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

[Lightwarrior]

@Shad0w: I suppose it helps, though for nuclear turbojets I imagine the issue would be loss of thrust at high air speeds rather than the engine overheating.

Yes, i think that thrust should depend on temperature difference between intake air and exhaust air. But i cannot imagine how can engine working with such high (and different) temperatures overheat because of intake air temperature.

p.s. also there is no combustion there at all, air is just heated up by reactor.

[Dal]

Alcubierre drive instructions/spoilers, for anyone wondering.

1. Warp to a position around the sun perpendicular to your previous location, so that your only velocity is away from (and then back towards) the sun.

2. As you approach your solar apoapsis find the orbital velocity of your destination planet and its direction.

3. When your speed reaches its lowest (at the solar apoapsis), warp around the sun until you are falling towards the sun parallel to your destination velocity (but 90 degrees from your destination position).

4. Wait for the sun to match your target velocity, then simply aim and warp towards your target.

5. Drop out of warp at your destination and enjoy your greatly eased maneuvers.

It took me a while to get the hang of warping around but once I did it was (even more) incredibly useful. You can also use the Alcubierre drive to change your orbits more directly, but that would require some infographics to explain well. I almost wish there was a mechjeb module or other way to precisely control the warp drive. It could perform almost any orbital maneuver with great efficiency if we could control the timing (distance traveled) better.

[Fractal_UK]

On a side note Fractal, is it realistic that you still need precoolers for intakes feeding thermal turbojets, especially ones using intertial fusion or gas core nuclear reactors to heat the atmospheric intake? That's so far been the biggest barrier to my attempt to make an Eve SSTO.

Yeah, it doesn't really have anything to do with the heating system, it's all about the intake design - most intakes slow down flow to be subsonic, often pushing it through turbomachinery, it's this rapid decrease in intake air speed that causes the internal components to overheat. Fission and fusion reactors both scale down their Isp in order to increase thrust with atmospheric engines, which implies there is some kind of turbomachinery going on in there to reduce the actual exhaust velocity. Antimatter engines don't so you could imagine, with the right intake, they could be used with purely supersonic flow, a bit like a SCRAMJET. A slightly different intake design would be needed, of course.

And BTW those R.A.P.I.E.R. engine, if it is designed based on real Sabre engine, already have integrated precoolers.

A real sabre is actually unit consisting of an intake, precooler, turbomachinery and nozzle. The nozzle is only the part that's really represented on the rapier, the B9 sabre intake, B9 precooler and B9 sabre is a good representation of the whole unit.

Also how will those thermal turbojets, being heated by reactors with 15k+ core temperature, will overheat from atmospheric friction?

Any scheme for having those kind of core temperatures requires some kind of non-material seperation from the reactor walls, an example is a fusion torus that magnetically contains a plasma - you don't melt the reactor because the plasma never touches the walls. Your plane, however, cannot be seperated from the air which it is flying through so you can still cook the interior by flying too fast without a heat exchange mechanism.

[Eadrom]

Yeah, I actually tried to do some work on a 2.5m inline refinery model myself to address this issue but the result was pretty horrendous. Making a decent texture for a simple part is unfortunately beyond me!

Any old part models that could be retasked? I'm almost tempted to copy a fusion reactor or one of the inline thermal microwave receivers and seeing if copying the non-graphical part info from the refinery would work.

EDIT:

I should clarify that I mentioned those two parts simply because they are pretty much just solid cylinders and not because I think you should use those part models for an inline refinery.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Eadrom

[Lightwarrior]

Any scheme for having those kind of core temperatures requires some kind of non-material seperation from the reactor walls, an example is a fusion torus that magnetically contains a plasma - you don't melt the reactor because the plasma never touches the walls. Your plane, however, cannot be seperated from the air which it is flying through so you can still cook the interior by flying too fast without a heat exchange mechanism.

Yes, and if i install deadly reentry i will actually overheat the parts that should overheat in this case. Those which are hit by the air, mostly intakes themselves and radially attached parts like batteries, but not the engines. And it seems exactly how it should work.

[Fractal_UK]

Yes, and if i install deadly reentry i will actually overheat the parts that should overheat in this case. Those which are hit by the air, mostly intakes themselves and radially attached parts like batteries, but not the engines. And it seems exactly how it should work.

