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

[ABZB]

Does the real-scale Kerbin mod (i.e. the 10x scale) correspondingly change the van allen belts for antimatter harvesting? Or are they now relatively lower?

[Northstar1989]

Northstar: You need to take the vehicle off of the launchpad for it to work. While it sits on top of any mesh (buildings including runway) it won't work.

The rest of you having trouble with gathering impact data: Try testing if it makes a difference if you go root part first vs last. I've had plenty of debris fall through the ground and bug my game out when it landed rear-first.

Look at my later experiments. The impactors were off the KSC mesh, and I still didn't get an impact event unless the impact was both very close to the impactor, and at very high speeds (over 400 m/s)

Regards,

Northstar

[Fractal_UK]

Does the real-scale Kerbin mod (i.e. the 10x scale) correspondingly change the van allen belts for antimatter harvesting? Or are they now relatively lower?

They're scaled relative to the radius of the planets so they should remain in the right place.

[Northstar1989]

They're scaled relative to the radius of the planets so they should remain in the right place.

@FractalUK

Awesome- now what about all the problems I and other players have been having with the impact experiments?

Also, I never got a response- what about the idea of creating a GUI (operated in much the same way KAS has a GUI for winch-control) for the ISRU refineries so you could add more reactions? Stuff like the Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction and the Haber-Bosch Process (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68797-In-Situ-Resource-Utilization-Useful-Reactions) could easily be integrated without overwhelming the players with such a GUI....

What I was thinking was eight square "boxes" with each of the relevant resources (LiquidFuel, Oxidizer, LiquidWater, IntakeAtm, Ammonia, Methane, Hydrogen Peroxide, and Monopropellant), and a scrollable list with the different reactions listed on the side of the GUI where you could "select" a process to display arrows showing the pathway, and highlights of the boxes showing the reactants and products...

Edited February 25, 2014 by Northstar1989

[ABZB]

Ok, good. Thanks!

[Northstar1989]

The three reactions I'd very much like to see added, again:

Haber-Bosch Process: N2 (IntakeAtm) + H2 (Liquidfuel) --> Ammonia + Energy

Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction: CO2 (IntakeAtm) + H2 (Liquidfuel) + Energy --> CO (Ignored) + H2O (LiquidWater)

Methane Pyrolysis: CH4 (Methane) + Energy --> C (Ignored, recycled by reaction with atmosphere) + 2 H2 (LiquidFuel)

I noted which reactions were exothermic and which were endothermic because this should affect the amount of electricity needed to run the reactions.

The Haber-Bosch process is exothermic, and as such should only require electricity to warm it up at first (like a Fusion Reactor).

The Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction, on the other hand, is endothermic- and thus should require considerably more electricity than the Sabatier Reaction, which is actually exothermic (and thus shouldn't require *nearly* as much electricity as it currently does).

Edited February 25, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

The Anthraquinone Process also needs to be fixed (along with the Sabatier Reaction- which is exothermic). As currently implemented, it is:

H2O + H2 --> H202

The *ACTUAL* reaction normally used in the real world is:

H2 + O2 --> H2O2

If a player wants to start from LiquidWater, they should have to perform electrolysis first. On the other hand, if a player wants to start from LiquidFuel and Oxidizer, they should be able to do it (there is currently no way to combine the two, short of burning them in a rocket engine- open cycle fuel cells to combine the two and produce electricity might also be nice- as a separate part).

Not shown is the Anthraquinone catalyst, or intermediate steps in the reaction.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Northstar1989

[longslide9000]

Wonderful mod you have here! However, I'm having a bit of confusion with the impactor experiment. How does it work, and how do I get my glorious science? The lack of seismic experiments has become a detriment to my space program.

[BigD145]

Wonderful mod you have here! However, I'm having a bit of confusion with the impactor experiment. How does it work, and how do I get my glorious science? The lack of seismic experiments has become a detriment to my space program.

Land a craft with the seismometer on a body. Turn it on. Throw something at that body at excessive speeds. Occupy that something until it pounds the surface. That's the short of it.

[merendel]

Wonderful mod you have here! However, I'm having a bit of confusion with the impactor experiment. How does it work, and how do I get my glorious science? The lack of seismic experiments has become a detriment to my space program.

