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

[zzz]

Yes, I had to do a bit of rescaling, part physical, part imaginary in order to get black body radiation values (via Stefan-Boltzmann) closer to the kind of values that my reactors actually produce.

I completely not mean you doing something wrong with it. I have some basic understanding (and usually do some investigations about things I try to make). Surely it must to have huge area to give any noticeable effect, it's not very effective process. It was more about how it looks rather than how reasonable it is.

Edited September 26, 2013 by zzz

[Fractal_UK]

I completely not mean you doing something wrong with it. I have some basic understanding (and usually do some investigations about things I try to make). Surely it must to have huge area to give any noticeable effect, it's not very effective process. It was more about how it looks rather than how reasonable it is.

Yes, it must be fairly large but we can minimise the area by going to high temperatures. The radiated power scales with temperature^4 so moderate increases in temperature lead to massive increases in radiated power.

[zzz]

Ok, now something completely different. I don't know how some one could to use it and to fly with such thing, I'm usually try to keep placeholders bounds for parts to not change exsised rocket designs too much but do not in this case.

Well It's microwave transmitter and receiver and it's far not as handy as current dish.

Maybe just not use it or halve size of it, I don't know. But I wanted to make it this way.

Just read how epic actual size of such things must to be

Anyway - there the link

http://www./download/d34iua26he140zy/microwave.7z

[theSpeare]

zzz your models are amazing - will you ever work on doing a more sci-fi, advanced-looking thermal rocket?

[zzz]

advanced-looking thermal rocket?

Do you mean this nozzles? Yes, I thought about it for some time and planned it next. I'm actually in this moment was going to ask about it. I have some ideas but not sure how will be better to make it (and how much "advanced-looking" it must to be) , there can be several approaches. Maybe you know some picture of how you want it to look(not sure is this correct words order to make it to be a question)?

Edited September 27, 2013 by zzz

[Xentoe]

To be true I got still not how this damn Thermal ROcket works (that is is acceptable strong).

(Yes Reactor direct and so... but this helps not real mutch (yes I have updated it).

Stays still more or less a "farty" strength.

[Fractal_UK]

Do you mean this nozzles? Yes, I thought about it for some time and planned it next. I'm actually in this moment was going to ask about it. I have some ideas but not sure how will be better to make it, there can be several approaches. Maybe you know some picture of how you want it to look(not sure is this correct words order to make it to be a question)?

I guess it would look fairly simple because it is just a simple rocket nozzle, the most likely shape for it is a simple Bell nozzle. Which is just the type that we have lots of in the game already. It could also be something like an expansion deflection nozzle but the difference is fairly subtle anyway (as far as I can tell, externally, the expansion deflection nozzle is just a bit shorter and fatter).

There is more room for creativity with the thermal turbojet which could be a (typical aircraft) plug nozzle engine, it could be an aerospike or it could also be an expansion deflection type nozzle.

Ok, now something completely different. I don't know how some one could to use it and to fly with such thing, I'm usually try to keep placeholders bounds for parts to not change exsised rocket designs too much but do not in this case.

Well It's microwave transmitter and receiver and it's far not as handy as current dish.

Maybe just not use it or halve size of it, I don't know. But I wanted to make it this way.

Just read how epic actual size of such things must to be

There are plenty of things I could do with these, I could use the huge receiver to make a bigger receiver that lets you receive much more power (i.e. less distance losses) for surface bases and that sort of thing. Having one of these attached off to the side of your moon base would look very nice, I think.

If anyone has other suggestions though, I'm open to ideas.

[zzz]

To be true I got still not how this damn Thermal ROcket works (that is is acceptable strong).

If you cut out NERVA (lv-n)nozzle - you will got this thing. But if LV-N have predefined reactor there you can to choose which one will be used.

I guess it would look fairly simple because it is just a simple rocket nozzle, the most likely shape for it is a simple Bell nozzle. Which is just the type that we have lots of in the game already.

