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

[Domfluff]

you can collect water from the surface of Duna

How do you collect the LqdWater resource? This isn't in the Wiki, as far as I can tell.

[Donziboy2]

Hey guys, sorry to bother you with another problem.

I've been using KSPI for quite a time now, and after upgrading to KSP 0.23 I updated KSPI and installed B9. I'm having problems with the thermal turbojets - they work fine, but they make very strange noises(It switches between jet engine and rocket engine sounds randomly) and everything lags ridiculously (I'm still having a green timer).

Thats all, strange noises and lags. Nothing fatal.

Another problem is the waste heat. No matter how many radiators i put on, wasteheat levels still rise until all the generators shut down (Or the solar cells retract). Until now it's still not that fatal, but annoying.

Anyone knows what's going on? Other mods i've installed are FAR, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer, KWR, B9, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and KAS.

Check your game settings, they changed the default for the physics slider, so you may have a similar problem to me. As the CPU starts to loose the parts battle you get more and more audio stutter. Atleast that is my theory, I have been the only person to come forward with a sound glitch with KSPI since 0.23 came out. In 0.22 the engine had the same animation as the stock jet engines and would change once you switched to fuel burning mode(looks like the plasma thruster exhaust.).

This is what I said on a related audio skipping thread.

[Aegrim]

If you actually have specific questions, there are plenty of people here who will be willing to help you.

Think the mod just needs some demo craft to show what works with what. I've spent all of last night trying parts together.

[metalpoetza]

Think the mod just needs some demo craft to show what works with what. I've spent all of last night trying parts together.

Between the WIKI and this forum it's actually fairly well covered - and getting better, I'm completely new to it and documenting my experiences by writing KSPStoryMissions around the parts as they become available - and on those few occasions when I couldn't find what I needed in the WIKI or here - somebody was always ready to answer the question. It does however require some reading up to figure out how the parts work together and what the best ways to use them are.

[metalpoetza]

Yet another KSPStoryMissions for KSPI update: https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.9

This one adds a new mission pack: Your friendly neighbourhood microwave network.

This mission pack contains 8 new missions based directly on RadHazzard's awesome guide on the wiki to constructing a basic microwave network for a plasma craft.

The first three missions constructs and places orbital power generators with microwave transmitters, then three more missions guides the player in creating a relay network using transceivers and finally mission number 8 guides the player in constructing a plasma+microwave powered craft capable of many Mun trips without refuelling.

I want to give a personal note of thanks to RadHazzard for the guide he added, this mission pack literally follows it almost to the letter (even the parts choices for the test craft is based on his suggestions) and without that guide I would probably have spent many days trying to figure out how this stuff really works by myself.

With his guide however, I was able to not only construct a working microwave network but write a comprehensive mission-pack around it in record time.

On a side note: tomorrow is the last day of my holiday, as of Tuesday I'm essentially back at work full-time (which in my world means 10+ hours a day) so my rate of development on this pack will be going down substantially after tomorrow. On the upside: I won't be spamming the forum so much

[Kaethorin]

I seem to be running into a small issue guys. no matter if i have the standard atmosphere scoops, or the radial versions, refuse to catch the air and work at all, i've tried while the craft was at over 300m/s and while still and get nothing. I tried on a bare stock craft in a save only modded with interstellar and it still wont work. any idea of whats going on?

[Shad0wCatcher]

The stackable atmospheric scoops do not work anymore and are to be phased out. The radial scoops are what you want and they need megawatts of power to run (6 for the small; 24 for the large).

[Fractal_UK]

The stackable atmospheric scoops do not work anymore and are to be phased out. The radial scoops are what you want and they need megawatts of power to run (6 for the small; 24 for the large).

The stackable scoops and radial scoops are just the same.

Kaethorin, you're not trying to use them as intakes are you? They need quite a bit of power and take gases from the atmosphere and compress them into fuel tanks.

[metalpoetza]

I have an idea for a follow-up to the microwave network mission based on what's mentioned in the Microwave Power Transmission section of the wiki -

Presumably it should be possible to build a satellite with a plasma thruster using microwave power from the existing Kerbin network to get into a solar orbit with a fairly close periapses, the satellite would be equipped with gigantor solar panels - once at periapses these can provide the power to circularize the orbit there - and now it can become a beaming power generator instead.

I have a few questions though:

1) Considering the transcievers can act as receivers - would it be possible to do it with just a transciever acting as a receiver when leaving Kerbin and a transmitter after arriving ?

2) Would it require relays ? If so - at what approximate orbit should these be placed ? Can a similar design (minus the solar panels) function for this ?

Obviously at the moment it would still be limited by the lower power of the un-upgraded plasma thrusters but if this is doable then a network constructed even now could power later upgraded plasma thrusters throughout the Kerbol solar system ?

Update:

Question 3: If you deactivate a microwave receiver when you're not thrusting - and your electrical charge runs out - can you reactivate it ? Basically - do they require electrical charge to activate ?

