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


Fractal_UK

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  Fractal_UK said:
Using an antimatter collector in the right spot around Jool will generate a fair bit more antimatter than using a science lab with lots of power. The only advantage of the science lab over the collector is convenience, it can work anywhere, which can save you the hassle of shipping antimatter back from Jool.

This is something I will look into, but for now I'm going to focus on getting a research station going around Kerbin that I can dock Ships at to upgrade, I may move actual the actual researching itself somewhere else and Transmit it back to Kerbin eventually, but for now this is my goal.

Also, What's Kethane? or is that a mod I don't have installed?

Edited by Ashtoruin
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Yes, it is a mod and it is very useful. It adds a green gaseous substance to the game - you have to find deposits using orbital scanner. Then you can send miner craft to excavate it with a drill. And then you can use a converter to produce liquid fuel, oxidiser, monopropellant and xenon. Adds a lot of options and depth to gameplay (^_^)b.

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  Scotius said:
Yes, it is a mod and it is very useful. It adds a green gaseous substance to the game - you have to find deposits using orbital scanner. Then you can send miner craft to excavate it with a drill. And then you can use a converter to produce liquid fuel, oxidiser, monopropellant and xenon. Adds a lot of options and depth to gameplay (^_^)b.

Might have to get that once I understand this mod just a bit more then :P Also, I know this doesn't really pertain to KSPI much, but how did you get your 5 Keostationary Solar Plants evenly(ish) spaced.

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In a very inefficient way :P I put apoapsis at 2864 km orbit and watched how my sats were spaced. Then i tweaked their orbits burning +/- radial until they were evenly-ish spaced. It's not ideal constellation, but i can't find a perfect way to place huge satellites precisely. Scott Manley did of course, but his sats are nowhere near Aton's size and thus it is possible to launch couple of them on one lifter. In the end i decided it was too much hassle, and instead launched more satellites than strictly needed to get full coverage. Now i'm debating with myself should i put two additional power plants over Kerbin poles. Is it even possible to have keostationary polar orbit?

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  Scotius said:
In a very inefficient way :P I put apoapsis at 2864 km orbit and watched how my sats were spaced. Then i tweaked their orbits burning +/- radial until they were evenly-ish spaced. It's not ideal constellation, but i can't find a perfect way to place huge satellites precisely. Scott Manley did of course, but his sats are nowhere near Aton's size and thus it is possible to launch couple of them on one lifter. In the end i decided it was too much hassle, and instead launched more satellites than strictly needed to get full coverage. Now i'm debating with myself should i put two additional power plants over Kerbin poles. Is it even possible to have keostationary polar orbit?

Yeah, I just watched that video, but my Satelites being roughly the same size as yours (though less parts I think) are WAAAAAAY too big to launch 4+ at a time, even with my ridiculous Super Heavy Lifter. Anyways trying to answer some of the questions Ive been having skimming this thread I've heard mention of an IRC Chat, is that open to anyone? I think that would be quite useful and I Would feel better about Spamming this thread with questions :3

Also, No, Keostationary over Poles is impossible.

Edited by Ashtoruin
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A stationary orbit over the poles is impossible because stationary orbits remain over the same point on the surface - in order to fulfil that property they must be exactly equatorial. You can have synchronous polar satellites though, that is polar orbiting satellites with a period of exactly 6 hours (in the case of Kerbin).

Also, the idea of using an orbit with a period of 4/5 or 5/6 of a Kerbin day to deploy 5 or 6 things into a synchronous Kerbin orbit can still work. Just deploy some sort of "marker" with the first launch that you can dock with, then you have something showing you each of the points you need to deploy the larger space stations at.

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OK, for those that want to Min-Max this mod, create a Science station/ship that will warp to Moho, it generates 3.0 science per day per lab. So create a vessel, with a warpdrive, AM reactor electric generator, a Nuclear generator and and a butt load of sci labs. The nuclear generator is useless for powering the warp drive but great for providing long duration power for the labs, man them and have them chill over at moho and just research. Have them periodically transmit their data back to Kerbin.

back at Kerbin you need 1 sci station on your space station and docking ports to dock up. You can very easily and effectively receive the combined sci points from your Moho research station and get top level gear relatively quickly.

