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

[Seyvern]

Its the stock engines that should be altered. Their values are wildly overpowered for what they're supposed to represent.

First, there is a thing called playability- hence why ion engines in stock are wildly olverpowered.

Second, NERVA engines in stock are mildy overpowered. Real NTR (Solid core) have a thrust/weight ratio of about 5 in the newest desgins. Real chemical engines come in around 100. About a 20 1 to difference. Calculate the numbers in this mod and get back to me.

Third, if the author's goal is to integrate it with stock, then stock is the baseline.

[Fractal_UK]

OK, first.... WOW! I haven't tried this (haven't had the time to DL and test yet. Definitely going to) but it looks fantastic! The effort put in and the variety resulting from all this looks very impressive. Unfortunately I missed this mod. Seeing 'KSP Interstellar' I thought it was just another hyperedit/warp drive mod which doesn't really interest me. Boy was I wrong. Wish I'd followed this from the beginning.

Yeah, I think this is a perception that I have no choice but to fight as best I can. I feared when I made the mod that the fact that I was including a warp drive would put people off and make people dismiss it. There was never a real plan to creating this other than to add some kind of path to the future of space travel in Kerbal Space program, technologies that are either realistic or at least have some kind of scientific basis to them, even if we really have no idea at this stage if they can actually work - the alcubierre drive is a good example of that. It has grown fairly organically from there.

I know science is an upcoming project in the stock 0.22 that's due... whenever, but the science upgrades in this might be done more like a traditional tech tree with some minor modification. I take it you still have to click 'upgrade' on a component to upgrade it to a new version? Why not move this functionality to the science lab itself?

IE a lab would now have two buttons. One 'Upgrade science facility' and 'Upgrade components'. The first would use science accrued, and basically would make the lab the 'next level'. How many levels it should have would be a good question. The second button would display a second menu with a list of components the lab could upgrade. Along side each item would be a 'highlight' button that would make the actual item highlighted in the same manner (perhaps a different color?) as when you move the mouse cursor over it. That way you could tell which of the vessels currently docked to the science facility you are affecting. Next to this button for each item on the list would be multiple 'upgrade buttons'. (EDIT:forgot to add, if the science facility isn't high enough for this tech this upgrade would be grayed out)

Multiple? Why start with antimatter reactors being able to be built from scratch? It's rather advanced tech after all. Start with something else that could be upgraded to antimatter (a specialist reactor? Maybe inertial confinement fusion? Barely believable that that could be upgraded to an antimatter reactor) Basically any item could be upgraded to it's next option (nuclear reactor Mk1 to Mk2) or to something else (nuclear reactor Mk1 to Toroidal Fusion Mk1... yeah, not a good choice. Totally different tech, but you get the idea). Thus a tech tree of sorts is born. Not every thing would have multiple options, but anything you think would be too advanced for Kerbalkind to start with could be put as an upgrade on an existing piece of equipment.

This component upgrading could use a second resource (development rather than science? As in Research and Development) or could be time based. IE when you click 'upgrade' to whatever you have chosen it changes to something else, a default 'non functional' version of the unit to represent the ongoing work. Then, as long as the component stays docked to the science lab, it will be upgraded after a fixed span of time. At the end of the time it would be replaced by the finished item.

I'm hoping that in 0.22, I will be able to create some new tech nodes and basically expand the research tree to include these technologies. At that point, it would not be possible to simply select an antimatter reactor from the start, you'd have to research your way up to the tech tree to near the very end.

Fusion would fall earlier in the tree than antimatter and likewise fission reactors would come before fusion reactors, so you could imagine a seemless path to high and higher energy output reactors where your ships become increasingly capable as you perform more research - as it should be! The current upgraded parts could also be part of that system, a nuclear lightbulb is a very different technological challenge to a solid core reactor so that could justify a tech node of its own.

I may indeed retain some small resource or science component as you suggest in order to actually perform a part upgrade. I can't say too much about my plans in this area yet though, I'll need to see and understand the 0.22 science API first before I can figure out exactly what I'm going to do next.

It's tough to say how different a spacecraft fission and fusion reactor might look but it would be nice to have unique models for each of these things.

