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

[Plutron]

On 11/6/2020 at 10:48 PM, Nertea said:

So I know yall are sad that KSP2 is delayed so let me provide a small present. A new challenger for the crown of 'biggest, baddest engine'

 

Holy...

[Kerbalwings]

Thanks Nerta I guess I won't be needing KSP2! 

[ssd21345]

minor but the ksp avc link to this thread is wrong

and still wrong in 0.9.3 just for sure

Edited November 8, 2020 by ssd21345

[Nertea]

30 minutes ago, ssd21345 said:

minor but the ksp avc link to this thread is wrong

and still wrong in 0.9.3 just for sure

It will eventually be updated to the release thread, so yes it will continue to be wrong. 

20 hours ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Some thoughts on balance:

The Ouroboros just sucks, it only has 500 more ISP then its fission counterpart, the Deliverance, while being twice as expensive, producing less thrust, and being unlocked at the very end of the tech tree.

I'm less certain about the following thoughts, but I figured I'd mention them:

Fresnel is outclassed by the Hammertong (which is unlocked earlier), though its thrust in LH2 mode is better then the Hammertong so it does have one advantage

Verne is unlocked in the same node as the Liberator and Emancipator, yet is just so much better than them. It does cost a ton more though.

FFREs have a bit too much ISP, imo.

 

Ouroboros: You could be right, but it does have some advantages, including:

• Easier to refuel (and maybe cheaper)
• Some power generation

Supposed to be a sustainer vs booster type thing too.

Fresnel vs Hammertong: That seems more or less as intended, tech might be wrong. You should be able to get better thrust with the Fresnel but Hammertong will win the Isp game. Fresnel also has power generation built in too.

Verne: Can bump the tech,

FFREs: Isp is lower than it should be, thrust might need to go further down.

 

15 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

It's interesting that you choose to divide by 50 to produce the SystemHeat value you want. According to Nertea's handling of the stock folding radiators, you want to divide by 5 again (or 250 in total). The gray numbers are config values. (Yes I know the medium folding divides by a different amount but it's still really close.) I've followed this trend for OPT parts.

I just learned that Heat Control's radiators may use different scaling. I'll have to update this image and see.

Scaling is the way it is because I took the time to approximately measure the stock radiators and compute their output realistically. It's not just a number I chose versus stock. 

6 hours ago, RedParadize said:

I would certainly love to have a LS done by Nertea. His stuff is high quality and easy to work with. Problem is, he is only one guy! If I had to define priority (I don't claim to have that prerogative, obviously!) I would say that a persistent trust would be at the top, Nertea almost have a monopoly on low trust electric engine, kind of make sense to have it handled by him. Below that would be a electric system that has separated loops, like his heat management. Then, a LS mod would use a similar loop system for air and else.

The heat management could get a tad more sophisticated, a low temperature loop (habitat) can't really use the same loop as a high (say nuclear) one. Not sure how to format that into something that is easily understood by player trough.

Gonna give a shot at persistent trust mod and see if I can make it work for me. Thanks btw

Honestly I'm unlikely to make a LS mod because I don't enjoy LS. Persistent thrust, last I checked the actual Persistent Thrust mod was pretty good though, and duplicating that wouldn't be fun.

The heat management thing you mention is already part of SystemHeat :). Mixing loops with different optimal temperature parts will give poor results. 

[ra4nd0m]

6 hours ago, Nertea said:

Persistent Thrust mod was pretty good

Actually there are some bugs with PT and FFT.  I've found another bug  that appear when PT is installed. The sound effects of the impulse engines play all the time.  Without any synchronization with impulses. 

The report is already on PT github. How fast these will be fixed is fully dependant on @FreeThinker.

