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

[Dreadp1r4te]

From what I understand B9 is not updated to 0.23, until its updated you have to do some modification to make the B9 sabre work, try asking or reading back a few pages on the B9 thread.

The only issue with B9 from .22 to .23 was the Firespitter DLL wasn't compatible with .23. I updated that once it was released and now the Sabres work fine. I've only started seeing this issue since I installed KSPI, so I assumed it had something to do with the custom Sabre/Rapier heating module this mod uses.

[metalpoetza]

I have a question regarding the ISRU - the wiki says you need somewhere to store depleted fuels in order to do nuclear fuel reprocessing - but it gives no indication of what this may be ? None of the containers I can see seems to match that description - so I have no real idea what sort of thing I need to attach to it for this to work ? When I just hooked one up via docking ports to a running tritium breeding reactor and enabled it, it seemed to be working (though I didn't timewarp to check if the results were accurate).

Any hints please ?

Update: I noticed that there is a 0 counted "depleted fuel" entry on the UF4 cannister - if I were to attach one of these and empty the UF4 value - would that hold depleted fuels ?

Nevermind - I tried it for myself and it does seem that this is how it works.

Edited January 4, 2014 by metalpoetza
Asked and answered

[Aegrim]

This mod is confusing as hell.

[Fractal_UK]

This mod is confusing as hell.

If you actually have specific questions, there are plenty of people here who will be willing to help you.

[Jivaii]

I've got a bit of a question. Was playing around on sandbox to experiment a bit with the higher end parts I haven't unlocked yet, and couldn't get a DT Vista engine to work. Does the reactor have to be touching it?

[Fractal_UK]

I've got a bit of a question. Was playing around on sandbox to experiment a bit with the higher end parts I haven't unlocked yet, and couldn't get a DT Vista engine to work. Does the reactor have to be touching it?

No but you do need full power all the time, it uses the same power at 1% throttle as at 100% because the specific impulse scales. Make sure you have the full 2.5GW electrical power.

Edit: also check for nearby Kerbals and, if present, move them or turn off the radiation safety features (accepting they will probably die in the process).

Edited January 5, 2014 by Fractal_UK

[Jivaii]

No but you do need full power all the time, it uses the same power at 1% throttle as at 100% because the specific impulse scales. Make sure you have the full 2.5GW electrical power.

Edit: also check for nearby Kerbals and, if present, move them or turn off the radiation safety features (accepting they will probably die in the process).

Was using a 3.75m reactor/generator on a probe ship. Had full MJ at the time.

[Fractal_UK]

Was using a 3.75m reactor/generator on a probe ship. Had full MJ at the time.

Radiation is the most probable answer then, perhaps you can describe what you're seeing in more detail?

[Taribu]

Hey guys, sorry to bother you with another problem.

I've been using KSPI for quite a time now, and after upgrading to KSP 0.23 I updated KSPI and installed B9. I'm having problems with the thermal turbojets - they work fine, but they make very strange noises(It switches between jet engine and rocket engine sounds randomly) and everything lags ridiculously (I'm still having a green timer).

Thats all, strange noises and lags. Nothing fatal.

Another problem is the waste heat. No matter how many radiators i put on, wasteheat levels still rise until all the generators shut down (Or the solar cells retract). Until now it's still not that fatal, but annoying.

Anyone knows what's going on? Other mods i've installed are FAR, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer, KWR, B9, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and KAS.

[dbmorpher]

Im having the same problem as metalpoetza

This is my setup

The UF4 from the hexcan will not transfer to the reactor and the actinides from the reactor will not transfer to the refinery

Also the Alumina miner does not seem to ever work and tritium breeding doesn't work either.

[Dreadp1r4te]

Hey guys, sorry to bother you with another problem.

I've been using KSPI for quite a time now, and after upgrading to KSP 0.23 I updated KSPI and installed B9. I'm having problems with the thermal turbojets - they work fine, but they make very strange noises(It switches between jet engine and rocket engine sounds randomly) and everything lags ridiculously (I'm still having a green timer).

Thats all, strange noises and lags. Nothing fatal.

Another problem is the waste heat. No matter how many radiators i put on, wasteheat levels still rise until all the generators shut down (Or the solar cells retract). Until now it's still not that fatal, but annoying.

Anyone knows what's going on? Other mods i've installed are FAR, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer, KWR, B9, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and KAS.

