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

[epicsockzebra]

I seem to have run into an issue. I built a rather large Dt fusion engine ship. Which I took to Jool and had to return due to my low supply of Liquid fuel. I was burning retrograde around Kerbin to bring myself into an orbit and then the game froze and then it unfroze. After unfreezing i was hovering from about 65mil km with an orbit speed of .1m/s and my deuterium and tritium now have Nan as their fuel levels. Because of this I cannot try to re-orbit and I was hoping to be able to reuse this station, rather than letting it plummet towards Kerbin. Any help would be appreciated thanks

[NeoAcario]

let me make sure i understand- i need to lunch them in pairs of Generator+Reactor and dock these pairs together?

Generators and Reactors must be directly touching... yes. You might want to include a couple radiators in these launch sections... just to be on the safe side.

~Steve

Edited April 20, 2014 by NeoAcario

[Fractal_UK]

I seem to have run into an issue. I built a rather large Dt fusion engine ship. Which I took to Jool and had to return due to my low supply of Liquid fuel. I was burning retrograde around Kerbin to bring myself into an orbit and then the game froze and then it unfroze. After unfreezing i was hovering from about 65mil km with an orbit speed of .1m/s and my deuterium and tritium now have Nan as their fuel levels. Because of this I cannot try to re-orbit and I was hoping to be able to reuse this station, rather than letting it plummet towards Kerbin. Any help would be appreciated thanks

Do you have a KSP.log file you could share?

[WaveFunctionP]

let me make sure i understand- i need to lunch them in pairs of Generator+Reactor and dock these pairs together?

You might find the video tutorial video in my sig helpful. I'll also hopefully be uploading a video on power generation this week.

[OctarineNoise]

Any tips for building a spaceplane utilizing the thermal turbojets for atmospheric flight, followed by a thermal rocket once the jets are no longer effective? My tech level is pre-fusion and pre-antimatter. I have all the stock techs unlocked, though. My current approach is to use beamed microwave thermal power, rather than having reactors on the ship itself. Hoping to get an idea of how much power I need to make it feasible.

I've played around a bit with SSTOs. Bear in mind I use FAR, your experience will be very different without it.

I found that basic fission just doesn't cut it, way too little TWR. Once you get fusion though, it gets feasible. I recommend you use the 2.5m hybrid turbojet; better TWR than the 1.25, and having two separate subsystems is just wasting weight. Because the foldable radiators will be ripped off with prejudice during ascent, radials must be used. There's no way you can cool a fusion reactor with them though, so it must be shut down once you stop burning. Include the smallest fission reactor to serve as starter motor and standby power.

If you can afford the memory, I also recommend you use B9 and Procedural Wings. The first for its awesome fuselages, and the second will make it a lot easier to have big wings that don't flop around and break apart. Lower part count helps too. Also, the turbojet gulps down an unholy amount of air, you need lots and lots of intakes to saturate it, and B9 has some nice big ones. Check your reactor on the way up: if it drops under 90% before you are at the edge of the atmosphere, you need more of them.

With basic fusion and LFO as vacuum propellant, I managed to get a 45t plane off Kerbin comfortably with a few thousand delta-V to spare. On Eve, I could just barely leave (the ascent angle had to be just right), not because of fuel, but a thrust deficit. With upgraded fusion? You can do the same with pure liquid and have an interplanetary SSTO, or just use LFO (how does a TWR of 6 sound?) and blast out of the atmosphere like a boss

[epicsockzebra]

I'm not much of a computer wizz. If you could direct me to where I could find it, I can give it to you.(Btw i use steam).

[DrNuke]

First of all, thanks. Didn't know those existed.

@DrNuke: I assume those are yours? Might I suggest adding a short explanation about what is better for each axis? Specifically with regard to scientific notation. The negative exponents are actually quite hard to see (at least for me; I missed them the first time), and a naive observer might look at that and think bigger numbers = better, when in the case of the AM flux, the opposite is true. Getting that backward might make someone think the best place to get AM is Pol, when it's actually the worst.

Just some thoughts after having looked at all those and thought "Pol is the best? No, that can't possibly be right. At all. No."

Or maybe even using a legend that is absolute relative to every graph, so that it's even more apparent there is a huge difference between say Jool and Pol, where Jool would be pretty much the only place you'd see that dark red. That would make them a lot easier to read with respect to each other.

@phoenix_ca Yup those are my graphs, I made them back for version 0.7.4 so they probably should be updated. I've taken a quick look a things and they should still be valid for .11.

