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

[Eadrom]

Looking forward to being able to direct all available power to the warp drive! lol

Also looking forward to advanced fusion reactor and fuel types.

Fractal, how much trouble would it be to make part upgrades require an EVA action to perform? Would add a little more immersion for me to have to EVA a kerbal out to upgrade a part instead of doing it from ship view. If it's not a quick and easy change, I wouldn't be too heartbroken about it. I don't usually upgrade too often past late in my middle game.

[Myrten]

Helium 3 will not be available at launch, no. I'm assuming that on Kerbin, like on Earth, Helium 3 is exceptionally rare - it is possible to manufacture on Kerbin, however, because Tritium decays into Helium 3 so if you can produce lots of Tritium, you will eventually end up with a tidy supply of Helium 3.

I want to add Helium 3 mining to regions like the moon's polar regions but even in those areas its very rare so I don't want to make a static mining operation, I'm looking to add some kind of tractor with revolving regolith processor that drives around sifting through lots of regolith to extract all the juicy Helium 3, I just need to find someone who can take this idea from my head and turn it into model form!

Note that these aneutronic fusion reactors are very different to the other reactors in the mod, attached to a generator they'll give you stupidly high efficiencies at making electrical power but they give very little thermal power and consequently much less waste heat.

If it can be manufactured on launchpad then shouldn't it be available at launch? This seemed to be the rule until now.

How is this decay going to work in-game? If a ship has container for Tritium and Helium 3 will one Tritium supply decrease over time and Helium 3 increase or something more fancy?

[Eadrom]

If it can be manufactured on launchpad then shouldn't it be available at launch? This seemed to be the rule until now.

How is this decay going to work in-game? If a ship has container for Tritium and Helium 3 will one Tritium supply decrease over time and Helium 3 increase or something more fancy?

It can be manufactured, but it's incredibly rare still. Just like a lab on the ground of the KSC can manufacture antimatter, tanks of antimatter still don't come full from the VAB.

If I understand the process correctly, I'll be launching up a large complex in low orbit around Kerbin with a couple nuke reactors and a gob of lithium. The idea is to convert a ton of lithium into tritium so I can have a good supply of helium 3 easily available. I'm hoping I can do this long before I get to the point of unlocking helium 3 fusion. I'll typically unlock antimatter collection and build an antimatter farm at kerbin or Jool so that by the time I unlock antimatter reactors, I already have enough antimatter collected for a mission or two. I hope I can do the same thing with helium 3.

[DaMichel]

@Donzi: Nice to see someone else building nuclear spaceplanes. I've been working on something similar but much smaller for career mode. I don't have all upgrades so it runs on fission reactors.

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There are several variants. Still trying to figure out the best configuration. I burn most of the LFO during the ascent. Probably i'm not patient or it is limited by only one intake per turbojet. To get into space i switch to LFO in 23 km altitude at mach 3.5. By then the thrust has dropped below the level which LFO gives. It has no payload either, except for science experiments! Its mission will be to dock with a mothership, go to another planet, fly around, do science and hopefully return to KSC

Btw. @Fractal: Last time i checked IP intakes provided 5x the amount of atmosphere than stock intakes. Might be a bug. If not, isn't this OP?

Looking forward to the next update.

Cheers,

[Videoman]

Hi,

I've installed the latest version, but it seems that the nuclear fuel reprocessing doesn't work anymore. I used it in previous versions, but now nothing happens. The remaining time stays at zero, but there are still actinides in the reactor. Or do I use it wrong. I put the science lab right above the reactor.

About the DT Fusion drive: One of my uranium went out of fuel on Moho so I wanted to send another one of the same kind to pick up the kernels. The main engine is a DT fusion drive, and the vessel can take of any planet except Eve. Landing in Kerbin is a bit tricky, due to the low TWR.

Anyway, I was approaching the landing site, when suddenly the engine shut down, and the craft crashed in to the planet. The other kerbals were not in EVA, but safely inside their craft. Also the safety was put on.

This should be fixed: either kernels in any craft are safe, or it gives a warning 30s before, if you might fly to near, so you might change course or so.