Make sure you're using the right radiators for the job. In atmosphere, you want either the stacked radiators (they're cylindrical*) or the radial heatsink-style ones (looks sorta like the heatsink on your CPU... sorta.) If you're going into a vacuum, though, you want the deployable ones that look like orange solar panels. I'm a bit miffed as to how to read them the radiator stats, though; for example, it claims 4 standard sized deployable radiators (unupgraded) won't cool the heat from a 2.5m Aegletes reactor, however as the heat rises the rate of dissipation increases and they WILL adequately cool the reactor. The tooltip claims it can only cool at max 75 MW of heat before upgrade, and the Aegletes outputs 500; the chart that shows performance at higher heat levels though indicates it can radiate much higher than 75 MW of waste heat, so I figured it would only radiate more than the "maximum" if you upgraded it... If someone could fill me in on that, I'd surely say thanks Need to know how many sinks to put on my new fusion reactors! Hooray!

EDIT: I actually think I just answered my question after like 5 seconds of thought as I re-read what I typed; the fission reactors will downheat to 30% when not being utilized, hence why the 4 standard radiators were able to keep up. *DOH.*

Also, I'm not 100% sure if the radiators need to be placed ON the reactor, or just anywhere on the ship. I've always put them on the reactor just in case but that'd be nice to know too.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Dreadp1r4te

[Fractal_UK]

Hey guys, sorry to bother you with another problem.

I've been using KSPI for quite a time now, and after upgrading to KSP 0.23 I updated KSPI and installed B9. I'm having problems with the thermal turbojets - they work fine, but they make very strange noises(It switches between jet engine and rocket engine sounds randomly) and everything lags ridiculously (I'm still having a green timer).

thats all, strange noises and lags. Nothing fatal.

Another problem is the waste heat. No matter how many radiators i put on, wasteheat levels still rise until all the generators shut down (Or the solar cells retract). Until now it's still not that fatal, but annoying.

Anyone knows what's going on? Other mods i've installed are FAR, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer, KWR, B9, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and KAS.

I'd guess if you're having strange lag and weird behaviour with thermal rockets you've probably got an install issue, thermal rockets are among the parts that malfunction when the mod is installed in the wrong location. Check you don't have an extra GameData folder in your install path or something similar, it might eveb be worth deleting the WarpPlugin folder and then fully reinstalling the mod.

Waste heat mechanics changed in recent versions, it will build up for a while but radiation will also go up as it does so provided you do, in fact, have enough radiators it will eventually stabilise.

The next version will have a thermal mechanics helper in the VAB to make all the numbers clear to you as you design your rocket.

The UF4 from the hexcan will not transfer to the reactor and the actinides from the reactor will not transfer to the refinery

You can only transfer nuclear fuel with an EVA kerbal when the reactor is shutdown. Actinides never transfer, they get reprocessed.

Also the Alumina miner does not seem to ever work

It won't work on Kerbin, try using it on the Mun.

and tritium breeding doesn't work either.

It will if you time accelerate up to about 1000x. It doesn't work at lower time acceleration due to some weird change the developeds made to the resource system in 0.23 that makes all instantaneous resource requests smaller than 1e-5 return 0.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Fractal_UK

[Taribu]

Make sure you're using the right radiators for the job. In atmosphere, you want either the stacked radiators (they're cylindrical*) or the radial heatsink-style ones (looks sorta like the heatsink on your CPU... sorta.) If you're going into a vacuum, though, you want the deployable ones that look like orange solar panels. I'm a bit miffed as to how to read them the radiator stats, though; for example, it claims 4 standard sized deployable radiators (unupgraded) won't cool the heat from a 2.5m Aegletes reactor, however as the heat rises the rate of dissipation increases and they WILL adequately cool the reactor. The tooltip claims it can only cool at max 75 MW of heat before upgrade, and the Aegletes outputs 500; the chart that shows performance at higher heat levels though indicates it can radiate much higher than 75 MW of waste heat, so I figured it would only radiate more than the "maximum" if you upgraded it... If someone could fill me in on that, I'd surely say thanks Need to know how many sinks to put on my new fusion reactors! Hooray!

I'm building a Duna-Plane which has to be able to reach low Duna-Orbit from Duna-ground (planning a little base+station there), and I tried more or less every type of radiator. But i forgot that i'm in carreer mode now, i havn't played in that mode until 0.23. So i have to upgrade those radiators, and i guess two small unupgraded deployables wont cool 4 1.25m fission reactors sufficiently :/ (especially when they're retracted...). I'll just try it with more radiators.

But this heat issue really got a serious problem when my Dres-Ship started overheating on the way home. I had two small Solar Panels (1x6) and one small deployable radiator :/

I'd guess if you're having strange lag and weird behaviour with thermal rockets you've probably got an install issue, thermal rockets are among the parts that malfunction when the mod is installed in the wrong location. Check you don't have an extra GameData folder in your install path or something similar, it might eveb be worth deleting the WarpPlugin folder and then fully reinstalling the mod.

Waste heat mechanics changed in recent versions, it will build up for a while but radiation will also go up as it does so provided you do, in fact, have enough radiators it will eventually stabilise.

