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

[ss8913]

Is there a tutorial somewhere on how to use the thermal rockets and plasma engines? I can't seem to get them to do anything *useful*, and by useful I mean produce enough thrust to get anywhere, even in a vacuum, without weighing so much (nuclear reactors) that they don't have enough thrust to leave orbit. Is there a basic 'if you want to use one of these engines, attach X, Y, and Z in <this> order' tutorial somewhere? I'm sure I can take it from there. Great job on this mod, btw, can't wait to unlock the rest of it

[R4inator]

My game crashes when it loads this file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\WarpPlugin\Spaces\sci\internal.cfg

Help, please?

[BigD145]

Is there a tutorial somewhere on how to use the thermal rockets and plasma engines? I can't seem to get them to do anything *useful*, and by useful I mean produce enough thrust to get anywhere, even in a vacuum, without weighing so much (nuclear reactors) that they don't have enough thrust to leave orbit. Is there a basic 'if you want to use one of these engines, attach X, Y, and Z in <this> order' tutorial somewhere? I'm sure I can take it from there. Great job on this mod, btw, can't wait to unlock the rest of it

You have to upgrade reactors to get anything useful in vacuum.

[AndreyATGB]

For anyone wanting to build solar microwave transmitters, get your Vista engine and pack a lot of panels.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I think I will build a rather large, foldable circular satellite of some sort. I would like to achieve 1GW with the sats.

[Donziboy2]

For anyone wanting to build solar microwave transmitters, get your Vista engine and pack a lot of panels.

http://imgur.com/a/eICNW

I think I will build a rather large, foldable circular satellite of some sort. I would like to achieve 1GW with the sats.

I was planing to do something similar with Kosmos Balka panels, but I found that I had to be so close to the sun that it was not realistic.

Before assembly...

Assembled and ready to leave, it had over 20k Dv. Had 18x 200ec panels.

[AndreyATGB]

I was planing to do something similar with Kosmos Balka panels, but I found that I had to be so close to the sun that it was not realistic.

Before assembly...

Assembled and ready to leave, it had over 20k Dv. Had 18x 200ec panels.

I just finished testing in the VAB and launch pad and I'll need about 70 stock gigantor panels to get 1GW at 200 000km. The lightest I managed was a huge square clocking in at 55t. There are several problems with this solution as I'm using FAR, the only way I can get such a huge thing in orbit is with hinges but folding it is impossible without struts. Overall I really don't think it's worth it at all. The work it'll take to get it working is not worth the power output. Even getting 1GW with one sat, assuming I'll put up 5 or so that means maybe 2 or so GW available to receivers. Comparing that to my power station currently in use which gets 24GW makes the panels look stupidly weak.

Nice assembly you got there BTW.

Edited January 26, 2014 by AndreyATGB

[AngelLestat]

I like all these stuff:

Experimental Electrics

Electric Generator: Brayton Turbine → KTEC Thermoelectric (better efficiency)

Heat Radiator: Mo Li Heat Pipe → Graphene Radiator (better efficiency)

Microwave Power Transceivers.

But I dont want install all the other things.. I am in trouble dont you?

There is not plan to make solar sails or beamed propulsion?

[merendel]

You have to upgrade reactors to get anything useful in vacuum.

For the plasma's sure, thermals are another mater however. I've been useing unupgraded 3.75 nukes with a thermal rocket on the back as a mun base lander. Its the nuke/generator combo with a rocket on the botem, 4 science labs with landing legs attached to girders along with a pair of 2.5m pure liquid tanks from KW. Also has a couple docking ports and the required radiators to keep the thing from overheating. It can land and take off from the mun easy and I could probably do the same from duna although I might need to use either Th4 or LFO for the liftoff. Its not all that much better than a LV-N cluster really but it looks damn cool landing that behemoth. I'm actualy thinking of lobing one of those with some drop tanks at moho next window that comes along.

Prety much for thermal rockets if you dont have upgrades yet you need to use "Go big or go home" as your build mentality. its just not worth it otherwise and dont expect it to have a performance envolope much higher than LV-N's. the only way to do them light initialy is useing microwave power.

Plasma's you prety much have to use microwave early in the tech tree. Straping it directly to a nuke you may as well be useing ion drives for all the good it will do you as a launch system. Plasmas are amazing when you can shove enough power into them however.

