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

[merendel]

Is there any way around this? I'm using FAR so fairing-less launches are not an option.

It's procedural fairings btw.

Havent had too many problems with this but I'm also runing extraplanetary launchpads so I tend to construct the more obnoxious to launch stuff in orbit. However I'd just force the fairings to be larger. Stick a couple of girder segments or other lightweight structural part on decouplers to force the fairing to a big enough diameter that it wont stick. I recomend doing dry runs on the launchpad till you find a setup that wont jetison the array with the fairings. you can eject the extra parts at the same time.

[Boamere]

AGGGGH WHY!?

As you can see I have helium underneath my IR telescope, yet the telescope clearly states (well kind of clearly) "Helium coolant D(eprived)"

Any reason why? This happens on all my telescope builds

[BigD145]

Turn the bloody lights on.

[Arrowmaster]

Nice thrust, but then, that is the 3.75m fusion reactor, so i suppose it looks right, i only tested 2.5m upgraded reactor with thermal turbojet.

Actually the trust numbers in MJ are bugged with thermal rockets.

Heres a comparison of MJ and KER thrust stats at 0%, 5%ish, and 100% throttle. It probably needs changes to both MJ and KSPI to be fixed.

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[HerrGeneral]

AGGGGH WHY!?

[a really dark image]

As you can see I have helium underneath my IR telescope, yet the telescope clearly states (well kind of clearly) "Helium coolant D(eprived)"

Any reason why? This happens on all my telescope builds

Actually, I can't see jack **** because it's nighttime.

But the problem for me was that the telescope needed to be directly mounted on the helium tank, and both have to be powered.

[WaveFunctionP]

Its the thermalpower. Technically its non-transferable, but after all, any module that has thermal power defined, will be able to 'receive' thermal power from other module, in this case, another reactor. Btw, microwave thermal receivers should also work on same thing. Nice thrust, but then, that is the 3.75m fusion reactor, so i suppose it looks right, i only tested 2.5m upgraded reactor with thermal turbojet. Pretty decent Isp as well, 4000 with LFO.

Only thing that i wonder in that concept is, that you should be able to get max. thrust just that one main nozzle as it splits the power to three.

Strange, it barely gets off the pad (twr 1.01) with just the 3.5 rocket nozzle, with less weight.

Edited March 6, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[DivisionByZero]

Hi, Bonesbro,

I'll go through re-installing the mod by deleting the warpPlugin folder, then copying the original download into the gameData folder.

I was trying to make sure I had the "record seismic" mode active. when I get back I usually try to click on the "collect data" button and it tends to do nothing at all. It's very frustrating.

Any other suggestions for things to check in, maybe, the part files or whatever is also appreciated.

[JDCollie]

Yes - it remembers the name of the impactor so you have to rename them to get multiple impacts recorded from the same design.

Seriously? >.< Well, that solves the mystery of the non-recording impactor. Thanks!

[BigD145]

Either 50GW is too much in a power network or a single 1.25 plasma thruster is too powerful for mun landings. Hmm. I even turned the thrust down around 5.5 to 20. Vacuum power is great for long distance travel but forget about fine tuning anything. Perhaps I should switch to smaller thrusters and electric generators.

[merendel]

Either 50GW is too much in a power network or a single 1.25 plasma thruster is too powerful for mun landings. Hmm. I even turned the thrust down around 5.5 to 20. Vacuum power is great for long distance travel but forget about fine tuning anything. Perhaps I should switch to smaller thrusters and electric generators.

It is, a 1.25 only uses 25GW effective max. It will use a bit more depending on the effency of the fuel but even the least effent fuel wont take a full 50gw. pumping in that much extra is just cooking your ship faster than you need to That said it really depends on how heavy your ship is. I tend to use the .625 thrusters on craft only clocking in at a couple tons. those have a limit of 3 or so GW. Good rule of thumb is if you can break the sound barier 5 seconds after takeoff on kerbin you probably have a smidge too much power to land on Mun or minmus in an elegent manner Alternitively let some speed build up and pulse your drive on and off to keep the speed down and just accept the fact that your probably going to land at a couple m/s

[VaporTrail]

Another possible alternate is to take a couple small engines that run off the same fuel you use for your plasma thruster and use those for the suicide burn/touchdown leg, especially if you use MechJeb. Mechjeb seems to handle standard rockets alot better than the plasma thrusters, simply because the fluctuating power of the plasma requires changes so often.

