get it from Jool. Well I finally went back to my cloud scoop and began getting some of the infrastructure in place to support it (prior to that it was a single use tool essentially).

The most important thing it needed was an antimatter station as no other source of power has proven good enough for flight that deep in Jool's atmosphere. I launched the MKI collector below which came in two parts for easier launch and had it all set up but after I switched away I returned to find it a pile of debris drifting (rapidly) apart. I still don't know what happened but I'm assuming from the parts that were left it was an explosion of the AM tanks. It had more than enough power so my guess was maybe an issue with either the way the tug disconnected (decoupled rather than docking port) or the fast there were docking ports between the tanks and the reactor. Either way I then built the MkII as a single piece and it seems to be working beautifully. I have also now designed the MkIII which if it works will have an extra 35 collectors.

The experimental scoop was then deployed to Jool and rendezvoused with the station and took on a good load of antimatter. It uses a thermal turbojet on liquid fuel for self propulsion in space. From there it simply descends into Jool's atmosphere, turning on the thermal turbojet (atmospheric) to power directly downwards as hard as it can. It then simply levels off at about 50 meters and starts scooping He3. The flight is so stable it usually only has an ascent/descent speed of +/-0.01m/s and can thus be left alone and checked on every 15 minutes or so. At the moment it scoops about 108 an hour. During yesterdays trial I took 28,000 antimatter which was enough for just shy of two hours flight, plus ascent and I still had about 5000 left in the tank.

Making orbit is embarrassingly easy with antimatter... I just fly up at about 80° East on full throttle... this gets you most of the way out the atmosphere as it is and should even get an apoapsis above where you need. As you cross into the thinnest parts the thermal turbojet will start to overheat as it has no pre-coolers so you switch to liquid fuel for the rest of the ascent and completion of the orbit. When doing so the scoops can be set to Hydrogen, continually replenishing the tanks even in the thinnest whiff of atmosphere. By the time it makes a 500,000m orbit the small liquid fuel tank should still be over half full.

So what next? Well I need a craft to shuttle between the scoop in low Jool orbit, the AM station higher up and my station around Laythe, bringing AM to the scoop and then carrying the He3 back to Laythe. Shouldn't be hard and will probably be plasma thruster powered, though it could also be refueled by the scoop and also run on thermal engines. After that I need to refine the scoop further - it's just a prototype really. I want the final one to have over 4x the scoops if possible so it can fill 400+ an hour. The problem is as it gets heavier it also gets slower which leads to each scoop being less efficient. At some stage I'm going to hit a wall where adding an extra scoop doesn't really increase what it can bring in per second. I may also get to the stage where it can't actually even fly that low down, or can't ascend so I'll just have to see if it's even possible to meet my objective.

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Edited May 12, 2014 by Tristavius

[phoenix_ca]

I'm failing to see the point of it all when you need to collect so much antimatter to get it. If you used FAR and PWings, with fairly large wings, you could probably get a lot more weight down there at far less energy cost.

Everyone has to reinvent the wheel I guess.

I know right? It's enough to drive one crazy.

Edited May 12, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[Tristavius]

Yeah, He3 does seem very unbalanced currently, it's either an enormous investment in time waiting for tritium decay or enormous effort in cloud harvesting (and the energy cost is phenomenal using all that anti-mater). Considering the performance from a fusion reactor burning He3 really isn't that great it does sort of make the whole thing futile.

But it's not about the He3, it's about the challenge!

Still, He3 could use a re-examination I think... maybe a much greater quantity in Jool's atmosphere (even just moving that decimal place by one from 0.000137% to 0.00137% would make a big difference - that would mean 1000 an hour for a craft like this which is enough to power a generator for a good while. I'd be tempted to say make it even larger and make un-powered aerobraking dives a valid method for scooping a bit of it up. Perhaps add the current tiny quantity to another planet?

[phoenix_ca]

I suppose one could try this for MM:

@ATMOSPHERIC_RESOURCE_DEFINITION[JoolHelium3]:FINAL
{
	@abundance = 0.00003
}

Replace abundance with, whatever.

If I'm not mistaken, pure He-3 fusion in 2.5m and 3.75m reactors is crap though, meaning its only really useful in small reactors. On top of that, it only produces charged particles in that state so forget about using it for thrust. Which is ass-backwards from a gameplay perspective.

Edited May 12, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[artforz]

On top of that, it only produces charged particles in that state so forget about using it for thrust. Which is ass-backwards from a gameplay perspective.

Err, with the current KSPi, ChargedParticles produce thrust just fine.

[phoenix_ca]

They do? ...oh feck I forgot they get converted to thermal power if there's no use for them. Thanks for the correction. Though I'm fairly sure my point about the He-3 fusion in the large reactors is still accurate.

[Atrius129]

Wouldn't the answer to all of this He3 business be to fix tritium decay on an unfocused vessel?