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

[db48x]

Is there any benefit to building a station with the science lab and a computer core? Does it give more science?

Also why does Jool give more science per day then moho? I have the same exact station build at both, but the one at moho produces half the amount per day.

Thanks!

Jool is more sciencetastic.

[Defesan]

I have a couple problems with this mod, please let me know if you can help:

1. The laboratory doesn't have an option to send science back. For some reason there just isn't an option, and it doesn't tell me how much science i have collected at all. I have both kerbals inside and a satellite transmitter and lots of power. Still, nothing.

2. I can't connect satellites via anything! The receivers don't give an option to connect or anything. I set up two different ones right next to each other, turned both on, ad still nothing happens.

3. I can't access the science tree to upgrade parts, i dont know where to find it.

I haven't really worked with power transmission, so I don't know how much help i can be with 2(unless you're talking about antennas, in which case you're looking for RemoteTech), but here's some help with 1 and 3.

1 - Like BigD145 said, the labs don't work like that. They transmit science at the rate they generate it when they're focused. When they aren't, they still generate science, but it gets sent back in one big chunk when you focus on the lab again. I think. Edit: Turns out, when you switch to a vessel with a science lab, a message pops up saying how much science was transferred. I did not know that.

3 - There's no specific tree for upgrading parts, they get upgraded at the nodes in the science tree specified in the first post in this thread(there's a picture...not sure if it's up to date). Unfortunately, there's no indication in the science center of which techs upgrade which parts. The computer core and alcubierre drives are upgraded on a per-part basis. You have to have enough science to upgrade them, but then you just right click on them and click on the upgrade button. If you can't access the science center, you're playing in Sandbox, and everything is unlocked and upgraded(again, other than the computer core and warp drive).

Edited January 14, 2014 by Defesan

[Fractal_UK]

Solar Sails

Solar sails, for those who don't know, are essentially just huge, light, reflective surfaces attached to a spaceship which reflect light from the sun in order to produce thrust via the light-pressure imparted on the solar sails. These are of interest in space travel because they require no fuel and no energy other than that required to point the sail in the proper direction. The downside of solar sails is that the thrust is minimum (0.08µN/m^2), thus very large sails are required to produce useable thrusts.

My interest in solar sails in KSP started when Honey Fox sent me some code after producing some initial work on solar sails, the problem, as it so often is in KSP, was that solar sails didn't really work because you can't timewarp fast enough for their tiny thrusts to actually do anything without the player waiting for days or weeks. I was fairly certain I could solve this particular problem by making the solar sails work at normal time acceleration (i.e. up to 100,000x) but development stopped at a half-finished state because I decided to work on other things and I had no suitable models anyway.

All of that changed a week or two ago when SasquatchM posted a topic on the development boards about a solar sail part he had made and requested some plugin code to control it. I pointed him toward the half-finished solar sail module found in Interstellar, I subsequently finished the work on this Module and indeed it now works properly during both physical and non-physical time acceleration. Subsequently, SasquatchM has generously allowed me to make use of his model for Interstellar.

Initially, the sail will be purely solar powered - under those conditions it operates rather nicely up to about Kerbin's orbit and adequately out to Duna's orbit, it's brilliant for inner solar system missions - indeed I imagine it becoming a top method of propulsion for Moho and Low Kerbol transfers particularly, since these misisons have very high delta-v requirements. We do, however, have future plans for a laser part, which sort of like like the microwave arrays, could be used to beam power into the sail and permit higher thrust operation at far greater distances and making the sail far more versatile!

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[Shad0wCatcher]

Holy crap that's a lot of material for a tiny probe. So much for my miniaturization plans >.> lol. Looking great though Fractal; should be interesting to see how it turns out.

[RussPixie]

So, laser powered sails, anti matter engines, ISRU... Avatar's ISV Venture Star anyone http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php

It's a real pity we don't have actual interstellar distances to travel. I still might try and build one anyway

Russ

[Shad0wCatcher]

Hopefully this isn't considered a double post; but I just remembered something. I'm not sure if it's on Interstellar's end Fractal as I'm using Real Fuels; but the thrust limiter in the VAB right-click menu with the D-T Vista Inertial engine consumes the same amount of fuel no matter the thrust limited setting; I just ran into that issue with my latest Duna trip (3.5kM dV to 6800ish @ a limited 54.5% throttle is what it should have been; however it ate fuel at a much faster rate than that; ended up with under 2kM dV going out). Again not sure who is at fault; if it's the D-T engine not respecting ISP changes due to thrust limitation or if that's a "feature" or if it's the RF fuel settings not respecting reduced fuel usage.

[Jivaii]

If no one minds me asking, what would be the best choice to use for swapping fuels around. As in, taking one of the LFO adapters from B9 and swapping for methane?

[mossman]

Solar Sails

Could you please go into detail about how non-physical timewarp acceleration is working?

