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

[JewelShisen]

Just curious but has anyone been doing the impactor experiments since 0.10.3 released? If so, is everything working fine with it?

There were a couple of reports of people getting less science than expected since I integrated the impactors with the stock science system but I've been totally unable to reproduce that problem in my own testing. It'd be nice to get some reports of success/failure.

I messed with them a little but only enough to add the stock science back onto the part. Beyond that I haven't done more than one impact and didn't get any messages at all.

[forsaken1111]

Just curious but has anyone been doing the impactor experiments since 0.10.3 released? If so, is everything working fine with it?

I was setting up for a munar impact last night. Will let you know how it goes.

[db48x]

why the IR telescope needs lqHelium? To cool it? But what heat would receive from 550AU?

It's not related to waste heat; it's all about sensitivity to small changes in energy. Any IR detector will be more sensitive when it is cooler, and most sensitive at cryogenic temperatures. Helium liquifies at 4 Kelvin, which is quite cold indeed.

I just added a wiki page: https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/IR-Telescope

[db48x]

Just curious but has anyone been doing the impactor experiments since 0.10.3 released? If so, is everything working fine with it?

There were a couple of reports of people getting less science than expected since I integrated the impactors with the stock science system but I've been totally unable to reproduce that problem in my own testing. It'd be nice to get some reports of success/failure.

I just retried the ones that failed last time. I have three detectors on the Mun, landers that were exploring the munar biomes. They're widely scattered but not placed with any deliberation. I had four probes in orbit for use as impactors, and I got a total of ~1354 science from them (617.5 + 374.6ish + 224.2 + 137.8). It was very satisfying.

However, I only see one report in the R&D center.

Thanks Fractal_UK, I'm quite enjoying this!

[Fractal_UK]

I just retried the ones that failed last time. I have three detectors on the Mun, landers that were exploring the munar biomes. They're widely scattered but not placed with any deliberation. I had four probes in orbit for use as impactors, and I got a total of ~1354 science from them (617.5 + 374.6ish + 224.2 + 137.8). It was very satisfying.

Excellent, that looks spot on, it's a lot more than you'd get with one detector but less than the theoretical maximum from perfect placement.

However, I only see one report in the R&D center.

Does that report contain all the 1354 science? That's how I set it up in the end.

[db48x]

Excellent, that looks spot on, it's a lot more than you'd get with one detector but less than the theoretical maximum from perfect placement.

Yea, I thought it was pretty good considering I was just landing them wherever. One is up near the poles; I'm sure that helps.

Does that report contain all the 1354 science? That's how I set it up in the end.

Oddly enough, it says 1313.68 science.

Now that I look at the other reports, I see that they're combined as well; it's not as obvious because there are a bunch of different biomes, so you still see half a dozen reports from any one instrument.

[JeffreyCor]

Just curious but has anyone been doing the impactor experiments since 0.10.3 released? If so, is everything working fine with it?

There were a couple of reports of people getting less science than expected since I integrated the impactors with the stock science system but I've been totally unable to reproduce that problem in my own testing. It'd be nice to get some reports of success/failure.

Did impacts last night, all registered correctly and was able to transmit back with a message about the impact study in the report, but with 350 science on the first impact on Duna instead of the 500 for first impacts from 10.2 on Minimus and Mun. All used single detector on the surface. Somewhat lower but still a very respectable amount of science!

Edited February 7, 2014 by JeffreyCor

[Fractal_UK]

Did impacts last night, all registered correctly and was able to transmit back with a message about the impact study in the report, but with 350 science on the first impact on Duna instead of the 500 for first impacts from 10.2 on Minimus and Mun. All used single detector on the surface. Somewhat lower but still a very respectable amount of science!

Sounds like one detector then? I tweaked the numbers a bit because in the previous version there was a problem with the handling of multiple detectors so I wanted to get the balance right after that got fixed.

Anyway, I'll let a few more reports build up first but assuming everything is working nicely, I'll look at integrating the data from the science lab and the telescope in the same way.

[Kaa253]

Is it just me or is there something wrong with the 62.5cm ATTILA Thruster?

[AngelLestat]

The detectors must be kept at ~2K, that's very difficult if your spacecraft has any kind of power system aboard.

Even if your spacecraft was in a total void with no stars nearby, no electrical power onboard whatsoever, CMB temperature is ~2.7K which is too hot.

It's not related to waste heat; it's all about sensitivity to small changes in energy. Any IR detector will be more sensitive when it is cooler, and most sensitive at cryogenic temperatures. Helium liquifies at 4 Kelvin, which is quite cold indeed.

Ok yeah, now I understand, I dint knew that they need so low working temperatures, if it was 20k then it would be easy to cool it down with normal radiation process.

Good reasearch work guys.

[db48x]

Is it just me or is there something wrong with the 62.5cm ATTILA Thruster?

You'll probably need to be more specific. What sort of problem are you having?

[InfinityArch]

Out of curiosity, how low into Jool's atmosphere does one need to get to effectively harvest Helium-3? I haven't been able to get significantly below 90 km in my testbed vehicles without burning up due to deadly reentry, and even down there the atmospheric scoops still read a flow of 0.0 and don't seem to be adding He-3 to the tanks no matter how long I leave it there.

[JewelShisen]

Out of curiosity, how low into Jool's atmosphere does one need to get to effectively harvest Helium-3? I haven't been able to get significantly below 90 km in my testbed vehicles without burning up due to deadly reentry, and even down there the atmospheric scoops still read a flow of 0.0 and don't seem to be adding He-3 to the tanks no matter how long I leave it there.

