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

[mdapol]

You can use any stock or modded stackable intakes, the b9 sabre intakes are the most appropriate.

I meant that I'm forced to use inline intakes in all spaceplane designs. Come on. Surely you can see that that _can't_ be the only valid design. In "real life", couldn't someone design a spaceplane where surface-mounted intakes attach to intercoolers "somewhere" so you can do the whole thing like a lifting body design? I'm thinking something like the XR2 or XR5 in Orbiter.

If it works for real life, why not allow at least _some_ of the radial intakes to have that capability? Maybe they have to be at a higher tech node or something? Or are you saying that no designs like that are valid in the real world? (hypothetically of course)

[Jivaii]

I meant that I'm forced to use inline intakes in all spaceplane designs. Come on. Surely you can see that that _can't_ be the only valid design. In "real life", couldn't someone design a spaceplane where surface-mounted intakes attach to intercoolers "somewhere" so you can do the whole thing like a lifting body design? I'm thinking something like the XR2 or XR5 in Orbiter.

If it works for real life, why not allow at least _some_ of the radial intakes to have that capability? Maybe they have to be at a higher tech node or something? Or are you saying that no designs like that are valid in the real world? (hypothetically of course)

B9 has a radial tank that has an attachment node on the back of it.

[Railgunner2160]

Can someone give me a rundown of HOW to start and/or run a fusion reactor?? Been trying to get one to work, but no luck so far......

[Lightwarrior]

Can someone give me a rundown of HOW to start and/or run a fusion reactor?? Been trying to get one to work, but no luck so far......

You need some EC for it to start, for smaller ones ~1000 will be enough (just tweak generator to be full of EC in VAB), and for bigger ones you will need few batteries. To run continiously it will need generator to produce power required for reactor operation.

[Bignumbers]

Overall I must say I like the direction the mod is going but one very big gripe I have is with EVA maintenance on the reactors. Firstly there needs to be a progress indicator when doing things like swapping out fuel, and just how long is it supposed to take to refuel a reactor? I had a 3.75 nuke run out of UF4 on me in 90 days (bug?) and I waited 2 minutes after clicking refuel UF4 and it only filled up by .11/3.

Also could we get some means of automated reactor maintenance? I like putting the big reactors into orbit with a power transmitter to power the DT fusion engine but having to send up a crew every time the thing runs out of its 3 units of fuel would be very tedious. At the very least it would be nice to be able for reactors to pull fuel on their own from storage tanks.

Oh! one more thing, why don't lithium cells come with any lithium?

[merendel]

Also could we get some means of automated reactor maintenance? I like putting the big reactors into orbit with a power transmitter to power the DT fusion engine but having to send up a crew every time the thing runs out of its 3 units of fuel would be very tedious.

Some of us just get around this with a ground based powerplant approach instead of launching orbiting nukes. make a large rover in the SPH that consists of as many nuke/generator pairs as you want and either leave it there or drive it away from KSP so you dont lag launches. If the thing runs outa fuel you just recover it and send out a new one. you can actualy move the thing fairly fast if you use landing gear for the wheels and just strap some rockets on the back. The atmospheric power loss is offset by the fact that you can keep the effency of the generators maxed thanks to convection cooling keeping WH at 0 and the fact that you can easily send as many nukes out as you want.

[ModZero]

Some of us just get around this with a ground based powerplant approach instead of launching orbiting nukes. make a large rover in the SPH that consists of as many nuke/generator pairs as you want and either leave it there or drive it away from KSP so you dont lag launches. If the thing runs outa fuel you just recover it and send out a new one. you can actualy move the thing fairly fast if you use landing gear for the wheels and just strap some rockets on the back. The atmospheric power loss is offset by the fact that you can keep the effency of the generators maxed thanks to convection cooling keeping WH at 0 and the fact that you can easily send as many nukes out as you want.

The local branch of WWF would like to talk to you about that entire rare species of duck that you flash-fried.

[merendel]

The local branch of WWF would like to talk to you about that entire rare species of duck that you flash-fried.

Ah yes their concerns are of course very important to me. I'll have them shown to my office (conveniently located in front of the transmitter) and I'll be with them shortly to hear their grievances.