I thoght similar, but there is what I call "several approaches". Make it to be reasonable simple bell nozzle or make it something I don't know what advanced cool looking. But even with bell I still not sure how to make it.

Edited September 27, 2013 by zzz

[Fractal_UK]

Just been playing around with the glow effects, I think the radiators look much nicer with some of these added:

[Fractal_UK]

When you are using a thermal rocket, you don't need to worry about radiating heat, what you have in this case is open cycle cooling. That means, if you just want to run a nuclear or antimatter reactor without a generator attached and just use it to power a thermal rocket engine, you don't need to worry about cooling. You use the reactor to heat up the propellant and then throw it out of the back of your ship, at which point that heat is no longer your problem.

My rocket here has the generator turned off but is running on an antimatter reactor, it isn't generating any heat because all of the heat that is being produced is being dissipated by the engines.

If I then turn on the generator and tell the alcubierre drive to start charging, my engines are no longer dissipating all of the heat and my waste heat starts to build up once again.

[Krevsin]

I have to say, good work on this mod. I've been enjoying it immensely (after removing the antimatter and warp things. Too handwavy for my tastes). Keep it up.

[zzz]

Just been playing around with the glow effects

Can you to control emmisive color.a (0-1.5) by the plugin or it's will be too hard?

[Fractal_UK]

Can you to control emmisive color.a (0-1.5) by the plugin or it's will be too hard?

I don't know, if I can figure out how to get the glow effect itself from the code then it should be easy because I can just modify its transparency. Is there a specific name that I can address this layer by, do you know?

[DaveStrider]

How serious do you plan to make the negative effects of heat buildup? I tend to build things for aesthetic appeal, and i'd rather not have giant panels sticking out of my ships.

[zzz]

Is there a specific name that I can address

I know barely nothing about unity coding. "emmisive color.a" is how called emissive map alpha(transparency) multiplier in material, I use it in animation.

Edited September 28, 2013 by zzz

[Fractal_UK]

How serious do you plan to make the negative effects of heat buildup? I tend to build things for aesthetic appeal, and i'd rather not have giant panels sticking out of my ships.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to handle the negative effects just yet but ultimately, not dissipating heat is one of those things that would be a very effective way of killing anyone aboard your ships and, if you continue, cooking your ship as well. I'll likely add more safety features anyway so that things shut down automatically before bad consequences result meaning that the likely worst consequence is that your reactors continue to function but with vastly diminished capacity.

Additionally, the open cycle cooling I mentioned above makes a huge difference because almost nothing requires the reactors to be run anywhere near close to full power other than thermal rocket engines, plasma engines, alcubierre drives, DT-vistas and science lab antimatter production. Thermal engines dissipate their own heat, so you don't need radiators to cool them so it's really just plasma engines, alcubierre drives, DT-vistas and science labs producing antimatter that require extensive radiative cooling. Anything else and you should be able to cope with one or two small radiators.

You can still manage the heat even with small radiators because you can now control whether the warp drive will charge or not, so if you turn everything that uses power off you can spend some time dissipating excess heat then turn everything back on for a while while you have spare Waste Heat capacity.

The point is, it won't be hard to avoid the negative effects but it will give you an extra thing to have to plan to deal with. I also think that this can, in fact, be a good thing for spacecraft aesthetics - retracted radiators function pretty effectively convectively so you generally don't need to actually deploy them until you're actually in orbit, which I think helps keep everything looking appropriate to its setting.

In an ideal world, it'd also be nice to make open cargo bay doors from the likes of B9 function as radiators (like the space shuttle's did) but that may be a pipe dream.

[GabrielG.A.B.Fonseca]

Idea: Being nearer the sun reduces the efficiency of heat dissipation. Shadowing the Radiators helps a little to increase it.

It would be darn awesome to have to design a Solar Relay Station that way. Solar panels around a Hexagon-shaped transmitter, with huge radiator panels glowing red-hot over the station's shadow, shielded from the sun's own radiation emissions.

All of that compressed into seven words: AWESOME!!!

