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

[Donziboy2]

You are right. I'm still wrapping my head around the numbers. I was going over the tables to see if i could site some examples and I can see where the 2.5m and 3.75m basic fission reactors do better than stock. And you are right, to each their own. Some have more patience than others.

The tables in the wiki on thermal nozzles only lists numbers for LiquidFuel the multipliers for other fuels as a foot note (so is easily overlooked). Run LFO through the little buggers and they do much better. In fact there really ought to be a .625 nozzle. Is there a googledoc of that table somewhere. I'd really like to flesh that out with all the possible fuel combo's to build up a better picture of there utility.

As to plasma, that table could use some love as well.

Did you see my note about the bad behaviour when the throttle is applied too quickly (i.e. under mechjeb's control).

Use This its the spreadsheet that I have been slowly updated over the versions, it is not totally accurate for 0.9.1 but it gets the job done and several parts can be changed and it will auto adjust.

[Gibster]

You need fuel lines to transfer oxidiser and liquid fuel as you would between stacks on a rocket. The fuel line needs to go from the tank to the refinery (the opposite way to what you might expect).

Was it an inline or radial radiator? Only the deployable radiators that look a bit like solar panels actually deploy.

The large deployable radiators.

[kalizec]

It's worth noting as well that there is literally no way to use anything other than linear scaling (in other words, I can't make the nuclear powered ones better without making the more advanced tech ones better by the same factor) due to the way the plasma thrust works (adding up power from all sources of electricity) so it's totally impossible, due to the scales involved, to make the bottom end any more useful without causing the top end to shake your ship to pieces through excessive thrust.

I think this bit answered my question as well.

[SirusKing]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/63269-VASAMR-thrusters

Perhaps VASAMR thrusters for KSPI as well? I would use near futures, but balance wise it doesn't fit with KSPI and this has more features

[Sun]

This'll be nice for the new stars in Krag's Planet Factory!

[Fractal_UK]

In some of your pictures I saw you're using only the antimatter reactor and a container(which isn't supposed to contain any antimatter in the beginning) on the ground. Is that possible or just something for the picture?

Sorry, I missed this post earlier. It isn't possible (by default) to get Antimatter direct from the VAB but you can land antimatter tanks at the space centre and fuel up your crafts with that.

[rosenkranz]

As I sit here debating AM infrustructure, it suddenly occurs to me to ask... Do AM collecting ships do their thing while not the active ship?

[Fractal_UK]

As I sit here debating AM infrustructure, it suddenly occurs to me to ask... Do AM collecting ships do their thing while not the active ship?

Yes, they do.

[Fractal_UK]

Version 0.9.2 Released (Merry Christmas)

With now beautifully performing thermal turbojet atmospheric code, there is no doubt that tonight Santa will be ditching his reindeer and swapping them for a nuclear reactor and thermal turbojet

Version 0.9.2
-Added 62.5cm thermal rocket and plasma thruster.
-Added 2.5m thermal turbojet.
-Reverted to 0.9 atmospheric code and fixed application, engine atmospheric performance should now be optimal
-Added tweakable option for reactors to start disabled in the VAB
-Unupgraded generator efficiency raised to a theoretical maximum of 31%

Download links in the first page have been updated.

[Eadrom]

Those of you struggling to use the unupgraded plasma thruster, remember that you have to option of beaming power to your space craft. You can still get PLENTY of juice to your small space probe by lobbing up a few 3.75m fission reactors and beaming that power to it via microwave power systems.

I find that, in general, it requires more planning, engineering, and time to utilize a lot of the early Interstellar parts, but if you do put in that effort, you can still reap substantial rewards without having to wait for more advanced versions of the tech to be researched.

In short, when dealing with self-contained powered systems, ion engine will probably beat plasma thrusters early on. If you beam power to your ship, the plasma thruster can use all that extra power; the ion engine will quickly hit a cap. It's over that ion engine max power drain cap that the plasma thruster is useful.