[RedParadize]

Installed Persistent trust, it change everything really! My new favorite engine was the nuclear salt water, now its the nuclear fragment. Compact, not expensive and not too heat intense. Perfect for my Current project:

Pegasus Lifeboat/Taxi

Playing at 6.4 scale and with Life support and failure (kerbalism) can turn a perfectly planned mission to Jool into a disaster. For that reason I made this lifeboat, its light, compact and relatively inexpensive. Idea is to send it unmanned to Jool and serve as a backup return craft in case of failure. With 120k deltaV and its triple redundancy it can bring back 4 astronaut safely home in less than a year and half.  The Engine can be replaced but I doubt it would be worth it as at that point most of the craft will be past its life expectancy. Will see.

Edited November 9, 2020 by RedParadize

[theJesuit]

2 hours ago, RedParadize said:

Playing at 6.4 scale and with Life support and failure (kerbalism) can turn a perfectly planned mission to Jool into a disaster. For that reason I made this lifeboat, its light, compact and relatively inexpensive. Idea is to send it unmanned to Jool and serve as a backup return craft in case of failure. With 120k deltaV and its triple redundancy it can bring back 4 astronaut safely home in less than a year and half.

What is your mission time and how does a nuke cope with radiation in kerbalism?  Hate to think what happens when the kerbalism devs put the rads heavy on that.

[RedParadize]

@theJesuit It seem to not consider it unless the engine fail. If it do  and you keep it running it will irradiate and kill your kerbal. I did not try to get a kerbal behind the shadow shield trough!

[theJesuit]

45 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

@theJesuit It seem to not consider it unless the engine fail. If it do  and you keep it running it will irradiate and kill your kerbal. I did not try to get a kerbal behind the shadow shield trough!

Awesome.  Nice to see that kerbalism is still kling as many kerbals as possible,  and that these, for now at least, aren't going to make the fancy new toys impossible to use.

[RedParadize]

@NerteaI trough it might help if I share my impression of FFT stuff. I have to say that I did not test them on a stock game. I play 6.4x, have plenty of mod that could interfere and I also have a patch that scale down engine weight. So take it with a grain of salt. While I have read a bit about these engine on the Atomic Rocket webpage (I love it), my comment are focused on gameplay and not scientific accuracy:

A-134NG Casaba:
Its really heavy, ISP and trust aren't impressive. I did not find a way to replace the burned ablator, with a 40t playload it is therefore limited to less than 50k deltaV before engine need to be changed. For that reason it doesn't compare favorably to the other FFT engine, its probably the worst in fact.

JP-10 Impulse: 
Heat generation is really low but fall into a bracket where no radiator really fit. ISP is bad, on par with most NFP engines, if it was a tad better I could see it has its use when running in "Deuterium" mode if I had a reliable access to Lithium and Deuterium.

JR-20A Ouroboros:
It has its use in the high trust department, nothing that X-2 doesn't do better however. (That is if you do not roleplay radiation restriction as I do)

JR-15 Discovery:
It's average, if it was not of He3 cost it would be ok I guess.  It doesn't stand out in any category and that's its main flaw.

JR-45 Fresnel:
The Higher ISP of "reaction product" cant be exploited because of the extra heat generated, "low trust" mode offer better performance as the full setup have a lower dead weight. Stretching the Engine simply isn't a option in"reaction product" mode because of its heat issue. In "low trust" mode stretching benefit is marginal because of the added weight. Tested with a 40t load, JR-15 outperform JR-45 in all its configuration.

K-80 Hammertong:
Much better than both JR-15 and JR-45. Even with He3 cost as it is, it is more or less on par with X-6 in term of cost effectiveness. If I were to go harvest He3 that's probably the engine I would chose. I do not see the point of the "low trust" mode, it burn the same fuel mix, have almost identical trust and much worst ISP. Was it intended to burn hydrogen as well?

X-2 Heinlein:
Its exactly as its description say it is.

X-20 Verne:
Its ok, trust is good and ISP decent. With enough fuel a pretty high deltaV can be reached, it get massive pretty quickly however.  I know from experience that refining  100t of uraninite -> enriched uranium -> fission pellets take ages and massive infrastructure, even on the best spot possible, that's its main drawback. Unless if K-80  X-6 and X-9 fall into higher tech I would probably not use the X-20. It should not be the case trough, X-6 could have been made in the 60s.

