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

[Nelien]

Have you checked that your installation includes the file it notes: GameData/WarpPlugin/PlanetResourceData/kerbin_uranium.png ? Check out that that file is there and opens properly. You may need to delete the WarpPlugin folder, download a new copy of Interstellar and reinstall.

Yep, it's there and it works fine. Could this have something to do with Active Texture Management? I'm running with that plugin as well and it might be messing up the resource textures. I'll see if I can add KSPI to ATM exceptions or something.

[Fractal_UK]

Yep, it's there and it works fine. Could this have something to do with Active Texture Management? I'm running with that plugin as well and it might be messing up the resource textures. I'll see if I can add KSPI to ATM exceptions or something.

Yeah, I imagine that is something that could be responsible but it's not a plugin that I've tested with. Please let me know the results.

[Gibster]

Hey guys, quick question, what is the process for refueling a nuclear reactor with hexcans and what is the process for reprocessing nuclear fuel? I've got a couple of Thorium Hexcans, a depleted reactor, and a science module but when I try reprocessing nuclear fuel it says it will take infinite amount of time. Help, I want to know how to do this for when I start using my DT Vista engines and will need to refuel them.

Edit: would you recommend I use KW rocketry with this mod, the only other mod I have installed currently is mechjeb.

[Nelien]

Yeah, I imagine that is something that could be responsible but it's not a plugin that I've tested with. Please let me know the results.

Ok, that actually worked, I added WarpPlugin to the exception list of ATM and that fixed the problem.

One question though, you know all these texture files that you have in the WarpPlugin root folder? Files like warpr2.png and transparent.png. Would I break the plugin if I moved them to a subfolder within WarpPlugin? Like WarpPlugin/MiscTextures or something?

The reason I'm asking is because Active Texture Management allows you to exempt certain folders from it's texture compression or individual files, and it would be much easier to add the entire folder rather than file by file.

Also, while I have you, a gameplay related question: I've just recently started using KSPI, but am I supposed to have some of menu/map when scanning for resources with the magnetometer or spectometer? Or am I supposed to take note of the numbers they give me and manually keep track of resources? Because I'm not seeing any map/menu.

[paramedicdoc]

Quick question regarding the Resource mining module. Is there a guide towards this module? I am trying to mine water but I am having no luck anywhere (except the ocean). I am looking for just basic information on how this module works before I send it to Duna. Thank you very much.

[Fractal_UK]

Quick question regarding the Resource mining module. Is there a guide towards this module? I am trying to mine water but I am having no luck anywhere (except the ocean). I am looking for just basic information on how this module works before I send it to Duna. Thank you very much.

On Duna, it will work similarly to how it does when you're in Kerbin's ocean, the only difference is the rate, extracting water from Duna's soil is a slower process and requires some power. The rate is based on the water abundance in the soil and that varies according to latitude, Duna's ice caps naturally have far more water than its equatorial regions.

[xfrankie]

Hi, I have some issues with my AM Farm (apparently not farming).

http://imgur.com/a/K8V6t#0

I have 15 collectors there, so it should produce 59,85 units per day. The screenshots take place during ~10 hours, but no AM had been caught.

I edited some antimatter into those tanks and shut down the reactor to show it wasn't eating the AM faster than I gather it. Also I checked and the parts between collectors/rest of the ship are fuel crossfeed capable.

Any ideas why it does nothing?

[TheDude]

Could I get a hand with waste heat?

(And maybe a bug report)

I was mucking about with adding waste heat to a Kethane converter. Getting it to produce waste heat was the easy part but getting the radiator to dissipate the heat has been a real pain.

My test has been really simple: I have a Kethane tank, Kethane heavy converter, an empty fuel tank, some radiators stuck to the side of the fuel tank and a power source. Turns out the power source makes all of the difference.

The Kethane convert code looks like this:

MODULE

{

name = KethaneConverter

Label = Fuel

InputRates

{

Kethane = 15

ElectricCharge = 20

}

OutputRatios

{

LiquidFuel = 0.45

Oxidizer = 0.55

}

OutputRates

{

WasteHeat = 20000

ThermalPower = 0.01

}

}

Here is where the problems begin.

If I use the generator from the Kethane mod and turn on the converter the waste heat will build as expected. When I turn off the converter the waste heat stops increasing but it never goes down.

So, I got rid of the Kethane powered electrical generator and switched to batteries. Same result - Waste heat never goes down.

Then I tried the next power source: Solar Panels. Suddenly waste heat starts decreasing! I try various solar panels from several different mods including stock and all allow the waste heat to decrease.

Going on up the line I use the various reactors from the Interstellar mod and any of them in combination with my test rig will allow waste heat to decrease.

So my question to the group is what does solar panels and reactors bring to the table that allows waste heat to decrease but batteries and kethane generator does not?

Possible Bug report:

I tried solar panels from KOSMOS and all allowed waste heat to decrease EXCEPT for the BALKA solar panels. So, what ever is happening with regular solar panels is not happening with the BALKAs.

