[WIP] Nert's Dev Thread - Current: various updates

[123nick]

ultra high tech concept engines? well, if you make it into mod i think you should call it "Far future tech" because you already have a near future tech mod

 

[passinglurker]

10 hours ago, Nertea said:

(name still in flux, because aside from the cringe-worthy FFT acronym joke for us scientists, it sucks)

1. Phenomenal far future fantastic technology (or "PFFFT ha ha not in your life time" for short)

2. Plausible Torch drives (because well... that's technically what they are...)

3. GINI (stands for "GINI Is Not Interstellar"  you know so no one gets confused)

Edited July 9, 2016 by passinglurker

[Ixenzo]

Nerd Force. Because very narrow specialization of technology which delivers a force. I'm not great with names 

[h0yer]

Really funky stuff

 

How about some purely electrodynamic systems?

 

Drives that tie either into the electric or magnetic field of any arbitrary celestial object, if available.

 

I think it would be quite simple to push off earth's magnetic field, if one has enough power available.

Furthermore, electrostatic charging should come in handy if closely passing a positively charged body like our sun for example, one would just need to care for proper insulation, to prevent unwanted ESD.

You basically need just a cathode ray tube to expel unwanted electrons from your vessel. Charge neutralization afterwards happens automaticaly by accquiring electrons from the interplanetary medium. Your'e positive, so you will again attract electrons. The expelled electrons usually won't come back to the charged spacecraft since they can be easily accelerated beyond any kind of escape velocity.

It works as well the other way around, expelling positive ions, like in an ion drive, but without re-injecting electrons into the ion jet for charge neutralization. (The craft would be slowed down by the following attracting cloud of ions, which in itself would dissipate quickly, since all its parts repel each other. Depends on how far away you can hurl dem ions, if they stay away or come back after a while.) A downside of flying around negatively is one needs to consider for proton influx.

 

 

Under the bottomline, one is virtually changing the mass of a vehicle by overlaying electrodynamics. Sun's gravity pulls, but equal positive charge between the sun and the spacecraft  repell, slightly compensating the gravimetric forces. Propulsion without propelling stuff. Goes into the general direction of EMOND, I guess.

 

[KSPanier]

Hi Nertea,

how do you want to make Tritium work? Because it has a rather short halflife time (just 12.3 years). So storing large amounts of it would not only produce huge amounts of heat, but it would also start to decay to Helium-3. Helium-3 would also be fusionable, but to keep simple, why not directly using Helium-3?

[Van Disaster]

I made a suggestion about NFC octo-corner pieces in the main thread a while ago, I though this might be a better place for suggestions though. Been attempting to build large ships out of NFC parts, and what I keep running into is this stuff:

* Corners, as mentioned - building laterally with the cubes gets extremely heavy given they're half a tonne each. The surface mount parts don't really help.
* Octo->triangular conversion means using 3 size adapters if you're doing it without ramming one type into the other.
* I was trying to stack three lithium tanks ( so 2.5m ) radially, the small offset 1.25m->2.5m conversion piece seems to have vanished from stock. There's a rather heavy tank there now which is huge & clumsy, but I did also note the NFC 2.5m->3x1.25m converter ends up with apparently no clearance at all, which meant the lithium tanks had parts being clipped. The other way to attach them would be laterally, but that goes back to having to build outwards with heavy cubes. So, offset adapter and perhaps an interesting looking multistack adapter?
* Octo 1.25m docking port is a bit too flush quite a lot of the time, one with a docking tube for a bit of clearance would be really appreciated.
* Mission support version of the small octo part would be really rather useful. The other one would be an open octostrut with just a pole/narrow piece of structure in the middle, so you can eject 1.25m parts from it without getting them stuck.

The other thing I'd like some of was extra nuclear powered devices, like atmospheric engines, only requiring a central reactor & some sort of limitations for how heat is sent to them ( so you can't have some byzantine half mile of pipework between the two ). I've no doubt you've already considered that but just adding my vote there.

Thanks.

Edited July 17, 2016 by Van Disaster

[Nertea]

On 7/11/2016 at 3:13 AM, KSPanier said:

Hi Nertea,

how do you want to make Tritium work? Because it has a rather short halflife time (just 12.3 years). So storing large amounts of it would not only produce huge amounts of heat, but it would also start to decay to Helium-3. Helium-3 would also be fusionable, but to keep simple, why not directly using Helium-3?

I am not really interested in modeling any kind of radioactive decay... doesn't add much to gameplay without creating a whole nuclear breeding/extraction economy, and KSPI 

On 7/10/2016 at 2:23 AM, h0yer said:

Really funky stuff

How about some purely electrodynamic systems?

