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

[darklordchris]

I no im in for a trolling, saying use the reactors,

But how many Gigantor XL Solar Array do I need for my space station to produce 1+ MJ

[Eadrom]

I no im in for a trolling, saying use the reactors,

But how many Gigantor XL Solar Array do I need for my space station to produce 1+ MJ

Since solar power generation depends on how far away you are from the star and since you have to use microwave transmission to allow a vessel to convert EC to MW and send it to your station and that has variables that affect it's efficiency, such as distance from transmitter to receiver and angle of receiver to transmitter, the answer to your question is most definitely, it depends.

What you can't do is put a KSPI science lab on your space station and attach some solar panels and have it start spitting out science. I believe gigantor's can pull in 18 EC/s at Kerbin. That's at least 56 of those big solar panels before considering transmission losses.

It would really help us help you if you would tell us what you are trying to power on your space station. If we know what you are trying to power, we can help you out with some solutions on how to most effectively get that power. If you have a good picture of your station, that would help as well.

[Eeke]

The smaller reactors are not very viable as thermal rockets before you upgrade them. Their primary use at a low tech level is either powering thermal turbojets or generating a large amount of electricity. The 2.5m and 3.75m unupgraded reactors have superior T/W with LFO over stock LV-Ns, although they are larger and heavier and have a lower ISP. The 3.75m can even match the LV-N in T/W using pure liquid fuel, which gives you superior ISP (915s vs 800s).

These numbers are all considering Uranium-powered reactors. If you swap to Thorium, your performance is even better, although not enough to make the 1.25m viable. Basically, if you want to use the low-tech reactors on a ship, you need to build big. You might as well stick a science lab (for reprocessing) on your ship and run thorium, which gives you even better performance for only a slight additional weight.

Ah yeah for some reason I wasn't paying attention and lost the quote.

I suppose this is the appropriate answer but my criticism was actually that I didn't understand why the entry level Nuclear tech had the nozzles included in the first place because of how awful they are.

If they're going to be that bad you'd think that it'd simply be given to you in upgraded form further down the line.

I didn't consider electricity generation, although was aware of the use with thermal turbojets, those were surprisingly useful for what they did.

Either way, those uses are fair I guess, I just felt a bit cheated to dump all the science I had just obtained to get what I got.

[darklordchris]

Since solar power generation depends on how far away you are from the star and since you have to use microwave transmission to allow a vessel to convert EC to MW and send it to your station and that has variables that affect it's efficiency, such as distance from transmitter to receiver and angle of receiver to transmitter, the answer to your question is most definitely, it depends.

What you can't do is put a KSPI science lab on your space station and attach some solar panels and have it start spitting out science. I believe gigantor's can pull in 18 EC/s at Kerbin. That's at least 56 of those big solar panels before considering transmission losses.

It would really help us help you if you would tell us what you are trying to power on your space station. If we know what you are trying to power, we can help you out with some solutions on how to most effectively get that power. If you have a good picture of your station, that would help as well.

1stly thanks to Extraplanetary Launchpads i was planning on building a couple(5) of big solar arrays with transmitters and a receiver at Moho and put them in 3mill orbit around Kerbol(sun), The main use is to generate antimatter in verious locations in the system.

U say I need min of 56 thats do-able was planing on have 42 per station. but if extend the 6 solars arms to add 10 panels on each would bring it up to 60.

Edited December 28, 2013 by darklordchris

[Eadrom]

1stly thanks to Extraplanetary Launchpads i was planning on building a couple(5) of big solar arrays with transmitters and a receiver at Moho and put them in 3mill orbit around Kerbol(sun), The main use is to generate antimatter in verious locations in the system.

If you have low kerbol power stations, you'll have gobs of power available via microwave transmission. One of small 1x6 panels was giving me over 4,000 EC at one point in low kerbol orbit. Offhand and using that as a point of reference, I would say each gigantor would generate around 35-40MW in low kerbal orbit. You'll need around 130 to 135 gigantors (plus more to account for transmission losses the farther out you are beaming this power) to generate the 5 gigawatts required for max antimatter production in a lab. Remember that you can easily collect antimatter. A few days in optimal orbit aroun Jool with a couple dozen collectors will give you enough antimatter for dozens of missions. Send a freighter out there once every few years and you'll be drowning in antimatter.

You can also get decent amounts of antimatter in kerbin's orbit and any I the planets/moons that are similar in size to Kerbin. This is because you don't need full tanks of antimatter on every ship. A few thousand antimatter will usually suffice for any mission you might send out. Even super long duration or range missions will rarely ever use more than 10 or 20 thousand antimatter, a fraction of what the smallest containment tank holds.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Eadrom

[Fractal_UK]

Ah yeah for some reason I wasn't paying attention and lost the quote.

I suppose this is the appropriate answer but my criticism was actually that I didn't understand why the entry level Nuclear tech had the nozzles included in the first place because of how awful they are.

If they're going to be that bad you'd think that it'd simply be given to you in upgraded form further down the line.

