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


Fractal_UK

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At that point, you want efficiency over thrust so the Plasma thruster.

Is there any way to get more power transmission from my orbital microwave station? It produces 3GW but my craft is only receiving, from only a few kilometres away, about 160MW.

Edited by SirusKing
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Sounds good with liquid xenon or mono? No 1.25m argon (that needs to be changed!)

Try lithium. And on that note an argon, and lithium tank for small probes would be awesome. I've been building ion satellites and helperdrones with plasma engines like this (bottom to top)

Plasma thruster

Fission reactor+2 radial small radiators (not the foldout ones)

generator

Rcs tank

Core

Xenon tank

Docking port Jr.

Then various trinkets: Rcs etc. Mechjeb

It makes small easy to tow probes that serve as satellites for scan sat, and others I put magnetic grapples from kas on the end to clean up orbital debris. They are perfect for this. You get around 7k dv for the mono which I use for long burns and 800 dv with xenon but at nearly double twr. I use that to quickly get back to orbital velocity after deorbiting junk, or for capture orbits. Anyways the bi fuel system works really well for me but on a large manned tug I use argon and lithium and get much better performance. It's already a struggle to make small non fusion probes viable, so it would be nice to have all the fuel choices available. Same for 1.25 sized rockets.

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The active craft's receiver needs to be pointed DIRECTLY at the transmitting vehicle to get maximum received power. The angle in which it is not aligned is how much power transmission is lost. I believe it's on a 100% to 90 degree scale. This is why a lot of us keep a few power stations in a geosync orbit... or around Kerbol. Easy to just aim up or at Kerbol.

~Steve

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Interestingly enough, the radiation stuff I was mentioning also occurs when no reactors are nearby.

Since my last post in this thread, I've also managed to decommission my old station, return the Kerbals home, remove some mods I didn't really use, as well as NFP. Got the new station up and partially crewed. Next stage is to finish designing the power modules for my orbital power station. I plan to use 4 of the 3.75m molten salt reactors for their longevity (upgrades not yet available), then design and deploy a relay network of 4 or more satellites, potentially to GKO, but at least 1 Mm, contrary to the Wiki's recommendation of ~700Km.

I would like to figure out what the lifespan of the reactors would be (assuming no extra fuel tanks) if I used ThF4 instead of UF4.

Edited by Einarr
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If I might just check something about the ISRU refinery...

I was trying to set up a little lithium / tritium harvesting rig close to KSC, but I couldn't get the refinery to extract lithium, or even water. After a bit of investigation it seems to be that those controls only appear if the entire vessel is floating - if even a single part is touching the surface, even a KAS anchor fired into the seabed, those controls vanish. Is this intentional, or at least known behavior, or a bug?

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{BUG} With the microwave THERMAL receiver the thermal turbo jet and the thermal rocket burn all my fuel in less than 5 seconds and produce OVER 20K thrust before fuel is gone.

EDIT: http://www.twitch.tv/dookiejones/b/520677587 Shows thrust getting WAY above what it should be.

You have over 8GW of power and are using LiquidFuel, thermal receiver produces poor ISP, which with lots of power means a lot of thrust. If you want to preserve your fuel for longer, you need to turn down your reception power.

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If I might just check something about the ISRU refinery...

I was trying to set up a little lithium / tritium harvesting rig close to KSC, but I couldn't get the refinery to extract lithium, or even water. After a bit of investigation it seems to be that those controls only appear if the entire vessel is floating - if even a single part is touching the surface, even a KAS anchor fired into the seabed, those controls vanish. Is this intentional, or at least known behavior, or a bug?

Splashed down and Landed are the only two "landed" states, and they are mutually exclusive.

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any way to have solar power amound made by craft converted to MJ power rating (KW/GW) on the same craft (so craft with panels can generate its own MJ via solar alone?)

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Splashed down and Landed are the only two "landed" states, and they are mutually exclusive.

