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

[artforz]

Indeed, in the Tokamaks D/He3 is rather sad and pure He3 is close to useless.

For pure He3

upgraded 1.25m produces a net excess of ~465MW_cp, uses ~11.5% of total output for laser power, weighs 2.7t including generator

upgraded 2.5m can't even power itself.

upgraded 3.75m produces a net of ~768MW_cp, uses about 67.4% of total output for plasma heating, 44.5t including generator

So for pure He3, a pair of 1.25m fusion reactors has more usable output power, about 10 times the power/weight ratio and higher efficiency at every load point...

[Einarr]

Actually, fixing tritium decay on unfocused vessels is onlypart of the solution...Perhaps increase the rate of decay, or lower the time it takes for the decay process to occur...that and tweak the reactors so that they produce a useul amount of CP when using He3...

[Tristavius]

Bah, you guys have totally missed the spirit here! Forget tritium decay, I don't like to achieve anything by just time warping personally - if that's all it takes I may as well just enable it in the VAB and be done with it. That tiny bit in Jool's atmosphere is an engineering challenge that's quite different to what stock KSP provides. Yes interstellar gives resource harvesting on planets, but really landing a refinery isn't much different to landing a 'for-the-hell-of-it' base.

Anyway, I too am very disappointed in the returns from He3 in fusion... as has been stated, the 2.5m is utterly useless and can't even power itself and the 3.75m isn't much better. The smaller two do make good use of it, but the gains between the incredibly easy Deuterium/Tritium fuel and difficult He3 are only measured in rather small numbers (about +30% on the 1.25m for example). In short, really not worth it. If the larger two didn't have the weird reductions then maybe for serious power stations the +~30% gain might be useful to some people, but even then, far easier just to add another reactor.

What we have all forgotten, myself included however, is the Antimatter Initiated Reactor. Up until I returned some He3 to Kerbin today I haven't even been able to test it, and I get the feeling that's the case for a lot of people (a lot of info about it is missing online as well). Basically it uses 4 resources: Deuterium, He3, UN and Anti Matter. Deuterium comes with 500/500 and He3 must be provided as it starts with 0/500. Both are the 'main' fuel for the reactor and are consumed at the same rate. It took about 191 days @ 100% power to exhaust them (sorry, no qualitative figures yet, experiment results only). UN is provided at 20/20. In the 191 days this figure didn't even move. The wiki shows tiny, tiny amounts being used. The initial fuel will likely last many, many full cycles of the main fuel. Anti Matter isn't provided either and must be stored in a separate tank. In 191 days only 0.01 grams had been used, meaning even the tiny 1g bottle would last for many, many refuels of D/He3.

So other than providing a tiny quantity of AntiMatter, it's basically a Deuterium/He3 reactor and it's really quite good. 44 GW is a really very nice chunk of power, better than any Fusion or Fission reactor. It can put most of this out as charge particles too to take advantage of direct conversion generators. The core temperature is a little lower than the larger fusion reactors but better than small fusion and all fission so should give decent thermal rocket ISP. The main selling point though is the vastly tonnage compared to similar performance reactors.

Deuterium can also be scooped from Jool, allowing both to be refilled at once.

Not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it yet... it might be the solution for a long-distance mothership that has to operate away from the power grid?

[phoenix_ca]

Wouldn't the answer to all of this He3 business be to fix tritium decay on an unfocused vessel?

Kinda sorta. Even that takes a very, very, very long time, with a loooooooot of tritium. Given the 12.3 year half-life of Tritium (H-3 for reference) to He-3 (4,489.5 days), that'd give you ~0.111 units of He-3 per day for every 1,000 units of Tritium available.

<snip>qualitative<snipsnipsnip>

Well...by definition what you provided was quantitative and qualitative information. Purely quantitative info would be from say, you checking the persistence file. >.>

As for the AIM...hrmmm. Those are actually good points. It still leaves pure He-3 tokamaks in a rather silly position of being practically useless. That means it's a pitfall that pretty much any newbie will fall into, because most of the info would point to the conclusion of "He-3 = more charged particles = better energy production". But that logic breaks-down in an unexpected way. It might be better to just remove the pure He-3 fuel mode from them entirely and leave it for the AIM.

Edited May 12, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[BigD145]

If you're able to get to Jool for refueling/refuelers, why would you need a mothership that can work away from the grid? You might as well put relays out beyond Eeloo or between the orbits of the major bodies.

[Tristavius]

Relays only provide line of sight, they do not strengthen the signal so to speak. A ship in orbit of Jool when Jool is at it's closest approach to Kerbin is able to pick up about 30% of Kerbin's power network per large receiver and only about 1% per medium receiver. Considering how awkward large receivers are to work with this is a major pain in the ass. Planets like Jool and Dres when on anything other than the closest alignment aren't going receive any significant kind of power even on a large receiver and the easier to place mediums are only going to provide okay power to the inner planets on close approach.

There is of course an argument for building more power stations around other planets. I have about 400 GW on tap around Kerbin, and about 10 GW each at Duna and Jool currently and I'm planning on expanding the Jool grid to start operations on the 5 moons. Currently however any decent sized vessel beyond about Duna orbit really doesn't have any significant power to draw on so there will always be a need for self-contained vessels carrying their own reactors, and I would argue the AIR is a superb one for a large craft, providing good power and respectable ISP for thermal and decent power for plasma.

Of course, to get the He3 costs 10's of 1000's of antimatter, which would provide an even better power source so yeah, He3 is still looking a bit mediocre really!