I didn't consider electricity generation, although was aware of the use with thermal turbojets, those were surprisingly useful for what they did.

Either way, those uses are fair I guess, I just felt a bit cheated to dump all the science I had just obtained to get what I got.

They really aren't awful, you just have to build big to make good use of them. Its not like your investing in special techs to get them either,they're just unlocked on stock nodes so there's no real justification for them being significantly better than anything stock.

The nice thing about the basic reactors is that your nuclear powered ships actually look a bit more like realistic designs because you need significant radiator areas to make something that works. Russ's ship on the previous page is a nice example. They might not be loads better than stock LV-Ns but they're perhaps a bit more interesting for that reason.

[Eadrom]

I've found the high ISP useful when building small science or scanning probe powered by the 62.5cm fission reactor. As long as you build as light as possible, a little dab of fuel will do ya, further helping you stay light. Makes for good small probes for Eve and Duna early on.

[Fractal_UK]

I thought I would share a quick picture of how work on how the thermal mechanics helper is progressing since I've finally had some time to work on this today - it should certainly make your designs easier to asses in the VAB!

The idea is to colour code information so that you can see if you simply have a) insufficient radiator capacity enough to cool a nuclear reactor at minimum 30% operation or c) enough to cool the reactor at 100%. Here I'm working with upgraded reactors/radiators in sandbox mode but you can see the impact of replacing the smaller radiators with the larger ones.

The information on radiator resting temperatures should help you get an idea of efficiency from generators too.

[Eadrom]

Awesome! I've always just napkin mathed how much radiating capability I need. This will let me build more finely engineered vessels!

[Amram]

Awesome! I've always just napkin mathed how much radiating capability I need. This will let me build more finely engineered vessels!

lol, I just launched it into orbit and tried to make it melt, if it couldn't I was good to go.

[Fractal_UK]

lol, I just launched it into orbit and tried to make it melt, if it couldn't I was good to go.

Hopefully this system should make this process a lot more scientific, now you'll have lots more information to plan what your heat dissipation needs actually are. The most important information is exactly when those indicators turn red, essentially informing you that you will never be able to keep the ship cool in space - afterall if extra equipment is causing your ship to overheat, you can always turn that off.

[Jivaii]

Hopefully this system should make this process a lot more scientific, now you'll have lots more information to plan what your heat dissipation needs actually are. The most important information is exactly when those indicators turn red, essentially informing you that you will never be able to keep the ship cool in space - afterall if extra equipment is causing your ship to overheat, you can always turn that off.

I'm all for just lobbing **** into orbit and if it doesn't explode, it's good.

[Donziboy2]

I'm all for just lobbing **** into orbit and if it doesn't explode, it's good.

How very Kerbal of you

[Fractal_UK]

Final piece of work of the day but I think it's rather a nice little feature. With this new thermal mechanics build helper, I need to give you information about solar panels too so you can stop those from overheating, of course, the amount of heat production you get from solar panels depends massively on your distance from the sun. For that reason, giving you only information about what happens at Kerbin isn't very helpful.

Solution: I've added a slidebar to the helper where you can scroll closer or further away from the sun and see what the heat dissipation status is anywhere in the solar system from the comfort of your VAB. Here we can see a small probe, which is adequately cooled in space near Kerbin, no longer has sufficient heat dissipation at 0.044 AU.

Kerbin

Low Kerbol

[NotCoach]

Final piece of work of the day but I think it's rather a nice little feature. With this new thermal mechanics build helper, I need to give you information about solar panels too so you can stop those from overheating, of course, the amount of heat production you get from solar panels depends massively on your distance from the sun. For that reason, giving you only information about what happens at Kerbin isn't very helpful.

Solution: I've added a slidebar to the helper where you can scroll closer or further away from the sun and see what the heat dissipation status is anywhere in the solar system from the comfort of your VAB. Here we can see a small probe, which is adequately cooled in space near Kerbin, no longer has sufficient heat dissipation at 0.044 AU.

Kerbin

http://i.imgur.com/JTb9GSb.jpg

Low Kerbol

http://i.imgur.com/2cyXflb.jpg

That's so freakin awesome. I don't just launch and cross my fingers like others do. I test in a sandbox world before doing in my career world. But this will save so much time and grief. Thank you.

[Amram]

now the only thing I do wish for, and hope you find the time to do someday, is to know the current true thrust of my craft pre-launch.

To date i've just built my propulsion system and attached it to a pod, engine aimed upwards, planted it on the pad, and throttled up to see what I get before deciding if that's the way i'll go or not, as the engines all seem to report their maximum, and not what i'll achieve. To be fair I could do some math, but the simple test is a bit quicker, and an in game readout far quicker still.

[Shad0wCatcher]

Note to self: DO NOT USE 100% thrust with DRE in space with a craft that has a 10:1 TWR in LKO. Space Kraken are hungry. Either that or I can generate artificial black holes with how quickly craft implode.

[Fractal_UK]

now the only thing I do wish for, and hope you find the time to do someday, is to know the current true thrust of my craft pre-launch.