I know there are some monoprop fueled engines somewhere that MechJeb can use... I just haven't seen them in a while.

[bonesbro]

It is, a 1.25 only uses 25GW effective max. It will use a bit more depending on the effency of the fuel but even the least effent fuel wont take a full 50gw. pumping in that much extra is just cooking your ship faster than you need to That said it really depends on how heavy your ship is. I tend to use the .625 thrusters on craft only clocking in at a couple tons. those have a limit of 3 or so GW. Good rule of thumb is if you can break the sound barier 5 seconds after takeoff on kerbin you probably have a smidge too much power to land on Mun or minmus in an elegent manner Alternitively let some speed build up and pulse your drive on and off to keep the speed down and just accept the fact that your probably going to land at a couple m/s

Don't forget that you can right click on the engine and limit the thrust. You can lower it as low as 6% I think which makes even way-overpowered craft controllable.

[merendel]

Don't forget that you can right click on the engine and limit the thrust. You can lower it as low as 6% I think which makes even way-overpowered craft controllable.

he'd talked about doing that already and it still being a problem. I've experienced this once myself where I built it when I only had a small reactor network and then cranked it up to 50GW or so. Craft was fairly light and it went from being quite spritely but easy to controll to geting 1G of accelleration at minimum throttle and having the drive core clean through the rest of the craft at max thrust. That one made a fun explosion. Either way its possible to end up in a situation where even 6% thrust is overkill.

[DivisionByZero]

Ugh.

So my magnetometer can be activated, but it doesn't have any additional buttons. So, I can *read* the particle fluxes and B-field information, but I can't actually log data to generate the SCIENCE! report.

Also, I did, somehow, manage to make a switch to a nearby flag, and then over to the probe with the seismic instrument. However, when I click "collect data" it does absolutely nothing. I do get the nice "seismic report available", but the collect button does nothing. [edit: this method seems very unreliable. I can't switch on a regular basis without going through the tracking station.]

So, I don't know much about mods and just pulled down the entire list of mods that Scott Manley listed for the interstellar quest. Is it possible some of the mods are messing these science options up?

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on what to check or how to trouble-shoot the situation.

Edited March 7, 2014 by DivisionByZero
additional clarification

[GavinZac]

Yes I installed it as per the readme, and this is the second PC that won't run this mod (since I changed recently). Any ideas? I obviously don't have any crash logs, Kerbal just closes without confirmation.

You always have crash logs.

/Kerbal Space Program/KSP_Data/output_log.txt

No crash popup usually means out-of-memory though.

[Fractal_UK]

Ugh.

So my magnetometer can be activated, but it doesn't have any additional buttons. So, I can *read* the particle fluxes and B-field information, but I can't actually log data to generate the SCIENCE! report.

Also, I did, somehow, manage to make a switch to a nearby flag, and then over to the probe with the seismic instrument. However, when I click "collect data" it does absolutely nothing. I do get the nice "seismic report available", but the collect button does nothing. [edit: this method seems very unreliable. I can't switch on a regular basis without going through the tracking station.]

So, I don't know much about mods and just pulled down the entire list of mods that Scott Manley listed for the interstellar quest. Is it possible some of the mods are messing these science options up?

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on what to check or how to trouble-shoot the situation.

I think some people had problems before when using the expanded science reports thing because it asks you to replace the stock ScienceDefs.cfg file rather than just editing them with module manager.

[Atragon]

I think some people had problems before when using the expanded science reports thing because it asks you to replace the stock ScienceDefs.cfg file rather than just editing them with module manager.

That's what happened to me. I removed the extended science reports, and the magnetometer started working again.

[GavinZac]

I think some people had problems before when using the expanded science reports thing because it asks you to replace the stock ScienceDefs.cfg file rather than just editing them with module manager.