I don't know how low you need to go but why not try using my Airship mod to let you go down lower without fear of not making it back out?

[forsaken1111]

I don't know how low you need to go but why not try using my Airship mod to let you go down lower without fear of not making it back out?

Oh you developed the airships mod? I do like that one.

Can you leave a vessel floating in atmosphere and switch to another? I would love to have a persistent floating refueling base on Jool but I suspect the game will delete the craft as it is in the atmosphere.

[JewelShisen]

Oh you developed the airships mod? I do like that one.

Can you leave a vessel floating in atmosphere and switch to another? I would love to have a persistent floating refueling base on Jool but I suspect the game will delete the craft as it is in the atmosphere.

I didn't develop it, Hooligan Labs did. However he left it to me when he left the modding community, thus why I now call it my own. He is still credited in the mod though.

You CAN do that on most planets however because of how Jool is designed, namely the "surface" of it, leaving a ship in atmo there is not possible. However with the use of the KAS mod you can "Land" your ship on Laythe, Duna, or Eve and still have it floating above the ground.

[chlue]

You'll probably need to be more specific. What sort of problem are you having?

I have the feeling the ATTILA Thruster's have two bugs:

1. the small one has the same weight as the 1.25m one, while I would suspect something like 167kg

2. They show the same thrust in the VAB (0.0131kN/MW for liquid) as the Plasma Thrusters, but I guess the have 5 times the thrust. Seem to work fine trough

Some other minor things:

- The HA-1 Aluminium rocket has about 2 unit of oxygen too much. As a result mechjeb does not autostage. (Not sure if it is possible to get hybrid thruster right due to rounding errors, but on the other hand on drop-tanks it works fine)

- The ISP tooltip (after launch) of thermal rockets does not change when switching the fuel while the throttle is set to 0 (Mechjeb already upgrades trough). Once I give minimal thrust the displayed value is upgraded to reflect the change.

Btw Mechjeb is pretty much useless for rocket design with this addon because it uses completely wrong TWR values (likely caused by the fact that it does not know how much power the engine will get) and in many cases wrong ISP value too (likely caused by the fact that thrust and ISP are downscaled in atmosphere). Are there some other addons which handle this better?

[InfinityArch]

I don't know how low you need to go but why not try using my Airship mod to let you go down lower without fear of not making it back out?

Mainly because the big problem isn't getting back out; the spaceplane uses a hybrid fusion powered thermal turbojet, and since said rocket can run on liquid fuel, which can be harvested from Jool's atmoshpere, it can just refuel itself in flight, and it probably could make it out of the atmosphere from ~60 km (random guess) even without taking that into consideration. The big problem is that I also have deadly reentry installed, which means anything I try to send down there inevitably burns up on the way down.

I think it might be possible to make a powered descent, and an LFO fueled fusion-thermal-rocket can manage a high enough TWR for that, but there's no way to get oxidizer directly from Jool, which means I'll have to have bases on Vall or Laythe to support my He-3 extraction operation, and while I was planning to do that eventually anyway, "get helium 3 so I can run the antimatter initiated reactor (mainly due to its amazing power to weigh ratio compared to the other non-antimatter based reactors)" was the first part of my plan to colonize the Joolian moons.

[JeffreyCor]

Sounds like one detector then? I tweaked the numbers a bit because in the previous version there was a problem with the handling of multiple detectors so I wanted to get the balance right after that got fixed.

Anyway, I'll let a few more reports build up first but assuming everything is working nicely, I'll look at integrating the data from the science lab and the telescope in the same way.

Yes, single detector. I wanted to make it the same as I used in the previous version. I figured that would provide the most useful results to be comparable.

[mdapol]

I haven't seen anyone ask this, but how do I make the Thermal Helper default to Hidden in the VAB? It's annoying to have to push "I" every time I go there. Is there a setting somewhere I can configure?

[Boamere]

I haven't seen anyone ask this, but how do I make the Thermal Helper default to Hidden in the VAB? It's annoying to have to push "I" every time I go there. Is there a setting somewhere I can configure?

It's also annoying when trying to use RCS build aid

And I advise poking around in the configs

[BigD145]

I poked. Did not see a setting.

[Newbinator]

Guys,

The following tanks seem to need re-researching all the time:

Uranium Nitrade tank

Thorium Tetra (ThF4) tank

Uranium Tetra (UF4)

Lithium tank.

Does anyone know how to fix it? I have tried to look in the part.cfg and I cant seem to find the issue.

Edit

It seems to become unavailable in the VAB when you go from research to that building.

Appreciate

Newb

Edited February 7, 2014 by Newbinator

[Evilchicken]

Is there any compatibility with the Krag's factory mod? If not is there a config file I can edit to add magnetic fields around these planets, resources and science?

[BigD145]

You have a copy of a part file somewhere. It's probably from when hexcan went out and the new tanks went cylindrical.

Delete your Warp folder in gamedata and reinstall it from the newest version. This will break ship files in the VAB that have those parts. They won't be connected properly even though they are completely open-able.

[Newbinator]

You have a copy of a part file somewhere. It's probably from when hexcan went out and the new tanks went cylindrical.

Delete your Warp folder in gamedata and reinstall it from the newest version. This will break ship files in the VAB that have those parts. They won't be connected properly even though they are completely open-able.

NP, I will give it a go, thanks

EDIT

Thanks, its fixed.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Newbinator