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

[TechnicalK3rbal]

How do I make an impactor probe?

[phoenix_ca]

https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Double-C-Seismic-Accelerometer

[Fractal_UK]

Since they're both resources, you could also make a part with your favorite resource conversion module (stock ModuleGenerator or KethaneConverter) configured to convert EC to MJ. However, if you produce an Interstellar-managed resource without going through Interstellar's resource manager, the Interstellar manager may be confused. I vaguely remember one of the symptoms being that Interstellar modules wouldn't notice the resource you were producing. That could be why the refinery isn't seeing any MJ.

Indeed, you can use stock generators to generate as many megajoules in the resource bar as you like but the megajoule resource manager will know nothing about them, so they amount of use they'll be is 0. Interstellar (or rather ORS) managed resources are similar to stock resources only in that they use the resource bar to display information.

If they were straightforwardly compatible and you could do everything required by Interstellar with ElectricCharge, there wouldn't be any need for Megajoules as a resource.

[ArcFurnace]

I've been messing around with integrating TAC Life Support with KSPI's ISRU options. The ModuleManager config in the spoiler below adds a module to the TAC Water Filters that lets you process KSPI LqdWater into drinkable Water, and a module to the Carbon Extractors that lets you transfer Oxidizer into your life-support Oxygen tanks (as well as one that lets you transfer it back out, just in case you need that for some reason...). Conversion numbers are calculated to conserve mass during the conversion process.

MODULE
{
name = TacGenericConverter
converterName = ISRU Water Filter


// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
conversionRate = 2160


// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
inputResources = LqdWater, 1.8, ElectricCharge, 20


// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
outputResources = Water, 1, false
}
}


@PART[TacWaterPurifierLarge]
{
MODULE
{
name = TacGenericConverter
converterName = ISRU Water Filter


// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
conversionRate = 2880


// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
inputResources = LqdWater, 1.8, ElectricCharge, 20


// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
outputResources = Water, 1, false
}
}


@PART[TacCarbonExtractor]
{
MODULE
{
name = TacGenericConverter
converterName = Transfer Oxidizer In


// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
conversionRate = 86400


// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
inputResources = Oxidizer, 1


// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
outputResources = Oxygen, 11.65, false
}


MODULE
{
name = TacGenericConverter
converterName = Transfer Oxidizer Out


// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
conversionRate = 86400


// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
inputResources = Oxygen, 11.65


// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
outputResources = Oxidizer, 1, false
}
}


@PART[TacCarbonExtractorLarge]
{
MODULE
{
name = TacGenericConverter
converterName = Transfer Oxidizer In


// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
conversionRate = 86400


// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
inputResources = Oxidizer, 1


// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
outputResources = Oxygen, 11.65, false
}


MODULE
{
name = TacGenericConverter
converterName = Transfer Oxidizer Out


// Number of units to convert per day (24 hours)
conversionRate = 86400


// A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs.
// For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which
// is multiplied by the conversionRate)
inputResources = Oxygen, 11.65


// A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above
// but also specify whether it should keep converting if the
// resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away).
outputResources = Oxidizer, 1, false
}
}

@PART[TacWaterPurifier]{

I want to do a greenhouse-style food producer as well, but that one really needs a new part, as well as more thought into what inputs it should use and how fast it should supply food (it's not like with water, where the water is already there and you're just gathering it- you have to actually grow the food).

Edited April 26, 2014 by ArcFurnace
Config wasn't quite right

[mrstoned]

A suggestion for next update/release to the textures.

Could we have the Uranium Nitride fuel containers read "UN" instead of UF4 (i think it is now). Just to differentiate the canisters if you have several on a utility-ship. Just for flare.

/Rikard

[phoenix_ca]

A suggestion for next update/release to the textures.

Could we have the Uranium Nitride fuel containers read "UN" instead of UF4 (i think it is now). Just to differentiate the canisters if you have several on a utility-ship. Just for flare.

/Rikard

That's a bug and is fixed in WaveFunction's version, IIRC.

ArcFurnace: Take a look at MKS. It already has a greenhouse. It's a very...involved mod, but it's there. As an aside, combined with KSPI, a good spot to set-up a self-sustaining colony is probably on one of the moons of Jool. I'm looking at Laythe. Lots of science to be had, there are lots of useful resources in the ocean and a decent amount of thorium too. Being in range of Jool for antimatter and helium-3 extraction is the biggest bonus.