X-6 Clarke:
Simple to use, superb ISP, reasonable heat generation and decent trust. Not being able to refuel isn't a drawback, they are small and comparatively cheap, stacking and staging is cheaper then the other engines. Alternatively, they can be brought back to KSP center pretty easily. In my eye its the best of all the FFT "low trust" long ranger.

X-7 Asimov:
Its good, fission particle seems to be easier to produce than pellets as you do not need as much of them. Even if X-7 can refueled but in my eye the higher total weight of the setup make it less attractive than the X-6. The "afterburning" mode big drop in ISP make it hard for me to see a scenario where it would be useful, allot of tanking need to be added and resupplying would be more complex, negating its refueling capability.


My conclusion is that X-6 and JR-20A are fine as they are and cover the high trust category pretty well. X-6 and K-80 stand out on the low trust category, mostly because of their lack of or low dependence on He3. He3 cost make the other fusion engines prohibitively expensive to run. Looking at my persistant.sfs (Spectral Telescope do not detect He3?) the only place where He3 can be found is Jool atmosphere... I have difficulty imagining that it can be harvested economically, certainly not on a scale large enough to rely on. If that were to be addressed, I would say that and JR-45 would still need a buff. JR-15, its too average, I think it need to excel at something the others don't. JP-10 probably need a slight buff in ISP. A-134NG Need allot of love before being competitive.

[Cochies]

On 11/7/2020 at 12:48 AM, Nertea said:

I think there's actually a "write me" section in that readme for the curved ones...

Configuring radiators is not too hard. You need to figure out surface area and temperature. You should pick surface area by looking at your radiator and seeing how large it is (compare it one of the SH ones, and scale from there). Then you pick maximum temperature, which is determined by the type of radiator you are using. 

• 350K: basic ammonia loop (life support) radiators like on the ISS
• 1000K: The 'high temperature' radiators in Heat Control, which are based more or less on high temp radiators we could feasibly build today.
• 1300K: The 'microchannel' higher tech carbon filament tube radiators that can handle more heat

You can pick whatever you want, of course, but those are the categories I've been running with. Fancier radiators might be higher.

Then you use the stefann-boltzmann law to get the approximate ideal radiation power. That's F = A*sigma* T^4, where

• sigma is the setefann-boltzmann constant, 5.67*10^-8 
• T is the temperature you chose, in K
• A is the area you calculated, in square metres

You then round the answer to a nicer number, and plug the temperature and the flux into the TemperatureCurve:

@MODULE[ModuleActiveRadiator]
  {
    @name = ModuleSystemHeatRadiator
    moduleID = radiator
    // ModuleSystemHeat instance to link to
    systemHeatModuleID = default

    // option: use deterministic temperatures
    // Power radiated per temperature
    temperatureCurve
    {
      key = 0 0
      key = 1000 50
    }
  }
}

An alternate, possibly lower effort, way to do it is to look at a radiator I configured with the same temperature properties and figure out how much bigger or smaller yours is, and copy/scale the values appropriately.

 

So I know yall are sad that KSP2 is delayed so let me provide a small present. A new challenger for the crown of 'biggest, baddest engine'

 

 

 

Thanks for the detailed explanations, this is exactly what I needed and answers many questions about the characteristics.

[Nertea]

Thanks @RedParadize, I will add some answers below with my thoughts:

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

A-134NG Casaba:
Its really heavy, ISP and trust aren't impressive. I did not find a way to replace the burned ablator, with a 40t playload it is therefore limited to less than 50k deltaV before engine need to be changed. For that reason it doesn't compare favorably to the other FFT engine, its probably the worst in fact.

You are supposed to be able to refurbish the ablator with the nuclear smelter, I think that got lost in the transition from the old version. The concept is that it is very much like the Verne, but lighter and simpler (plus some thrust, Isp) as a result of using antimatter to ignite the blast. Probably needs some work.