Fractal - i think you should add some passive heat radiation even from parts that are not radiators. If parts generate heat when they work, they also should cool off slowly when idle. On one of my ships i've opened a Gigantor for a moment, generated 4 units of heat and closed panel again - and the heat stayed in system for good (this ship has no radiators since it was launched before they were added).

I will indeed do this, I just need to tweak the static radiator part module since presently the convective bonus is hard-coded in and I need to add an option to stop them being upgradeable. Static parts like this aren't going to dissipate much heat though and I don't want to model heat dissipation from every part, so I'll probably just choose a select few of the more sensible choices to model the net effect.

[Patupi]

I'm hoping that in 0.22, I will be able to create some new tech nodes and basically expand the research tree to include these technologies. At that point, it would not be possible to simply select an antimatter reactor from the start, you'd have to research your way up to the tech tree to near the very end.

Yeah, I guess my idea would be a lot of work to do just to find you could do more and do it easier with the new 0.22 research system. I was really thinking that we have no idea how long 0.22 will take to come out. Thus my idea was until then.

Fusion would fall earlier in the tree than antimatter and likewise fission reactors would come before fusion reactors, so you could imagine a seemless path to high and higher energy output reactors where your ships become increasingly capable as you perform more research - as it should be! The current upgraded parts could also be part of that system, a nuclear lightbulb is a very different technological challenge to a solid core reactor so that could justify a tech node of its own.

I understand that, and why you've got a lev1 version of everything so far, upgraded to it's own better half. Fission to fusion doesn't really make sense (where do you put the neutron damping rods in a Tokomak? ), though like I said, an inertial fusion system is barely believable upgraded to an antimatter reactor. If it uses ion or particle beams to confine the hydrogen in the fusion system these might be converted to a particle and anti particle beam for the injector assembly. They don't even have to be high power. Speed isn't really key in this, control is.

On a similar note are you considering different types of fusion reactors in future? IE differences between interial confinement and magnetic? Tokomaks could give low power output but with long lasting fuel supply (indefinite with internal Deuterium/Tritium supply?) and inertial might have higher power outputs at lower efficiencies and some extra fuel needed. Current projects coat the 'pellets' in plastic or other compounds that cause the implosion once hit by laser/ions etc, maybe it needs Deuterium and something else to represent this?

I may indeed retain some small resource or science component as you suggest in order to actually perform a part upgrade. I can't say too much about my plans in this area yet though, I'll need to see and understand the 0.22 science API first before I can figure out exactly what I'm going to do next.

I've always thought time to do stuff is what is missing in KSP. I know time is going on while you are busy in the VAB/SPH but taking no time to build a rocket you've designed seems a tad silly. But in that case game playability, I understand. However I'm assuming the new 0.22 research system will have time factored in. Perhaps if you do any further work time to so stuff (upgrades etc) might be factored in?

[jakedasnake]

I probably just installed the mod wrong, but whenever I build a craft with the thermal rockets or turbojet, the "firing" animation is playing even they are deactivated, and the turbojet will not register any intake air. Any suggestions?

[Seyvern]

I am aware that the basic nuclear thermal rockets are weak for KSP parts, this is because I've tried to use reasonably sensible values for nuclear reactor power/mass ratios, for example, the 3.75m part (which is the one that is arguably still decent in this mod) is based on the real NERVA engine. Since I'm comitted to having rocket engines that actually don't require more energy than they consume, I'm constrained by an absolute limit on the performance of the nuclear rockets. The only way I can add more thrust to the existing rockets is by taking away Isp and that really doesn't help or by making the nuclear reactors more powerful, which affects the balance of the whole rest of the mod.

I am however looking for something else that I can do to make these parts better - the toggleable propellants, I think, are a good start to this end but I am giving thought to more options. Nitrogen propellant might now be something to consider, since it's abundant in many atmospheres and would offer a straightforward refueling option but I am open to suggestions here.

Perhaps the right option is simply to make the upgraded reactor a bit cheaper, since although those don't have great thrust, they offer enough of a specific impulse improvement to still be very useful.

I'm open to suggestions anyway.