To date i've just built my propulsion system and attached it to a pod, engine aimed upwards, planted it on the pad, and throttled up to see what I get before deciding if that's the way i'll go or not, as the engines all seem to report their maximum, and not what i'll achieve. To be fair I could do some math, but the simple test is a bit quicker, and an in game readout far quicker still.

You can now use MechJeb to figure out the thrust of all thermal rockets in vacuum. This new thermal display also does a fair bit of the work toward gathering the information that I need in order to calculate plasma engine thrust pre-launch too, unfortunately even when this is complete the remaining final steps won't be completely straightforward.

[Shad0wCatcher]

So many variables to account for even getting a ballpark figure is a hell of a feat Fractal.

Pretty sure Amram was looking for possibly something at atmosphere as opposed to vacuum (I was actually doing the same thing he/she was with regards to TWR at 1 ATM; testing for a possible lander scenario using thermal rocket motors). Even the vacuum TWR readout is greatly appreciated though. Appreciate the work you've done so far and looking forward to the future of this mod.

[jallious]

Have you tried the Active Memory Reduction plugin?

This worked pretty well! It took out about 400kb, so I can use half-rez textures with few crashes.

[yeliabmit]

I did a search of the thread, but couldn't find a post directly on point: I think it might be cool (ha ha) to add a small WasteHeat buildup for non-KSPI power-generating parts (I'm specifically thinking of RLA's big RTGs). I think I can figure out how to use ModuleManager to do this, but I can't seem to find any configs in the KSPI folder that reveal the mechanism for creating a heat buildup. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Konnor]

Hi, Fractal.

A little suggestion or maybe a feature request. You've probably heard that in Remote Tech 2 a vessel with large probe core and six Kerbals can act as a mission control (meaning that other unmanned ships will be controllable if thay have a connection to that vessel, even if they don't have a connection to KSC). Is it possible (or does it make any kind of sense) for AGI cores to be capable of that (maybe with Kerbals on board, but less than six)?

That is, if Kerbals trust these artificial intelligince guys and their priorities...

[Fractal_UK]

I did a search of the thread, but couldn't find a post directly on point: I think it might be cool (ha ha) to add a small WasteHeat buildup for non-KSPI power-generating parts (I'm specifically thinking of RLA's big RTGs). I think I can figure out how to use ModuleManager to do this, but I can't seem to find any configs in the KSPI folder that reveal the mechanism for creating a heat buildup. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

You can't add WasteHeat to something like an RTG directly but there is an experimental Interstellar RTG module you could try replacing the existing module with. To do this, you need to add a module like this:

MODULE
{
	name = FNModuleRTG
	ReactorTemp = 450
	ThermalPower =  // desired thermal power in MW (in practise this should be a small number, for a stock RTG 0.0075)
 	radius =  // radius of part
}

You will also need to add a resource definition

RESOURCE
{
	name = Plutonium-238
	amount = // the figure that you used for thermal power * 2000
	maxAmount = // the figure that you used for thermal power * 2000
}

Doing this will give you an RTG Module that generates Thermal Power and WasteHeat, i.e. you can use it to power ThermalRockets and attach generators to it. By default it will include a thermocouple that generates ElectricCharge at 10% efficiency.

Its power will also drop off slightly as time passes according to the 87.7 half-life of Plutonium-238.

[yeliabmit]

You can't add WasteHeat to something like an RTG directly but there is an experimental Interstellar RTG module you could try replacing the existing module with.

...

Doing this will give you an RTG Module that generates Thermal Power and WasteHeat, i.e. you can use it to power ThermalRockets and attach generators to it. By default it will include a thermocouple that generates ElectricCharge at 10% efficiency.

Its power will also drop off slightly as time passes according to the 87.7 half-life of Plutonium-238.

First: Fractal_UK thanks for responding to my question!

I can report that I added the noted MODULE and RESOURCE, and the RTG temperature started to climb, but there was no WasteHeat buildup, even after I added a RESOURCE min/max for WasteHeat; and adding a radial Graphene radiator didn't slow the climbing temperature of the RTG.

Since RTGs are sort of like a sealed unit (reactor and generator in one), without scalability, I was hoping (naively, no doubt) that there was a way to just specify a set amount of WasteHeat buildup, like with solar panels.

[Fractal_UK]

First: Fractal_UK thanks for responding to my question!

I can report that I added the noted MODULE and RESOURCE, and the RTG temperature started to climb, but there was no WasteHeat buildup, even after I added a RESOURCE min/max for WasteHeat; and adding a radial Graphene radiator didn't slow the climbing temperature of the RTG.

Since RTGs are sort of like a sealed unit (reactor and generator in one), without scalability, I was hoping (naively, no doubt) that there was a way to just specify a set amount of WasteHeat buildup, like with solar panels.

No problem. What do you mean by the RTG temperature? A normal radiator might not increase in temperature much when an RTG is present because the power would be very low.

To be honest I haven't done a lot of work on this module though, it was just something I was playing with for a couple of hours in case it was useful later.