[curiousepic]

Woo finally a mod with thermal management! This looks amazing.

[Fractal_UK]

Woo finally a mod with thermal management! This looks amazing.

It's funny actually, thermal management was the first idea for a KSP mod that I had, it's also something I've seen brought up time and time again by people on the forums as something they'd like to see included in the stock game. As soon as I had the models to do this, this was always going to be a top priority.

In my opinion, KSP is a pretty neat educational tool, teaching people about many aspects of space travel so I do think it's a real shame that heat management, which is both one of the most important but also least publicly acknowledged aspects of space travel, is excluded from the stock game.

[theSpeare]

Fractal, your progress with updates is as always amazing. When can we expect to have this next beauty?

[Xentoe]

This Question is mostly to the Modelmakers here.

I wonder if it would be ok when I announce little design Problem I got (I made me a work around but it is not a realistic one).

you know the warpdrive is a fully ring.

This works fine for the standart ship / Rocket.

But it is a (if we wanna stay realistic) dessaster for a Spaceplane based ship.

No landinggear is high enougth that the Ring does not break on the runway.

I made now with Magic Smoke a Swingable Ring.

What means it can change between horizontal and vertical alignment

(see screenshots)

Horizontal:

Vertical:

So the Point is now, this is technical not impossible. The ring does move through the solid shipstructure (Works because glitch) but in real life it is impossible.

so I thought now about one additional model for the warpringdrive.

LeT`s say an advanced construct, but only the small capacety one).

The follwing:

The Ring has 2 "states"

In the let`s call it offline state, it is rotated like on Picture 1, but it is not a full ring, only more like (on eatch side) 2 nearly halfrings like this: (-|-).

Than you set it online, and the 2 parts swing into vertical mod (like Picture 2) and connect both to be again a Ring.

Knows someone the Episode "The timemashine2 in Captain Future? There the Comet has too a Ringshaped shipaddition, that extends from a kind of narcels.

It is like said only an idea.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Xentoe

[zzz]

) 2 nearly halfrings like this: (-|-).

I see. I can to make it. I like moving things and it can to used as model for small\tiny sized version instead just rescale. Something simple. But I need to finish with engines(thermal\plasma\jet) at first before to take something else.

[Bloodbunny]

Any reason why my science station isn't producing science.. It is on Minmus, has 2 kerbals, and is powered. Yet when I activate "do research" it animates but doesn't produce anything. Does it have to be farther away from Kerbin or is it glitched?

[Conti]

There are plenty of things I could do with these, I could use the huge receiver to make a bigger receiver that lets you receive much more power (i.e. less distance losses) for surface bases and that sort of thing. Having one of these attached off to the side of your moon base would look very nice, I think.

If anyone has other suggestions though, I'm open to ideas.

The large one would be ideal for relay receiver or surface receiver (to reduce range and atmospheric losses). This would give the relays an advantage in improving efficiency.

I also have a model for a new microwave receiver, it is for receiving microwave energy as thermal power to drive an assortment of thermal engines I have created. I have also been thinking for smaller microwave energy receivers, for small rovers and probes, we could actually use a rectenna model (think rabbit ears) and reduce the amount of energy they can receive. This would be in keeping with realistic real world microwave energy receivers. Transmitters should be masers, not dishes, that much is certain.

PS: I haven't put my preliminary relay/nuclear transmitter code up yet because I've discovered a couple of bugs that I have to iron out first. I will hopefully have the time to get to it by next week.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Conti

[Xentoe]

Sure no problem:-) I wanted only suggest it :-) Because like said would look sure coole r(for people who build spaceplanelike ships)

Ahh additional I found a Bug:

Following:

I have an Antimatter reactor (tried with all scales).

And one of these Electricity / Megajule Generators.

Now when I Update the Antimatter Reactor (Retrofit).

The Electricity Generator says: No Thermal Power connected

(It does than behave like there is no AM Reactor anymore and stops working, but the AM does still make Thermal Output power (like it should)).