You could create a Jool mining platform that would harvest anti-matter that fuel freighters would come by and fill up off of and carrying it back to kerbin. Or you can use Kethane to set up mining and refining operations on Minmus, which has a huge amount of kethane. Do with that as you will. Another thing you can do is create a Sci Lab platform at KSC park it right off the pad with a tanker truck, and just fill up the rockets and ship them into space.

-Æ

Edited by agentexeider
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  Fractal_UK said:
A stationary orbit over the poles is impossible because stationary orbits remain over the same point on the surface - in order to fulfil that property they must be exactly equatorial. You can have synchronous polar satellites though, that is polar orbiting satellites with a period of exactly 6 hours (in the case of Kerbin).

Also, the idea of using an orbit with a period of 4/5 or 5/6 of a Kerbin day to deploy 5 or 6 things into a synchronous Kerbin orbit can still work. Just deploy some sort of "marker" with the first launch that you can dock with, then you have something showing you each of the points you need to deploy the larger space stations at.

That's actually not a bad idea. and I had just got my first Satellite perfectly set Up :/

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Good news, I've killed two bugs with one fix.

It turns out that the thermal rocket code was causing the part's temperature to become NaN when the throttle or thermal power was set to zero. Some of my longer term players will be familiar with having to disable MechJeb prevent engine overheats functionality in order to make the engines work, well, this was why. This problem also explains why the emissives weren't working for the thermal engine either.

As the following screenshot shows, we now have the Thermal Rocket playing nice with MechJeb and the emissives looking... emissive.

4pSektF.png

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1379934_10151905505508656_1302184378_n.jpg

1378353_10151905506078656_1450757241_n.jpg

These are what Im currently working on, 1.2MW each, plan on putting 6 total in Keostationary Orbit arround Kerbal :3 Two down, Four to go.

Also the Kosmos URM-125 L05 Fuel Tanks are the perfect length to go between two of the Balka Solar Wing Blocks

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I've now added heat generation mechanics to the Microwave receivers. Regardless of the efficiency listed by the microwave receiver, the amount of waste heat produced by the receiver will be 15% of what arrives at the dish after atmospheric losses and range losses are accounted for. This is because energy must first arrive at the dish before it can be wasted on heating it up.

Vessels powered by beamed microwaves are thus quite a bit easier to keep cool than, say, nuclear powered vessels - as you probably expect.

tNlYznn.png

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Is there any plan to change the dynamics of the warp drive? Currently, i see absolutely no reason to ever go faster than the slowest speed. Even at the smallest percentage of C, you can cross the system near-instantly with the use of time warp. Additionally, constantly using the slow speed allows you conserve your exotic matter to easily make multiple quick jumps in order to align your trajectory with an aerobraking maneuver. Between this, you can easily fly to jool/eve/duna regardless of orbit position and use only minimal Dv to adjust the braking PE.

Seems rather unbalanced.

  Quote
OK, for those that want to Min-Max this mod, create a Science station/ship that will warp to Moho, it generates 3.0 science per day per lab. So create a vessel, with a warpdrive, AM reactor electric generator, a Nuclear generator and and a butt load of sci labs. The nuclear generator is useless for powering the warp drive but great for providing long duration power for the labs, man them and have them chill over at moho and just research. Have them periodically transmit their data back to Kerbin.

Min-maxing:

60 AM collectors in kerbin orbit. 20 per launch to LKO, then pushed out to 900km. Not pictured is a small tug with enough dv to ferry AM back and forth to LKO 4-5 times. 10,000% easier than labs or jool freighters.

SY9pbX7.jpg

10 Labs to Moho. I plan on pushing more at a time in the future - upgrading the original power system will allow 30+ additional labs to be attached without their own power generation.

7EM30zM.jpg

I've noticed that this mod requires your ships to be extremely interchangeable and multi-mission capable, else you risk losing your science investments.

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  Fractal_UK said:
As the following screenshot shows, we now have the Thermal Rocket playing nice with MechJeb and the emissives looking... emissive. incredibly powerful thermal rockets

I'm assuming this is antimatter-powered? Between the thrust-weight ant the surprisingly low burn time, I'm seeing a different beast than my nuclear-powered ships. Similar dV, but with only one 2.5m tank, too. I guess that's what I get for trying to push 325 tons of ship around...