[TheTom]

Actually no. This is a part of a joint opeation with KFD - "Kerbal Fried Ducks", that the space mission is providing with a never ending supply of long lasting fresh meat

I would like to second Merendel's issue. It would be nice to have a nin-EVA approach possibly with a larger tank setup. In a radation power satellite setup it would be assumable that you would have some automated means to move fuel cells to and from the docked supply ship A robot loader system may be anice additional component to attach to a reactor - or an upgrade of the component.

[ModZero]

Actually no. This is a part of a joint opeation with KFD - "Kerbal Fried Ducks", that the space mission is providing with a never ending supply of long lasting fresh meat

Now with less Caesium-137â„¢!

[AeroEngy]

I just went ahead and removed the over heating module for now till some better intakes came out or pre coolers. I like the idea for pre-coolers just dont like how it limits my builds haha.

I tend to agree. I like the idea but don't like how the current pre-cooler models limit my designs. How exactly do you removed the over heating module/disable the pre-cooler requirement?

Or is there a way to add a precooling module to other parts? For example some of the fuselage sections especially in the larger b9 crafts could house an internal pre-cooler fed by radial intakes connected directly to it.

[ctbram]

Okay so how the hell does the new grav science work.

1. I put 6 stations on the mun at the four cardinal points and on each pole.

2. checked science it was at 820

3. I verified all the grav sensors were recording.

4. I took the deploy ship to max alt within mun soi 2300km it's weight around 20t and deorbited it. It impacted at 769 m/s.

I went back and checked my science and it was still 820. So WTH? How does the grav science work? What did I do wrong? Why am I getting NO science? Is there a log so I can check any of this?

[sidfu]

just so u know u not limited to the model. if u look around u could always find something that looks better then copy the .cfg parts over and boom new cooler. if u dont like something about a mod change it for yourself if u have no pateince or help the moder and make him a model for the part and give to him.

ctbran did u stay in control of the ship u crashed and was it close to one of the sensors? remember random debris wont regesiter on sensor u have to be in control of the crashing part. also how far away where u from the sensor? when i did it at ksp the sensor was on runway and crashed about 2.5km south of the sensor and got the messge across my screen to pop up

Edited February 4, 2014 by sidfu

[Sevio]

Hi Fractal_UK: Thanks for all your hard work with the new update, I can't wait to play with the new reactors and all the other things! Unfortunately I seem to have hit upon a rather severe bug.

It's easy to reproduce, create a vessel with probe brain, FL-T800 fuel tank, 2 small deployable radiators and strap 4x symmetry generator/Omega fusion reactor/thermal rocket to the fuel tank. When on the launchpad, after running the engines for a bit and the thermalpower of the reactors has run out, one of the 4 engines drastically loses thrust, creating an uncontrollable spin effect due to the asymmetric thrust. Or it would, if the test ship had enough TWR to lift off.

Which brings me to a question, I've noticed the Omega and GEKKO fusion reactors have had their mass significantly increased (from 1.5t to 2t for the Omega), why is that? I don't think that was needed, their TWR even with LFO fuel was nothing to write home about.

Hi Fractal_UK: Some more testing that may or may not be useful to you: the thrust drop happening with one of the thermal rockets (problem occurs with turbojets too) seems to be due to the way the generators decide to balance the load of keeping the fusion reactors operational amongst themselves, along with the fusion reactors' new capability to scale the amount of chargedpower they produce. One of the generators decides to produce all the power for the 4 reactors while the other generators do nothing, allowing those reactors to scale to full thermal power.

I also found another, possibly related problem with the Omega fusion reactors while testing in a slightly different setup. Same probe as in the quoted post, but instead of using 4 direct conversion generators, I decided to use 4 KTEC solid state generators:

After running the engines for some time, because the thermal rockets take precedence over generators the stored Megajoules in the generators run out and the fusion reactors shut down.

I'm ok with this happening with thermal generators because there is the option of using direct conversion to supply the fusion reactors, but it would be nice if direct conversion generators were able to balance the load between themselves somehow to avoid the asymmetric thrust situation.

[Fractal_UK]

Hi Fractal_UK: Some more testing that may or may not be useful to you: the thrust drop happening with one of the thermal rockets (problem occurs with turbojets too) seems to be due to the way the generators decide to balance the load of keeping the fusion reactors operational amongst themselves, along with the fusion reactors' new capability to scale the amount of chargedpower they produce. One of the generators decides to produce all the power for the 4 reactors while the other generators do nothing, allowing those reactors to scale to full thermal power.