Closing thoughts:

I've not tried this with any other reactors and power sources from other mods. Near Future immediately comes to mind. I have a feeling I"ll run into the same problem but I'll confirm that once my brain cells have been adequately marinated in alcohol.

Best regards,

The Dude

[Pharotic]

Something is definitely wrong with the radial radiators along these lines. As soon as you add a stackable radiator they all start working fine it seems. Had the same issue with solar panels getting bugged and never lowering wasteheat until I attached them to the stackable radiator directly, then the reactors with the radials started cooling properly too.

Could I get a hand with waste heat?

(And maybe a bug report)

I was mucking about with adding waste heat to a Kethane converter. Getting it to produce waste heat was the easy part but getting the radiator to dissipate the heat has been a real pain.

My test has been really simple: I have a Kethane tank, Kethane heavy converter, an empty fuel tank, some radiators stuck to the side of the fuel tank and a power source. Turns out the power source makes all of the difference.

The Kethane convert code looks like this:

MODULE

{

name = KethaneConverter

Label = Fuel

InputRates

{

Kethane = 15

ElectricCharge = 20

}

OutputRatios

{

LiquidFuel = 0.45

Oxidizer = 0.55

}

OutputRates

{

WasteHeat = 20000

ThermalPower = 0.01

}

}

Here is where the problems begin.

If I use the generator from the Kethane mod and turn on the converter the waste heat will build as expected. When I turn off the converter the waste heat stops increasing but it never goes down.

So, I got rid of the Kethane powered electrical generator and switched to batteries. Same result - Waste heat never goes down.

Then I tried the next power source: Solar Panels. Suddenly waste heat starts decreasing! I try various solar panels from several different mods including stock and all allow the waste heat to decrease.

Going on up the line I use the various reactors from the Interstellar mod and any of them in combination with my test rig will allow waste heat to decrease.

So my question to the group is what does solar panels and reactors bring to the table that allows waste heat to decrease but batteries and kethane generator does not?

Possible Bug report:

I tried solar panels from KOSMOS and all allowed waste heat to decrease EXCEPT for the BALKA solar panels. So, what ever is happening with regular solar panels is not happening with the BALKAs.

Closing thoughts:

I've not tried this with any other reactors and power sources from other mods. Near Future immediately comes to mind. I have a feeling I"ll run into the same problem but I'll confirm that once my brain cells have been adequately marinated in alcohol.

Best regards,

The Dude

[Pharotic]

Looking at the area values for the large and small radial radiators I can't but help to think they are completely wrong, .25 and 1 vs 100 for the .625 stackable.

[Timqsh]

Hi! How can I disable this feature:

"atmospheric engines overheat at very high velocities unless precoolers are directly attached to intakes"

?

It ruins all my stock and B9 SSTO desings.

[Fractal_UK]

Looking at the area values for the large and small radial radiators I can't but help to think they are completely wrong, .25 and 1 vs 100 for the .625 stackable.

Where are you seeing this 100 for the 0.625 stackable? The area in the .cfg file is 1.25 not 100.

Could I get a hand with waste heat?

(And maybe a bug report)

I was mucking about with adding waste heat to a Kethane converter. Getting it to produce waste heat was the easy part but getting the radiator to dissipate the heat has been a real pain.

You can't just use stock or modded modules to produce WasteHeat, the Interstellar power resources: ThermalPower, ChargedPower, WasteHeat and Megajoules all use a special resource manager to produce them. If you produce them just by adding them to the total, the resource manager will not properly understand where that heat is coming from, why it exists or how to deal with it.

Not sure why the BALKA doesn't work though, the WasteHeat changes should be applied to all solar panels. Does the BALKA display the heat production bar?

Hi! How can I disable this feature:

"atmospheric engines overheat at very high velocities unless precoolers are directly attached to intakes"

?

It ruins all my stock and B9 SSTO desings.

At present you can't but it's really easy to avoid anyway, switchover to LFO before your engines overheat or add some precoolers to the intakes.

[Duchy_CZ]

Hi, I need complete list of parts for my KMP server. How can i get it?

Thanks

[TheDude]

Greetings,

To clarify here are some pictures:

This works - IE it will reduce the waste heat

And this works

This does not:

And this does not:

And here is the BALKA that does not. As you can see it does not display the heat production bar.

If I can't simply have modules produce WasteHeat because the resource manager can't deal with it then why do some of these configurations work and others do not? Is it because the ones that do work contain components that properly produce and account for WasteHeat?

Best regards,

The Dude

Edited January 11, 2014 by TheDude

[Fractal_UK]

If I can't simply have modules produce WasteHeat because the resource manager can't deal with it then why do some of these configurations work and others do not? Is it because the ones that do work contain components that properly produce and account for WasteHeat?