Thanks for the configs. That greatly simplifies interoperability between KSPI and TAC. I wish KSPI would just use the more commonly used names for resources (Water, ArgonGas, etc) but for now, I guess that'll do.

Edited April 25, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[TheShandyMan]

Yesterday was busy for me so I didn't get a chance to reply (and I haven't yet finished catching up on the thread so if anybody else replied to me; thanks in advance). Long story short it was a glitch on my end somewhere (maybe a bad download of KSPI? Or some cruft file in my KSP install, dunno for sure but everything works now at any rate.

I do have another question however regarding relay's. As it stands now; I have about 25GW combined power being sent from a bunch of stations in orbit around Kerbol. I also have a relay network around Kerbin to make sure that I can put that power to use. However; whenever one of my transmitting stations orbits to the far side of Kerbin; my available power (obviously) drops. If I were to put a second relay network in a higher orbit (compared to my generator stations) around Kerbol; to where no generator was out of site of at least one Kerbol stationed relay; would I always have full power available on Kerbin (full power minus loss due to transmission, distance etc)?

@TheShandyMan

I would recommend you use more panels, or download the Balka arrays from the KOSMOS package. Those things are. Serious.

I had to double check my install since I always used to run KOSMOS; but it appears as though I forgot to install it. I just assumed I hadn't unlocked those parts yet; silly me. My "real" arrays use the OKEB-250's from NearFuture. I'll have to re-install KOSMOS to compare but the 250's produce 250EC at "normal" distance from Kerbol. With 8 of them per-station I think I'm actually generating more than I can transmit due to lack of EC storage. IIRC the Balka's only do ~200EC; however I might be able to fit more of them onto my stations since I think they're smaller than the OKEB's. It might be time for me to start working on the MK VII of my Icarus stations :-D

[Pds314]

Playing with basically ultra-realism mods (RSS, Real Fuels, AJE, KSPI, FAR, etc) and I noticed something weird about radiation in KSPI.

Kerbin (Earth, specifically the Florida Keys) sea level has a fairly severe radiation dose of 1.67 Sv/year.

http://xkcd.com/radiation/ says that the average U.S. citizen recieves a radiation dose of ~4 mSv/year.

This is especially disturbing when one can DECREASE their radiation exposure by standing on a tower of giant nuclear reactors to get further from Kerbin/Earth (which is the case).

[AndreyATGB]

The radiation does nothing right now, the levels are really high in stock KSP as well but it doesn't matter.

[ArcFurnace]

Yeah, Fractal hasn't worked with the radiation system too much yet I think, some of the levels are really high (try finding the highest dose-rate location in Minmus orbit, it's well over 10 Sv/hr iirc, which would be insanely lethal if it was actually implemented). Right now it's just a placeholder for if/when he wants to implement it properly in the future. He did something similar with the waste heat system, implementing it as a visible-but-nonfunctional stat to get people used to it before implementing actual negative consequences for excessive waste heat, but so far nothing much has happened with radiation.

Edited April 25, 2014 by ArcFurnace

[jinks]

I have considered moving to a version a bit more highly modified that I like to call stockalite that revamps kpsi to look more stock and simplifies many of the confusing and/or redundant elements of the addon and removes a good chunk of the power creep.

I actually like KSPI mostly the way it is. Will you still maintain your experimental tree with community-fixes and interim improvements? I kinda rely on you to integrate Fractal's releases into a sane git-tree. (Mostly because of the line-endings. Fractal pushes CRLF and on Linux I cannot autoconvert.)

[undercoveryankee]

Playing with basically ultra-realism mods (RSS, Real Fuels, AJE, KSPI, FAR, etc) and I noticed something weird about radiation in KSPI.

Kerbin (Earth, specifically the Florida Keys) sea level has a fairly severe radiation dose of 1.67 Sv/year.

http://xkcd.com/radiation/ says that the average U.S. citizen recieves a radiation dose of ~4 mSv/year.

This is especially disturbing when one can DECREASE their radiation exposure by standing on a tower of giant nuclear reactors to get further from Kerbin/Earth (which is the case).

One of the things Fractal has said the current radiation levels take into account is the level of thorium in the ground. There may be a hot deposit near KSC. How do the numbers change elsewhere on the surface?

[Einarr]

Hmm, having trouble keeping my fusion reactors going during non-physical timewarp. They'll seem to be running fine for a bit, then suddenly lose all power. If it wasn't for TAC Life Support slowing down as EC nears depletion, I'd end up with no power at all. Anyone else having similar issues?

Edit: Further testing shows that it's cropping up when I hit 10k x timewarp or faster. It's fine up to 1k.