Land at least 1 ship with the accelleromiter part on the body of choice. Set the acceleromiter to record impacts. Crash a controlled object into the heavenly body at a speed of 40m/s or greater. the crashing object can be as simple as a probe body propelled off a mothership with sepratrons as long as your controlling it when it hits. Return to recording ship and colect the experiment. Note if you want to transmit the expiriment you can get 100% transmission but its a huge chunk of data, include plenty of power generation. IF you land several ships with acceleromiters as far from eachother as possible you can get the maximum amount of science with fewer impacts.

[EasyAce]

what other mods do you have? That is a common problem that occurs when you have ~just~ the right number of mods to max out the RAM available. Remember that KSP is a 32 bit program, so you are limited to 3.9 gigs in normal game usage, plus unpacked parts and plugins.

Hmm, that might be the problem. Got many Mods, but none heavy like B9.

I did install a robotics mod, after I wrote the last post, without any problems

[tal2410]

I made a quick flowchart to summarize the reactions available in the ISRU, I hope it can help someone:

[Horus]

Flowcharts rule! Thanks.

[DonLorenzo]

you sure its not something in your construction? I just did a small test craft of a probodobodyne OKTO on top of a methane tank and a Deinonychus and it prety much flew strait as an arrow. was only seeing maybe 10% on the yaw indicator from SAS stabalizing my flight path which is not much considering the probodyne only has like .3 torque. I did have to fly it at half throttle because I overloaded the G tolerance when that tank got low but other than that I see nothing wrong with it. Maybe post a picture of your craft.

I'm on my phone now so no pictures, but it's the three man pod, a large SAS and then a methane tank and the engine. Can't go wrong with that I dont think!

Edited February 25, 2014 by DonLorenzo
added in the quote :)

[celem]

..snip.. Question about SSTO using KSPI engines rather than rapiers.

Likely to be possible yes. I can see fusion or antimatter working with a plasma thruster. You could also use microwave power if you don't have FAR and don't mind the fact that it looks silly. I didn't build an SSTO but I did make a thermal turbojet plane and you need to put your engine and reactor in the middle since they're so heavy.

I havent experimented with the top end KSPI power options, I currently have no fusion or AM. That said, a thermal turbojet design is easily realisable even with basic KSPI infrastructure. Key is to not carry the reactor of-course, the thermal jets are a bit gutless as the air thins and they really struggle to push their own power source into a position where you can make an orbital insertion. I've managed to make a number of reasonable SSTO designs that will fly with FAR using microwave thermal receivers and the turbojets. Major design constraint here is engine length sticking out the back of the craft since you cant surface attach to the thermal receiver (due to its animation).

Heres an example of something I managed to get into an 80x80 with a little to spare. It needs about 500MW per engine on the runway to power up to working altitude

Note that the radial intakes are dangerous and were removed in the next version of this design, They don't work with the pre-coolers and caused the turbojets to detonate when I lit them on re-entry (DRE contributed i'm sure). Additionally the wing surfaces are all procedural, which made it easier to get the proper wing-shapes despite not being able to attach to the receivers.

A much smaller earlier design with a single receiver/turbojet and a total weight below 10 tonnes was able to mach whilst still on the runway and showed re-entry effects on the powerclimb. These engines are quite a lot of fun to be honest, and im looking forward to seeing how these same designs perform when fed with more power.

[Boamere]

..snip.. Question about SSTO using KSPI engines rather than rapiers.

I havent experimented with the top end KSPI power options, I currently have no fusion or AM. That said, a thermal turbojet design is easily realisable even with basic KSPI infrastructure. Key is to not carry the reactor of-course, the thermal jets are a bit gutless as the air thins and they really struggle to push their own power source into a position where you can make an orbital insertion. I've managed to make a number of reasonable SSTO designs that will fly with FAR using microwave thermal receivers and the turbojets. Major design constraint here is engine length sticking out the back of the craft since you cant surface attach to the thermal receiver (due to its animation).

Heres an example of something I managed to get into an 80x80 with a little to spare. It needs about 500MW per engine on the runway to power up to working altitude

http://i.imgur.com/FwCpyHM.jpg

Note that the radial intakes are dangerous and were removed in the next version of this design, They don't work with the pre-coolers and caused the turbojets to detonate when I lit them on re-entry (DRE contributed i'm sure). Additionally the wing surfaces are all procedural, which made it easier to get the proper wing-shapes despite not being able to attach to the receivers.

A much smaller earlier design with a single receiver/turbojet and a total weight below 10 tonnes was able to mach whilst still on the runway and showed re-entry effects on the powerclimb. These engines are quite a lot of fun to be honest, and im looking forward to seeing how these same designs perform when fed with more power.