The next version will have a thermal mechanics helper in the VAB to make all the numbers clear to you as you design your rocket.

I'm pretty sure I've installed KSPI correctly. But until i got everything working I installed, deleted and reinstalled (installed, deleted...) quite a few mods. I'll just redownload+reinstall everything then, and start over with a nice and clean game directory. Guess it will work then.

Can't wait to see the next version of KSPI!

Thank you guys!

[AerospaceME]

Also, I'm not 100% sure if the radiators need to be placed ON the reactor, or just anywhere on the ship. I've always put them on the reactor just in case but that'd be nice to know too.

They work when placed anywhere on the ship, but I tend to place mine on the generators as a matter of engineering aesthetics.

[Dreadp1r4te]

They work when placed anywhere on the ship, but I tend to place mine on the generators as a matter of engineering aesthetics.

Glad I'm not the only one who considers aesthetics Doesn't make much sense to put radiators on the fuel tank; the last thing you want is excess heat flowing through your highly combusti-- oh wait, these are Kerbals we're talking about...

I'm sure this has been asked before but, any plans/chances of a 2.5m or 3.75m Fusion Reactor? Haven't messed with em much yet, have to run out for a while (oh god, outside!) but I noticed they didn't exist so I was curious.

[Hremsfeld]

I'm sure this has been asked before but, any plans/chances of a 2.5m or 3.75m Fusion Reactor? Haven't messed with em much yet, have to run out for a while (oh god, outside!) but I noticed they didn't exist so I was curious.

If I recall correctly, Fractal wanted a better texture/model for them, but plans to have the larger sizes eventually.

On this note, what would the stats for the larger reactors be? I think the texture/model looks fine scaled up, but I'm not good enough at nuclear physics to determine what sane stats would look like.

[dbmorpher]

What about a tokamak looking reactor, it could look like this

http://www.chinatechgadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EAST-Tokamak.jpg

And as a follow up to my last reply how would one go about reprocessing actinides as whenever I try to reprocess the wait time is always infinity even if there is a full reactor of the resource.

[Fractal_UK]

If I recall correctly, Fractal wanted a better texture/model for them, but plans to have the larger sizes eventually.

On this note, what would the stats for the larger reactors be? I think the texture/model looks fine scaled up, but I'm not good enough at nuclear physics to determine what sane stats would look like.

I want to alter the design for the larger reactors, the small reactors are laser powered interial confinement fusion units but I want the large units to be a kind of fusion torus - these would be more analogous to the large fission reactors, i.e. pretty heavy and use non-linear power scaling but capable of breeding their own supply of tritium from a lithium blanketed reaction chamber. I haven't worked out exact stats but unupgraded they'll probably be roughly on a par with the gas core fission reactors albeit with slightly different power scaling so they'll have a slightly different feel rather than just being bigger versions of the existing reactors.

You should, however, still expect that it will need ongoing electrical power consumption to support plasma confinement/heating and a focus on higher power consumption and lesser fuel efficiency compared to other reactors in the same tech node.

[Termaul]

When i have Interstallar mod installed my stock turbo fan jet engine keeps over heating at high speed and high above kerbin , with out the mod installed i dont have the over heating problem. I tried radiators but that was not the problem still over heated also threw a pre cooler on and still same thing. What could be causing the stock turbo fan jet engine to over heat?Thanks

O , I never mind i i see that the radial intakes dont work on the pre-coolers derp .

Edited January 5, 2014 by Termaul

[The Blue Kraken]

This mod is actually quite amazing!

[Kidneythump]

I hope this hasnt been asked already but i tried googling and searching the thread to no avail. I was thinking I'd go and build a permanent base on duna, the only problem is that I'd need to cart all the fuel there in the first place so I thought I'd go with the methane/oxidizer rocket as a renewable transport. I've run in to a bit of a snag with my drop ship though, as far as I understand it I would need the ISRU Refinery for this, only i cant get it to produce methane, do i need to hook it up in a certain way? As far as I could tell from the wiki I would need Atmospheric intakes, water for electrolysis for that sweet sweet hydrogen and a power supply to run the damn thing. I sent one testcraft to duna but it lacked the intakes and since I'm kinda lazy I'd rather just ask how to make it work instead of sending a time consuming mission without knowing what to put on the ship...

EDIT: Oh wait I just checked the wiki again, I need to run the Anthraquinone process instead?

EDIT2: Also for these processes to work does the refinery have to be resting on the ground? Is the same true for the other processes as well?