I also found another, possibly related problem with the Omega fusion reactors while testing in a slightly different setup. Same probe as in the quoted post, but instead of using 4 direct conversion generators, I decided to use 4 KTEC solid state generators:

After running the engines for some time, because the thermal rockets take precedence over generators the stored Megajoules in the generators run out and the fusion reactors shut down.

I'm ok with this happening with thermal generators because there is the option of using direct conversion to supply the fusion reactors, but it would be nice if direct conversion generators were able to balance the load between themselves somehow to avoid the asymmetric thrust situation.

Yes, you're right, the problem is related to how ChargedParticles are converted into ThermalPower when a supply of ChargedParticles isn't needed. I have managed to fix the problem of thrust assymetry by changing the way that conversion happens, the fix basically stops ChargedParticles from being converted into ThermalPower and instead allows generators and thermal rockets to consume ChargedParticles directly if they have need of more power.

The downside of this approach is that there is no preferential treatment of charged particles meaning that the generators can likewise run out of power to maintain the fusion reactions when in charged particle mode.

At least this second problem is much easier to solve, I'm going to add a warning that will alert the user when fusion plasma heating power is getting dangerously low so they can take some action to prevent it (e.g. throttling engines down to 90%).

I have some ideas for better solutions though, so I'm going to test those alongside this approach and see what works best.

[JeffreyCor]

I've made simple test craft in sandbox mode and sent it to kerbol orbit:

...only to find that old nasty antimatter storage problem is still there, and while 2 gigantors produce enough power for antimatter containment i cannot use warp higher than 1000x because EC will instantly drop to zero and warp will be reduced to 50x with warning that antimatter storage is going to explode.

So i dumped all antimatter and tried again with only probe core consuming power. It worked fine. EC stayed full during timewarp and panels worked after it.

p.s. also antimatter storage problem seem to be caused by stock resource system (basically you need way more power stored then consumed, even if power production is higher then consumption), may be you had the same problem? The only workaround now is to either use lots of batteries or power things like antimatter storage by megajoules, not EC.

Very strange, seems I'm having 2 separate problems and not a single one as I thought. Or particular to the 62.5 gen, which seems highly unlikely.

I first noticed this because in .10 the consumption rate on the 62.5 reactor went way up causing the little thing to use up all its fuel in 100-120 days or so. As a result during a trip to Duna all nuclear fuel was used up and in turn the generator stopped producing. Being so far away the game was at high time warp for well over 100 days. After returning time to normal the nasty problem first appeared, in that case constantly demanding 66MW of power dispute the actual demand being only a few kW. I'll recreate the original situation later and get some captures of it.

[Bignumbers]

Some of us just get around this with a ground based powerplant approach instead of launching orbiting nukes. make a large rover in the SPH that consists of as many nuke/generator pairs as you want and either leave it there or drive it away from KSP so you dont lag launches. If the thing runs outa fuel you just recover it and send out a new one. you can actualy move the thing fairly fast if you use landing gear for the wheels and just strap some rockets on the back. The atmospheric power loss is offset by the fact that you can keep the effency of the generators maxed thanks to convection cooling keeping WH at 0 and the fact that you can easily send as many nukes out as you want.

That is what I have been trying to do lately, though the big problem I always run into is that the wheels keep snapping off under the weight of the reactors. Could you put up a picture of what you have been using?

I first noticed this because in .10 the consumption rate on the 62.5 reactor went way up causing the little thing to use up all its fuel in 100-120 days or so.

I noticed the same thing, and as I had mentioned a page ago the same thing happened with the 3.75 nuke. Glad to know it's not just me...

Edited February 4, 2014 by Bignumbers

[Fractal_UK]

Very strange, seems I'm having 2 separate problems and not a single one as I thought. Or particular to the 62.5 gen, which seems highly unlikely.