You want powerful ssto's? Wait until you get 2.5m upgraded fusion reactors, I can launch orange tanks into space with 9/10 of my fuel left to spare! (with FAR)

[DonLorenzo]

I'm on my phone now so no pictures, but it's the three man pod, a large SAS and then a methane tank and the engine. Can't go wrong with that I dont think!

Well I'll be damned, it turned out to be the Mk3 pod! I never did notice it before since the other engines have more steering authority that offsets the weird force. I'm assuming it's some mod that's being difficult as I don't recall the Mk3 having phantom forces

[merendel]

Well I'll be damned, it turned out to be the Mk3 pod! I never did notice it before since the other engines have more steering authority that offsets the weird force. I'm assuming it's some mod that's being difficult as I don't recall the Mk3 having phantom forces

Lol that makes more sense as I couldnt see a probe core being able to control it when a mk3 couldn't. I dont think I've ever used the mk3 in anything. I generaly use the mk1 or 2 if I'm makeing a spaceplane and for rocket craft the pods look better most of the time. I wonder if its COM is a bit off kilter when used with normal stack parts.

[kubi]

I have an interesting bug: the very end of the tech tree has been disappeared. I do not have Fusion Power, Antimatter Power and Ultra Highh Energy Physics nodes in the tree, but I have the parts in VAB.

I can build all of the advanced parts, but the upgrades are missing: e.g., the KIWI reactor is only 40MW.

Has anyone else saw this?

Mods:

Toolbar, CustomBiomes, DeadlyReentry, Engineer, EnhancedNavBall, HrmHaystack, KAS, Keramzit, KerbalJointReinforcements, KWRocketry, SimplePartOrganizer, ThunderAerospace and Interstellar

As far as I remember, I've been upgrading from a 0.9 Interstellar to 0.10.3 with this save.

[Hremsfeld]

I have an interesting bug: the very end of the tech tree has been disappeared. I do not have Fusion Power, Antimatter Power and Ultra Highh Energy Physics nodes in the tree, but I have the parts in VAB.

I can build all of the advanced parts, but the upgrades are missing: e.g., the KIWI reactor is only 40MW.

Make sure you have the correct tree.cfg file in the same folder as your persistence/quicksave files.

Edit: If yours went missing, I uploaded a copy to Pastebin here.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Hremsfeld

[kubi]

Thanks, this helped. Somehow I've had a notree.cfg.

[BFGfreak]

I was wondering is there any way I can convert stock Electric charge to megajoules without resorting to microwave power? I'm trying to figure out various ways to start up fusion generators for my eventual grand tour vessel, and quite frankly I would like to avoid carrying both a fission plant and microwave transmitters around so that I actually would have to worry about those fusion reactors dieing for whatever reason. (yes I'm one of those people that tries to limit themselves to realistic limitations like no microwaves in atmosphere and no antimatter within Kerbin's SOI) Right now I'm thinking I might resort to having a startup tug fire up those engines in Kerbin orbit, but if something happens that forces me to shut those engines down I'm just wondering if I can start them back up again without another reactor or microwave power.

[db48x]

I was wondering is there any way I can convert stock Electric charge to megajoules without resorting to microwave power? I'm trying to figure out various ways to start up fusion generators for my eventual grand tour vessel, and quite frankly I would like to avoid carrying both a fission plant and microwave transmitters around so that I actually would have to worry about those fusion reactors dieing for whatever reason. (yes I'm one of those people that tries to limit themselves to realistic limitations like no microwaves in atmosphere and no antimatter within Kerbin's SOI) Right now I'm thinking I might resort to having a startup tug fire up those engines in Kerbin orbit, but if something happens that forces me to shut those engines down I'm just wondering if I can start them back up again without another reactor or microwave power.

The fusion power plants are already a special case; their startup power can come from stock electric charge, if you have enough.

You can also attach a fission reactor to your launch struts, so that it gets left behind when you launch.

[Kellas]

How do you mine with the isru refinery? I've tried a few prototyped mining vehicles around the space center but I'm unable to extract anything. I'd like to set up a lithium refinery to refuel my plasma vessels on Minmus. I can't locate any thorium or uranium with the gamma ray spectrometer either.

[Patupi]

Wow! I leave reading this thread for a whole half a day.... and it's still on the same page? That's unheard of! Probably about the only time I've seen this thread not race along at about five or six pages a day!