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

[Lightwarrior]

Hey, I can't understand the point of the 62.5 cm thermal rocket engine, the weight of the reactor plus fuel far outweighs the use of it, also I think it would be better if there was a 62.5 cm thermal receiver, because the you wouldn't need the weight of the reactor.

(I want the 62.5cm to run well because I'm launching a mini rockets )

It makes awesome probes with 0.625m fusion reactors and few stock toroidal fuel tanks. With insane dV, reasonable TWR (~1-2T weight, ~7KN thrust) and plenty of power for additional equipment like RT antenas.

And same with plasma thruster BTW, but with lower thrust and higher ISP.

Edited January 20, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[Slow Dog]

Why doesn't energy usage of the Fusion Engine appear on the Power Management Display?

//Edit I've just seen a post on the previous page that implies the Fusion Engine doesn't draw power because of a bug.

Edited January 20, 2014 by Slow Dog

[Vaporlynx]

Fractal, check your pms. It says your inbox is full.

[Die4Fun]

Hey guys I posted earlier and perhaps you missed it. Does the Deinonychus engine (the one that uses liquid methane) has thrust vectoring? Because even though the engine info says 1.00 for thrust vectoring range, I get none when flying my rockets. Thank you!

[Eeke]

Relay mode doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. When a transceiver is set to relay mode, it acts as a mirror for microwave transmissions, meaning it just bounces incoming transmissions. It doesn't receive or transmit any power of it's own.

Can I ask what you're specifically trying to do? In most cases, it should be possible to just have a single transceiver and swap it between receive, transmit, and relay mode as necessary.

I actually did take a look at the guide and the wiki. While they're great resources they don't seem very clear on either of these specific setups. I could do a test with two objects but I thought I'd ask here in case someone knew the answer offhand.

Specifically I'd like to set up a Com-sat network(via Remotetech2) with each com able to also relay power.

The com part is irrelevant, but the issue is just I'm not sure if I need two transceivers or not. I'd like to just turn them on, set them to some setting then be hands off and trust they do what they need to do.

Here's the general plan:

1) Launch some large power generating arrays in some sort of orbit (probably 1/2 dozen into elliptic) around the sun.

2) Have any of those arrays be capable of transmitting/relaying power generated to satellites/objects around Kerbin.

3) Use this power to reduce the mass of other satellite launches to other celestial bodies.

I've thought of using Nucelar power but I don't have the tech to do it efficiently yet and am not interested in launching them again and again then redoing their orbits as they slowly run out of fuel. I considered synchronous orbits but no matter how precise I try to do it I eventually get drift, so I'll overcompensate with some elliptical orbits and call it a day.

So...

Now I have a Satellite generating power, it needs to:

1) Transmit power to other satellites

2) Take power from other satellites and relay it to other satellites and add it's own with it.

3) Do 1-2 without any input from me after toggling the appropriate initial setting.

That's why I asked if I needed two transceivers or if I could just do it with one.

EDIT: As an addendum, I notice that 1MW = 1k e-charge/s. So... it takes like.. 167 thousand Gigantor Solar Panels to equal 1 3.75M Reactor?

Thanks in advance

Edited January 21, 2014 by Eeke

[SpaceGremlin]

Is it possible to remove the engine overheating/precooler feature by deleting the module manager configs for those parts?

[taigan242]

Is it possible to remove the engine overheating/precooler feature by deleting the module manager configs for those parts?

I am also curious about this, it has broken large b9 space planes. It seems that overheating is attached to how fast you're going regardless if your in the atmosphere or not. In fact going retrograde at full throttle decreases overheat dramatically whilst going forward at the limit even with 1% thrust will blow those things up.

[db48x]

So...

Now I have a Satellite generating power, it needs to:

1) Transmit power to other satellites

2) Take power from other satellites and relay it to other satellites and add it's own with it.

3) Do 1-2 without any input from me after toggling the appropriate initial setting.

Usually people use two different kinds of satellites, instead of combining them. Type A generates power, type B is cheaper and lighter and just relays it.