[Myrten]

Version 0.9.2 Released (Merry Christmas)

With now beautifully performing thermal turbojet atmospheric code, there is no doubt that tonight Santa will be ditching his reindeer and swapping them for a nuclear reactor and thermal turbojet

Version 0.9.2
-Added 62.5cm thermal rocket and plasma thruster.
-Added 2.5m thermal turbojet.
-Reverted to 0.9 atmospheric code and fixed application, engine atmospheric performance should now be optimal
-Added tweakable option for reactors to start disabled in the VAB
-Unupgraded generator efficiency raised to a theoretical maximum of 31%

Download links in the first page have been updated.

Thanks for the update , but since Nuclear Santa has to carry so much I'm pretty sure he would like to use 3.75m fusion reactors and 3.75m thermal turbojets

[RadHazard]

Those of you struggling to use the unupgraded plasma thruster, remember that you have to option of beaming power to your space craft. You can still get PLENTY of juice to your small space probe by lobbing up a few 3.75m fission reactors and beaming that power to it via microwave power systems.

I find that, in general, it requires more planning, engineering, and time to utilize a lot of the early Interstellar parts, but if you do put in that effort, you can still reap substantial rewards without having to wait for more advanced versions of the tech to be researched.

In short, when dealing with self-contained powered systems, ion engine will probably beat plasma thrusters early on. If you beam power to your ship, the plasma thruster can use all that extra power; the ion engine will quickly hit a cap. It's over that ion engine max power drain cap that the plasma thruster is useful.

Exactly this. This craft has 13km/s dV and a TWR of 2.35 using a lithium-fueled plasma engine. It's powered by 3 2.5m nukes in Kerbin orbit and a 3.75m nuke landed at KSC. All of those reactor/generators are upgraded, but there's nothing stopping you from using un-upgraded versions. In fact, you could just put a relay constellation in orbit and build a ground station with like 5-10 3.75m nukes to power your LKO ships with impunity. You wouldn't even need to worry about reprocessing because you could just recover and relaunch the ground station. Yes, you'll have a difficult time doing a circularization burn when you fly interplanetary, but using aerobraking or packing a backup thermal rocket would fix that just fine. Self-sufficient plasma ship are tough to do at low tech levels, but with a bit of creativity the plasma engines themselves aren't useless.

Edited December 24, 2013 by RadHazard
Oops, forgot image

[Lightwarrior]

If i remember correctly you do not have transmitters/receivers when you have just unlocked reactors/generators.

p.s. also thanks for update and those small engines.

[Eadrom]

You get microwave transmitter and receiver parts shortly after though if I remember correctly. Best tranceiver comes a bit later, but not much.

[wasmic]

Thanks for the update , but since Nuclear Santa has to carry so much I'm pretty sure he would like to use 3.75m fusion reactors and 3.75m thermal turbojets

Nah, it's a MAGIC fission reactor and a MAGIC thermal turbojet. Just like he previously used MAGIC reindeers.

[jallious]

What I did was caterpillar a bunch of reactors and generators together into a moveable hunk, strap a transmitter on top, and create an orbital relay system around kerbin. Power all the way around the planet, and if you need more, just add another reactor/generator on the ground.

...This took me about 30 hours to make. Now that it's done though, I'm getting 20GW of power to my ship up to 4-5 minimus-lengths away, and it slowly drops after that.

ALSO QUESTION!

I swapped computers, and this one will drop the program after it's done setting all the parts onto the ram A.K.A. finishing the loading screen. The rest of the mods won't do this, only interstellar. The question is...why?

[Fractal_UK]

ALSO QUESTION!

I swapped computers, and this one will drop the program after it's done setting all the parts onto the ram A.K.A. finishing the loading screen. The rest of the mods won't do this, only interstellar. The question is...why?

Have you installed more mods? Normally crashes are caused by KSP hitting the memory limit. It could also be an issue with your installation of the mod, make sure an extra GameData folder hasn't crept in or something.

[Donziboy2]

Version 0.9.2
-Added 2.5m thermal turbojet.

Could you check Santa's bag for a 2.5m Intake, Pre-Cooler and Fusion Reactor or can we use B9 Intake/precooler at high altitudes?

Merry Christmas

Edit, I also noticed on the runway that the Fusion Reactors always seem to max out at 85.3% when running Thermal TurboJets, more intakes will not change it. With 2 intakes per reactor/engine all reactors cap at 85.3% and I start loosing Thermal/MJ because the 2 reactors that supply power are being limited and they cant throttle up...