Re-entry effects/atmospheric shock heating and atmospheric engine overheating without precoolers are not the same. Turbojets cease to function due to materials limitations from the heat generated by the slowing down of intake air at maybe Mach 3-4 while scramjet aircraft and rockets are capable of hypersonic travel through the atmosphere, all of these experience shock heating which is what DRE simulates, only the first will suffer from internal overheating. These are very different problems.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Fractal_UK

[Lightwarrior]

Re-entry effects/atmospheric shock heating and atmospheric engine overheating without precoolers are not the same. Turbojets cease to function due to materials limitations from the heat generated by the slowing down of intake air at maybe Mach 3-4 while scramjet aircraft and rockets are capable of hypersonic travel through the atmosphere, all of these experience shock heating which is what DRE simulates, only the first will suffer from internal overheating. These are very different problems.

Yes, and this is what i am talking about.

Thermal nozzles should not have problems similar to turbojet ones.

[Haarlock]

Fission reactors have to be refueled manually. You have to shut down the reactor, wait for it to cool, and then use a kerbal on EVA to right click and select the "refuel" option. This option should be available as long as you have enough fuel of the correct type and the reactor isn't completely full of actinides.

Thanks RadHazard. That's what I'd thought, but it doesn't actually seem to work for me. Does the fuel in the reactor have to be completely empty? Or can there be some thorium/uranium left in there and still be refueled? Regardless, I did a test prior to seeing your reply. I placed a reactor with a generator on it, some radiators, and a pair of thorium pods directly mounted on the sides of the reactor. I placed a ISRU module on the top, and a capsule somewhere so I'd have a kerbonaut on hand to maintain the reactor. I accelerated time to zip to skip several days ahead, after enabling Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing in the ISRU. Actinide build up stayed low, depleted fuels began to appear, and uranium (despite being sure I was using thorium) began to appear in the reactor. After some time, I shut the reactor... *goes back to make sure he did it right* Alright, so I actually managed to refuel the uranium reactor. Will test thorium later.

So now I know how to refuel a reactor. Thanks! However, I still have another issue.

I'd built an unmanned vessel to go to Jool to collect antimatter in anticipation of the alcubierre drive's power requirements, and it is equipped with an ISRU refinery to keep actinide levels down so as to maximize it's life span (Ideally, it fills up it's AM holds and returns to Kerbin orbit where a maintenance crew would refuel it), but it seems that despite having fuel in the reactor, and actinides not anywhere near full, it shuts down after a semi-fixed amount of time. After about 700 days Elapsed Mission Time, the thorium reactor choose to shut down on it's own. At first I thought I'd messed up and failed to clear actinides, but the meter wasn't even a third full. So naturally I checked the thorium levels and the levels in the reactor seemed to be fine, too. This has happened on many of my vessels, and one of the few times I'd had kerbals on board such a vessel, manually restarting the reactor immediately resulted in it going into it's decaying period, and refueling it with on board tanks (as described above) did not seem to work. Mind you, now that I think about it, the tanks WERE mounted on I beams, the ones that don't have fuel crossfeed. They were connected with fuel lines, though, and were receiving depleted fuels from ISRU reprocessing. Should that make a difference? Do the pods have to be directly mounted to the reactors in order for EVA kerbals to refuel them? Or do they just need a crossfeed connection?

Well, either way, you've helped me with refueling the reactors enough that I can get around that second issue for now. So for that, thanks again!

[RadHazard]

Thanks RadHazard. That's what I'd thought, but it doesn't actually seem to work for me. Does the fuel in the reactor have to be completely empty? Or can there be some thorium/uranium left in there and still be refueled? Regardless, I did a test prior to seeing your reply. I placed a reactor with a generator on it, some radiators, and a pair of thorium pods directly mounted on the sides of the reactor. I placed a ISRU module on the top, and a capsule somewhere so I'd have a kerbonaut on hand to maintain the reactor. I accelerated time to zip to skip several days ahead, after enabling Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing in the ISRU. Actinide build up stayed low, depleted fuels began to appear, and uranium (despite being sure I was using thorium) began to appear in the reactor. After some time, I shut the reactor... *goes back to make sure he did it right* Alright, so I actually managed to refuel the uranium reactor. Will test thorium later.