[not-a-cylon]

I'm trying to understand how the thermal turbojets work... correct me if I'm wrong.

I notice that the higher I go, the lower the thrust output becomes. However, if I go faster more intake air will feed the jets and restore thrust. Is this correct?

Also, is there an speed limit on the jets? I'd like to know the maximum speed before switching propellants. I know the B9 sabres will lose thrust at 1600 m/s.

I'm trying to plan my Eve SSTO

[Domfluff]

Solar sails!

[Umlüx]

So, laser powered sails, anti matter engines, ISRU... Avatar's ISV Venture Star anyone http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php

It's a real pity we don't have actual interstellar distances to travel. I still might try and build one anyway

Russ

aawww yes! it would be cool to build the venture star with those sails

i think the welding mod would be a MUST for the truss section.

[Genhellfire]

Long time lurker here.

On the solar sails I thought it was amusing that it would take 125,000,000,000 m² or 12.5 Million km² just to get one measly ton of force, For reference the Earth's total surface area is 510,072,000 km² so it would be 2.45% of that.

Assuming that it is carbon nanotubes with a weave tighter then half the wavelength of the light hitting it at 0.1 gram/m² your looking at 12,500 tons of carbon and a acceleration of a maximum of 0.00008 G's your payload will not be significant if its anything less than 125 tons.

The power potential for a surface that large is immense, at 1.321 KW/m² in earth orbit you end up with 165.125 Terrawatts of power potential for reference mankind's total power usage as of 2012 (everything including the plankton that feed our fish we eat.) was 4700 TW in other words our solar sail could provide for 3.5% of the worlds needs.

@FractalUK is there any chance of a Statite like functionality being possible with this module?

[TomatoSoup]

Could you please go into detail about how non-physical timewarp acceleration is working?

This is my suspicion: When you go on rails normally, the game puts you on rails and moves you according to Kepler's orbital parameters. When you stop being on rails the game dumps you back into normal space and applies normal physics. I'd imagine that this is directly editing the orbital parameters (either by very clever math or by briefly converting to XYZ position and velocity, editing those, and then converting back).

[RadHazard]

I'm trying to understand how the thermal turbojets work... correct me if I'm wrong.

I notice that the higher I go, the lower the thrust output becomes. However, if I go faster more intake air will feed the jets and restore thrust. Is this correct?

Also, is there an speed limit on the jets? I'd like to know the maximum speed before switching propellants. I know the B9 sabres will lose thrust at 1600 m/s.

I'm trying to plan my Eve SSTO

The higher you go, the greater your ISP becomes. This means at first, you will notice your thrust increasing as you climb (since KSPI engines' thrust is dependent on ISP). Once you hit a point where your intakes produce less air than your engine(s) can consume, your thrust will decrease. Going faster will give you more intake air to somewhat counteract this. I don't know the exact formulas off the top of my head, but you can see the amount of intake atmosphere intakes produce by right-clicking them, and you can check the power level of the reactor to see if you are utilizing it fully.

[Fractal_UK]

This is my suspicion: When you go on rails normally, the game puts you on rails and moves you according to Kepler's orbital parameters. When you stop being on rails the game dumps you back into normal space and applies normal physics. I'd imagine that this is directly editing the orbital parameters (either by very clever math or by briefly converting to XYZ position and velocity, editing those, and then converting back).

That's correct, when off the rails the game applies forces to the ship, adjusts your orbit "physically" by the force the planet's gravity acting on the ship, thus engines can function simply in the same way, by applying thrust to the ship as you'd expect. When on the rails, the game has the ship following an exact Keplerian orbit. Instead of the craft sitting on this same orbit with only the time parameter changing each frame, I update the characteristics of the orbit to account for the change in momentum produced by the solar sails - you will therefore see your apoapsis/periapsis/inclination changing in real time as you time accelerate.

[mossman]

I'd think that solar sails nix the lasers would be of limited usefulness as they'd only be able to accelerate you radial outwards from the sun, right?

Also, you surely are going to adapt this on-rails acceleration for ion engines etc, yes?

[Fractal_UK]

I'd think that solar sails nix the lasers would be of limited usefulness as they'd only be able to accelerate you radial outwards from the sun, right?

Nope, you can lower or raise your orbit by orienting your sail at 45 degrees to the sun so you could use them to fly into the sun if you so wished. You can't "burn" radially toward the sun but radial burns are pretty rare anyway. All other directions are possible by orienting the sail properly.

Also, you surely are going to adapt this on-rails acceleration for ion engines etc, yes?

Maybe but it's difficult to do because I have to write a totally new engine module that does everything the engines in the stock game can do, I can't reuse any base KSP code. Call it a long term objective, I'd really like to do it because it'd be literally a game-changer.