[mdapol]

So I've figured out from reading this thread that I need to attach Intakes-Precooler-Reactor-Thermal Turbojet in that order for the pre-coolers to function. I've done that for my current design, but when I right-click on the precoolers in flight, it says "Precooler Status: Offline". What am I doing wrong?

[Lightwarrior]

Is there a tutorial somewhere on how to use the thermal rockets and plasma engines? I can't seem to get them to do anything *useful*, and by useful I mean produce enough thrust to get anywhere, even in a vacuum, without weighing so much (nuclear reactors) that they don't have enough thrust to leave orbit. Is there a basic 'if you want to use one of these engines, attach X, Y, and Z in <this> order' tutorial somewhere? I'm sure I can take it from there. Great job on this mod, btw, can't wait to unlock the rest of it

You will need either upgraded reactors/generators or microwave power transmission.

It is easy enough to use plasma engines with unupgraded reactors, even for LV-s, you just need 3 relay satelites in KSO and big power station on the ground near KSC.

[oktav]

thanks Atragon!

I'm not sure which mod is causing the module loading issues, but I figured out what was causing the magnetometer issues...

I had the crowd sourced science logs installed, which replaces the stock ScienceDefs.cfg file with another one. To make sure I could revert back to stock, I made a backup copy of the ScienceDefs.cfg file without changing the extension. It seems like ksp was trying to load both, which both shut down the magnetometer, and was the cause of some nasty spontaneous vessel disassembly issues I was having. Moving the backup copy out of the resources folder fixed the issues. (The part module issue is still there, but everything seems to work...)

[meatballcannon]

I'm sure somebody's brought this up, so I'm sorry. I'm having a problem where there are certain parts missing, even in sandbox.

These seem to include the aluminum hybrid engine, the microwave transmitters, and most of the odd containers for things like say, argon and stuff. If you have a fix, I'd appreciate it.

[Jivaii]

I'm sure somebody's brought this up, so I'm sorry. I'm having a problem where there are certain parts missing, even in sandbox.

These seem to include the aluminum hybrid engine, the microwave transmitters, and most of the odd containers for things like say, argon and stuff. If you have a fix, I'd appreciate it.

Have you tried to reinstall Interstellar?

[kalizec]

Hi there.

So far I'm enjoying KSP Interstellar. What I'm wondering about is the lack of 2,5m and larger fusion reactors.

I did find a post from about two months ago claiming they weren't included because the model doesn't look up to scratch when scaled to 2,5 or larger.

Is this true? Are there any other reasons/issues why 2,5 and 3,75 fusion reactors are missing?

[Kenken244]

2.5 meter and other fusion reactors are coming in the next version

[Aloriel]

So, I've decided I don't like the overheating jet engines aspect of the mod. I was pondering how to disable it.

I've noticed a file that seems to have the information I want, and some lines that might be it. I just wanted to confirm that I had the right lines of code.

@PART[turboFanEngine]

{

MODULE{

name = ModuleSabreHeating

}

}

If I delete these lines, and the lines like it for other jet engines (basically, the entire rapier.cfg file)... will this disable the engine overheating at high speed?

[Termaul]

So, I've decided I don't like the overheating jet engines aspect of the mod. I was pondering how to disable it.

I've noticed a file that seems to have the information I want, and some lines that might be it. I just wanted to confirm that I had the right lines of code.

@PART[turboFanEngine]

{

MODULE{

name = ModuleSabreHeating

}

}

If I delete these lines, and the lines like it for other jet engines (basically, the entire rapier.cfg file)... will this disable the engine overheating at high speed?

Thats what i did and it seem to have worked

[Aloriel]

Thanks. I'll give it a shot tomorrow after work.

[RadHazard]

Is there a tutorial somewhere on how to use the thermal rockets and plasma engines? I can't seem to get them to do anything *useful*, and by useful I mean produce enough thrust to get anywhere, even in a vacuum, without weighing so much (nuclear reactors) that they don't have enough thrust to leave orbit. Is there a basic 'if you want to use one of these engines, attach X, Y, and Z in <this> order' tutorial somewhere? I'm sure I can take it from there. Great job on this mod, btw, can't wait to unlock the rest of it

You have to upgrade reactors to get anything useful in vacuum.

This isn't quite true. The un-upgraded fission reactors CAN be used as thermal rockets, but you will need to use either the 2.5m or 3.75m reactor and use Thorium in order have an engine more effective than the stock LV-N.

The stock LV-N produces 60 KN of thrust and has an ISP of 800 s. It's base thrust-per-ton is 26.6667 KN/t.