[Fractal_UK]

If it can be manufactured on launchpad then shouldn't it be available at launch? This seemed to be the rule until now.

How is this decay going to work in-game? If a ship has container for Tritium and Helium 3 will one Tritium supply decrease over time and Helium 3 increase or something more fancy?

No, antimatter can be manufactured on the launchpad but you don't start with it, the rule is, if its extremely energy intensive to produce or derives from a short half-life isotope you have to make it yourself - tritium is the exception to the rule because you do get a small supply in the fusion reactors, just not the larger supply in the containers. Anyway, Helium 3 is a result of the decay of Tritium, which has a ~12 year half life, it is at least stable though, so you once you have it it won't go anywhere. Mechanically this will function very much like real life: after 12 years, half of any supply of Tritium you have will have become Helium 3 but the decay process is constant and ongoing, so even after 5 minutes you'll have some tiny quantity.

[pina_coladas]

So how much tritium would you have to haul around to refuel a fusion reactor in any reasonable amount of time? I'm guessing a lot. So we may see people mining lithium, breeding it into huge amounts of tritium to refill on helium3 without waiting years, and then dumping most of the tritium tanks before taking off again. Is there no way to speed up the radioactive decay process?

[forsaken1111]

Antimatter tanks are still pretty much impossible to use at high timewarp. It spams messages about explosions and drops the timewarp back down.

[Fractal_UK]

Antimatter tanks are still pretty much impossible to use at high timewarp. It spams messages about explosions and drops the timewarp back down.

There are two factors that contribute to this, both will be fixed in 0.9.

I've installed the latest version, but it seems that the nuclear fuel reprocessing doesn't work anymore. I used it in previous versions, but now nothing happens. The remaining time stays at zero, but there are still actinides in the reactor. Or do I use it wrong. I put the science lab right above the reactor.

Yeah, sorry about this, it works in the refinery but only Thorium reprocessing is working in the science lab (due to a typo), again fixed in the next update.

So how much tritium would you have to haul around to refuel a fusion reactor in any reasonable amount of time? I'm guessing a lot. So we may see people mining lithium, breeding it into huge amounts of tritium to refill on helium3 without waiting years, and then dumping most of the tritium tanks before taking off again. Is there no way to speed up the radioactive decay process?

Basically, I think the trick to utilising the decay process is going to be to use Deuterium/Tritium fuel for an initial mission and just carry some He3 tanks on the voyage. By the time the mission is complete and you get whereever you're going, you'll have some kind of supply of He3.

Flying around Jool as low as you can go with a thermal turbojet is probably a method with more immediate returns though.

[forsaken1111]

And 0.9 isn't coming out until KSP 0.23?

[Fractal_UK]

And 0.9 isn't coming out until KSP 0.23?

Which is coming out on Tuesday.

[Myrten]

So how much electic MW will we be able to get from largest helium-powered reactor + generator? I'm wondering if it can beat placing AM reactor + generator with ~60 AM collectors at Jool's orbit

[Shogun Gunshow]

What's the explanation for these fancy new Graphene huge radiators only radiating 168MW after upgrade? That's nowhere near the advertised 13k in the VAB. What am I doing wrong? .-.

[Fractal_UK]

What's the explanation for these fancy new Graphene huge radiators only radiating 168MW after upgrade? That's nowhere near the advertised 13k in the VAB. What am I doing wrong? .-.

Maybe you aren't generating enough heat that needs radiating? You can't, afterall, radiate more heat than your reactors are producing. If you're not producing lots of WasteHeat, don't worry about the actual figure that's being radiated.

[Shogun Gunshow]

Maybe you aren't generating enough heat that needs radiating? You can't, afterall, radiate more heat than your reactors are producing. If you're not producing lots of WasteHeat, don't worry about the actual figure that's being radiated.

I am, unfortunately, accumulating Waste Heat at quite a rapid rate. Are there special placement rules? Currently they're on the reactor (the largest one). Do I need to slap them on the generator instead?

[Fractal_UK]

I am, unfortunately, accumulating Waste Heat at quite a rapid rate. Are there special placement rules? Currently they're on the reactor (the largest one). Do I need to slap them on the generator instead?