Edited by Hremsfeld
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  Scotius said:
In a very inefficient way :P I put apoapsis at 2864 km orbit and watched how my sats were spaced. Then i tweaked their orbits burning +/- radial until they were evenly-ish spaced. It's not ideal constellation, but i can't find a perfect way to place huge satellites precisely. Scott Manley did of course, but his sats are nowhere near Aton's size and thus it is possible to launch couple of them on one lifter. In the end i decided it was too much hassle, and instead launched more satellites than strictly needed to get full coverage. Now i'm debating with myself should i put two additional power plants over Kerbin poles. Is it even possible to have keostationary polar orbit?

Actually, it just occurred to me how to do this properly, get the 2nd satellite into an orbit, set up an intercept, your intercept should be your Apoapsis, so when you get to your apoapsis, burn Prograde at your apoapsis, since Im doing 6 satellites, I kept burning till it hit 7 hours, which will put me an hour behind the satellite when I come back around (1/6th the way around the planet), then when I hit my Apoapsis again and burn Retrograde till 6 hours. More or less a super easy way to do it.

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  Donziboy2 said:
<Salute>

SIR!!! We have completed the 2.4MW Death Ray!!!!

<Evil Laughing>

8pp0DM7.png

SOqZJRF.png

It is surprisingly stable for its length. The launch boosters could be reworked but im happy with it.

Awesome :D I'm shamelessly stealing this project :cool:

Ashtoruin: good idea, but it will have to wait. Moho Research Station suffered unexpected setback last night. During course correction burn second part of MRS got hit by a bug, and Kraken ate it completely. And i didn't have a quicksave before :( I've launched replacement, but Moho is out of optimal position, so my ship is in for a long trip.

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Fractal_UK, any chance in reworking the electric charge portion of the receivers, its kind of a waste to loose a MW of energy when you don't actually use it. Even with RTG's installed that first MW just goes poof for no reason. Can you make it dynamic the way the generators/reactors work?

Just a warning guys, I used a less powerful reaction wheel on that sat, I found that if I added a normal KSP reaction wheel it would shake the crap out of the sat. It was a little to much wobble for my liking.

Edited by Donziboy2
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Is anyone still having issues with transmission/reception of science? Sometimes you barely get any science, sometimes way more than you should be getting and sometimes none at all but then later (without anything changing) a lot of science is ready for receiving?

Transmission is fine, as far as I can see, but receiving doesn't work properly for me. Anyone got any ideas?

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  Hremsfeld said:
I'm assuming this is antimatter-powered? Between the thrust-weight ant the surprisingly low burn time, I'm seeing a different beast than my nuclear-powered ships. Similar dV, but with only one 2.5m tank, too. I guess that's what I get for trying to push 325 tons of ship around...

Yes, it is indeed antimatter powered. I find ships like the one there that are capable of performing many functions extremely useful for testing purposes.

  Donziboy2 said:
Fractal_UK, any chance in reworking the electric charge portion of the receivers, its kind of a waste to loose a MW of energy when you don't actually use it. Even with RTG's installed that first MW just goes poof for no reason. Can you make it dynamic the way the generators/reactors work?

There are some approaches I've been considering for how to do this but I'll have to experiment and see what works.

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Ha! Aton II in Kerbin's orbit - generating 2.3 MW of power :)

Q0PfMpd.png

Two Atons docked to Osiris tug, on the way to low Kerbol orbit.

cVWRgGQ.png

Whew. Docking those three together was an adventure in itself. Whole thing is over 400 parts. It lags. It turns like a dead whale. It guzzles monopropellant like a dry sponge. But it's also surprisingly stable and rigid, even at full thrust.

Exploration cruiser Prometheus mapping Moho after warp flight that almost ended in failure - i barely made it into stable orbit.

Whdie2k.png

And the second type of exploration vessel of different design: Daedalus orbiting Minmus after the shakedown cruise.

Cf3aZLi.png

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I have noticed that fuel tanks are more stable then girder parts.

Im working on a docking version of my 2.4MW sat, and a few other things :)

My current version has the last outer booster come off just before Mechjeb cuts engines and starts working on increasing my periapsis.

This leaves me with over 5k DV in my Sat.

Im am toying with the idea of launching 3-4 sats at 1 time. I wanted to do one that unfolded a few times but infernal Robotics hinges aren't strong, stable or slow enough to do it without tearing it apart.

When in doubt make it bigger :)

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