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

[Rampart]

In the next update, I'm killing off warp drive functionality as a big battery for megajoules of power. Instead, the warp drive will be powered by an exotic matter resource, which the warp drive will automatically generate when it has electrical power available. As I said before, I'm also making it an upgradeable part. This upgrade will be the cheapest available because it very much qualifies as "nice to have" rather than a stellar must have. The upgrade will simply allow the warp drive to charge substantially more quickly and permit higher warp speeds with a more massive ship. Since you're adding a few mutlipliers together, this could easily make upgraded nuclear rockets practical warp ships as well.

Love your mod btw, I'd like to vote to include those AM reactor models in the mod, the glow effect is particularly nice.

Do you want bug reports now or after you release the next version? (hopefully soon!)

Edited August 22, 2013 by Rampart
quote fix

[legion1202]

I`m lost with this mod although it looks really cool.. Is there any how to's for this mod?

[DaveStrider]

I'm trying to build an antimatter farming airship (so depositing the antimatter is easier) and i was wondering at what height the collectors start working, and what their optimum height is (if there is one) obviously i can't test this at kerbin since there doesn't seem to be any antimatter at all, and i'd rather not send the airship out to another planet if it turns out that antimatter only exists above the atmosphere

[CalculusWarrior]

I'm trying to build an antimatter farming airship (so depositing the antimatter is easier) and i was wondering at what height the collectors start working, and what their optimum height is (if there is one) obviously i can't test this at kerbin since there doesn't seem to be any antimatter at all, and i'd rather not send the airship out to another planet if it turns out that antimatter only exists above the atmosphere

I'm afraid that antimatter may only be collected above the atmosphere (according to the few missions I've done). If you'd like a hint at which altitude to look at, I believe that at 1000 km Kerbin antimatter flux is at a maximum. (This was for an earlier version, things could have changed) I do also know that while still providing more antimatter than smaller planets like Duna, Kerbin isn't your best source for antimatter. You'll want to seek out larger magnetic fields to collect more.

[DaveStrider]

I'm afraid that antimatter may only be collected above the atmosphere (according to the few missions I've done). If you'd like a hint at which altitude to look at, I believe that at 1000 km Kerbin antimatter flux is at a maximum. (This was for an earlier version, things could have changed) I do also know that while still providing more antimatter than smaller planets like Duna, Kerbin isn't your best source for antimatter. You'll want to seek out larger magnetic fields to collect more.

Thanks for the info, i was planning to send it to eve, which i imagine is the best place for antimatter (excluding jool and kerbol) but now i'll try to make an SSTO collector to refuel my ground base

[Fractal_UK]

Thanks for the info, i was planning to send it to eve, which i imagine is the best place for antimatter (excluding jool and kerbol) but now i'll try to make an SSTO collector to refuel my ground base

Eve is unlikely to work out much better than Kerbin, it has its greater mass on its side but its rotation period is smaller by almost the same factor, both of these are taken into account in the magnetic field trapping model - that means Eve is likely to perform very similarly to Kerbin albeit at slightly different altitudes. Trying to power a science lab dedicated to antimatter production might work better in these locations.

[Fractal_UK]

Decided to make more parts that should be upgradeable upgradeable, so I though I'd give the antimatter reactors a look. Upgrade costs in these pictures are liable to change (upwards) because I think the relative performance is much much better than what you get with the nuclear upgrades, I think you'll still be pleased with the results.

I've also updated the reactors to show their core temperatures as part of the on screen information. Core temperature is important because it affects both the specific impulse of attached thermal rockets and the thermal efficiency of attached generators (high temperatures are good!)

Here is the base antimatter reactor now:

This is the upgraded antimatter reactor: notice the huge leap in temperature!

Thermal rocket performance with the upgraded reactor: be aware that your max thrust will go down with these upgrades but specific impulse goes up by much more, relatively speaking. That means ridiculously amazing fuel efficiency, these are really powerful sublight drives that you can use to compliment warp exploration of the solar system. They do burn through antimatter at an alarming rate though!

I've also tweaked the 3.75m antimatter reactors as I thought they gave a poor compromise between thrust and specific impulse. Both versions should now be more thrusty at the expense of some specific impulse.

The new resource back-end seems to be working smoothly too, though I did fix a rather obscure bug with it this morning so I want to place it through a few more situational tests before release.

Do you want bug reports now or after you release the next version? (hopefully soon!)

Bug reports are always welcome, hopefully they will have already been fixed as part of the work on the new version but it's good to make me aware of any problems.