Hmm, I guess that counts as known behavior then, if it's a limitation of the system. I guess it's time for Plan B, then, until I can figure out some sensible way of retrieving material from a floating refinery. Thanks!

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Updated experimental insterstellar:

- Fixed thermal reciever power reception throttling. (experimental)

All changes from stock kspi

// slashes indicate changes that were rolled back when merging with the official version and I haven't yet reapplied them.

Version Experimental
- Fixed data collection on magnetometer.
- Added more details to generator, reactor and radiator modules.
- Added atmospheric intake functionality to atmospheric scoops.
- Charging is now disabled by default on the alcubierre drives.
- Added 1000 EC to computer core, and increased torque to 5/5/5.
- //Added a more detailed tooltip description for the computer core.
- //Added details about power transmission to array and reciever to tooltip descriptions.
- //Added details about generator attachment and modes to tooltip descriptions.
- //Added detail to the GC/MS tooltip to indicate that it is also a science experiment.
- //Added details to the GRS description to indicate that it is useful for detecting concentrations of uranium and thorium.
- //Added a more detailed description of the science labs capabilities.
- //Added a clarification of the crygenic helium tank, and its use with the IR telescope.
- //Added details about the magnetometer is also a science experiment to the tooltip desciption.
- //Added details to the helium-3 container to clarify that it does not store helium, and is used as a reator fuel.
- //Added tooltip to antimatter containers to indicate maximum capacity.
- The UN tank now uses the correct model.
- Charging is now disabled by default for antimatter containers.
- Microwave recievers will now attempt to throttle reception to equal demand. (experimental)
- Plasma engines now have the capability to automaticely toggle between quantum vacuum plasma and normal fuel. (experimental)
- Added "radial" warp drive models.
- Fixed thermal reciever power reception throttling. (experimental)

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I've been doing some work on the ElectricEngines, for a start, the code is insufficiently pretty (by which I mean, it's horrible), so I've rewritten that from scratch to make it more sensible.

Since I was doing that, I decided to convert the Electric Engines to use ModuleEnginesFX (which the rapier engine uses) instead of ModuleEngines (which just about everything else uses). ModuleEngineFX is newer and I suspect that all the engines in KSP will be moved on to that system in the future. The other advantage of this is that people can mod up their plasma engines with HotRockets or equivalent. In any case, without any additional modding on behalf of the user, it gives me a lot more control over the engines and their particle effects.

This is just a demo but you can see that by changing the fuel type, I can actually change the particle colours.

This extra control also means an end to the days where a ship using beamed power to produce something like 1KW in their engines gets the same particle effects as a ship using a huge fusion reactor.

CfrJs2q.jpg

0i1jF4e.jpg

Edited by Fractal_UK
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Specific scenarios:

1) 10t or-so probe from LKO to a polar orbit on any body or ring Kerbol (I want to map and scan everything).

2) HEAVY probe (40+ ton - colony parts) to Duna or a nearer moon's surface.

For 1, you want the most ISP possible. That means in a best-case scenario an AM reactor and plasma drive using liquid fuel. But you could just as easily use the game's default ion drive. A thermal rocket motor wouldn't be a bad choice either. I point those out because plasma drives are an ultra-pain-in-the-ass without gigantic amounts of power, often producing less than that of a stock thermal nuclear rocket thingy of awesome. LV-N...or whatever.

For 2, uhhhh...are you landing it? Because then you should be thinking about high thrust rockets (thermal turbojet thingy might do), and a lot of chutes.

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For 1...

For 2...

Oooh thanks! Now this is exactly the sort of info I need. Yes, Ions are efficient, but take. So. Long. and burning out of your interplanetary burn can be problematic as well, so a bit more power is ideal. It sounds like I should give a thermal rocket build a goo. As for landing - I was just going to chute the parts down (they would break into several sections on re-entry. I'm using MKS). It was getting there and circularising I've been most worried about. Yeah, an LV-thing would do the trick.. but I figure maybe my new toys are up to the job and so I should give them a go!

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