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

[Lightwarrior]

So, generator efficiency.

I have a KTEC solid state generator, 3.75m, on a tier 1 3.75m fission reactor (uranium) in low kerbin orbit, with 12 graphene huge deployable radiators (way overkill), and I'm getting 15% efficiency on my generator. Is this normal?

Note that when I hit orbit, I get a much more reasonable efficiency, but it rapidly drops off. Right now, with this particular station, after time warp till the output stabilized, I'm only putting out 400MW

Unupgraded reactor + upgraded radiators = very bad idea.

Reactor core temperature is way lower than maximum radiator temperature, so radiators will actually be not much better than unupgraded ones, except when they will heat up to ~reactor core temperature you will get ~0 generator efficiency. You have enough of them to have 15% efficiency which is good enough

Edited January 7, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[Nando]

I don't know if this is intended but the 10% flameout value of the fusion engine applies to the power consumption as well. The engine produces around 850kn thrust at >0.25GW and <2.5GW.

[Fractal_UK]

I don't know if this is intended but the 10% flameout value of the fusion engine applies to the power consumption as well. The engine produces around 850kn thrust at >0.25GW and <2.5GW.

The power consumption should never drop below 2.5GW regardless of the thrust. I don't really know why it has suddenly started doing that in the current version, I'm guessing it's related to engine changes in 0.23. Regardless, it needed rewriting to be compatible with the megajoule power management display anyway so I've done that ready for the next version and it performs properly there.

[CleverLikeMe]

Unupgraded reactor + upgraded radiators = very bad idea.

Radiator core temperature is way lower than maximum radiator temperature, so radiators will actually be not much better than unupgraded ones, except when they will heat up to ~reactor core temperature you will get ~0 generator efficiency. You have enough of them to have 15% efficiency which is good enough

Wow I think I understand. I get it, but it seems really counter-intuitive that I could find myself in that kind of a spot?

[NotunMojarGame21]

Radiators have to be hot to do their job. No wasteheat, no radiated heat either, so the radiators can't do anything at all until you build up wasteheat.

Its like the stock engine overheat mechanic. Showing overheat isn't a problem at all, just don't actually max out. Having wasteheat isn't a problem, its just a fact of life, but if you brought enough radiators you will never actually max out, so it won't be a problem.

Well that makes sense. However the other problem: solar panel retracts when overheated, is there a solution to that? I want to put one of those microwave emitter near the sun to generate electricity and transmit it to other ships...but if they retract, they become useless obviously. So what is the solution to overheating of the solar panel?

ALSO: This is way after so many posts and I'm sure someone probably stated it, but for the sake of saving time...can anyone tell me how I upgrade a part (i.e. reactor)? I have them unlocked in the tech tree. Now need to know the upgrading system...

THX:)

[Lightwarrior]

Wow I think I understand. I get it, but it seems really counter-intuitive that I could find myself in that kind of a spot?

This is one of good ideas in this mod - upgraded is not always only better, sometimes upgrades have some disadvantages.

Upgraded radiators can get hotter reducing generator efficiency, but also dissipating more heat.

Another example is fission reactor lifetime without maintenance. Yes, upgraded reactors generate more power, but they will run out of fuel faster. Sometimes i wish i can use basic, unupgraded reactor even after upgrade.

ALSO: This is way after so many posts and I'm sure someone probably stated it, but for the sake of saving time...can anyone tell me how I upgrade a part (i.e. reactor)? I have them unlocked in the tech tree. Now need to know the upgrading system...

All new crafts you launch will have upgraded parts.

On old craft just right click part, there will be oa option to retrofit it.

[RadHazard]

A useful thing to note about radiators in this mod is that both upgraded and non-upgraded radiators will dissipate exactly the same amount of heat at the same temperature. The only difference is the upgraded radiators have higher temperature caps and thus can dissipate a LOT more heat when at their maximum temperature. The Waste Heat Management page has some formulas you can use when using electrical generators, so that you can determine how many radiators you need in order to achieve the efficiency you want.

Well that makes sense. However the other problem: solar panel retracts when overheated, is there a solution to that? I want to put one of those microwave emitter near the sun to generate electricity and transmit it to other ships...but if they retract, they become useless obviously. So what is the solution to overheating of the solar panel?

If your solar panels are closing, you don't have enough radiators on your ship to dissipate all the waste heat. Since you are close to the sun, your solar panels generate a lot more heat than they do near Kerbin. I believe they generate half as much waste heat as power, so if you are getting 500 kW out of the solar panels you need enough radiators to dissipate at least 250 kw. You can click on the transmitter to determine how much electricity you are generating in total, which should help you determine how many radiators you need.

To Fractal: Since you already hook into solar panels to cause them to generate waste heat, how hard would it be to convert them to producing Megajoules? I know in a lot of cases they would be mostly useless, but one good use case I thought of would be building a microwave-transmitting solar satellite with a plasma engine. You could launch it from Kerbin by receiving power from LKO nuclear satellites, and then swap to solar power when you get near the sun in order to circularize. Since you changed it so megajoule-producing parts fill up electric charge before anything else, there's no longer any downside to swapping, as far as I can tell.