Sure, i have some suggestions on how to bring things in line. I wouldnt bring in gas core reactors, because the NERVA stock engines are clearly solid core based upon ISP and temperature, and you need to be in-line with those. They aren't as out of wack as some poeople think - mostly their T/W ratio is off, but most of the engines in KSP have T/W ratios that are too high.

Anyway, I think I can help, but to make it clear I need to post spreadsheets. Whats the best way to do that in the forum? Alternatively I can mail you privately.

-G

PS - in the meantime, before I figure out how to post spreadsheets, suggest the following as ideas.

First, thermal rocket mass = 6 is a major area where you are unfairly hurting performance. its drastically hindering T/W ratio of small reactors. The 0.625 reactor is just pathetic. Simplest method of fixing it is set the weights to zero and purely govern the performance of the NTR by the reactor (which you are essentially doing now). My modded values take this step. However, there is a nicer more elegant solution I'm still playing with. However, its a hard code thing you would have to implement, I can't do it by moding your part values.

Basically, the idea is you modify the thermal rocket part such that its weight covers the size of the expansion cone, but more importantly, includes the heat exchangers and pumps moving the reaction mass past the hot reactor coolant. So, basically small thermal rocket parts weigh much much less than big thermal rocket parts, BUT they are limited in the amount of thermal power they can pump through them at once. So you put some value into the thermal rocket part that is equivallent to a throttable fuel flow rate (the way chemical rockets work in ksp) where the 'fuel' is thermal power. The rocket part can only throttle up so high based upon whatever value you give it in that field in the part description.

So basically if you hook up a 0.625 size jet to a 3.5 size reactor, it can only move (in your current setup) 1.125 thermal power through it, irrespective of the fact that the reactor has 1500 thermal power to spare. That limits its thrust. But it weighs alot less. So little rockets using little reactors still have reasonable thrust to mass ratios, and everything is self consistent.Also, if you do the same thing with generators (use thermal power to run them, and throttle them), then hooking a big rocket and a big generator to a single reactor means you can run your rocket full throttle or your generator full throttle but not both.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Seyvern

[jakedasnake]

Whenever I try to use the thermal turbojet, the "active" animation is running even when the engine is deactivated, and will flame out immediately flame-out no matter how many air intakes I have. Is there anyway to fix this?

[Fractal_UK]

Sure, i have some suggestions on how to bring things in line. I wouldnt bring in gas core reactors, because the NERVA stock engines are clearly solid core based upon ISP and temperature, and you need to be in-line with those. They aren't as out of wack as some poeople think - mostly their T/W ratio is off, but most of the engines in KSP have T/W ratios that are too high.

The upgraded nuclear reactors are based on nuclear lighbulbs (gas cores), if you look at the reactor temperature, you'll see the core temp jump from 2900K (solid core) to 27000K (gas core).

Remember though that these engines aren't just nuclear thermal rockets, they are bimodal rockets that are capable of power generation too so we can't just up the power output to make the engines better because we risk making generating loads of power really easy. Let's say we decided to scale things based on the stock NERVA in terms of T/W, we'd need to up the power output of some of the reactor sizes by more than 10x in order to do this. Often, power generating nuclear reactors in space are often sitting around the 1MW/ton mark but scaling up fairly rapidly with increased mass, so those are the sort of values that we see for the small nuclear reactors in the mod but the big ones scale up to much larger values.

So, I really need a solution that isn't just changing thrust values because that neccessarily entails changing reactor powers (by a lot). That's why I suggest alternative propellants or easier upgrades as possible solutions rather than tweaking engine properties.

Basically, the idea is you modify the thermal rocket part such that its weight covers the size of the expansion cone, but more importantly, includes the heat exchangers and pumps moving the reaction mass past the hot reactor coolant. So, basically small thermal rocket parts weigh much much less than big thermal rocket parts, BUT they are limited in the amount of thermal power they can pump through them at once. So you put some value into the thermal rocket part that is equivallent to a throttable fuel flow rate (the way chemical rockets work in ksp) where the 'fuel' is thermal power. The rocket part can only throttle up so high based upon whatever value you give it in that field in the part description.