So now I know how to refuel a reactor. Thanks! However, I still have another issue.

I'd built an unmanned vessel to go to Jool to collect antimatter in anticipation of the alcubierre drive's power requirements, and it is equipped with an ISRU refinery to keep actinide levels down so as to maximize it's life span (Ideally, it fills up it's AM holds and returns to Kerbin orbit where a maintenance crew would refuel it), but it seems that despite having fuel in the reactor, and actinides not anywhere near full, it shuts down after a semi-fixed amount of time. After about 700 days Elapsed Mission Time, the thorium reactor choose to shut down on it's own. At first I thought I'd messed up and failed to clear actinides, but the meter wasn't even a third full. So naturally I checked the thorium levels and the levels in the reactor seemed to be fine, too. This has happened on many of my vessels, and one of the few times I'd had kerbals on board such a vessel, manually restarting the reactor immediately resulted in it going into it's decaying period, and refueling it with on board tanks (as described above) did not seem to work. Mind you, now that I think about it, the tanks WERE mounted on I beams, the ones that don't have fuel crossfeed. They were connected with fuel lines, though, and were receiving depleted fuels from ISRU reprocessing. Should that make a difference? Do the pods have to be directly mounted to the reactors in order for EVA kerbals to refuel them? Or do they just need a crossfeed connection?

Well, either way, you've helped me with refueling the reactors enough that I can get around that second issue for now. So for that, thanks again!

Is your reactor overheating? The reactor will automatically shut down if waste heat levels go over 95%. This can be solved by adding more radiators. If that's not the case, it sounds like a bug and you should write up a report, as I haven't heard of the reactors automatically shutting off for anything other than overheating or running out of fuel.

Fuel crossfeed and fuel lines are both unnecessary for fuel pods. As long as the fuel is somewhere on the same vessel, the kerbal can use it to refuel the reactor.

[metalpoetza]

Just a small progress update on the KSP_Interstellar Story Missions I'm developing - I've put out a new pre-release today which adds a second mission chain entitled "Magnets - how do they work" in which the player gets to use the dual magnetometer to scan for antimatter around Kerbin, Eve and Jool. I'm expecting some guests soon so I won't be working on this further today but I will be back and working on the next chain (thermal jets based) over the weekend.

https://github.com/ajventer/ksp_stuff/releases/tag/0.0.5

[Lightwarrior]

Haarlock ,

One note, antimatter is not really required to use Warp Drive. Warp Drive only need power to replentish its exotic matter supply, the more power is available the faster it will be. But it seems that even single 1.25m fusion reactor will do it fast enough to be able to use warp once you leave atmosphere.

p.s. personally i avoid using antimatter at all, it make things too easy (just too powerfull for interplanetary travel, as it should be, and we have no other stars yet). When you can build tiny craft consisting of 5-10 parts which can go to any planet, land there and return without even thinking about something like aerobraking or gravity assists... it kills all fun for me.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[Haarlock]

Is your reactor overheating? The reactor will automatically shut down if waste heat levels go over 95%. This can be solved by adding more radiators. If that's not the case, it sounds like a bug and you should write up a report, as I haven't heard of the reactors automatically shutting off for anything other than overheating or running out of fuel.

Fuel crossfeed and fuel lines are both unnecessary for fuel pods. As long as the fuel is somewhere on the same vessel, the kerbal can use it to refuel the reactor.

Ah, good to know that I can place them anywhere on the vessel. As for overheating, I think that's sort of what's happening. I have found that four medium-sized deployable radiators when upgraded keeps the reactor cool enough, but when warping everything goes wonky. So to that end, I think what is happening is that at some point the reactor does get ticked as being overheated, but there's been no consistency to it so far. I haven't been able to reliably replicate the circumstances that have made it happen each time. The AM collector that died at 700 days made it to 880 days more recently. Alternatively, I have also noticed that thorium reactors lose efficiency as actinides build up, and I'm wondering if my reactors are perhaps getting below 10% and thus being 'too cool' to stay active.

Regardless, if I do manage to rule out human error, I will defintely write up a report.