Edited January 7, 2014 by RadHazard

[Lrauka]

Hello.. created an account, just to ask this. Loving this mod, I consider it one of my essential ones, but I've run into a slight snag. I tend to use SSTO's a lot, but more like a drop ship style. Vertical ascent till 15km with, level out to gain speed, then aim straight up and rocket. My problem is that the new precooling requirement is really messing up my style of ship design. Cargo plane, fighter jet, etc, I can easily accommodate a giant precooler, but my drop ships are compact, small as possible things, generally with multitudes of engines. The precoolers literally will not fit. I'm curious if there is a way to disable the precooling requirement? Or, modify the file in such a way I could use say.. a cubic strut.. for example, as a precooler instead.

TL;DR: is there a way to disable or modify precooling?

Thanks!

[pina_coladas]

A useful thing to note about radiators in this mod is that both upgraded and non-upgraded radiators will dissipate exactly the same amount of heat at the same temperature. The only difference is the upgraded radiators have higher temperature caps and thus can dissipate a LOT more heat when at their maximum temperature. The Waste Heat Management page has some formulas you can use when using electrical generators, so that you can determine how many radiators you need in order to achieve the efficiency you want.

Yeah this needs to be repeated. Some of us misinterpreted Fractal earlier in the thread when he seemed to imply that upgrading radiators first is somehow counter-productive, when in reality it does not have any negative effects. You just have to keep in mind that upgraded radiators will behave exactly the same as unupgraded radiators with low temperature reactors, so you can't get away with using fewer of them with low tech reactors.

But then the waste heat UI in the next version should clear up all this confusion anyway.

[Vahal]

Guys, I noticed that kerbal couldn't take the magnetometer datas. Issue or intended?

[Lightwarrior]

Yeah this needs to be repeated. Some of us misinterpreted Fractal earlier in the thread when he seemed to imply that upgrading radiators first is somehow counter-productive, when in reality it does not have any negative effects. You just have to keep in mind that upgraded radiators will behave exactly the same as unupgraded radiators with low temperature reactors, so you can't get away with using fewer of them with low tech reactors.

But then the waste heat UI in the next version should clear up all this confusion anyway.

This is still counter-productive. You get nothing from this upgrade, and still spend science on it, which can be used to upgrade reactors instead, which will have WAY better results.

BTW tested it again and antimatter production at 100.000x timewarp is still broken, it does not consume antimatter anymore, but does not produce it either, still consuming power.

[Hughesdylan]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but how does one go about generating Helium-3 for efficient fusion electrical generation?

[Lightwarrior]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but how does one go about generating Helium-3 for efficient fusion electrical generation?

Store some tritium in D/T tanks and use 10.000+ timewarp while this vessel is active and tritium will slowly decay into He-3. You also need some He-3 tanks obviously.

The easiest way seems to be... just build your craft, launch it, and while still at the launchpad transfer tritium from the reactors to external tanks. Then timewarp for few weeks until you get some He-3 for launch. Later, when you will be using timewarp during transfers you will get mor He-3 then you will ever need, just remember to turn off those reactors, or switch them to D/T mode.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[metalpoetza]

Hi guys. Progressing along nicely - sorry there hasn't been another pre-release lately as I'm burning hard to finish the first beta before I go back to work tomorrow (and I'm close). I'm now on to the first antimatter powered rocket test drive mission. I got a lovely mission planned for showing it's use and connecting with the collectors placed in previous missions.

The ship refuels from a science-lab factory on the launch-pad, which should be JUST enough to power the launch and a visit to the Kerbal collector sitting at 700km orbit, where it can then refuel for a trip to the Jool collector.

Could somebody give me near-enough estimates on how much antimatter you would need for the various stages (assume the ship is very light and uses a small 62.5m fusion reactor+generator to power the containment device so antimatter is ONLY used for burning the rocket) - so I can give the user an indication of how much he needs to collect from the slow science lab before take-off, how much at least he would need to get from Kerbal collector and how much he'll need to fetch at Jool to make it back ?

Right now my test ship (full mass including liquid fuel: 13 tonnes) has 19 units. The wiki states 1000 units is enough for a short mission but gives no idea how to define "short" here - would a visit to the nearby orbital collector be at the END of that scale or so close to the beginning that say 100 units can do that part of the mission ?

Regards

A.J.

[Hughesdylan]

Store some tritium in D/T tanks and use 10.000+ timewarp while this vessel is active and tritium will slowly decay into He-3. You also need some He-3 tanks obviously.

The easiest way seems to be... just build your craft, launch it, and while still at the launchpad transfer tritium from the reactors to external tanks. Then timewarp for few weeks until you get sime He-3 for launch. Later, when you will be using timewarp during transfers you will get mor He-3 then you will ever need, just remember to turn off those reactors, or switch them to D/T mode.

Very much appreciate the fast response. This community never ceases to amaze me.