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

JP-10 Impulse: 
Heat generation is really low but fall into a bracket where no radiator really fit. ISP is bad, on par with most NFP engines, if it was a tad better I could see it has its use when running in "Deuterium" mode if I had a reliable access to Lithium and Deuterium.

It is entry level so this is intended. If I did the math right it should have somewhat better full-system efficiencies than the NFP engines. I can take a second look though.

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

JR-15 Discovery:
It's average, if it was not of He3 cost it would be ok I guess.  It doesn't stand out in any category and that's its main flaw.

I intended this to be a good all-around engine - it does stand out in one way, it has the single highest engine power generation, so you can use it to make a ship effectively alone - no need for a separate power source to cool tanks, run radiators. It's a generalist, not a specialist.

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

JR-45 Fresnel:
The Higher ISP of "reaction product" cant be exploited because of the extra heat generated, "low trust" mode offer better performance as the full setup have a lower dead weight. Stretching the Engine simply isn't a option in"reaction product" mode because of its heat issue. In "low trust" mode stretching benefit is marginal because of the added weight. Tested with a 40t load, JR-15 outperform JR-45 in all its configuration.

Looks like I have to take a look at this one. It should definitely be beating the JR15 when it is stretched at the very least. Some bounds

• The Reaction Products mode should probably be beating the K80's low thrust mode in terms of thrust but not Isp.
• The Afterburner mode should definitely be beating the K80 in terms of thrust all the time. 

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

K-80 Hammertong:
Much better than both JR-15 and JR-45. Even with He3 cost as it is, it is more or less on par with X-6 in term of cost effectiveness. If I were to go harvest He3 that's probably the engine I would chose. I do not see the point of the "low trust" mode, it burn the same fuel mix, have almost identical trust and much worst ISP. Was it intended to burn hydrogen as well?

It just burns more deuterium with the He3. I'll take a look at the exact numbers though.

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

X-20 Verne:
Its ok, trust is good and ISP decent. With enough fuel a pretty high deltaV can be reached, it get massive pretty quickly however.  I know from experience that refining  100t of uraninite -> enriched uranium -> fission pellets take ages and massive infrastructure, even on the best spot possible, that's its main drawback. Unless if K-80  X-6 and X-9 fall into higher tech I would probably not use the X-20. It should not be the case trough, X-6 could have been made in the 60s.

That sounds about right, it should be powerful but big and awkward to use.

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

X-6 Clarke:
Simple to use, superb ISP, reasonable heat generation and decent trust. Not being able to refuel isn't a drawback, they are small and comparatively cheap, stacking and staging is cheaper then the other engines. Alternatively, they can be brought back to KSP center pretty easily. In my eye its the best of all the FFT "low trust" long ranger.

I think these need to go down in thrust a bit. Shouldn't be that good. 

11 hours ago, RedParadize said:

X-7 Asimov:
Its good, fission particle seems to be easier to produce than pellets as you do not need as much of them. Even if X-7 can refueled but in my eye the higher total weight of the setup make it less attractive than the X-6. The "afterburning" mode big drop in ISP make it hard for me to see a scenario where it would be useful, allot of tanking need to be added and resupplying would be more complex, negating its refueling capability.

Sounds like I might need to play with the numbers on the afterburner mode. 

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2020 by Nertea

[Nertea]

On 11/8/2020 at 5:07 AM, ra4nd0m said:

Actually there are some bugs with PT and FFT.  I've found another bug  that appear when PT is installed. The sound effects of the impulse engines play all the time.  Without any synchronization with impulses. 

 

Addendum: I'm not surprised at all - I wrote a completely custom animation handler for them. 

[RedParadize]

A-134NG Casaba:

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

You are supposed to be able to refurbish the ablator with the nuclear smelter, I think that got lost in the transition from the old version. The concept is that it is very much like the Verne, but lighter and simpler (plus some thrust, Isp) as a result of using antimatter to ignite the blast.