This is in the list of planned features, so to speak.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Fractal_UK

[Donziboy2]

Fractal_UK did you nerf Microwaves?

Cause I went from 100+MW per large receiver to about 7...

Basically went from 14 receivers = DT Vista to "sir the lights in the lab are flickering, peddle faster"

Edited October 9, 2013 by Donziboy2

[automcdonough]

zzz you really upped the bar on yourself.. now the antimatter containment looks cartoonish and out of place next to the reactors and generators.

[Fractal_UK]

Fractal_UK did you nerf Microwaves?

Cause I went from 100+MW per large receiver to about 4...

Basically went from 14 receivers = DT Vista to "sir the lights in the lab are flickering, peddle faster"

No, the only operational changes in 0.6 should've been the changes that make you need to point the dish at the receiver. 0.6.1 shouldn't have altered this other system other than to make it possible to transmit non microwave power too.

Could the dish facing direction explain the problem?

[Seyvern]

The upgraded nuclear reactors are based on nuclear lighbulbs (gas cores), if you look at the reactor temperature, you'll see the core temp jump from 2900K (solid core) to 27000K (gas core).

Remember though that these engines aren't just nuclear thermal rockets, they are bimodal rockets that are capable of power generation too so we can't just up the power output to make the engines better because we risk making generating loads of power really easy. Let's say we decided to scale things based on the stock NERVA in terms of T/W, we'd need to up the power output of some of the reactor sizes by more than 10x in order to do this. Often, power generating nuclear reactors in space are often sitting around the 1MW/ton mark but scaling up fairly rapidly with increased mass, so those are the sort of values that we see for the small nuclear reactors in the mod but the big ones scale up to much larger values.

So, I really need a solution that isn't just changing thrust values because that neccessarily entails changing reactor powers (by a lot). That's why I suggest alternative propellants or easier upgrades as possible solutions rather than tweaking engine properties.

sorry, i meant don't bring gas core reactors into the discussion about making things 'in line' thats all, not suggesting not to include them. ANd yes, i've made a big spreadsheet with all your default values and such so I could play with them and bring them 'in line' in my game, so well aware of your values for core temp, etc.

In any case, to the point of balancing, lets talk power generation too:

If you alter the masses slightly (particularly of the jet mass) then i agree, in order to bring the 1.25 reactor + jet in your mod up to LV-N stock values, you need to increase the thermal power output by 10. Specifcally , if you made (this would be so much easier if I knew how to post a spreadsheet) the 1.25 part

Reactor mass = 2, Jet mass = .25, and the thermal power 10x greater (move it from 25 to 250) then your NTR is directly in line with stock- you get a total mass of 2.25, a thrust of 55.7, and a T/M ratio of 24 (its T/w ratio is slightly worse than stock, but its ISP is better - its pretty close in any case).

in general, across the board, if you modify jet mass per my previous post, and up the thermal power by about a factor of 10, everything lines up with stock for solid core reactors (and you can do the same with gas core to keep them in line).

Which leaves you with your issue about generator power. the 3.5 meter reactor is producing 45GW.

All I can say is this is essentially irreconcilable if you use 'our universe' values. I mean Kerbin has a density of tungsten and Kerbal is a yellow star thats about the size of Earth. Nothing in this universe lines up exactly with our values. If you want your NTR reactors to be comparable with stock, you need to address this somehow. Or you could hide the factor of 10 in a conversion from thermal power to thrust. Basically you need to use a different constant than what we use for our universe's constants. One last option would be to leave all the thrust values alone but make everything weigh 10 times less (but then people would need to put 10 reactors on a vessel to achieve the same thrust) - so you become a part hog.

I dont' know what to tell you, other than I love what you are doing with your mod, but I'm going to use thermal powers that put the reactor in line with LV-N so I can play with your mod in a way thats compatible w/ stock.

Seperate question:

Whats your rationale for the values you use in your core temperatures of the AM reactors - why did you choose to make AM reactors have core temperatures that scale with size? I thought that was a wierd choice, because ISP is wildly dpendent on size as a result, rather than thrust. Since I was moding your stuff anyway, I altered those values so that the core temps of AM reactors were consistant, but reduced the thermal power to keep thrusts and weights 'reasonable' (if such a thing as reasonable exists for AM reactor outputs - honestly, my values are probably way to low). Just curious.