Edited January 5, 2014 by Kidneythump

[metalpoetza]

I hope this hasnt been asked already but i tried googling and searching the thread to no avail. I was thinking I'd go and build a permanent base on duna, the only problem is that I'd need to cart all the fuel there in the first place so I thought I'd go with the methane/oxidizer rocket as a renewable transport. I've run in to a bit of a snag with my drop ship though, as far as I understand it I would need the ISRU Refinery for this, only i cant get it to produce methane, do i need to hook it up in a certain way? As far as I could tell from the wiki I would need Atmospheric intakes, water for electrolysis for that sweet sweet hydrogen and a power supply to run the damn thing. I sent one testcraft to duna but it lacked the intakes and since I'm kinda lazy I'd rather just ask how to make it work instead of sending a time consuming mission without knowing what to put on the ship...

I'm no expert and I'm sure others can give you more detailed answers but for a start my understanding is that atmospheric intakes will only work on ships which are moving at fairly high velocity (i.e. on a space plane or something). So you may need to build a small space-plane to go with your base which uses atmospheric intakes to collect the materials and then deliver them to the base and dock with it to transfer ?

[Dreadp1r4te]

I want to alter the design for the larger reactors, the small reactors are laser powered interial confinement fusion units but I want the large units to be a kind of fusion torus - these would be more analogous to the large fission reactors, i.e. pretty heavy and use non-linear power scaling but capable of breeding their own supply of tritium from a lithium blanketed reaction chamber. I haven't worked out exact stats but unupgraded they'll probably be roughly on a par with the gas core fission reactors albeit with slightly different power scaling so they'll have a slightly different feel rather than just being bigger versions of the existing reactors.

You should, however, still expect that it will need ongoing electrical power consumption to support plasma confinement/heating and a focus on higher power consumption and lesser fuel efficiency compared to other reactors in the same tech node.

If you need any help with the (graphical) design of the larger reactors, or anything else for that matter, I'd be happy to help. Love what you've got so far, for sure; except maybe the stacked radiator, which looks a bit like something a Kerbal would grate cheese with. Seriously, loving the mod so far though. Bit confusing at first, but very rewarding once you start figuring stuff out. I love that in a mod.

[metalpoetza]

New pre-release of the KSP_Interstellar mission pack for KSPStoryMissions: https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.8

This update adds two new mission packs:

Charley and the Tritium factory (rank 13):

Over a three-part mission-set the player constructs a tritium breeding factory, science lab and ISRU at KSC itself - the science lab can be used to generate science points or get some early antimatter production going or whatever else the player needs. The entire setup is dockable to allow for fuel transfers to waiting-to-launch vehicles etc.

This is essentially an introductory mission to show how to use the science lab, ISRU and and tritium breeding.

KNOWN ISSUE: There is a bug in the current version of KSPStoryMissions that causes it to (regularly) fail to recognize docking objectives as being completed on surface installations. This made the missions impossible to complete, in order to resolve this the missions do not at this stage actually require docking the parts together - merely that they be placed at KSC - however docking them together is highly recommended (using a remote resource system like Lazor is not very effective in this scenario as actinides cannot be transferred making fuel reprocessing impossible).

Science is my lady (rank 14):

This is a 4-part mission pack built around deploying science labs at progressively harder locations (based on the multiplier scores from the KSP_Interstellar wiki). The first mission requires the player to land one on the Mun, then on Ike. The third mission places one in orbit around Jool and the final mission requires landing one on Moho. Note that the final mission here is very, very tough - but it also has a very high reward. I haven't managed to successfully complete it myself yet - but it's been sufficiently tested to confirm it doesn't have (significant) bugs - it's just bloody hard

Over-all the budgets for these missions are much higher than average but this is because they require significant crew recruitment which needs to be funded out of that budget as well.

Edited January 5, 2014 by metalpoetza
missing line.

[Fractal_UK]

I hope this hasnt been asked already but i tried googling and searching the thread to no avail. I was thinking I'd go and build a permanent base on duna, the only problem is that I'd need to cart all the fuel there in the first place so I thought I'd go with the methane/oxidizer rocket as a renewable transport. I've run in to a bit of a snag with my drop ship though, as far as I understand it I would need the ISRU Refinery for this, only i cant get it to produce methane, do i need to hook it up in a certain way? As far as I could tell from the wiki I would need Atmospheric intakes, water for electrolysis for that sweet sweet hydrogen and a power supply to run the damn thing. I sent one testcraft to duna but it lacked the intakes and since I'm kinda lazy I'd rather just ask how to make it work instead of sending a time consuming mission without knowing what to put on the ship...

EDIT: Oh wait I just checked the wiki again, I need to run the Anthraquinone process instead?

EDIT2: Also for these processes to work does the refinery have to be resting on the ground? Is the same true for the other processes as well?

It's the sabatier process you will need to produce Methane and Oxidiser, you need some LiquidFuel (Hydrogen) to make it work, so you can either take that with you or you can collect water from the surface of Duna and electrolyse it.