I have thought about how to put them all on one legend, unfortunately Jool is 8-9 orders of magnitude greater than the small moons (i.e. Pole, Bop, and Gilly). Which is probably why I made this chart to show where to get the most antimatter:

How about I make a couple sets of optional charts that common legends. Set 1 Jool and Kerbol (Sun). Set 2 Kerbin, Laythe, Eve, Duna and Typo. Set 3 the remaining bodies. Would that help make things more understandable?

Or I could change the units to µg/s or ng/s instead of mg, but then I get into the problem of people having to convert units or I could change it to mg/day, any thoughts?

Edited April 21, 2014 by DrNuke
more options

[epicsockzebra]

I'm not sure if my last reply went through, so this might be a double post. Anyways, if you could direct me to the file that you need I'd be more than happy to help.

[WaveFunctionP]

@phoenix_ca Yup those are my graphs, I made them back for version 0.7.4 so they probably should be updated. I've taken a quick look a things and they should still be valid for .11.

I have thought about how to put them all on one legend, unfortunately Jool is 8-9 orders of magnitude greater than the small moons (i.e. Pole, Bop, and Gilly). Which is probably why I made this chart to show where to get the most antimatter:

http://i.imgur.com/pTGPLMh.png

How about I make a couple sets of optional charts that common legends. Set 1 Jool and Kerbol (Sun). Set 2 Kerbin, Laythe, Eve, Duna and Typo. Set 3 the remaining bodies. Would that help make things more understandable?

Or I could change the units to µg/s or ng/s instead of mg, but then I get into the problem of people having to convert units or I could change it to mg/day, any thoughts?

I think mg/hour makes the most sense.

And now that I think about, editing the units on the tooltips ingame to show this instead of days would probably resolve the issue with kerbal vs earth time.

[illucypher]

ok, not sure if this has been posted already but.........I think NASA has been talking to Squad a lot, not just coz of the ARM mission but I reckon they also play KSPI

"NASA just crashed a satellite into the moon on purpose

BY DANIEL COOPER @DANIELWCOOPER APRIL 18TH 2014, AT 9:45:00 AM ET"

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/18/nasa-ladee-crashes-into-moon-on-purpose/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

NASA MUST be testing out Fractal's seismic sensor package, but forgot to make sure it was on a craft already landed on the Mun before crashing the probe....... :)

[Einarr]

I've played around a bit with SSTOs. Bear in mind I use FAR, your experience will be very different without it.

I found that basic fission just doesn't cut it, way too little TWR. Once you get fusion though, it gets feasible. I recommend you use the 2.5m hybrid turbojet; better TWR than the 1.25, and having two separate subsystems is just wasting weight. Because the foldable radiators will be ripped off with prejudice during ascent, radials must be used. There's no way you can cool a fusion reactor with them though, so it must be shut down once you stop burning. Include the smallest fission reactor to serve as starter motor and standby power.

If you can afford the memory, I also recommend you use B9 and Procedural Wings. The first for its awesome fuselages, and the second will make it a lot easier to have big wings that don't flop around and break apart. Lower part count helps too. Also, the turbojet gulps down an unholy amount of air, you need lots and lots of intakes to saturate it, and B9 has some nice big ones. Check your reactor on the way up: if it drops under 90% before you are at the edge of the atmosphere, you need more of them.

With basic fusion and LFO as vacuum propellant, I managed to get a 45t plane off Kerbin comfortably with a few thousand delta-V to spare. On Eve, I could just barely leave (the ascent angle had to be just right), not because of fuel, but a thrust deficit. With upgraded fusion? You can do the same with pure liquid and have an interplanetary SSTO, or just use LFO (how does a TWR of 6 sound?) and blast out of the atmosphere like a boss

For the moment, I'm just looking at something to replace the KSO as my LKO science/crew ferry. I want to use the Thermal turbojets to aid when I overshoot KSC (as I always seem to with the KSO). Perhaps you didn't notice that I mentioned using beamed Thermal Power from orbiting power stations/relays (built with the Tier 1 3.25m fission reactors). I will need no radiators on the ship unless I include a small reactor for power generation in the final design (for test designs I use RTGs). I use B9 and was planning on making the majority of the hull from those parts. I have been using Liquid as my vacuum propellant, perhaps I should swap to LFO...

Typically, I use rockets and landers to gather science, return them to my LKO station that has a sci lab on it (the one to clean instruments with), transfer the data to the station, then pick it up with the KSO for return to Kerbin. I then refuel and reuse the science ships without ever landing them on Kerbin (unless there's an emergency or upgrade).

I was unimpressed with PWings as, although they can be large, I'm not a fan of wings thinner than a human hair (all of the example craft I saw when I had it installed had 2d wings, length, width, shape along those two dimensions, but no thickness)...just not appealing to me.