I'm about to embark on a similar mission in my own game. I'm going to send some satellites with solar panels down into low Kerbol orbit. These can beam power to any ship in the system, with the obvious caveat that they can't reach the ones on the dark side of a planet. To solve that I'll put three relays up in Kerbin orbit, about 700km up. If you're worried about your power sats going behind the sun, you can of course put a trio of relays in Kerbol orbit as well.

EDIT: As an addendum, I notice that 1MW = 1k e-charge/s. So... it takes like.. 167 thousand Gigantor Solar Panels to equal 1 3.75M Reactor?

Sounds about right, but remember that the closer to the sun you are the more power a single panel can collect. See Inverse-Square Law.

[HGGundamReviews]

Is there any known issues with this mod causing KSP to not fully load do to a conflict with other mods?

[db48x]

Is there any known issues with this mod causing KSP to not fully load do to a conflict with other mods?

No, but installing it incorrectly is known to have caused a wide variety of interesting issues.

[ATuinhek]

Hi there. Let me start by thanking all involved for the great work creating this mod!

I have a question regarding the cooling of a large 3.75m reactor in orbit. I created a power station in career mode containing the reactor, a matching generator and a microwave transmitter. The problem I'm having is waste heat. At the moment I have something like 22 huge radiators attached, but heat is still building up at +- 760 units each second. Adding the last 8 radiators only dropped this amount by 80 units. The documentation states that 10 huge radiators should be enough for the reactor. Am I missing something? I'll check if the parts are upgraded or not later today.

[Patupi]

Bear in mind that the radiators are innefficient until their temp rises. As you get higher waste heat they'll radiate more. Since I haven't used the 3.75m since the 9.x update I'm not certain of the precise numbers, but it should stabilize at high waste heat values.

[Boamere]

It makes awesome probes with 0.625m fusion reactors and few stock toroidal fuel tanks. With insane dV, reasonable TWR (~1-2T weight, ~7KN thrust) and plenty of power for additional equipment like RT antenas.

And same with plasma thruster BTW, but with lower thrust and higher ISP.

oooh, I don't have fusion reactors yet, only nuclear, I guess I'll have to wait

[Shad0wCatcher]

Basically; the upgraded 0.625 Nuke Reactor is great for long duration power needs; not much else however (works VERY well with the Near Future Propulsion engines). The Fusion Engines are better for KSPI powered probes.

[kiwiak]

Will we have some support for engineer redux/mechjeb for thermal nozzles and plasma thrusters in VAB?

[Boamere]

Basically; the upgraded 0.625 Nuke Reactor is great for long duration power needs; not much else however (works VERY well with the Near Future Propulsion engines). The Fusion Engines are better for KSPI powered probes.

Yeah i know, i'm using near future, but using interstellar electric charge feels cheaty

[CreepyD]

Question.. I have a solar powered microwave transmitting ship, complete with 24 Gigantors and the large transceiver.

However I put it into operation too soon, and before I've completed my orbit adjustment (I wanted it just inside Eve's orbit), I'm out of Electric Charge even with all panels open and facing the sun.

Problem is the transmitter takes all of it no matter how much is produced, so I can't do ANYTHING, power engines, stop transmitter etc.. The ship is dead, despite it transmitting almost 1MW at it's closest approach.

Any way around this?

Could I change the part in a cfg file to use 99% of the input power maybe rather than every last drop? (doesn't look like it from looking myself).

Less good but working around the issue, I guess I could edit the save file to close it, but would rather a better solution as above.

Edit:

Ok solved it myself in the end.

1. I edited my save file to disable to the transmitter

2. Back in game I completed my orbital transfer

3. Found I couldn't enable the transmitter - edited the save to re-enable it.

4. MOST IMPORTANT! I turned "off" the batteries (the little button to the right of the bar showing charge) - It wont then use up any power in those batteries, but will keep transmitting power

Edited January 21, 2014 by CreepyD

[Konnor]

Not sure what exactly I did here, but the general idea was to build a spacecraft "as versatile as it gets". Well, maybe "versatile" isn't the right word, the point is it can take off, achieve an orbit and then go interstellar interplanetary, on its own, with some cargo, no refueling needed. I'll probably fiddle with it more, it is obvious for now that oxidizer is the most precious resource, so it would make sense to change one fuel tank to LFO. But it seems SABRE and fusion-powered turbojets work rather nicely together.