[Lightwarrior]

And how about those things which are possible only with physics working like asymmetric thrust etc? If they are just ignored (and it seems so) there will be lots of ways to exploit it and create unrealistic/impossible crafts. It may be not a big problem for solar sails because of their limitations, but for other engines...

Edited January 14, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[Jivaii]

A long shot, but has anyone gotten a CFG together for Modular Fuel systems for KSPI?

Another question is the percentages for the methane engine since I'm attempting to put together a CFG for myself to use B9 tanks with the KSPI engines.

[Ogamaga]

Hey Fractal, just making sure you noticed my last post. Post 5410 I think, it was about the modulemanager configs you included. If you'd like me to fix them up and send them to you, just let me know.

[Shad0wCatcher]

MFS or Real Fuels Jivaii? If Real Fuels then yes, links are in the second post on the first page. If MFS no; but any other engine config will work. 45% Liquid Fuel to 55% Oxidizer. Otherwise you can run 100% Liquid Fuel. If you're looking for something exotic like adding Argon I wouldn't recommend it at stock KSPI values as the tank mass becomes excessive (200+ tons of argon in a smaller 2.5 meter tank excessive).

[Jivaii]

MFS or Real Fuels Jivaii? If Real Fuels then yes, links are in the second post on the first page. If MFS no; but any other engine config will work. 45% Liquid Fuel to 55% Oxidizer. Otherwise you can run 100% Liquid Fuel. If you're looking for something exotic like adding Argon I wouldn't recommend it at stock KSPI values as the tank mass becomes excessive (200+ tons of argon in a smaller 2.5 meter tank excessive).

Using MFS, and trying to exchange the liquid fuel for liquid methane. Going off one of the pre-existing methane tanks I got a 43.7% liquid methane and 56.3% Oxidizer.

[Fractal_UK]

Hey Fractal, just making sure you noticed my last post. Post 5410 I think, it was about the modulemanager configs you included. If you'd like me to fix them up and send them to you, just let me know.

Oh, yes I did, I altered the MM configs for the next release as you suggested. The configs seem to work fine for me without the change but I certainly intended to do it the way you proposed anyway.

[InfinityArch]

@Fractal: Wait, do you seriously have some sort of on rails acceleration working? That solves basically every issue with implementing low thrust engines in KSP and for accelerations to high fractions of light speed for high fraction of light speed interstellar travel.

Hell, even with pre-warp KSPI tech, you could get delta-v's on the order of about 10% of light speed with the fusion engine at low throttle and at a mass ratio of 10, which would entail a interstellar travel speed of 2.5% of c for a manned interstellar voyage or return probe, 5% of c for a probe intended to actually land somewhere, and 10% of c for a flyby.

At kerbal scales (1/11 of real life), a flyby to a hypothetical Alpha Centurai analogue would take just over 3 Earth years discounting the acceleration period (which would probably be on the order of several months I grant you), a probe that needs to slow down would get there is about 6 years, and a manned mission would take 12 years each way, which is completely feasible for someone to wait through with 1,000,000x time acceleration.

Really the limiting factor on interstellar travel in KSP has always been the insane acceleration periods required to reach suitable velocities, and from the sounds of things your well on the way to solving that. Great job man!

Also, is there any chance this "on rails" acceleration could be used to simulate orbital perturbations and/or exoatmospheric drag? Maybe even an alternate means of simulating N-body interactions by guesstimating the perturbations that would occur from such interactions based on the orbit's characteristics compared to the universal time (which can be used to extrapolate the relative positions of any celestial bodies in the kerbin system), and applying them in the same manner. Granted I have no idea whether that's even possible to do given how many calculations this would add to mantaining "on rails" objects positions, or whether it would be accurate enough to provide a reasonable approximation of actual multi-body dynamics, but I would really like to think it would work, given that pretty much everything else Squad said was impossible to do for technical reasons (multiplayer is the big one) has been accomplished by mods.

In fact, if this solution could be shown to work, I'd hope Squad would adopt it for the vanilla game and implement "true" n-body physics when the simulation is off rails, given that the "on rails" part was the limiting factor.

Edited January 14, 2014 by InfinityArch

[Neoxan]

Fractal, First of all, great mod, one of the best mods ive ever seen, Scott Manley picked you for a good reason, but as everything, its not perfect, I want to report a bug that has caused me a lot of nightmares.

Sabre engines are quite bugged, when you enter rocket mode, the mod does not detect that and they keep overheating, even in space!!! to overide that, you of course need to put the precoolers and they just work fine but the air intakes need to stay open and as i said, even outside the atmosphere, rapier engines work ok in rocket mode but please, can you plz fix the sabres?, sometimes i dont put precoolers cause i use the rocket mode to climb up faster and the bug is really easy to fix, just include the sabre engine rocket mode as a rocket engine so the mod can overide the heating while the engine is at high speeds when in rocket mode.

Thank you and keep the good work, youre amazing.