-seyv

PS - if somone could tell me the best way to link a spreadsheet, I could have a better time explaining some of these suggestions.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Seyvern

[jakedasnake]

Whenever I try to use the thermal turbojet, the "active" animation is running even when the engine is deactivated, and will flame out immediately flame-out no matter how many air intakes I have. Is there anyway to fix this?

[Mzxs]

Fractal - i think you should add some passive heat radiation even from parts that are not radiators. If parts generate heat when they work, they also should cool off slowly when idle. On one of my ships i've opened a Gigantor for a moment, generated 4 units of heat and closed panel again - and the heat stayed in system for good (this ship has no radiators since it was launched before they were added).

you could just get KAS and add the small radiators and add them that way.

[Donziboy2]

IDK I found a perfect use for the 62.5CM reactor/gen

[Donziboy2]

No, the only operational changes in 0.6 should've been the changes that make you need to point the dish at the receiver. 0.6.1 shouldn't have altered this other system other than to make it possible to transmit non microwave power too.

Could the dish facing direction explain the problem?

Nope pointed them right at the sun, I have something like 1.4GW potential from sats atm, I get 0.5-0.6%. With the big dish.

In this picture taken before patch I was running tests on Plasma Engines run off receivers only, to get the 10kN of thrust I need +760MW of energy. That's like 120MW per receiver.

I was actually adding more sats so I could run a DT Vista on 7 Receivers.

I could run a Vista with this but my plan was to pull large loads so a central engine did not work. It was a fun test thou, I have the upper portion on a hing so I can follow the sun 175degrees.

If you need me to troubleshoot more I can reinstall the old version and reset the sats, I had to go to each one before the mod would see them for receivers to get anything.

In the morning that is;)

Edited October 9, 2013 by Donziboy2

[NeoAcario]

Looks like the best Antimatter generation around Kerbol (sun) is right around 418,000-419,000 km and you get about 0.0303 per sec per harvester. Anyone have the numbers around Jool?

~Steve

EDIT: Correction. 0.0306 at ~410Mm

EDIT: 0.03062157, 392.5Mm, 0 inclination. Kerbol Max. Time to check Jool.

Edited October 9, 2013 by NeoAcario

[Fractal_UK]

All I can say is this is essentially irreconcilable if you use 'our universe' values. I mean Kerbin has a density of tungsten and Kerbal is a yellow star thats about the size of Earth. Nothing in this universe lines up exactly with our values. If you want your NTR reactors to be comparable with stock, you need to address this somehow. Or you could hide the factor of 10 in a conversion from thermal power to thrust. Basically you need to use a different constant than what we use for our universe's constants. One last option would be to leave all the thrust values alone but make everything weigh 10 times less (but then people would need to put 10 reactors on a vessel to achieve the same thrust) - so you become a part hog.

If I hid the conversion in the thermal power to thrust conversion then the rockets would no longer conserve energy, the rocket would magically producing more power than its reactor. Everything in the mod conserves energy, I think it's really important to maintain that distinction when we have so many things that are actually depedent upon power and energy in the mod. I very much doubt the Kerbal universe doesn't conserve energy so in this respect upping the reactor energies is better, we know Kerbal stuff is dense, so we can fairly safely do this a bit. If we up it too much though, let's say we did increase everything by 10x, where do we put the antimatter stuff then? Do we have a 3.5m antimatter reactor that generates over 1TW and consequently have an engine with say 3.16*more thrust and 3.16* more isp? If we leave antimatter where it is, it's still better than the fission components but where do we put fusion parts? There is no gap anymore.

Also, what do we do with the DT vista, which can now be powered by a much smaller unupgraded reactor?

My point is, the nuclear parts don't exist in a vacuum. Any change to them affects everything else in the mod in a really complicated chain reaction of dependent interactions. I could fix this by basically rebalancing every number in the mod to some arbitrary value but I'm not so interested in this approach, one of the things I'm really interested in is reading some papers about emerging propulsion technologies and basing some calculations off what I discover and putting them into the mod.