It is also complicated as hell, with three engines and their different modes. Even engineer freaks out, basing its stats on the SABRE engine which is currently inactive so Isp should be around 5k (upgraded fusion reactors, thermal turbojets in liquid fuel mode) and DeltaV much, much more.

[Shad0wCatcher]

Looking fairly solid Konnor. Now try with Real Fuels . (LH2 + LOX makes for a PAINFUL experience when trying to produce a ton of DV lol). I've been trying to work on the same sort of thing using the HL fuselage setup for a larger cargo area.

[AndreyATGB]

If anyone's doubting relays for microwaves, they don't display anything but they work just fine. I just finished my initial test.

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Question, do later tech level receivers get more power or is the difference from distance?

Edited January 21, 2014 by AndreyATGB

[Sevio]

Ok, I hate to be one of those guys that only posts when something free isn't working right, however I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of performance from Thermal Turbojets. Irregardless of how many intakes I put on a craft both the 1.25m and 2.5m Thermal Turbojets (Coupled to an upgraded Aegletes II reactor in career mode) suffer from a severe thrust drop at roughly 15,000m. It also seems as though the Intake Atm resource and Intake Air resource do not scale appropriately with Intake Atm often running short far before Intake Air. Using FAR I can even confirm that the engines are getting enough air in Intake Air mode. Even though the engine is being provided with 113% the amount of air it needs to operate at full power it still starts to lose thrust as though its being starved of atmosphere.

If I swap out the crafts twin 2.5m Thermal Turbojets with a total of eight stock KSP TurboJet engines, leaving the reactors with the same amount of air intakes I can get well over 30,000m before needing to use an alternate propulsion method as the engines become oxygen starved. What gives!?!

I have been hammering at the nuclear-powered SSTO challenge myself, as Fractal said it's been quite the engineering challenge to even design one that can get into orbit. However today I seem to have finally hit a sweet spot. I present to you the Seraph Surface-to-orbit Shuttle:

The Seraph without cargo weighs 21.075 tons, can operate in any atmosphere due to being purely fusion-powered and for its test flight carried a cargo of 10.8375 tons into LKO, consisting of a large metal can plus 2.4 tons of useless oxidizer.

Other mods used: B9, Modular Fuel Tanks, Extraplanetary Launchpads (heavy metal cargo can), Mechjeb (only for statistics)

I used some part clipping to make the thing look somewhat aesthetic. Key elements are:

• Works in any atmosphere!
  
• 4 upgraded fusion reactors with 1.25m direct conversion generators. The middle ones are clipped into their generators to keep engine section from sticking out too far behind.
  
• Sabre M intake + 3 supersonic inlets on each side. Although the Sabre Ms are technically attached to the precoolers (the adapter behind it is just there for show), the supersonic inlets mounted radially on the precooler don't seem to benefit from its effect and thus the engines will still show some overheating. Take care not to activate your engines in airbreathing mode when reentering at high speed!
  
• Plasma Thruster in the middle to squeeze more thrust out of the fusion reactors after switching away from airbreathing mode mode for the burn to orbit. Both Xenon and Argon are suitable for this stage, go for Xenon if you are worried you won't have enough thrust to get out of the atmosphere quickly.
  
• Modular Fuel Tanks: Thanks to MFT, the twin engine mount at the back can contain some monopropellant for docking, plus the LFO needed for the burn to orbit and rendez-vous maneuvers. The middle LFO tank contains either 54 Argon or 4480 Xenon for the plasma thruster, and 480 units of (cargo) oxidizer but could also be used to transport kethane or other fuels.
  
• Small 2m cargo bay: It's not very useful for actually deploying space probes due to its small size and the wing above blocking part of the bay. However it has 2 internal attachment points that can be used to attach cargo containers in line with the Center of Mass such as metal cans. The 8t metal can clipping through the craft hasn't been a problem on my multiple test flights. This makes it useful for transporting various resources between surface and orbit.
  