Edit 2... It seems if you throttle all the way up before activating the engines you can force it to 100% on reactors, but as soon as you throttle down and back up they get stuck at 85.3%

Edited December 25, 2013 by Donziboy2

[Elan]

Bug report :

- Fusion reactor doesn't show laser power consumption in the mouseover menu in VAB (I think it should show the highest of the 3 modes). I tracked it back to line 71 in FNFusionReactor.cs. By the way, there are 3 variables (initial_laser consumption, laserPower, powerRequirements) that might describe 2 things. Also, your code indentation in some of the other files is terrible

- Generators sometimes show maximum power output 0, even when their current output is > 0. That also messes up the numbers in GUI showing total power, utilization etc.

- Tritium breeding doesn't work without higher time warp. I realize this might be a problem with the game, not this mod, but I don't know, so I included it.

Questions / suggestions :

- How to get He-3 ?

I would also suggest a new feature to mine it on bodies without atmosphere (He-3 Abundance) and from low Jool orbit (like Project Daedalus).

- Does enabling tritium breeding in reactors have any drawbacks ? (higher fuel consumption or something) If not, it should probably be permanently active.

- Can the refinery mine lithium and where ? It says "lithium mining offline" when I look at it on the launchpad.

Related suggestion - adding smaller lithium container (the only one available has 500 units of lithium and weighs a lot).

Also, should I join the wiki editing team ? The wiki needs improvement.

[oktav]

I am having an issue with KSP Intersterral (0.9.2 is installed) with 0.23. All the radiators are radiating heat only in the atmosphere (I tried on kerbin) as soon as I get out of it no heat is dissipated at all (I tried radial and deployable ones).

Even my old setup for relay satellite is unusable.

I am also using:

B9 Aereospace, FAR, KW Rockets, KAS (and a few small others)

-- edit:

I have tested it also without any mod and i still have the issue.

-- edit 2:

Well, no apparently smoething must have changed in the addon, I managed to get a little bit of heat radiated, but it was radiating only at 250km from the planet, at around 70k the radiate heat was 0. I don't get how does it work now and anyhow when I tried to send out a satellite with 2 small radial radiators and 4 giga-solar panel but no heat is dissipated at all, while wit

Edited December 25, 2013 by oktav

[Elan]

I am having an issue with KSP Intersterral (0.9.2 is installed) with 0.23.

...

You could try downgrading to previous version 9.1.1 - downloadable here. At least we would find out if the problem is with the new version. And you would still be able to play.

[Donziboy2]

I am having an issue with KSP Intersterral (0.9.2 is installed) with 0.23. All the radiators are radiating heat only in the atmosphere (I tried on kerbin) as soon as I get out of it no heat is dissipated at all (I tried radial and deployable ones).

Even my old setup for relay satellite is unusable.

I am also using:

B9 Aereospace, FAR, KW Rockets, KAS (and a few small others)

-- edit:

I have tested it also without any mod and i still have the issue

Get your craft into orbit and wait a few minutes, they do not instantly radiate in vacuum like they do in Atmo...

[BigD145]

I am having an issue with KSP Intersterral (0.9.2 is installed) with 0.23. All the radiators are radiating heat only in the atmosphere (I tried on kerbin) as soon as I get out of it no heat is dissipated at all (I tried radial and deployable ones).

Even my old setup for relay satellite is unusable.

I am also using:

B9 Aereospace, FAR, KW Rockets, KAS (and a few small others)

-- edit:

I have tested it also without any mod and i still have the issue.

-- edit 2:

Well, no apparently smoething must have changed in the addon, I managed to get a little bit of heat radiated, but it was radiating only at 250km from the planet, at around 70k the radiate heat was 0. I don't get how does it work now

Does your reactor shut down? If no, don't worry about it.

[jallious]

KSP works if I only have interstellar, or B9 with it, not both...but only for my pc. My laptop has tons of mods and still works. I tried running as administrator, but no change. How do I change the memory limit?

[BigD145]

Unless you're running 64 bit Linux there is no way to change the memory limit. Without knowing the difference between your two computers there is no way to know what is going on.