Ah I see, that mean we will need a ablator container too to get over its max deltaV. Its the only engine that need both smelter and dust/atmo scoop to be refueled. I think it might be wise to buff it a bit.

JP-10 Impulse: 

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

It is entry level so this is intended. If I did the math right it should have somewhat better full-system efficiencies than the NFP engines. I can take a second look though.

On paper it might be true, but its mass is greater than NFP engines + electric setup. It may still have a slight edge over the lower ISP ones.

JR-45 Fresnel:

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

Looks like I have to take a look at this one. It should definitely be beating the JR15 when it is stretched at the very least. Some bounds

• The Reaction Products mode should probably be beating the K80's low thrust mode in terms of thrust but not Isp.
• The Afterburner mode should definitely be beating the K80 in terms of thrust all the time. 

To clarify, I rate JR15 superior in relation to its ISP/mass and not trust. Thrust above 0.5g it isn't that useful for orbital and deep space maneuver. 

Comparing JR15 "High trust" with JR45 on "Low trust" mode only (the same fuel mass and a playload of 40t): At 8m JR45 " low trust" mode is beaten by JR15 on sheer ISP.  Stretched to 10m heat generation is equal to JR15 but deltaV is still lower. At 14m it would equal JR15 deltaV but you need 12k of extra cooling and end up equal or slightly under. At 18m it DeltaV is starting to be over. But at 18m  cost, size and mass difference of the vs  JR15 mean is pretty big. In my eye its hardly worth the extra launch cost.

Comparing JR45 "Reaction Products" with K80, thrust might be more of a issue as K80 is pretty low on that aspect.  My number will be different than yours on that as I have a mass reduction patch that affect all engine equally. With Equal fuel and including radiator, a 18m JR45 in "Reaction Products" mode have the 0.21 TWR and 37km/s DV. K80 "Reaction Products" has 0.13 TWR an 260km/s DV.  K80 "Low Thrust" has 0.11 TWR an 100km/s DV. Basically it in both mode it is roughly twice more trust for JR45 at a huge DV expense. Trade off isn't worth it.

A note on the two mode, given they have both different fuel type and heat generation I think its a feature that will be changed only in design stage.  Making both mode use the same fuel or have similar heat generation would change that.

K-80 Hammertong:

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

It just burns more deuterium with the He3. I'll take a look at the exact numbers though.

I did not notice that, may I suggest changing the "Low trust" mode name to something like "Deuterium Rich"? That is a very useful mode as it divide operating cost by 1/3 at the cost of 1/2 ISP.

X-6 Clarke:

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

I think these need to go down in thrust a bit. Shouldn't be that good.

It would have to be a pretty big nerf before being meaningful, I fear it would kill it. I do not know how if you could do that but increasing the Enr U cost would do it too to some extent.  The Engine itself should not cost much as it is really simple, but if changing Enr U cost isn't possible then maybe that would do it. If Radiation was a thing then that would put that engine in the same category as the X-2, too dangerous to be close to it. That would be the best solution.

About PT and FFT, its a sound issue only, it isn't too bad.

[WarriorSabe]

Yeah, FFREs are really just super OP if you make them usable in ksp without additional mods like Persistent Thrust or straying far from the actual concept. Since the irl ones are fission engines with 7-digit Isp, but a thrust low enough that it still ends up doing the interstellar brachistochrone, making a DS4G look like an F-1.

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

It would have to be a pretty big nerf before being meaningful, I fear it would kill it. I do not know how if you could do that but increasing the Enr U cost would do it too to some extent.  The Engine itself should not cost much as it is really simple, but if changing Enr U cost isn't possible then maybe that would do it. If Radiation was a thing then that would put that engine in the same category as the X-2, too dangerous to be close to it. That would be the best solution.

Most of these engines kill anyone anywhere nearby that aren't behind the shadow shield.