The solar panels have an Interstellar module added to them which creates a resource manager for WasteHeat if the ship doesn't already have one and then produces the heat. The batteries that you're using and the Kethane generator don't have any such module so the waste heat mechanics don't work properly. The assumption of the radiators is that there is nothing producing heat so they simply do nothing. I can't do much about this because the stock resource system isn't advanced enough to simulate the WasteHeat mechanics.

I'd guess from the look of the Balka panels that a new part module has been created for them. If that's the case, I'd have to write some new code to update those as well. I'll try and find some time to have a look at the KOSMOS pack and see if it's an easy fix to make them work properly again - I'm fairly sure they used to work so perhaps this is a recent change.

[TheDude]

Greetings,

What adds the module to the solar panels? Is it a modulemanger config?

Thanks for your patience in answering a bunch of noob questions. :-)

Best regards,

The Dude

[cziken20]

I am now thinking... Engines produce heat, or i am wrong? If they produce heat... (radiators won't be needed as heat is alredy expelled, by engine itself), but if it was possible to acquire this heat, it would be then possible to get more power frokm generators as there is more temperature. Am i wrong?

[Fractal_UK]

What adds the module to the solar panels? Is it a modulemanger config?

Thanks for your patience in answering a bunch of noob questions. :-)

A piece of plugin code, it adds FNSolarPanelWasteHeatModule to any part that contains a ModuleDeployableSolarPanel.

[likke_A_boss]

http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag11/thedude0901/screenshot4_zpsd69e82da.png

Off-topic: where did you get those solar panels? They would be perfect on my new station.

[ortho]

How to activate Water Extractor or conduct water mining?

Unfortunately the Wiki and FAQ have no mention of water other than Electrolyse, which doesn't work well with empty tanks.

Current situation: Floating in ocean on Kerbal with empty water tanks. ISRU is half submerged with plenty of power (883MW). Water Extractor: Offline

How do I bring Water Extractor: Online?

[TheDude]

Off-topic: where did you get those solar panels? They would be perfect on my new station.

Greetings,

They're the BALKA solar panels from the KOSMOS pack. All of the solar panels in that pack are really impressive.

[kodemunkey]

Thanks, i play in sandbox mode so i guess i've just missed it

[Fractal_UK]

Space Telescopes and Gravitational Lensing

It's about time I started adding some challenging objectives to actually get people making use of all the advanced propulsion technology found in Interstellar to do something a bit more challenging. Here's something I'm working on to that effect.

Infrared Space Telescope

This is more or less based on the James Webb Space Telescope, it's an Infrared (with a bit of visible) space telescope designed for surveying the cosmos. It functions a little bit like science lab, you place it in orbit and it will begin to generate science at an initial rate of 0.5/day - this makes it equivalent to a science lab landed on the Mun with Kerbals of average intellect. The advantage of the telescope is that it doesn't require large amounts of power to perform ongoing research, the downside is that it has a performance factor that decreases over time, reducing the amount of science produced until the telescope is maintained - this will probably involve transporting fresh supplies of Liquid Helium coolant. Maintenance will bring the telescope back up to full performance and the cycle repeats.

In effect this is just a new, ongoing, science experiment part. As usual, if you leave it running, science will be generated in the background and be added to your pool when you switch back to the telescope.

Gravitational Lensing

This is the interesting part.

Massive bodies, like stars, focus light in much the same way as a lens. This effect can be exploited in existing telescopes by looking at distant objects behind massive bodies, this is useful but it doesn't allow us a choice of what we are looking at, we can only look at things along the proper line of sight with the massive body we point our telescope at.

Here comes the however: if we can get sufficiently far away from the sun, we can use our own sun as a gravitational lens. We could then point our telescope at whatever interesting objects we choose, for example, we could observe nearby star systems where we have detected planets using indirect methods such as Doppler spectroscopy - then we could image those planets directly using our sun's gravity to massively increase the magnification!

What is the catch, you ask? Well, in order to actually make use of the sun as a gravitional lens, we need to reach ~550 AU, that's about 1/115th (~0.87%) of a light year. The actual distance will, as usual, be scaled to Kerbal distance scales, meaning that you need to reach 550x Kerbin's orbit radius (or 80x Eeloo's orbital radius).

If we can send out a ship to this enormous distance containing an IR telescope and either a science lab or an upgraded AGI core: we can conduct a new planet-observation activity, which will be largest science/day producing activity you can perform.

Now, this mission is, of course, using the alcubierre drive relatively easy but the alcubierre drive is one of the last techs to become available - if you can somehow complete this mission before getting it, you will accelerate your technological progress considerably. Without it, completing the mission within 5 years of ingame time requires about 95km/s of delta-v, so is certainly possible given sufficiently high standards of engineering. The challenge is set!

Telescope in action

I made the telescope model myself, it looks reasonable but I'll happy replace it if someone can provide a better one.

[BigD145]

Spitzer or Hubble would look good. They would also be challenging to get up and placed because of their dimensions and limited attachment point.

3D models at the bottom http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/explore/24-models

[fritobandito]

Can't wait!

95km/s Dv will not come easily