Drives that tie either into the electric or magnetic field of any arbitrary celestial object, if available.

I think it would be quite simple to push off earth's magnetic field, if one has enough power available.

Furthermore, electrostatic charging should come in handy if closely passing a positively charged body like our sun for example, one would just need to care for proper insulation, to prevent unwanted ESD.

You basically need just a cathode ray tube to expel unwanted electrons from your vessel. Charge neutralization afterwards happens automaticaly by accquiring electrons from the interplanetary medium. Your'e positive, so you will again attract electrons. The expelled electrons usually won't come back to the charged spacecraft since they can be easily accelerated beyond any kind of escape velocity.

It works as well the other way around, expelling positive ions, like in an ion drive, but without re-injecting electrons into the ion jet for charge neutralization. (The craft would be slowed down by the following attracting cloud of ions, which in itself would dissipate quickly, since all its parts repel each other. Depends on how far away you can hurl dem ions, if they stay away or come back after a while.) A downside of flying around negatively is one needs to consider for proton influx.

Under the bottomline, one is virtually changing the mass of a vehicle by overlaying electrodynamics. Sun's gravity pulls, but equal positive charge between the sun and the spacecraft  repell, slightly compensating the gravimetric forces. Propulsion without propelling stuff. Goes into the general direction of EMOND, I guess.

Find me some fun concept art and maybe!

On 7/17/2016 at 5:13 AM, Van Disaster said:

I made a suggestion about NFC octo-corner pieces in the main thread a while ago, I though this might be a better place for suggestions though. Been attempting to build large ships out of NFC parts, and what I keep running into is this stuff:

* Corners, as mentioned - building laterally with the cubes gets extremely heavy given they're half a tonne each. The surface mount parts don't really help.
* Octo->triangular conversion means using 3 size adapters if you're doing it without ramming one type into the other.
* I was trying to stack three lithium tanks ( so 2.5m ) radially, the small offset 1.25m->2.5m conversion piece seems to have vanished from stock. There's a rather heavy tank there now which is huge & clumsy, but I did also note the NFC 2.5m->3x1.25m converter ends up with apparently no clearance at all, which meant the lithium tanks had parts being clipped. The other way to attach them would be laterally, but that goes back to having to build outwards with heavy cubes. So, offset adapter and perhaps an interesting looking multistack adapter?
* Octo 1.25m docking port is a bit too flush quite a lot of the time, one with a docking tube for a bit of clearance would be really appreciated.
* Mission support version of the small octo part would be really rather useful. The other one would be an open octostrut with just a pole/narrow piece of structure in the middle, so you can eject 1.25m parts from it without getting them stuck.

The other thing I'd like some of was extra nuclear powered devices, like atmospheric engines, only requiring a central reactor & some sort of limitations for how heat is sent to them ( so you can't have some byzantine half mile of pipework between the two ). I've no doubt you've already considered that but just adding my vote there.

Thanks.

Valid stuff, might do some of it whenever I feel like sinking a bunch of time into boring trusses. Why don't the surface mount parts help though?

Theses two are pretty much done!

Finished off the large nuclear target storage boxes:

This antimatter tank is also pretty much done. Looks pretty nice ingame, left size is the ez-stack version , you can independently toggle the upper and lower support structures to make a nice stack of rings.

Started some work on engine effects too - the old pulse plugin was updated to work in 1.1.3, and somewhat improved. Basically the throttle setting varies the pulse rate between 1 and 5 Hz - completely graphical, no real pulsed impulse (headache for MJ and KER compatibility and the thrust on these isn't very high so doesn't seem too bad).

This one's pretty fun too. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jfull]

Amazing work as always

Though it seems like the antiproton storage ring ought to at least be protected by some kind of foil on the truss structure.

[shynung]

@Nertea Nice work on the engines. I like it.  

Also, don't forget the ISRU aspect.

Edited July 22, 2016 by shynung

[Nertea]

16 hours ago, jfull said:

Amazing work as always

Though it seems like the antiproton storage ring ought to at least be protected by some kind of foil on the truss structure.

It's actually pretty thick with multiple layers of magnets and insulation (i did a cross section cable on the exit point and it was fun).

12 hours ago, shynung said:

@Nertea Nice work on the engines. I like it.  

Also, don't forget the ISRU aspect.

What would you like to see? I don't plan on doing anything that complex with ISRU. 

[shynung]

6 hours ago, Nertea said:

What would you like to see? I don't plan on doing anything that complex with ISRU. 