As for FAR, I had some nullspace issues with it a bit ago, and to my knowledge, Ferram hasn't fixed the issue, assuming it's even something he can fix on his end. Probably an addon incompatibility...removing KAS fixed it, but I find KAS more important...especially since I have issues getting rockets to fly straight in FAR...and I've had to launch payloads so unwieldy, such as my power stations (over 100 tons stock on the end of a rocket with no propulsion of its own) that I doubt they could even be launched in FAR without fairings (I'm gonna see of Procedural Fairings will work for me...).

Eventually, I'll be looking into an interplanetary science ship that is able to land/takeoff from nearly anywhere, even airless worlds, but that will likely require fusion or antimatter.

[WaveFunctionP]

Eventually, I'll be looking into an interplanetary science ship that is able to land/takeoff from nearly anywhere, even airless worlds, but that will likely require fusion or antimatter.

You rang?!

May I present, the Prometheus.

Later designs got smaller. But it was a beast. I posted earlier in thread with the design. There's very little that plenty of fusion rockets, vista engines and refineries can't do. This was before the inline ISRU was an option.

Edited April 21, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[OctarineNoise]

For the moment, I'm just looking at something to replace the KSO as my LKO science/crew ferry. I want to use the Thermal turbojets to aid when I overshoot KSC (as I always seem to with the KSO). Perhaps you didn't notice that I mentioned using beamed Thermal Power from orbiting power stations/relays (built with the Tier 1 3.25m fission reactors).

Ah, right. Well, there's one big problem with the thermal receiver: it operates at only 1400K, and you get abysmal ISP from it. Although for a LKO ferry, that might not be a problem. Also, you can get crazy amounts of power, and can afford to use pure liquid fuel, which offsets this somewhat.

I was unimpressed with PWings as, although they can be large, I'm not a fan of wings thinner than a human hair (all of the example craft I saw when I had it installed had 2d wings, length, width, shape along those two dimensions, but no thickness)...just not appealing to me.

That's weird, I've never seen that, my wings always had thickness. It's in fact adjustable, separately for the root and tip.

Eventually, I'll be looking into an interplanetary science ship that is able to land/takeoff from nearly anywhere, even airless worlds, but that will likely require fusion or antimatter.

Paradoxically, airless worlds are a lot harder to land on once you have fusion (well, technically you don't need fusion to land a plane, but you won't be coming up again). On atmospheric worlds, you don't need a single drop of fuel to land after the deorbit burn. There's also the problem of orientation. My guess is you would need to make a plane with legs on the top and bottom side of the wings, so that it can also land on its tail like a rocket. It would be terribly unstable in the pitch direction, and the tiniest slope would make it topple. But if you have KAS, you could put winches with grappling hooks on the top and bottom, angled backwards. Land on tail, fire grappling hooks, maybe tighten the uphill one a bit, and profit.

[undercoveryankee]

I was unimpressed with PWings as, although they can be large, I'm not a fan of wings thinner than a human hair (all of the example craft I saw when I had it installed had 2d wings, length, width, shape along those two dimensions, but no thickness)...just not appealing to me.

That's weird, I've never seen that, my wings always had thickness. It's in fact adjustable, separately for the root and tip.

Thickness adjustment was added only in the last version or two of PWings. If the example craft were created with a version of PWings before the thickness controls were added, that might cause them to load with zero thickness instead of default thickness.

[Einarr]

I really want to use something similar in design to my favorite fictional ship from Orbiter, the XR2 Ravenstar. It has main engines, VTOL engines, and half or was it quarter power retro engines (compared to the mains). Not entirely certain I'll be able to get the VTOL engines in due to their placement (in the belly). This would, of course be fore the future general purpose science ship.

As to WaveMotion's ship...is there a craft file for it, and what other mods does it use?

[pantheis]

So I just unlocked warp drive finally (yay!), engaged it and noticed the textures for the effect are all black. I believe I saw mention of this being a problem due to the active texture management addon and that some file needed to be edited to add a specific exemption. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

Found it:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43839-0-23-5-KSP-Interstellar-%28Toolbar-Integration-New-Models-New-Tech%29-Version-0-11?p=967466&viewfull=1#post967466

However, making that edit doesn't restore the warp effect. It's still all black.

Anyone got any other ideas on this one?

[ArcticX9]

Anyone got any other ideas on this one?

I find a KSP restart sometimes resolves this.

[Thorbane]

Wavefunction, is there a config file somewhere where I can turn off the microwave receiver throttling? or just turn off heating from excess beamed power all-together?

[Atrius129]

Wavefunction, is there a config file somewhere where I can turn off the microwave receiver throttling? or just turn off heating from excess beamed power all-together?