Reasonably, there is probably a situation where the presence of PersistentThrust introduces 'appropriate' thrust scaling, something closer to reality. 

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

Ah I see, that mean we will need a ablator container too to get over its max deltaV. Its the only engine that need both smelter and dust/atmo scoop to be refueled. I think it might be wise to buff it a bit.

No, no container. Direct refurbish only - consider it an engine that works best between 'stops' in a civilized system. Range anxiety.

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

On paper it might be true, but its mass is greater than NFP engines + electric setup. It may still have a slight edge over the lower ISP ones.

 

NFP engines haven't gotten their SystemHeat patches yet

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

To clarify, I rate JR15 superior in relation to its ISP/mass and not trust. Thrust above 0.5g it isn't that useful for orbital and deep space maneuver. 

Comparing JR15 "High trust" with JR45 on "Low trust" mode only (the same fuel mass and a playload of 40t): At 8m JR45 " low trust" mode is beaten by JR15 on sheer ISP.  Stretched to 10m heat generation is equal to JR15 but deltaV is still lower. At 14m it would equal JR15 deltaV but you need 12k of extra cooling and end up equal or slightly under. At 18m it DeltaV is starting to be over. But at 18m  cost, size and mass difference of the vs  JR15 mean is pretty big. In my eye its hardly worth the extra launch cost.

Comparing JR45 "Reaction Products" with K80, thrust might be more of a issue as K80 is pretty low on that aspect.  My number will be different than yours on that as I have a mass reduction patch that affect all engine equally. With Equal fuel and including radiator, a 18m JR45 in "Reaction Products" mode have the 0.21 TWR and 37km/s DV. K80 "Reaction Products" has 0.13 TWR an 260km/s DV.  K80 "Low Thrust" has 0.11 TWR an 100km/s DV. Basically it in both mode it is roughly twice more trust for JR45 at a huge DV expense. Trade off isn't worth it.

A note on the two mode, given they have both different fuel type and heat generation I think its a feature that will be changed only in design stage.  Making both mode use the same fuel or have similar heat generation would change that.

There is a fundamental trade though that is interesting - you put more fuel into the engine, you get less heat needs (more is taken away). 

I need to digest this paragraph more, but I am spending some time updating my balance simulators to handle SH.

1 hour ago, RedParadize said:

I did not notice that, may I suggest changing the "Low trust" mode name to something like "Deuterium Rich"

Good idea.

 

[RedParadize]

Sorry, JR45 paragraph is pretty hard to read. I reformulated it several times and I could not do it right. A graph would have been far better.

[Nertea]

Hey so I've stepped back from staring at balance to work on some new stuff. I've overall thought that the best way to 'handle' the NSWR is, well, to provide more torch drives so it doesn't sit off by itself. For now, I'm scoping two - the ones that won the poll from before. The first one is the beamed-core antimatter drive, which I previewed last week. This engine will roughly allow you to get FFRE-level specific impulse with a fair bit more thrust.

This is quite a large engine. It has an extensible truss which has radiators - you can extend the engine to reduce the number of radiators you need to attach separately. It should be noted that the original Frisbee design had about 500 km of these radiators (yes, kilometres).

Because it uses a lot of antimatter, you will need something better than the antimatter ring, so here are some more antimatter tanks that get a little more scifi. They have blinking lights. 

Evidently, generating this much antimatter with Science is probably not realistic. You will need to harvest it with the exo-scoop or generate it using your own factories. More on that next update...

 

 

 

 

 

[Plutron]

29 minutes ago, Nertea said:

ve overall thought that the best way to 'handle' the NSWR is, well, to provide more torch drives so it doesn't sit off by itself

This is probably the best way of balancing I've ever seen. Can't wait to try them out! 

[RedParadize]

@Nertea Looks really cool. I do not know how much engine you still plan to do, but I think a small and compact lander engine would be really nice. Ideally something that do not use hydrogen as it take allot of volume. Is it something you may do?