Any way to produce the new fuels (Deuterium, Tritium, Nuclear Salt Water) from anywhere other than the launch pad. Even if it's just an MM config to make the stock ISRU converter or the NFE nuclear fuel processor able to make them out of ore, that would be great.

Though, antimatter particles are another story. IRL, we need a particle accelerator to make it. Even then, it takes a lot of power, and is horribly inefficient. On the other hand, antimatter particles are known to be trapped in the radiation belts of planets, due to the planetary magnetic field. A magnetic scoop could be used to gather these particles.

So, maybe 2 specific parts for antimatter production: a particle-accelerator part that takes in a large amount of EC to make minuscule amounts of antimatter, and maybe a scoop part that takes in EC and produces antimatter when it is at a specific altitude above certain planets, most likely Eve, Kerbin, Jool, and Laythe. Those planets have atmosphere, which suggests that they have magnetic fields, without which their atmospheres would have been stripped off by Kerbol's solar wind. Karbonite and Karbonite+ mods made by RoverDude have implemented space scoops that collect fuel in this manner, so you may have to study their implementation.

Well, that was a mouthful. If you prefer the easier route, just put an MM config that makes the stock lab part the antimatter factory; it makes sense if a high-tech space lab has a mini particle accelerator built in, and the ISRU converter looks more like an oil refinery rather than a particle accelerator.

[Van Disaster]

On 21/07/2016 at 7:08 PM, Nertea said:

Valid stuff, might do some of it whenever I feel like sinking a bunch of time into boring trusses. Why don't the surface mount parts help though?

Changing direction is still heavy & rather fiddly. What's your process for texturing the trusses? I'm quite capable of modelling a truss part, but matching looks is always tricky.

[Domfluff]

On 7/22/2016 at 9:05 PM, Nertea said:

What would you like to see? I don't plan on doing anything that complex with ISRU. 

As I understand it, the primary limitations of this kind of advanced propulsion are:

- Technology level + Cost (modelled, via the CTT)
- Heat (modelled, aside from structural issues, although Roverdude's "Wear" mechanic hand waves this now since heat adds to a part's "age")
- Radiation (perhaps with a mod, or your WIP radiation mod, if that ends up existing. Call this optional for now.)
- The difficulty of harvesting the required fuel. (e.g., the deuterium/helium-3 isotopes required for Project Daedalus were planned to be harvested from Jupiter's atmosphere for twenty years. Naturally that's a propulsion system an order of magnitude more potent, but it makes the point I think.)

Roverdude's Karbonite+ mod has a number of Torch Drive-like engines, which run on a substance that (until a recent version) you couldn't find on Kerbin. He's lately changed this so that you can add this in the VAB, but each unit is still massively expensive, so although you can produce it on Kerbin, you probably shouldn't.

To be honest, I suspect that might be sufficient limitation to show the ISRU limitations of this - if Nuclear Salt Water, Deuterium, Tritium, antimatter are all sufficiently expensive, then you'd be encouraged to launch these dry, and fuel them from a lucky asteroid or dedicated mining operation. Nuclear salt water might be produceable (MM patch) with one of your existing processors, and since Uranium is already fairly pricey, this all joins up fairly well and slots into stock ISRU.

 

[RocketSquid]

I think that the first change that has to happen for these to be a reality is that VASIMR should stop being after fusion propulsion in community tech tree, if anything the node that contains VASIMR (specialized plasma confinement, I think) should be a prerequisite for fusion.

As for parts, all I want to see is a Kannae Drive using Quantum Vacuum Krakens to produce thrust, on a scale similar to a very, very small ion engine.

Edited July 24, 2016 by RocketSquid
MOAR GRAMMARS!!

[Domfluff]

None of the above engines are really fusion-powered, any more than a hydrogen bomb is a nuclear reactor.

[RocketSquid]

1 hour ago, Domfluff said:

None of the above engines are really fusion-powered, any more than a hydrogen bomb is a nuclear reactor.

They use magnetic confinement, which is the main difficulty of VASIMR. Plus, it would still fall in the "fusion engines" tech node, which comes before the "plasma confinement" tech node for some reason.

[Domfluff]

Ah yes, I see what you mean, carry on

[Nertea]

On 7/23/2016 at 6:25 AM, Van Disaster said:

Changing direction is still heavy & rather fiddly. What's your process for texturing the trusses? I'm quite capable of modelling a truss part, but matching looks is always tricky.

Uh, I draw them more or less side by side with other parts so they're the same.