[legion1202]

Can some give me a break down on what parts go with what. I cant seem to get anything to work.. I get TWR but no fuel.

[Fractal_UK]

Can some give me a break down on what parts go with what. I cant seem to get anything to work.. I get TWR but no fuel.

A good setup would be fuel tank -> electric generator -> nuclear reactor -> thermal rocket, that's what I usually do. If you're trying to use the antimatter reactors instead of the nuclear reactors, all of the antimatter tanks start empty, you have to harvest some antimatter with a collector or create it in the science lab before you can use those.

[Scotius]

Hmm...since you switched to negative energy for warp drive, what about adding Quantum thruster? I guess it would be mostly a gimmick, with it's high power demand and wimpy thrust. But since it doesn't require external fuel tank and enjoys astronomical Isp, it could be useful for probes in range of Microwave Power Network.

[Fractal_UK]

I started some work looking at the electric engines now, I decided it was high time that they had different fuel options. The first step toward doing this was to alter the Magnetoplasdynamic thruster such that its default propellant (at 11,200s of specific impulse) is "LiquidFuel" rather than Xenon. Immediately the utility of an engine increases the moment standard fuels are available. Basically, the Liquid Fueled version of the plasma thruster will function exactly as the plasma thruster does now - only using Liquid Fuel instead of Xenon. Here is what you should see with an un-upgraded 2.5m generator, 2.5m antimatter reactor and the plasma thruster:

The large Xenon tank I added to the game was a bit of dodgy fix, I don't really like the idea of enormous Xenon tanks, Xenon is extremely rare stuff so I've decided to replace this tank with an Argon tank. Argon is another inert propellant but is less massive than Xenon, this means it offers intermediate performance in terms of thrust and specific impulse, here is that one:

Specific impulse has tumbled but we suddenly have considerable thrust available.

The final option remains Xenon. I haven't decided how exactly I'm going to work with Xenon in the future but assume that Argon is a good inert propellant for larger thrusters while smaller thrusters may want to go for Xenon.

You can see the specific impulse of this option here but unfortunately I have no fuel to show you the thrust. However, the value would be 767KN (which I believe just about pushes the TWR above 1).

It's worth noting as well that the plasma engines really benefit enormously from both the reactor upgrade and the generator upgrade, with these toggleable fuel options I suspect that they can be very competitive with the thermal rockets for many applications.

[Xentoe]

Hello. I like this Mod real and did tell the german KSP Group about it.

And I like the work you invest in it *thumb up*.

but would it not slowly be time to realease the now yet done update before start ever and ever a new thingi?

Aner I would too sufggest to use these cool glowy Antimattercores (tested it looks real amazing).

And would be easier to differ from "normal" tanks.

But real very good work *thumbs up*

[Kevin_010]

This mod is looking very cool, not at all what I expected it to be based on the title

[Scotius]

Is argon available only in stock fuel tanks, or can we get it in-situ? I'm thinking about adding it to a kethane refinery output - is it possible?

[Fractal_UK]

Is argon available only in stock fuel tanks, or can we get it in-situ? I'm thinking about adding it to a kethane refinery output - is it possible?

Yes, it's available in situ on most places with an atmosphere. I've updated the scoop to that effect. Argon is 0.93% of Kerbin's atmoshere, 1.05% of Laythe's atmosphere, 1.9% of Duna's atmosphere and a piddly 0.007% of Eve's atmosphere. It is not found on Jool in meaningful quantities.

You could probably make it produceable by kethane refineries by altering the kethane converter .part file.

[DaveStrider]

Will Xenon be harvestable in-situ as well? like you said it's extremely rare so i'd understand if it was unobtainable

[Fractal_UK]

Will Xenon be harvestable in-situ as well? like you said it's extremely rare so i'd understand if it was unobtainable

Xenon really is produced by atmospheric extraction but it really does occur in tiny quantities (about 87 parts per billion) in the Earth's atmosphere and all the other noble gases are easier and cheaper to obtain. If I add in a solution for Xenon extraction then, it will need to be a relatively long term thing, I have mechanisms for that so it can be done but I need to decide if its worth it. If I can figure out a nice option for a small electric engine that doesn't produce almost no thrust it will almost certainly be a Xenon-based thing, so I'll look at it in detail then.

I'm pretty sure that a small Xenon plasma thruster would have more thrust and be more useable than a stock ion engine but I'm still not convinced how many people would be interested in small probes with just a few kN of thrust even if they are relatively well endowed with delta-v.