I made one for myself using a scaled down JR20A, it use 10 lithium, 3 Helium3 and 2 deuterium, a bit like JP10 but with more Lithium. It make it compact but way too expensive to run for Kerbin launch.

[Nertea]

40 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

@Nertea Looks really cool. I do not know how much engine you still plan to do, but I think a small and compact lander engine would be really nice. Ideally something that do not use hydrogen as it take allot of volume. Is it something you may do?


I made one for myself using a scaled down JR20A, it use 10 lithium, 3 Helium3 and 2 deuterium, a bit like JP10 but with more Lithium. It make it compact but way too expensive to run for Kerbin launch.

Not really, I personally like the idea that the most futuristic engines are, due to radiation/size concerns, impractical to use for launch. It encourages something more complex than a one-size-fits all vehicle, so you have an architecture to deliver things to orbit, an architecture for transit A, transit B, etc..

[stephm]

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

Hey so I've stepped back from staring at balance to work on some new stuff. I've overall thought that the best way to 'handle' the NSWR is, well, to provide more torch drives so it doesn't sit off by itself. For now, I'm scoping two - the ones that won the poll from before. The first one is the beamed-core antimatter drive, which I previewed last week. This engine will roughly allow you to get FFRE-level specific impulse with a fair bit more thrust.

This is quite a large engine. It has an extensible truss which has radiators - you can extend the engine to reduce the number of radiators you need to attach separately. It should be noted that the original Frisbee design had about 500 km of these radiators (yes, kilometres).

Because it uses a lot of antimatter, you will need something better than the antimatter ring, so here are some more antimatter tanks that get a little more scifi. They have blinking lights. 

Evidently, generating this much antimatter with Science is probably not realistic. You will need to harvest it with the exo-scoop or generate it using your own factories. More on that next update...

 

 

 

 

 

pretty details I'm a fan !     

(NearFutureAeronautics, NearFutureProps, NearFutureElectrical, NearFuturePropulsion, NearFutureSolar, NearFutureExploration, installed forever )

steph.

[RedParadize]

@NerteaI agree with you on having architecture for specific purpose. Its not that I would wish for a one size fit all, its more about that there is no engine that cover modest size lander atm. Say you want to land on Laythe, atm the only engine that is good for that is the JR20A, that one is much more powerful and heavy than needed, so a rocket much bigger than the actual need will have to be carried to Jool orbit to do so. Maybe that type of engine can't be scaled down any further, I wonder if there would be one type that could trough.

About radiation, most of fusion engines produce less radiation than fission ones. Off, they do not pose as much hazard when close to them, wherever we are talking about direct radiation or contamination. When compared to space level of radiation it isn't that much of a concern, crew needs some level of protection either way. As for when the engine run... well you need a shadow shield that's for sure.

 

[Plutron]

13 hours ago, RedParadize said:

@NerteaI agree with you on having architecture for specific purpose. Its not that I would wish for a one size fit all, its more about that there is no engine that cover modest size lander atm. Say you want to land on Laythe, atm the only engine that is good for that is the JR20A, that one is much more powerful and heavy than needed, so a rocket much bigger than the actual need will have to be carried to Jool orbit to do so. Maybe that type of engine can't be scaled down any further, I wonder if there would be one type that could trough.

About radiation, most of fusion engines produce less radiation than fission ones. Off, they do not pose as much hazard when close to them, wherever we are talking about direct radiation or contamination. When compared to space level of radiation it isn't that much of a concern, crew needs some level of protection either way. As for when the engine run... well you need a shadow shield that's for sure.

 

Why not use a chemical/nuclear thermal engine for the lander, and use a fusion engine for the tug/main vessel? 

[SpaceFace545]

22 minutes ago, Plutron said:

Why not use a chemical/nuclear thermal engine for the lander, and use a fusion engine for the tug/main vessel? 

Maybe not nuclear thermal do to their size to thrust ratio but better added fusion aero spikes and nswr and metallic hydrogen rockets and there sort of compact