I first noticed this because in .10 the consumption rate on the 62.5 reactor went way up causing the little thing to use up all its fuel in 100-120 days or so. As a result during a trip to Duna all nuclear fuel was used up and in turn the generator stopped producing. Being so far away the game was at high time warp for well over 100 days. After returning time to normal the nasty problem first appeared, in that case constantly demanding 66MW of power dispute the actual demand being only a few kW. I'll recreate the original situation later and get some captures of it.

I already mentioned earlier, if you have nuclear reactors on saved crafts you may need to replace them with fresh copies from the VAB. KSP saves resource totals inside the craft files rather than looking up fresh totals and although there are mechanics in place to auto-upgrade reactors, it's difficult to distinguish between one on a saved craft and one that has just been placed in the VAB.

Since both the amount of fuel on the reactors and the consumption rate has been increased by 1000x, you will run out of fuel very quickly if you have a reactor with an old resource total.

[komodo]

Unfortunately the texture reduction mods don't work on Mac. :/

This is simply incorrect. The active memory reduction mod, and texture replacement packs work perfectly fine. What is a pain on the latter is finder's byzantine folder operations. Merging sub directories is almost impossible except by hand. It's tedious to be sure, but it does work.

The active memory mod does make a big difference on its own. Now if it could just work magic on my CPU, hah!..

[Fractal_UK]

This seems to have done the trick on the thrust assymetry issue, we just reserve a little power and keep it to one side to keep those plasma heating systems running:

[xfrankie]

So the impactor problems seem to go unnoticed. Here, have some screenshots.

And please, please tell me why the Minmus probes don't do anything when the one on Kerbin works just fine...

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Here's my KSP.log https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxSUXWRJIwcOdDlXN0ZyT0ZRbW8/edit?usp=sharing

[Sevio]

Yes, you're right, the problem is related to how ChargedParticles are converted into ThermalPower when a supply of ChargedParticles isn't needed. I have managed to fix the problem of thrust assymetry by changing the way that conversion happens, the fix basically stops ChargedParticles from being converted into ThermalPower and instead allows generators and thermal rockets to consume ChargedParticles directly if they have need of more power.

The downside of this approach is that there is no preferential treatment of charged particles meaning that the generators can likewise run out of power to maintain the fusion reactions when in charged particle mode.

At least this second problem is much easier to solve, I'm going to add a warning that will alert the user when fusion plasma heating power is getting dangerously low so they can take some action to prevent it (e.g. throttling engines down to 90%).

I have some ideas for better solutions though, so I'm going to test those alongside this approach and see what works best.

Allowing thermal generators and thermal rockets to consume charged particles directly sounds like a great solution, throttling back thermal rockets a little to allow enough room for electricity generation is something one can deal with Do fusion reactors get preferential treatment for consumption of the available power if there is also say, a plasma thruster demanding the maximum amount of available power?

[Shad0wCatcher]

@mdapol No joy on adding the precooler module to radial intakes. It works, the precooler module is successfully added; however, it is always offline. I'm personally not sure how to continue at this point. On one hand I absolutely love the idea of needing precoolers to keep temperatures down. On the other is absolutely plays hell with any SSTOs I try to make currently using DRE, FAR, and this. Getting into orbit is bad enough; but upon deorbiting having the engine instantaneously explode when providing any throttle whatsoever makes life rather difficult.

[Fractal_UK]

@mdapol No joy on adding the precooler module to radial intakes. It works, the precooler module is successfully added; however, it is always offline. I'm personally not sure how to continue at this point. On one hand I absolutely love the idea of needing precoolers to keep temperatures down. On the other is absolutely plays hell with any SSTOs I try to make currently using DRE, FAR, and this. Getting into orbit is bad enough; but upon deorbiting having the engine instantaneously explode when providing any throttle whatsoever makes life rather difficult.

That is not related to FAR/DRE. On re-entry, you are moving too fast to use airbreathing engines so you need to keep your engines off or intakes closed until you reach a safe velocity to switch on airbreathing engines again.

[pollodelfuego314]

ok, i just downloaded the update for this mod, installed it, got it running and... something went funky. Some of the textures for another mod (kw rocketry) were missing, none of the menus for tweaking fuel, etc. were available. and when i tried to launch my plane the game crashed. Should i revert to the older edition of KSPI until later? Any suggestions? I really don't want to have to start my game over. Oh yeah, it v .10.1

Edited February 4, 2014 by pollodelfuego314