No, there's no placement rules for radiators. The only other thing worth checking then is, are you using an unupgraded reactor? The temperatures of the unupgraded reactors are quite low and the other restriction on radiators is that they cannot get hotter than the reactors. So, until you get the upgraded reactors, you won't see much benefit from the upgraded radiators. This is partly a problem with the current version where the reactors are a bit cooler than they should really be (which consequently hinders radiator performance earlier than it should) - that can make things a little harder for the mid-tech era.

When the new version comes out, virtually all the thermal mechanics will be improved.

For now, you should be able to deal with the problem for now by installing a few more radiators - if you share an image of your craft or something maybe I can help you figure out how many you need.

[likke_A_boss]

Any idea when the update will come out? I've read a lot about it, but haven't seen a release date anywhere.

[Fractal_UK]

Any idea when the update will come out? I've read a lot about it, but haven't seen a release date anywhere.

The update will come up after 0.23, all the new content is more or less done - I had a very productive day of coding yesterday and this morning. It's now simply a matter of some fine tuning and then making tweaks that the new update allows when it emerges.

[Shogun Gunshow]

Sure, here you go

[Fractal_UK]

Sure, here you go

-image-

Yeah, it's definitely those unupgraded reactors capping radiator temperatures. At the moment, you'll need 6 of those radiators to keep that thing cool in space. If you have any docking ports on there you could send a kerbal out to shut the reactor down until you can dock some more.

After the update, 2-3 of those radiators will be enough for that vessel.

[Shogun Gunshow]

Thanks for the swift response, will wait for the patch to push my career in that direction.

[Kalloran]

Oddly enough, none of my vessels seem to be generating waste heat. Admittedly, I'm early in the career mode with interstellar, but I figured I should be generating waste heat at some point. While this may seem like the goose that laid the golden egg, I'm wondering if I have installed anything wrong:

I unzipped the WarpPlugin folder into my \GameData\ folder...and that's it. Is there anything else I needed to do, like move the parts folders or the PluginData folder to their respective folder in my root KSP folder?

If this has been addressed in a previous post, please direct me there, as there are 450 pages in this thread. Thanks!

--Kalloran

[vardicd]

Oddly enough, none of my vessels seem to be generating waste heat. Admittedly, I'm early in the career mode with interstellar, but I figured I should be generating waste heat at some point. While this may seem like the goose that laid the golden egg, I'm wondering if I have installed anything wrong:

I unzipped the WarpPlugin folder into my \GameData\ folder...and that's it. Is there anything else I needed to do, like move the parts folders or the PluginData folder to their respective folder in my root KSP folder?

If this has been addressed in a previous post, please direct me there, as there are 450 pages in this thread. Thanks!

--Kalloran

Yeah I'm getting this too, I played one game a while back, and the stock single solar panel had a display for waste heat, it almost never accumulated any, but now the waste heat display doesn't show. I've added a few mods, and was wondering if I've got something conflicting, but was going to wait till I unlocked bigger waste heat generators before mentioning it, but since you did...

[Fractal_UK]

It depends exactly what you have done in terms of installation - you should end up with three folders inside GameData, those are HexCans, TreeLoader and WarpPlugin. If you do have those directly inside the GameData folder, you have installed it correctly.

Also, you should be able to see if the WasteHeat is working by right-clicking on a solar panel, that will give you information about the amount of WasteHeat the panel is currently generating. If you don't see that, chances are there is something wrong with your installation.

[pina_coladas]

Basically, I think the trick to utilising the decay process is going to be to use Deuterium/Tritium fuel for an initial mission and just carry some He3 tanks on the voyage. By the time the mission is complete and you get whereever you're going, you'll have some kind of supply of He3.

Oh so there will be one fusion reactor that can change fuel modes on the fly? And you need a different type of generator depending on which fuel mode you're using at any one time, and thermal rockets will stop working when you switch to He3... I really like how you're fleshing out fusion but I hope for your sake that you make some really detailed patch notes, because there will probably be a lot of confused people in here next week!

Or am I misunderstanding and the different fusion reactions have dedicated reactor parts?