• Secondary cockpit has room for 2 passengers
  

Ascent strategy: Climb up to 10 km on the Thermal Turbojets, begin leveling out once engine thrust starts to rise more slowly. At around 12-13 km their thrust will be optimal, so try to squeeze as much speed as possible out of this stage while climbing very slowly to 950-1000 m/s at 20km.

Once there thrust will start dropping sharply, so pitch up to about 30 degrees, switch 2 of your engines over to LFO mode and activate the plasma thruster, while the other 2 turbojets continue to squeeze more thrust out of their now doubled intakeatm. Once the remaining airbreathing turbojets' thrust drops below that of your LFO thrusters (you should be at 30 km now), switch them over as well, turn off your intakes and pitch up to 45 degrees for the burn to orbit. Once you break 50 km altitude you can lean down and simply point prograde until you reach your desired Ap. Depending on execution, there should be around 600 - 1200 delta-V left after circularizing at 80km.

Some notes on construction: If you're not using Modular Fueltanks, you will probably have to get creative to avoid bringing too much dead weight with you. You'll have to use Xenon for the plasma thruster (the only argon container is far too big and heavy for a spaceplane), or alternatively you can leave out the plasma thruster entirely, replace the 1.25m generators with 62.5 cm ones and add some more LFO, but this will have slightly lower total thrust at the critical burn to orbit stage.

If someone would like the .craft file to give it a try, let me know and I'll put it up somewhere for download.

I hope this writeup helps some of you out with your interstellar spaceplane efforts! Happy flying!

Edited January 21, 2014 by Sevio
Forgot to mention it works in any atmosphere

[Eeke]

Usually people use two different kinds of satellites, instead of combining them. Type A generates power, type B is cheaper and lighter and just relays it.

I'm about to embark on a similar mission in my own game. I'm going to send some satellites with solar panels down into low Kerbol orbit. These can beam power to any ship in the system, with the obvious caveat that they can't reach the ones on the dark side of a planet. To solve that I'll put three relays up in Kerbin orbit, about 700km up. If you're worried about your power sats going behind the sun, you can of course put a trio of relays in Kerbol orbit as well.

Sounds about right, but remember that the closer to the sun you are the more power a single panel can collect. See Inverse-Square Law.

Yes I do actually plan to have 2 different satellite types for a microwave array. That being said I also need one that generates power, transmits, and relays because those are my power generators and I want those to be able to relay through each other.

So... do I have to use 2 transceivers, or can I get away w/ 1 on relay?

Edited January 21, 2014 by Eeke

[LFC908]

Recently downloaded this mod and I love it! However I had some questions regarding the fission reactors. I'm using the 2.5m?reactor and same size generator. I am also using 4 medium sized radiator panels, now my reactor has the waste heat bar full and is outputting at 30%. I'm only using 5MW at the moment. How do I increase the output from 30%?

[rosenkranz]

30% is the minimum output. you don't have anything drawing more power than that. The reactor auto-adjusts to power needs.

[Shad0wCatcher]

@Fractal: Just finished testing some stuff with NathanKell. Having some serious issues with the precoolers, SABREs, and DRE. Specifically running a set of non-precooled engines and a set of precooled engines causes massive overheating on all the engines with the precooler code. Whether shutdown or not the engines will handily explode spectacularly when in the upper atmosphere. To quote myself from the DRE thread.

"What I meant by heat dissipation is that the engines never cooled down internally(?) I guess is the appropriate word. They would show nominal temps after cutting throttle (cooling down like engines should in the right-click display) but as soon as throttle was applied again they immediately went back to the temperature they were prior to throttle being reduced. In my case that was kersplosion temperatures."

I believe the issue is twofold 1) The maxtemps are being set too high (original values) and DRE is dropping them down to 1500 from the original 3600 and 2) The heat production values are being overwritten from the DRE values to the original values (again much too high to function with DRE's increased heating scale).

I'm not sure how difficult it'd be to expose those settings to be tweaked, but I believe it'd go a long way toward making this play nicely in the realm of SSTOs. In the interim I've disabled the sabre heating module in the b9_aero.cfg in the hopes that it fixes the overheating issues I've been running into while using this with DRE.

I'll report back once I've done some testing to ensure that it solves the issue I've been running into while running both mods.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Shad0wCatcher