[Taki117]

Yes but unfortunately Near Future defines a different resource named "HydrogenGas". So it's incompatible with LiquidFuel, unless you (a) change all of the HydrogenGas references in parts to LiquidFuel or ( add HydrogenGas to the Plasma Thruster fuels.

The former is fairly easy with an MM patch, but unless you get more specific and edit each part individually, weird things will happen with the amount and maxAmount values (IIRC it also has a different density value compared to LiquidFuel).

For the thrusters, those are defined in the ElectricEnginePropellants config.

Honestly though, I wouldn't bother with using the HydrogenGas parts from Near Future combined with this mod, as they functionally overlap with a lot of things. Xenon and Argon tanks are definitely worth keeping, and the large batteries are nice.

Thank you, And the reason I ask is because I have the structural trusses and solar panels (But nothing else) and I wanted to use the large Hydrogen tank that they have.

[BigD145]

The large receivers are not awkward to work with. They don't seem to have a dynamic bounding box when deployed, so anything clips through them.

[Donziboy2]

The large receivers are not awkward to work with. They don't seem to have a dynamic bounding box when deployed, so anything clips through them.

Unless they fixed it they turn into giant umbrella's with FAR.

[BigD145]

Unless they fixed it they turn into giant umbrella's with FAR.

FAR is a different story entirely no matter what mod you use.

[Fractal_UK]

Unless they fixed it they turn into giant umbrella's with FAR.

That's pretty much intended, they are the kind of thing that should be in a fairing.

[Einarr]

Actually, the way He3 works in reactors is probably okay, the availability of it could be tuned a bit, though to make it slightly more feasible.

A little research shows that Fractal seems to have gotten things fairly close to reality with regard to the way He3 is theorized to work in the fusion reactor designs he's included.

I would remove He3 modes from the Tokamaks simply due to the inefficiency of it, but that's my preference. I'd also increase the abundance of it in Jool's atmosphere slightly, and possibly even make it mineable with the ISRU in certain places. Again, just personal preference.

[Kenken244]

As I recall, Fractal was also planning on adding an engine that runs only on charged particles, which would have stupendous isp. when that is added, it would make he3 (and the dusty plasma reactor) much more useful.

[Donziboy2]

That's pretty much intended, they are the kind of thing that should be in a fairing.

The problem is that FAR has issues seeing them as closed and thinks they are open, so it thinks you are trying to launch a wall and produces insane drag.

Im no stranger to fairings, but I found it funny that if I placed a large receiver without a fairing ontop of a craft with 5TWR the craft would get to about 30ms and then crumble under the pressure lol.

[BigD145]

I've always observed them going from open to collapsing when loading physics, even when they are still on. They don't seem to remember what they are supposed to be.

[Superfirestar123]

I have a new Idea for the Interstellar Pack. It would be an impulse drive that would function like a warp drive accelerating you at a constant speed of _______. It would run on electricity and be exactly like a warp drive but you can control it with throttle and you can steer.

[Einarr]

I have a new Idea for the Interstellar Pack. It would be an impulse drive that would function like a warp drive accelerating you at a constant speed of _______. It would run on electricity and be exactly like a warp drive but you can control it with throttle and you can steer.

Aside from the throttling, we have hat already...it's called the warp drive. You can go sublight with it, and steer while it's active.

[Superfirestar123]

Aside from the throttling, we have hat already...it's called the warp drive. You can go sublight with it, and steer while it's active.

We can steer but it doesn't do anything to change direction and I'm talking about a slow sub-light as in about 200-500ms not 10% the speed of light

[undercoveryankee]

As I recall, Fractal was also planning on adding an engine that runs only on charged particles, which would have stupendous isp. when that is added, it would make he3 (and the dusty plasma reactor) much more useful.

Currently, 1 unit of ChargedParticles is defined as enough particles to carry 1 MJ of energy. That 1 MJ of charged particles will have a different mass depending on what kind of particles they are and how fast they're moving. You're not going to simulate an engine by just assigning ChargedParticles a density and setting an engine to run on it.

It's probably details like that that are keeping the charged particle nozzle on the wish list.

[zapman987]

Quote Originally Posted by zapman987 View Post

What do you have to do to get the miners on the refineries to turn on? I only see buttons for thorium and uranium. With that, how do you store those? Ive attached the proper tanks, and its not filling them. Is there no fuel cross feed between the tanks and the refineries?

ThF4, UF4, and UraniumNitride all have ALL_VESSEL flow. It shouldn't matter where you put tanks. Though if having problems you could try using TAC Fuel Balancer for a workaround.

So that answers the flow(thanks!), but how about the mining?

[Rainoa]

to the dev team of this plugin, if u have not already heard about it!

kerbal.curseforge

[WaveFunctionP]

So that answers the flow(thanks!), but how about the mining?

Extraction options are only visible when they are available in sufficient concentration. If you don't have the option, you are not in the right location. Use the wiki or the in-game instruments to find the resources you are looking for. Keep in mind, extraction rates can be very very low for some resources.

Edited May 13, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[Tristavius]

Anyone have a link to that inline collapsible alcubierre drive?

(Sorry, I promise I have spent about 30 minutes searching and looking!)

[phoenix_ca]

Then you didn't look at the wiki. It was recently added there.

https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Alcubierre-Drive

[Atrius129]

We can steer but it doesn't do anything to change direction and I'm talking about a slow sub-light as in about 200-500ms not 10% the speed of light

I'm pretty sure you are thinking of...every engine in the game that isn't the warp drive.