As for the antimatter, Lightwarrior, I haven't yet used an antimatter reactor, or the alcubierre drive, but I mostly wanted to gather a bunch of it and store it in orbital silos that can be docked with... Yea, mostly I wanted to gather it 'because'. But either way, thanks for the tip. : )

Edited January 3, 2014 by Haarlock

[katalex-3]

Question about Plasma Thruster.

Is it okey what I can't see different Max thrust between smal and large size? In both case you wrote max 80.5?!

Edited January 3, 2014 by katalex-3

[Fractal_UK]

Question about Plasma Thruster.

Is it okey what I can't see different Max thrust between smal and large size? In both case you wrote max 80.5?!

What it says in the ModuleEngines definition in the .cfg file doesn't matter, it's controlled by the ElectricEngineController module. The reason the two engines in your pictures are different is due to the maximum power definitions, the small engine has a lower maximum power, it has a hit a cap and it can't go above that power. The larger engine has a bigger cap, so it can use a lot more power.

[katalex-3]

Fractal_UK, I don't understand you. I see two pictures, both plasma engines installed on big reactor product equal thrust (also equal power, equal charges of fuel). Thrust - major parameter. I think what both thrusters must be different between they max thrust. Isn't it? I ask you about it because I find no sense use large Plasma Thruster.

Just i try make Uber Rocket on Interstellar principe which can take off from surface of Kerbin.

I tested Thermal Rocket Nozzle on 3.75m Nuclear reacor+3.75m Electric generator+5 Huge heat radiator.

Excellent! Max Thrust - 22.5kN, 90 kN, 360 kN, 811 kN for 0.625m, 1.25m, 2.5m, 3.75m.

It's will be good if max thrust for Plasma Thruster different also.

Edited January 3, 2014 by katalex-3

[katalex-3]

And again about Plasma Thruster

I install 1 small engine on 3.75Reactor+3.75Generator+5Huge radiator. 1 engine consume 4.34 GW produce 56.8 kN, 9 engine consume 490.6 MWx9=4.34 GW produce 9x6.4kN=57.8 kN.

WHY? No difference between 1 and 9 engines.

I can only suppose what thrust is depend on 1 Nuclear reactor power.

Edited January 3, 2014 by katalex-3

[Fractal_UK]

And again about Plasma Thruster

I install 1 small engine on 3.75Reactor+3.75Generator+5Huge radiator. 1 engine consume 4.34 GW produce 56.8 kN, 9 engine consume 490.6 MWx9=4.34 GW produce 9x6.4kN=57.8 kN.

WHY? No difference between 1 and 9 engines.

I can only suppose what thrust is depend on 1 Nuclear reactor power.

There is no difference between 1 and 9 engines because you don't have enough power to reach the maximum power of the 62.5cm engine. 1 engine can already consume all the power so adding more engines doesn't help, you just split the same power between many engines and end up with the same thrust. If you have more power, you will see a difference.

[katalex-3]

Fractal_UK, thank you very match for you explanation. I understood your point of view. You fight with Uber-rocket:). Energy - major resource!!! If you want more thrust - use antimatter reactor! Unfortunately, stupid question:(. Without simple manual of your mode :(

Edited January 3, 2014 by katalex-3

[Donziboy2]

Fractal_UK, maybe add the max MW or Thermal Power each size engine can handle to the part descriptions, it may reduce confusion.

[Fractal_UK]

Fractal_UK, maybe add the max MW or Thermal Power each size engine can handle to the part descriptions, it may reduce confusion.

It's already in the part description in the VAB, it's the first thing listed.

[InfinityArch]

Well, my experimental Eve hybrid thermal jet SSTO project is going reasonably well. I've been able to achieve LKO in it with ~1600 m/s of delta V to spare not counting RCS on the first test, and it seems as if the 12 radial graphene radiators are enough to keep two of the four reactors running in space.

[katalex-3]

Folk, please give me link in this topic about use of "transmitter-reciever devices". Thank you very match.

[RadHazard]

Folk, please give me link in this topic about use of "transmitter-reciever devices". Thank you very match.

The wiki is the best place to find information on the mod.

For microwave transceivers, the relevant page is here: Microwave Power Trasceivers

[babbos]

My orbit 3.75m upgraded Fission Reactor gets overheated with 4 Huge Radiators... Is this the intended behavior?

[InfinityArch]

Yes, given that those radiators aren't upgraded, they can't radiate enough heat to cool the reactors.