On a related question, tritium breeding. 1. Is there a downside to enabling tritium breeding? 2. Is it possible with fusion generators only to gain more tritium than you are burning? or should fusion craft carry a small fission engine for this purpose? Thanks!

:edit:

Insofar as question 2 is concerned, for anyone interested. Yes. Yes you can. Strap some extra D2 to your rig, then some lithium, and a spare tank for the tritium to go into. Enable breeding, and time acellerate. You'll gain a fair chunk of extra tritium per day (~1 unit per day i think?).

Edited January 7, 2014 by Hughesdylan

[Lightwarrior]

Hughesdylan ,

As far as i know there are no downsides of using tritium breeding.

And it was mentioned somewhere earlier that fusion reactors can be made self-sufficiend if you really want to.

Also rememder to shut down those reactors during transfers and you will save lots of fuel. You can use single small reactor if you need some EC, or just few stock RTG-s. It is good idea to include RTG-s anyway because it will allow you to restart fusion reactors if you will occasionally shut them down and run out of EC/MJ.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[Hughesdylan]

Hughesdylan ,

As far as i know there are no downsides of using tritium breeding.

And it was mentioned somewhere earlier that fusion reactors can be made self-sufficiend if you really want to.

Also rememder to shut down those reactors during transfers and you will save lots of fuel. You can use single small reactor if you need some EC, or just few stock RTG-s. It is good idea to include RTG-s anyway because it will allow you to restart fusion reactors if you will occasionally shut them down and run out of EC/MJ.

By self sufficient i assume you mean by grabbing more Deuterium from oceans? Is there an easy way to accomplish this besides using say a station and lifter craft? If that's not what you meant, or if there's another way to make these self sufficient i would be glad to hear it.

[Fractal_UK]

To Fractal: Since you already hook into solar panels to cause them to generate waste heat, how hard would it be to convert them to producing Megajoules? I know in a lot of cases they would be mostly useless, but one good use case I thought of would be building a microwave-transmitting solar satellite with a plasma engine. You could launch it from Kerbin by receiving power from LKO nuclear satellites, and then swap to solar power when you get near the sun in order to circularize. Since you changed it so megajoule-producing parts fill up electric charge before anything else, there's no longer any downside to swapping, as far as I can tell.

Pretty easy, I'd just have to write a custom solar panel module, the main difficulty would be controlling the animations but all I'd need to do would be copy the radiator code and rotate it by 90 degrees so the panels face the sun rather than their edges facing the sun. It'd work fine for new ships but I'm not sure if it would break existing ships pretty badly - that's one reason I haven't looked into it too much.

[TheDude]

Is there a way to add waste heat to parts? I want them to GENERATE waste heat like a solar panel.

[Fractal_UK]

Is there a way to add waste heat to parts? I want them to GENERATE waste heat like a solar panel.

You can do it with plugin code easily enough but there is no generic module you can add to do it. What are you trying to make generate waste heat?

[TheDude]

I have several parts in mind that I want to both create and modify that would generate waste heat as part of their operation. Right now I'm thinking along the lines of life support where scrubbers and recyclers would generate waste heat as part o their operation. Anything with a Kerbal inside would need to get rid of X amout of waste heat per Kerbal.

Since your mod already does waste heat for solar panels, I thought there may be a quick and easy way to make a call to the waste heat stuff. Something like

MODULE

{

name = wasteheat

amount = 200

}

Or some such thing.

[Hughesdylan]

I have several parts in mind that I want to both create and modify that would generate waste heat as part of their operation. Right now I'm thinking along the lines of life support where scrubbers and recyclers would generate waste heat as part o their operation. Anything with a Kerbal inside would need to get rid of X amout of waste heat per Kerbal.

Since your mod already does waste heat for solar panels, I thought there may be a quick and easy way to make a call to the waste heat stuff. Something like

MODULE

{

name = wasteheat

amount = 200

}

Or some such thing.

I humbly suggest some sort of life support Waste product to food farm module. Even if it only had like 50% efficiency and weighed 50tons, it would still be very welcome. the only thing that TAC doesn't have for Recycling is food, which is disappointing.

[metalpoetza]

And time for another pre-release of the KSPI missions for KSPStoryMissions pack. This is the final pre-release - the pack will go into beta once I finish missions for the only outstanding part: the alcubiere drive.

In the meantime this update adds several new mission sets covering virtually every part up to antimatter reactors.

Warning: this product contains higher than RDA levels of antimatter puns. Possible side effects include: your cat getting microwaved, your spouse leaving you for your lawyer and your house turning 90 degrees through 4-dimensional space so that it has no depth but if you walk into the kitchen you travel 2 days back in time.

[BigD145]

I humbly suggest some sort of life support Waste product to food farm module. Even if it only had like 50% efficiency and weighed 50tons, it would still be very welcome. the only thing that TAC doesn't have for Recycling is food, which is disappointing.

That's way outside Interstellar. You might want to go hit up the BioMass mod.

[kodemunkey]

How do i scan planets for things like Thorium? is there a scanner i've overlooked?