2 hours ago, Domfluff said:

As I understand it, the primary limitations of this kind of advanced propulsion are:

- Technology level + Cost (modelled, via the CTT)
- Heat (modelled, aside from structural issues, although Roverdude's "Wear" mechanic hand waves this now since heat adds to a part's "age")
- Radiation (perhaps with a mod, or your WIP radiation mod, if that ends up existing. Call this optional for now.)
- The difficulty of harvesting the required fuel. (e.g., the deuterium/helium-3 isotopes required for Project Daedalus were planned to be harvested from Jupiter's atmosphere for twenty years. Naturally that's a propulsion system an order of magnitude more potent, but it makes the point I think.)

Roverdude's Karbonite+ mod has a number of Torch Drive-like engines, which run on a substance that (until a recent version) you couldn't find on Kerbin. He's lately changed this so that you can add this in the VAB, but each unit is still massively expensive, so although you can produce it on Kerbin, you probably shouldn't.

To be honest, I suspect that might be sufficient limitation to show the ISRU limitations of this - if Nuclear Salt Water, Deuterium, Tritium, antimatter are all sufficiently expensive, then you'd be encouraged to launch these dry, and fuel them from a lucky asteroid or dedicated mining operation. Nuclear salt water might be produceable (MM patch) with one of your existing processors, and since Uranium is already fairly pricey, this all joins up fairly well and slots into stock ISRU.

The main limitation is honestly how difficult it is to store and produce antimatter.

I'm going to model antimatter production on Kerbin with a pseudobuilding that is unlocked after Antimatter Power is researched. It will produce AM slowly (maybe 10-20u per year at start) and have a maximum storage capacity for a couple years' fuel. Similar to other buildings it is upgradeable a couple of times to increase production rate and storage. With some future development there could be an actual physical building, but that's a bunch more work than a simple plugin. We'll just assume it's part of the research facility for now. You will need to pull AM from the storage to launch ships containing it (hijacked the launch button if your ship has AM tanks on it). Sure you can timewarp to get it but eh... I'm kinda of the opinion that if that's what you want to do, you can do that. 

The other fuels are basically Nuclear Salt Water, FissionTargets, Deuterium, He3 and LH2. (Tritium will probably not be in the initial build, nor will FusionTargets - those need other engines). LH2 is covered by CryoTanks' patches. Deuterium should get extracted in a similar way at a lower rate.

NuclearSaltWater and FissionTargets will be produced from a new part that will take EnrichedUranium as a feedstock, so to ISRU these you'll need to have a small production chain to use NFT parts to get EnrichedUranium, then smelt it into the specialized fuels. That's the only production chain I'll ever make :P. 

I'll do a big magnetic scoop for particles that will get spaced based particles, like H2, minor amounts of He3 and tiny amounts of AM. I'll do a similar atmospheric scoop for getting more He3 from gas giants.

That limits new parts to a maximum of 3, a 3.75m particle scoop, a 2.5m atmospheric scoop and some kind of nuclear factory. Should be doable. Possibly some kind of detector for stuff, though for anything atmospheric I'll just patch the new 

1 hour ago, RocketSquid said:

I think that the first change that has to happen for these to be a reality is that VASIMR should stop being after fusion propulsion in community tech tree, if anything the node that contains VASIMR (specialized plasma confinement, I think) should be a prerequisite for fusion.

As for parts, all I want to see is a Kannae Drive using Quantum Vacuum Krakens to produce thrust, on a scale similar to a very, very small ion engine.

It's not after, it's on a different branch. The names in CTT are nominal and relatively generic. It could be called "fancy plasma propulsion" or something like that and have the same effect. If you want an experience with realistically labeled tech nodes, grab ETT or something similar. 

Let's add some more models though. Here's a beam core antimatter rocket, which more or less reacts equal amounts of AM and LH2. It's ridiculous in power, size, mass and coolness. 

Just kidding about the coolness. It runs hot. This isn't even enough radiators... But that ship is getting a TWR of 8 with 850,000 m/s of DV in that shot, so it could handle more radiators without breaking a sweat. 

And lastly (and the last AM engine) is the plasma-core antimatter engine, which basically just dumps a bunch of LH2 into a small amount of AM and dumps the resulting plasma mess out the back. Has a low and high density mode for high thrust/low efficiency or vice versa. 

 

 

 

[Domfluff]

Wow, you're making a beamed core antimatter drive? In terms of feasibility (assuming easy supply and storage of antimatter) that makes sense with the above, since it's mostly a matter of scale and some hand-waving... but that's an order of magnitude more powerful, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that's at the lower end of viable *interstellar* propulsion.

Are you planning on making some larger/more advanced radiators? 

[RocketSquid]

49 minutes ago, Nertea said:

It's not after, it's on a different branch. The names in CTT are nominal and relatively generic. It could be called "fancy plasma propulsion" or something like that and have the same effect. If you want an experience with realistically labeled tech nodes, grab ETT or something similar.