Edited January 5, 2014 by metalpoetza

[Aegrim]

I can only get tritium by making it myself right?

I've made a test truck with a nuclear reactor on it, an electrical generator, the radiators, a tank of lithium and a deuterium/tritium tank to capture the tritium from the tritium breeding.

But i get nothing. What am i doing wrong?

[metalpoetza]

I can only get tritium by making it myself right?

I've made a test truck with a nuclear reactor on it, an electrical generator, the radiators, a tank of lithium and a deuterium/tritium tank to capture the tritium from the tritium breeding.

But i get nothing. What am i doing wrong?

You have to time accelerate: a lot. Tritium breeding in real time doesn't work due to a glitch in KSP's resource generation system.

[Aegrim]

ya, realised i get 1 unit every 10 days or something. I'm using the 1.25m size reactor, do i get more from a larger reactor?

And will it still generate it when i'm off doing other missions?

[metalpoetza]

Drat... okay, tried to test my little idea - turns out as soon as I you leave Kerbin's SOI you are also disconnected from the microwave network - even if you're still quite close to it. Unless I'm just too far and maybe just need more relays further out ?

[Shad0wCatcher]

Ah apologies Fractal for that slight misinformation; I thought you were phasing out those Ram-Air style scoops for some reason.

[Kidneythump]

I've got another question regarding the reactors, I just unlocked the fusion reactor and hooked it up to the thermal jet thingie, whith atmosphere as fuel i get around 90 kN thrust at sea level, however when I switch to pure liquid it drops to 4.9, what's the reason for this? I tried using thermal and plasma engines as well all with the same result.

[metalpoetza]

BTW - I was wrong in my earlier guess: atmospheric scoops *only* require power, not motion, to function. I built a test space plane to try them out and confirmed I could harvest oxygen into oxidizer while standing on the runway with the brakes applied.

[Dreadp1r4te]

Question 3: If you deactivate a microwave receiver when you're not thrusting - and your electrical charge runs out - can you reactivate it ? Basically - do they require electrical charge to activate ?

Assuming it follows the same logic as probes do in KSP, you'd need electrical charge to interact with ANYTHING on the probe. If it runs out, your probe essentially becomes debris. For this reason it's a good idea to at least leave one solar panel open (and enough heatsinks to keep it from overheating and closing, obviously) until you get your relay network online.

[metalpoetza]

Assuming it follows the same logic as probes do in KSP, you'd need electrical charge to interact with ANYTHING on the probe. If it runs out, your probe essentially becomes debris. For this reason it's a good idea to at least leave one solar panel open (and enough heatsinks to keep it from overheating and closing, obviously) until you get your relay network online.

That's why I was asking as it turns out - my idea is completely impossible. Solar panels do not, apparently, produce MegaJoules and thus cannot power a thruster even if you do get it close to the sun (which I finally managed). Though if I understand the WIKI right, hooking a microwave transmitter up to a solar powered satelite will allow the receivers to get megajoules from it.

Odd little quirk that - it means in theory if you hook up a solar satelite with a receiver right in front of a transmitter you may actually be able to power a plasma thruster (very weakly most likely considering losses in that circular process).

[babbos]

I am having a problem attaching a mine on it's main vertical axis. It clips on top but remains red and will not turn green no matter how much i jerk it or try different attachment parts.

It can only attach from the side... I didn't have this problem before, anyone else experiencing this?

[Shad0wCatcher]

Yep. Also the model's top stack node is gone so it can no longer form the base of a craft

[CleverLikeMe]

I'm attempting my first microwave relay network (thanks to the guide on the Wiki) and I had a few questions.

First, as a KSPI newbie in general, I'm noticing that the power transmission from the 3 nukes I placed in LKO is fluctuating (and decreasing). Is this normal? I used Uranium in the reactor, I have 8 huge deployable radiators, and a 3.75m fission reactor and generator on each one, along with one microwave transceiver.

Second, for the relay satellites, all I need, along with obvious stuff like a probe core to control it and an engine and fuel to maneuever it into place, is the microwave transceiver set to relay, right? I have that set up, but my satellite isn't saying its connected despite being at 700km orbit, and the nukes placed at 100km orbit

Finally, for the relay network part of this, does anyone have any tips on getting the placement precise. Is there a display in mechjeb or somewhere else that will help me figure out if I'm at the correct relative angle?

[Shad0wCatcher]

Mechjeb won't help you. Either Vessel Orbital Information Display or Kerbal Engineer Redux will be your friends to obtain proper and precise relative angles between satellites.

[metalpoetza]

I'm attempting my first microwave relay network (thanks to the guide on the Wiki) and I had a few questions.

First, as a KSPI newbie in general, I'm noticing that the power transmission from the 3 nukes I placed in LKO is fluctuating (and decreasing). Is this normal? I used Uranium in the reactor, I have 8 huge deployable radiators, and a 3.75m fission reactor and generator on each one, along with one microwave transceiver.