I'm not completely blind to gameplay concerns, I do plenty of scaling here and there for the sake of making things work. Magnetic field antiparticle trapping is probably one of the things I've scaled up the most from real life but this has the advantage of being a lone mechanic with nothing else depending upon it, that gives me so much more flexibility to work with.

In the case of thermal rockets, I can't really just tweak the values without messing everything else up, so I look for an alternative.

Whats your rationale for the values you use in your core temperatures of the AM reactors - why did you choose to make AM reactors have core temperatures that scale with size? I thought that was a wierd choice, because ISP is wildly dpendent on size as a result, rather than thrust. Since I was moding your stuff anyway, I altered those values so that the core temps of AM reactors were consistant, but reduced the thermal power to keep thrusts and weights 'reasonable' (if such a thing as reasonable exists for AM reactor outputs - honestly, my values are probably way to low). Just curious.

I didn't feel compelled that the antimatter reactors all start solid core, since this is a more advanced technology than the nuclear reactors. The idea was that giving a selection of reactors would let you have control over the kind of performance you wanted, so if you wanted ludicrous thrust for some reason, you could use 8 small reactors with 8 rockets while 1 medium reactor and 1 medium rocket gives you a different profile and again 1 large reactor and 1 large rocket gives you a third different thrust profile. Obviously this is a bit hampered by the mass of the thermal rockets but hopefully you see what I was going for.

Nope pointed them right at the sun, I have something like 1.4GW potential from sats atm, I get 0.5-0.6%. With the big dish.

In this picture taken before patch I was running tests on Plasma Engines run off receivers only, to get the 10kN of thrust I need +760MW of energy. That's like 120MW per receiver.

I was actually adding more sats so I could run a DT Vista on 7 Receivers.

Damn, I was hoping you weren't going to say that. I didn't write this improved microwave code so I'll need to have a good look through it before I can figure out what the problem might be.

[Fractal_UK]

Found the problem: the collectorArea field has been removed from the microwave receiver, that means the big receiver won't function any more effectively than the small one. At least it's an easy fix!

[NeoAcario]

Are we simply unable to do science when in close proximity to Kerbol? I'm in an equatorial around 380Mm-425Mm and I can't do any science...

A lil help?

~Steve

EDIT: Ahh... is it because I'm too far away from a body? Hrmm.. must be. Disregard if so. Perhaps you could expand the range on Kerbol? I don't think I got any science done even as low as 23Mm. Kinda hard to get into an orbit low enough. Or is there no Science done around Kerbol because it's a star and not a physical planet?

[HoneyFox]

I have some codes for sun sail... and I'm thinking if i can share that to you so that you can consider merge that into your mod package?

[Fractal_UK]

I have some codes for sun sail... and I'm thinking if i can share that to you so that you can consider merge that into your mod package?

I'd definitely be interested to take a look, I was considering coding up a solar sail but thought it might be tricky to put in due to the huge solar sails needed to get a decent thrust going. Anyway, I am certainly interested to see what you have, feel free to PM me about it. It's definitely a technology I'd like to include.

[Seyvern]

If I hid the conversion in the thermal power to thrust conversion then the rockets would no longer conserve energy, the rocket would magically producing more power than its reactor. Everything in the mod conserves energy, I think it's really important to maintain that distinction when we have so many things that are actually depedent upon power and energy in the mod. I very much doubt the Kerbal universe doesn't conserve energy so in this respect upping the reactor energies is better, we know Kerbal stuff is dense, so we can fairly safely do this a bit. If we up it too much though, let's say we did increase everything by 10x, where do we put the antimatter stuff then? Do we have a 3.5m antimatter reactor that generates over 1TW and consequently have an engine with say 3.16*more thrust and 3.16* more isp? If we leave antimatter where it is, it's still better than the fission components but where do we put fusion parts? There is no gap anymore.

Also, what do we do with the DT vista, which can now be powered by a much smaller unupgraded reactor?