Edited April 26, 2014 by Einarr

[ArcFurnace]

Do you have any extra containers that can contain Tritium? One thing I noticed is that tritium produced by breeding tends to go into containers, rather than into the reactor's own storage. This caused one of my reactors to shutdown during a long coasting period a while ago when the reactor ran out of tritium (even though there was tritium stored in the external tanks). TAC Fuel Balancer can fix this by telling it to "transfer in" to the reactor. I also often see the WasteHeat fluctuating wildly at high timewarp, you might have hit an excessive amount of WasteHeat and had a shutdown (with mine that hasn't been a problem, it doesn't seem to bounce above 75% full or so).

I generally try to include a 62.5cm/1.25m fission reactor as a backup anyway to ensure I can always restart a fusion reactor if shenanigans occur.

[Einarr]

I do not have any external D/T tanks, I'm running 3 of the 3.75m upgraded core fusion reactors, plus 2 of the DT Vista engines, and 3 Thermal Rocket Nozzles. I posted some images earlier in the thread of my Cygnus Grand Tour ship. Granted, the images I posted are now out of date. I removed the scoops, extra tanks for D/T, Lithium, and He^3 as suggested by WaveFunctionP. I also swapped out the nose sensor package for a radial one, and the Mark 1 Lander Can for an ALCOR Pod. Have added some more TAC Life Support stuff (the Water Purifier and Carbon Filter). I had to rework the ladder so Kerbals can actually use it. The vessel has no backup fission reactor as I've not found a decent place to put one. Luckily, in the three cases I've had issues, there was enough thermal power to restart one of the reactors (I was essentially out of Megajoules and EC). The radiator setup may also be problematic as the radiators I have only cover ~50% of the reactor's generated heat (assuming they run at full power continuously). Though, during the coasting phases, each reactor is running at 10%, which should not generate enough heat to be a major problem.

WaveFunctionP indicated that he used a similar design (infact, I based mine off of his) and that it ran fine

[ArcFurnace]

Weird. I assume you checked, and there was tritium in the reactors? DT Vista engines use tritium too, so they have some storage, it could have ended up there. If there is, I'm really not sure what's causing it ... the only things that can cause fusion reactor shutdown are overheat, fuel loss, or power loss, and they supply more than enough power to keep themselves running so it really ought to be one of the first two ...

As to your radiator design, you can usually get away with that sort of thing unless you need absurdly long-duration burns; they'll have plenty of time to cool off while idling, and heat radiators can store a huge amount of waste heat as they heat up.

In other news, my current career mode save has spawned a Class E asteroid on a collision course with Kerbin. Impact in 15 days. I'm already a good way through the tech tree, so I think I have a chance of stopping it ... wish me luck.

[ctbram]

I did my best to search and I know this has had to come up. If I try to transmit MW power from more then one orbital power station all TP,MJ, and CP drop to zero.

Here is a description of what I am seeing. First I created a fusion based MW power transmission ship. It consist of 6 major parts from bottom to top

a 3.75m thermal engine just used to get it to keostationary orbit

a 3.75m fusion reactor 55GW High-Q Tokamak

a 3.75m electric generator type KTEC SS

a 3.75m liquid fuel tank

a computer core

a single panel MW phased array (set to transmit)

and then I have Li and D/T and He3 Tanks and a couple dishes a battery, mono prop, etc (see the link for an image)

To start I put one of these up and set it to transmit (said I was beaming around 31GW). I then put a network of 6 MW relay / commSats (although I am not using RT2 in 0.23.5)

Everything was peachy! I was getting lots of power to my MW receivers (averaging 22GW). I sent 12 landers to mun and minmus as impact sensors with MW receivers to have the power to transmit the impact data. I sent a flyby mission to Duna and back. That all worked fine.

Then I decided if one 30GW mw power transmitter is good three must be "gooder", right? So I built two identical power stations and put them in geosync orbits seperated by 120 degrees AND HERE IS WHERE THE PROBLEMS BEGAN!

As soon as I turned the first of the new pwr stations MW array to "transmit" all TP, MJ, CP drop to zero and the reactor crashes. The first reactor is still transmitting fine and only its TP drops to zero when I set it to transmit. So as I test I turned the MW arrays on all three stations OFF. Then I made sure the reactors and generators were all running and in the green. Then I switched the SECOND stations MW array to transmit and TP dropped to zero while MJ and CP stayed full and I verified I was beaming 31GW of power.