Another option would be just to have a slider to adjust the maximum power input that is being received in addition to the percent received that already exists. With something that is constantly fluctuating like power reception, percentage does little good (at least to me). If I could just limit it to a fixed rate I feel like I could do so much more with MW power.

[pina_coladas]

Another option would be just to have a slider to adjust the maximum power input that is being received in addition to the percent received that already exists. With something that is constantly fluctuating like power reception, percentage does little good (at least to me). If I could just limit it to a fixed rate I feel like I could do so much more with MW power.

Yeah, fixed MJ value would be better than a percentage for sure. Hard to do with a slider though, since the range of possible values would be so high.

[pantheis]

I find a KSP restart sometimes resolves this.

This is happening across restarts.

[ecat]

Strange occurrence, possible bug:

I'd been hopping around several different ships, all with some IS parts and B9 and some IR etc, for quite some time. Switching to my 176 day old Eve probe which had recently watched enter Eve SOI I found it unresponsive to throttle control, one stage had a chemical engine the other stage a chemical and four ions powered off the small 'safe ' fusion reactor + generator - no mix active/inactive engines restored the throttle, even after some forced staging. Interaction with the science parts was fine, it was just the throttle that wouldn't move. Poking around:

MechJeb DeltaV Status was showing NaN for all TWR values.

UF4 was showing NaN in the resources pop-down, iirc actinides was also showing NaN.

I used Alt-Enter + close window to exit so avoiding any writing to the persistence file.

Made a copy of persistent.sfs.

Restarted the game, returned to the ship... same problem.

Quit the game.

Taking persistent.sfs into an editor to see if the UF4 NaN etc were saved values or calculated I found

				MODULE
				{
					name = FNNuclearReactor
					isEnabled = True
					upgradedToV08 = True
					uranium_fuel = True
					upgradedToV10 = True
					IsEnabled = True
					isupgraded = False
					breedtritium = False
					last_active_time = 1.54568E+07
					ongoing_consumption_rate = 0
					reactorInit = False
					startDisabled = False

...

RESOURCE
				{
					name = UF4
					amount = NaN
					maxAmount = 22.5
					flowState = True
					isTweakable = True
					hideFlow = False
					flowMode = Both
				}
				RESOURCE
				{
					name = ThF4
					amount = 0
					maxAmount = 22.5
					flowState = True
					isTweakable = True
					hideFlow = False
					flowMode = Both
				}
				RESOURCE
				{
					name = Actinides
					amount = NaN
					maxAmount = 22.5
					flowState = True
					isTweakable = False
					hideFlow = False
					flowMode = Both
				}
			}

I changed UF4->amount to 22 and Actinides->amount to 0. Restarted the game and everything was back to normal and working fine.

I had done way to much jumping around to pin down any cause, but the NaNs got there somehow and appeared to break the throttle control for the entire vessel.

[phoenix_ca]

@phoenix_ca Yup those are my graphs, I made them back for version 0.7.4 so they probably should be updated. I've taken a quick look a things and they should still be valid for .11.

I have thought about how to put them all on one legend, unfortunately Jool is 8-9 orders of magnitude greater than the small moons (i.e. Pole, Bop, and Gilly). Which is probably why I made this chart to show where to get the most antimatter:

http://i.imgur.com/pTGPLMh.png

How about I make a couple sets of optional charts that common legends. Set 1 Jool and Kerbol (Sun). Set 2 Kerbin, Laythe, Eve, Duna and Typo. Set 3 the remaining bodies. Would that help make things more understandable?

Or I could change the units to µg/s or ng/s instead of mg, but then I get into the problem of people having to convert units or I could change it to mg/day, any thoughts?

Well since you're asking, yeah, different sets would help. Would make it easier to understand where the various celestial bodies sit in relation to each other. But hey, I didn't see that chart that clearly shows the flux relative to all planets until you posted it. My suggestions were just to make it easier to read off-the-cuff. Once you take a close look at the units being used it's actually not all that difficult to tell what's what.

And I'd go with WaveFunction's suggestion of mg/hour, mainly because in KSP the "day" has just become an unknown, because we don't know (and can't know) which day is being referred to, the 24hr or 6hr one. Better to stick to the units that stay the same.

[Fractal_UK]

The new electric engine re-work is coming along nicely, I can now create different particle effects for each propellant type. I'm not sure why I'm demonstrating this with an aircraft, but it does the job!

Hydrogen

Xenon

Lithium

[Walsht9]

I am unable to reprocess nuclear fuel. I can begin research and activate the antimatter factory, but whenever I select reprocess the animation glitches out. There are two status labels in the menu and one says locked and the other says idle. Does anyone have a fix?