The 3.75m reactor produces 849.77 KN of thrust at full power using thorium and liquid fuel. It weighs (when fully loaded with uranium) 43 tons + 3 tons for the thermal rocket. This gives it an effective TPT of 18.4733 KN/t and an ISP of 993 s. Assuming a rocket with the same engine mass (i.e. 1 3.75m thermal rocket or ~20 LV-Ns), you will have just under 70% the thrust but around 125% of the dV.

If you swap out liquid fuel for LFO, you get 3,144.15 KN of thrust with an ISP of 595.8 s. This gives you an effective TPT of 68.3511 KN/t. Compared to an equal weight of LV-Ns, this would give you 256% of the thrust, but you would only have 75% of the dV.

The 2.75m reactor isn't very useful with pure liquid fuel and thorium, as it has only 141.63 KN of thrust, with a weight of 14 t + 1.5 t for the thermal rocket. This gives it the same ISP of 993 s but a TPT of only 9.1374 KN/t. Compared to an equal weight of LV-Ns (~7 LV-Ns), you would have only 34% of the thrust and 125% of the dV.

Using LFO gives you 524.031 KN and again an ISP of 595.8 s. The TPT of this is 33.8085 KN/t. Compared to an equal weight of LV-Ns, you will get 127% the thrust but 75% of the dV. The only advantage of using the 2.75m reactor over the 3.75m is that it is smaller and thus more suitible for smaller interplanetary craft.

Overall, unupgraded fission thermal rockets are possible, but only advantagous when you are carrying very large payloads. I would recommend using them to build large interplanetary tugs.

As for plasma engines, those are a different beast entirely. Self-sufficient plasma engines are more-or-less useless until you get either fusion reactors or microwave-transmission. I recommend starting with this guide on the wiki, which assumes you have microwave transmission unlocked. If you chose to unlock fusion reactors before microwave transmission, I recommend using the 1.25m fusion reactor, the 67.5 cm plasma engine, and lithium for the fuel. Try that combination with a minimal payload (e.g. just the 1.25m capsule or something) and see how that works for you. It will work much better once you unlock upgraded generators (which are in the node after microwave transmission, I believe)

There is not plan to make solar sails or beamed propulsion?

Actually, Fractal_UK has a working solar sail. It'll be included in the next version. The post about it is here

[Lightwarrior]

The problem with this calculations is that you do not consider vessel dry mass/fuel mass ratio.

I tried to use 3.75 reactor and ended up with totally impractical amounts of fuel needed to be carried with it to have dV comparable to simple LV-n based designs. And without mainsail unlocked... i just gave up. Too many launches, orbital assembly, huge and heavy ship... and result will be similar to ~20-30T single launch LV-n based ship.

2.5 reactor is much more practical, but still seems to be needed only if you decided "i will not use LV-n's", otherwise LV-n based designs are much more flexible and easy.

[AngelLestat]

Actually, Fractal_UK has a working solar sail. It'll be included in the next version. The post about it is here

Thanks, that is good news for me.

I already offer to him any data that he maybe need about this.

About my second question, there is a way to install all insterstellar features about electrical power or heat mechanics without all the other props?

Someone try this?

Becouse I am already full of mods :S

[Boamere]

Everyone seems to think plasma engines are underpowered, but i have a massive power plant on the ground giving me around 15 GW of power and i can launch just about anything with xenon and it will have a a TWR of about 16, it's really good, I just haven't tested the thermal rockets yet

[Jivaii]

Everyone seems to think plasma engines are underpowered, but i have a massive power plant on the ground giving me around 15 GW of power and i can launch just about anything with xenon and it will have a a TWR of about 16, it's really good, I just haven't tested the thermal rockets yet

I'm recording a set of tutorials right now, and wow....I've learned alot myself from doing them, and it's insane how much you can actually get from it.

[Boamere]

I'm recording a set of tutorials right now, and wow....I've learned alot myself from doing them, and it's insane how much you can actually get from it.

XD yeah, who needs normal launch stages when you have plasma thrusters?!

Also.. I can't wait for the update

[kalizec]

I'm having trouble collecting antimatter.

I have a station in a circular and equatorial orbit around Kerbin (900km).

It has 16 AM-collector parts.

With focus it averages about 64 units of AM per day.

Without focus it doesn't produce any AM.

I read this was a bug that in november last year.

But I'm under the impression this bug was squashed...

Did I miss something?