[Rampart]

Xenon really is produced by atmospheric extraction but it really does occur in tiny quantities (about 87 parts per billion) in the Earth's atmosphere and all the other noble gases are easier and cheaper to obtain. If I add in a solution for Xenon extraction then, it will need to be a relatively long term thing, I have mechanisms for that so it can be done but I need to decide if its worth it. If I can figure out a nice option for a small electric engine that doesn't produce almost no thrust it will almost certainly be a Xenon-based thing, so I'll look at it in detail then.

I'm pretty sure that a small Xenon plasma thruster would have more thrust and be more useable than a stock ion engine but I'm still not convinced how many people would be interested in small probes with just a few kN of thrust even if they are relatively well endowed with delta-v.

The biggest problem I see with the super low thrust high isp engines is the inability to warp while thrusting. Hour long burns make it tough to squeeze in a game during lunch

For those obsessed with craft longevity, I've discovered that you can put docking clamps between a nuke reactor and a turbine, so you can swap out the reactor when it runs out of uf6, after you recycle all the usable duf6 that is.

[Scotius]

Not many i guess - though it's only my opinion. All low-power electric engines are borderline useless in KSP, because we can't burn using time warp. And with ion engines interplanetary change of velocity requires an hour+ burn times - not many players have enough patience (i don't ). Personally i would rather see more miscellaneous parts. For example some kind of atmospheric sampler allowing us to look for argon/xenon on Duna, Eve and Laythe. Or maybe scaled down Microwave Receiver for probes. Or even better - microwave converter transforming microwaves into normal electricity and vice-versa.

[DaveStrider]

The only use i can think to give xenon (other than as a propellant) is as a boost for research labs, as something for your scientists to mess around with, because of it's rareness i imagine it still has some scientific value. This could also be extended to other rare things like antimatter.

As for thrusters, having a high isp doesn't mean anything if you have to wait an hour to use it, from what i've seen people often get irritated about having to split their burn into two when using nuclear engines, so i'd guess that if a thruster forces you to do that then it's pushing the limit.

[Fractal_UK]

The only use i can think to give xenon (other than as a propellant) is as a boost for research labs, as something for your scientists to mess around with, because of it's rareness i imagine it still has some scientific value. This could also be extended to other rare things like antimatter.

Yes, Xenon does have scientific uses. One thing I'm aware of is its use in dark matter detectors where a small quantity of xenon is sealed up in a large container deep underground, surrounded by light detectors to try and detect (extremely rare) interactions between dark matter and regular matter. As of yet though, no such interactions appear to have been demonstrated. I don't know if I can do anything with this but it's an interesting idea.

[Khoal]

Actually, I think you could give Kerbals anything with the slightest tendency to explode, and they would want to pla.., er, experiment with it... xD

[Fractal_UK]

A long term (and probably obvious) idea I've had for an upgrade for the thermal jets is to create an upgrade that turns them into hybrid rockets that can work on either external atmospheric propellant or on internal supplies of fuel. I also wanted to make the jets compatible with stock intake air as well as the atmospheric resource that I introduced, afterall the only difference between the two is that IntakeAir must contain oxygen while IntakeAtmosphere only might contain oxygen.

This upgrade is really rather powerful so is fairly expensive in terms of science (cost 750) required but the results are highly impressive!

I've used an upgraded antimatter reactor for this demo as well because it really demonstrates what we can achieve by combining a few upgrades. I know building a plane like this one is going to require jumping through a lot of hoops (collecting both sufficient antimatter and sufficient science) but hopefully the end-product will be worthwhile.

So, here we have an antimatter powered plane using a thermal hybrid rocket to break the sound barrier at low altitude (We're using stock intake air here, not intake atmosphere):

At high altitude we just toggle over to Liquid Fuel mode and off we go to orbit!:

A short while later we arrive in a 76km parking orbit, all having used only half of the smallest liquid fuel tank as propellant

Using intake atmosphere instead of air and probably a slightly larger plane also offers intruiging possibilities for the exploration of Eve.

[Scotius]

This is...beautiful You are propelling Kerbin's space technology level hundreds of years into the future. I suspect in career mode of finished game it would be an absolute endgame. Evian SSTO. Mind. Boggles.

[Rampart]

Could you have the base science generated before accounting for kerbal stupidity visible somewhere? Maybe even another part like the magnetometer that detected "scientific novelty" or somesuch, though a line in the science lab would be ok. Its tough to consistantly get the same total stupidity level in all my probe science labs before deciding where to build a base. The ability to transmit science would be nifty, but if you don't go that route how about a "high redundancy data drive" that weighs as much as a sci lab but holds 4x the science for an energy cost.