It's more expensive, which in a science or career mode game means essentially the same thing. Why would I even try for VASIMR when easier to use, more efficient, more powerful fusion engines are available for far cheaper, and with less preliminary research?

[shynung]

@Nertea Very nice models, well done!

How do you plan to release these parts? Piecemeal like NFT, or all at once?

[Nertea]

16 hours ago, RocketSquid said:

It's more expensive, which in a science or career mode game means essentially the same thing. Why would I even try for VASIMR when easier to use, more efficient, more powerful fusion engines are available for far cheaper, and with less preliminary research?

The challenge of creating the community tech tree is creating meaningful progression in cases where mods are installed and others are not installed. Sometimes that works out great, sometimes it doesn't. Compressing the electric engines tech tree damages progression in that area for the sake of something nebulous and not that useful (and high impulse plasma engines do have advantages over entry-level fusion :S). 

I'd rather spend time and effort ensuring that various engine technologies have their own strengths and weaknesses, so that choosing a path is more interesting. 

16 hours ago, Domfluff said:

Wow, you're making a beamed core antimatter drive? In terms of feasibility (assuming easy supply and storage of antimatter) that makes sense with the above, since it's mostly a matter of scale and some hand-waving... but that's an order of magnitude more powerful, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that's at the lower end of viable *interstellar* propulsion.

Are you planning on making some larger/more advanced radiators? 

https://github.com/ChrisAdderley/HeatControl/issues?utf8=✓&q=is%3Aissue is%3Aopen

6 hours ago, shynung said:

@Nertea Very nice models, well done!

How do you plan to release these parts? Piecemeal like NFT, or all at once?

I have several phases on my plan document. 

1. AM and AM-catalysed engines with support tanks (this is pretty close to done)
2. Pulsed fusion/fission engines (MTF, MIF, Z-pinch fission/fusion)
3. ISRU components
4. Other fusion drives (ICF, magnetically confined, magnetic mirror cells)

A dev release should happen after phase 1. A real release probably happens after phase 3. 

Edited July 25, 2016 by Nertea

[Domfluff]

Have to say, I'm quite excited about this. I'm a big fan of the line you've taken with Near Future - keeping a vaguely "stocklike" tone, whilst also demonstrating the fundamental limitations and challenges of the technology (e.g., SEP versus NEP, liquid hydrogen tanks being impractically huge sometimes).

[Nertea]

On 7/25/2016 at 11:01 AM, Domfluff said:

Have to say, I'm quite excited about this. I'm a big fan of the line you've taken with Near Future - keeping a vaguely "stocklike" tone, whilst also demonstrating the fundamental limitations and challenges of the technology (e.g., SEP versus NEP, liquid hydrogen tanks being impractically huge sometimes).

Some of that is due to the efforts of people like @Streetwind and @Fraz86, so credit where credit is due :). But yes that is always my goal - to present each technology in a way that shows off a key advantage and a key disadvantage, and hopefully create interesting gameplay. Luckily most technologies tend to create their own categorizations

• MTF/MIF pulsed: Low system complexity compared to NEP but higher launch mass and size. Expensive fuels. 
• Z-pinch pulsed: Bulky compared to most fusion systems but lower power use reduces barrier to entry, better TWRs
• Pure fusion: tends to be smaller than pulsed systems, but typically have expensive fuel costs and poor TWRs
• AM-initiated: lower mass vs. pulsed fusion/fission, but very high cost of AM isn't great
• Pure AM: very high cost of AM isn't great, but theoretically the best otherwise. 

I can do a lot better once I finish Radioactivity, because the radiation emissions from each type are good differentiators as well. 

Today I wrote a small AM tank plugin - this implementation will basically have your AM burn off when you run out of charge on your ship, currently at about a rate of 1u/s. The AM is immediately converted to large amounts of heat (about 1 MJ per unit to start), which will probably allow you to recover from a small leak, but not a large one (boom!). We assume that the tanks have been designed to vent with some small efficiency when power is lost.

Also got the beam core unwrapped, which was a pain. Starting to design the two z-pinch engines as well, they'll be nominally 3.75m mounts, but will have protruding larger capacitor banks to add some bulk. 

 

 

[Nertea]

Few more engines. 

Mini-mag Orion, which pulses a large charge into a small fissionable target, compressing it to critical density and detonating it. The resulting plasma is captured by the magnetic nozzle for thrust. 

The fusion z-pinch engine is basically the same thing, but with a larger compression ratio and a pellet of fusion fuels. 

Did the effects as well.