Second, for the relay satellites, all I need, along with obvious stuff like a probe core to control it and an engine and fuel to maneuever it into place, is the microwave transceiver set to relay, right? I have that set up, but my satellite isn't saying its connected despite being at 700km orbit, and the nukes placed at 100km orbit

Finally, for the relay network part of this, does anyone have any tips on getting the placement precise. Is there a display in mechjeb or somewhere else that will help me figure out if I'm at the correct relative angle?

Since I wrote the mission-set based on that guide just earlier today I can answer some of these questions from fresh memories:

-The reactors fluctuating: sorry, I can't speak about this one, haven't had that.

-Network connection state: this threw me for a loop as well at first, turns out you can ONLY see connection states from RECEIVERS - neither relays nor transmitters will show as connected to anything else. However if you send up anything with a receiver it should tell you everything it's able to connect to. For a quick test, if you change the mode of one of your network satelites to receive you can verify that it can see at least part of the rest.

-What I did was this:

1) place the first relay at 1000km orbit, this is high enough to give you a decent margin of error which helps a lot.

2) launch the second relay to a low (75Km) orbit, go to map view mode, set the first relay as your target. Now expand create a maneuver node somewhere on your orbit doing pure prograde until your new orbit will intersect relay 1's orbit. The map will show you and intersect marker indicating where relay1 will be at the time you arrive (this assumes your relay placement takes only a few seconds to circularize at high orbit btw). 120 degrees = 360/3 - in other words you want that target-position indicator about 1/3 of the way around it's orbit from where your apoapsis will be. If it's not there, you can try altering it a bit if it's close, else look where it is (this gives you an idea of the relative speed of relay1) and place a new maneuvre node based on this until your intersection puts your apoapsis 1/3rd of an orbit from relay 1.

3) Do the maneuver and circularize at the apoapsis, your first two relays should now be quite close to 120 degrees apart (it certainly was close enough in my case to work).

4) Finally the hardest one is relay3 - because this must be exactly halfway between the other two (i.e. covering another 1/3rd of the orbit) - launch to low orbit like before. Unfortunately you cannot target two nodes at once so you can only see where ONE will be at intersect, but if you look at the distance between them - and work on the basis that they move at the same speed, you can fairly accurately work out where the other will be and place your maneuvre accordingly. I found that for me the right spot was almost exactly between the two nodes on the wrong side of the orbit (i.e. the short part between them) but I can't say this will hold for others. Once you have your spot, execute maneuver and circularize at apoapsis.

[metalpoetza]

Mechjeb won't help you. Either Vessel Orbital Information Display or Kerbal Engineer Redux will be your friends to obtain proper and precise relative angles between satellites.

...well if you want to do it the right way...

Now why didn't I think of that, I had engineer redux on all my vessels !

[RadHazard]

I've got another question regarding the reactors, I just unlocked the fusion reactor and hooked it up to the thermal jet thingie, whith atmosphere as fuel i get around 90 kN thrust at sea level, however when I switch to pure liquid it drops to 4.9, what's the reason for this? I tried using thermal and plasma engines as well all with the same result.

Thermal turbojets artificially lower the ISP of intake air to something around 200 - 300 s. This is hand-waved as integrated turbomachinery compressing the intake air and results in much higher thrusts when using intake air/atmosphere compared to any other propellant. Pure liquid fuels is almost the exact opposite, having much higher ISP but also much lower thrust.

You'll want to use LFO instead as it offers about 3x the thrust of liquid fuel with about 0.6x the ISP. Also note that your thrust will increase as you go higher in the atmosphere and your engine's ISP increases. You can get 12 kN out of a fusion rocket at high altitudes using pure liquid and 46 kN using LFO. If that's still not enough to circularize, you'll probably need to strap on some smaller booster rockets to help you get into space. You can turn those off once you get into space and fly around using only the high-ISP thermal rocket.

...

First, as a KSPI newbie in general, I'm noticing that the power transmission from the 3 nukes I placed in LKO is fluctuating (and decreasing). Is this normal? I used Uranium in the reactor, I have 8 huge deployable radiators, and a 3.75m fission reactor and generator on each one, along with one microwave transceiver.

...

It's likely because your waste heat levels are rising and thus your generator's efficiency is dropping. If your generators and radiators aren't upgraded, you might not have enough radiators to cool off your reactors when running at full power, meaning they'll eventually overheat. It's a bit cheaty, but if you swap away from the satellite while the transmitter is on, it will stay frozen in the state it last was and will continue to produce that much power without gaining any more waste heat until it is loaded again.

10 huge unupgraded radiators is enough to dissipate the entirety of the 3000 MW of power the unupgraded 3.75m reactor produces. I'm fairly certain you can get away with 9 since some of that thermal power will become electricity instead of waste heat, but 8 is pushing it. Regardless, you aren't likely to get any good efficiencies out of these unless you spam radiators or you unlock the generator upgrade. The Waste Heat Management page on the wiki can help you figure out how many radiators to stick on your rocket.

Edited January 6, 2014 by RadHazard