My point is, the nuclear parts don't exist in a vacuum. Any change to them affects everything else in the mod in a really complicated chain reaction of dependent interactions. I could fix this by basically rebalancing every number in the mod to some arbitrary value but I'm not so interested in this approach, one of the things I'm really interested in is reading some papers about emerging propulsion technologies and basing some calculations off what I discover and putting them into the mod.

I'm not completely blind to gameplay concerns, I do plenty of scaling here and there for the sake of making things work. Magnetic field antiparticle trapping is probably one of the things I've scaled up the most from real life but this has the advantage of being a lone mechanic with nothing else depending upon it, that gives me so much more flexibility to work with.

In the case of thermal rockets, I can't really just tweak the values without messing everything else up, so I look for an alternative.

I didn't feel compelled that the antimatter reactors all start solid core, since this is a more advanced technology than the nuclear reactors. The idea was that giving a selection of reactors would let you have control over the kind of performance you wanted, so if you wanted ludicrous thrust for some reason, you could use 8 small reactors with 8 rockets while 1 medium reactor and 1 medium rocket gives you a different profile and again 1 large reactor and 1 large rocket gives you a third different thrust profile. Obviously this is a bit hampered by the mass of the thermal rockets but hopefully you see what I was going for.

ok figured out the spreadsheet thing. google docs to the rescue. Here is a possible solution, can't tell if you will like it or not, but it conserves energy.

So, lets start with the spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AstvgPENUcE2dE1Ca2xnWGNvQkVKOGtfRU1RUUY3Tmc&single=true&gid=0&output=pdf

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AstvgPENUcE2dE1Ca2xnWGNvQkVKOGtfRU1RUUY3Tmc&usp=sharing

So if you check out that spreadsheet, you notice what I'm doing is altering the 'engineering efficiency' of big reactors vs. small ones. End result, all the NTR's have thrust to weight ratios that range from ~19 to 29 (bigger ones are more efficient TWR). They range in power output from 16MW to 3500 MW (for solid core reactors) and are therefore within the range that you were using within a factor of 2. And they conserve energy between reaction thrust and energy generation. Notes are embedded in the spreadsheet. You could change the exponent coefficients to tweak the values, obviously.

I didn't mess with AM but you could do the same thing there to the same purpose. And, as much as I've read up on NTRs, i have no idea what the actual engineering effiincies are in scaling up or down reactors, so for all I know, these might be relatively accurate (aside from the fact that the Thrust to weight ratios are all hosed compared to real life, but thats stock!)

Hope this helps.

-Seyv

PS playing with the relative mass ratios between reactors and heat exchangers, and you can get some cool effects there if you make the exponents slightly different. Might bed worth exploring. IRL< im not sure what the relative 'mass' ratio is between the machinery associated with the reactor and that of the heat exchanger. I suspects its pretty close to 1:1, perhaps even with the heat exchanger equipment coming in with more mass than the reactor. Its going to be pretty close anyway.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Seyvern

[Mechfan]

So at the risk of sounding incredibly stupid, is it possible to convert stock electric charge into MW? Because I have the awesome looking solar wings and wanted to put them on my science vessels. but since the labs only use MW, wasn't sure if it was do-able.

[HoneyFox]

I'd definitely be interested to take a look, I was considering coding up a solar sail but thought it might be tricky to put in due to the huge solar sails needed to get a decent thrust going. Anyway, I am certainly interested to see what you have, feel free to PM me about it. It's definitely a technology I'd like to include.

Yeah the biggest issue is about size. Solar Sail in RL needs to have massive size, much larger than VAB. Currently I'm simply using a 10x rescaled Comm-88 antenna model (it's still very small) with some over-powered parameters to make it work. It can generate 1.0kN thrust when facing directly towards the sun. The solar sail also has a magnet-sail mode (yeah I know it's actually quite a different thing, but well...), which will consume electric charge to accelerate/deflect particles around to gain additional thrust. To make it useful, the thrust was around 3~4kN IIRC, of course on LKO.

I'll push the code onto some open source-code base later and will PM you the address.

[gmeine921]

random idea, would it be possible to add in the dangers of a nuclear accident. ie, some big freaking explosion if say a nuclear reactor happened to be on a craft that met an unfortunate end. probably something difficult to add, but an idea.