Actually the issue I had was that I had ended up with two ScienceDefs.cfg's. When I make sure there's only one, the Magnetometer works just fine with the Community Science Reports. Evidently it's a common mistake to either have two, or to keep one as a backup - even when renamed it seems to be 'active'.

[Fractal_UK]

Actually the issue I had was that I had ended up with two ScienceDefs.cfg's. When I make sure there's only one, the Magnetometer works just fine with the Community Science Reports. Evidently it's a common mistake to either have two, or to keep one as a backup - even when renamed it seems to be 'active'.

Yes, that's because of how KSP loads config nodes. You can keep a backup but you need to keep it outside of GameData, any cfg file anywhere inside of the GameData folder will have its definitions loaded, at which point the game is loading two copies of supposedly unique definitions.

It would be really nice if someone produced a module manager edit for the community science reports so that these kind of issues didn't happen.

[BigD145]

he'd talked about doing that already and it still being a problem. I've experienced this once myself where I built it when I only had a small reactor network and then cranked it up to 50GW or so. Craft was fairly light and it went from being quite spritely but easy to controll to geting 1G of accelleration at minimum throttle and having the drive core clean through the rest of the craft at max thrust. That one made a fun explosion. Either way its possible to end up in a situation where even 6% thrust is overkill.

The craft is very lightweight (sub 10 ton). 1 man pod, duplicates of all science, some mono for docking at an orbital facility, and the rest is 1.25 engine parts. I think I'll redesign it for 62.5 parts, or I would if the inline receivers came in the 62.5 variety. I didn't want to use the dish receiver because of the docking port impeding symmetry designs.

I tried a combo craft with 4 62.5 plasma and 1 1.25, but megajoules sputtered out even with the 1.25 plasma off. This is with only one 1.25 generator as it has to be inline with the inline receiver. Even at 35% the little plasma's would sputter and two would shut off. All four 62.5's do work at times, but not reliably. I was just testing different combinations and not looking at specs at all.

[Lightwarrior]

Just a note:

Using thermal receiver+generator is very, very inefficient way. You probably loose more than 50% of power by doing so.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Lightwarrior

[merendel]

I've had mixed success with combineing different sizes of plasma/attilla thrusters. I had 1 design with a central 1.25 and put a pair of .625s on outrigers because I had more power than the single could use, my TWR was just bairly over 1 and I figured the 2 extras would use up the spare power in the net and boost thrust. It actualy lowered thrust as for some reason the main stack stoped drawing its full load and the MJ pannle showed I was showing lower utilization than just turning off the outrigers. Ended up junking the outrigers and replaced them with argon droptanks to get that one off the ground.

However I've never had plasmas just splutter out unless I managed to compleatly loose connection to the relay. Normaly power fluctuations do lower the thrust but dont result in a flameout shutdown. Although for a 10 ton I'd say try reducing to only 2 if you can. I had a spaceplane design that was about 19 tons and it could just bairly hover at sea level on kerbin on a pair of .6's useing lithium. could hover at rather low throttle off LF or vacume on the mun. use the main drive when you need extra power and the smalls when you only need a low amount of thrust.

[Lightwarrior]

Actually i think that those generator attached to thermal receiver may end up having zero efficiency because of really low receiver temperature (lower than radiator maximum temperature), obviously producing no power at all.

[GavinZac]

Yes, that's because of how KSP loads config nodes. You can keep a backup but you need to keep it outside of GameData, any cfg file anywhere inside of the GameData folder will have its definitions loaded, at which point the game is loading two copies of supposedly unique definitions.

It would be really nice if someone produced a module manager edit for the community science reports so that these kind of issues didn't happen.

Hmm.

*10 minutes later*

I figured out why it's not done that way.

Module Manager matches parts like so:

@NODE[name]{}

But the Science file doesn't have names, it has 'id' and 'title', so

@EXPERIMENT_DEFINITION[crewreport]{}

doesn't match anything.

[HerrGeneral]

Is there any way to have a Kerbal take the data from the magnetometer, like other science parts? As is, you have to either transmit or keep it, which makes it useless for further science.