Then I went back to the FIRST station. The one that was working fine for three kerbin years and I switched its mw array to transmit and TP, MJ, and CP all drop to zero and the reactor shuts down and the power manager shows a net power of minus 187MW (the power needed to start the reactor). The same thing happens to the THIRD station if I try to set it to transmit.

I can then take the one that is transmitting and stop it. power the others back up. Set a different one to transmit and then the other two will instantly drain all their TP, MJ, and CP as soon as I try to set their MW transceiver to transmit??

So what is going on here and why?

Edited April 26, 2014 by ctbram

[Computer.Pers]

Hi!

Where i can modify science to use KSPI with other planet mods ?

[ultraviolet150]

I don't now if this has been discussed, but I've searched the thread thoroughly and it seems as though it has only been mentioned. The very large microwave transceiver repacks itself (refolds closed) once I swap back to my ship. It continues to work, so it seems like an animation bug. Is there a solution to this? All the radiators start folded and unfold, yet the transceiver starts open and then folds closed on vehicle load. Any help will be greatly appreciated guys!

In short, the radiators work and the transceiver does the reverse of what is expected.

[g00bd0g]

Can anyone give me an idea why my ISRU refinery says "offline" and I can't extract water, ammonia, etc...?

[rtxoff]

Can anyone give me an idea why my ISRU refinery says "offline" and I can't extract water, ammonia, etc...?

Maybe you have no power attached?

Maybe you have no empty container attached?

Maybe you have no controlling part attached?

Maybe i forgot something ?

[phoenix_ca]

Not spashed/landed?

[ctbram]

I did my best to search and I know this has had to come up. If I try to transmit MW power from more then one orbital power station all TP,MJ, and CP drop to zero.

Here is a description of what I am seeing. First I created a fusion based MW power transmission ship. It consist of 6 major parts from bottom to top

a 3.75m thermal engine just used to get it to keostationary orbit

a 3.75m fusion reactor 55GW High-Q Tokamak

a 3.75m electric generator type KTEC SS

a 3.75m liquid fuel tank

a computer core

a single panel MW phased array (set to transmit)

and then I have Li and D/T and He3 Tanks and a couple dishes a battery, mono prop, etc (see the link for an image)

To start I put one of these up and set it to transmit (said I was beaming around 31GW). I then put a network of 6 MW relay / commSats (although I am not using RT2 in 0.23.5)

Everything was peachy! I was getting lots of power to my MW receivers (averaging 22GW). I sent 12 landers to mun and minmus as impact sensors with MW receivers to have the power to transmit the impact data. I sent a flyby mission to Duna and back. That all worked fine.

Then I decided if one 30GW mw power transmitter is good three must be "gooder", right? So I built two identical power stations and put them in geosync orbits seperated by 120 degrees AND HERE IS WHERE THE PROBLEMS BEGAN!

As soon as I turned the first of the new pwr stations MW array to "transmit" all TP, MJ, CP drop to zero and the reactor crashes. The first reactor is still transmitting fine and only its TP drops to zero when I set it to transmit. So as I test I turned the MW arrays on all three stations OFF. Then I made sure the reactors and generators were all running and in the green. Then I switched the SECOND stations MW array to transmit and TP dropped to zero while MJ and CP stayed full and I verified I was beaming 31GW of power.

Then I went back to the FIRST station. The one that was working fine for three kerbin years and I switched its mw array to transmit and TP, MJ, and CP all drop to zero and the reactor shuts down and the power manager shows a net power of minus 187MW (the power needed to start the reactor). The same thing happens to the THIRD station if I try to set it to transmit.

I can then take the one that is transmitting and stop it. power the others back up. Set a different one to transmit and then the other two will instantly drain all their TP, MJ, and CP as soon as I try to set their MW transceiver to transmit??

So what is going on here and why?

Must have been a memory issue. When I restarted the game this morning and started all the transmitters on all the stations they did not drain the reactor mj and cp. But now I have another problem. I am now beaming 90GW of power and all my relays which are powered beam a pair of beamed power receivers are over heating and slideing the reception bar to 1 has no affect on wasteheat production. So are you telling me now that every ship I build that uses beamed power receivers has to dissipate 90GW of heat? Seriously? So I have to put a starship sized radiator solution on my 0.625 based ships using beamed power receivers? That seems broken somehow!!!

[phoenix_ca]

I thought relaying didn't generate waste heat...

[AndreyATGB]

I thought relaying didn't generate waste heat...

It doesn't since you can't receive with an inactive vessel and/or generate heat.