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

[Starhelperdude]

Isn't the hammertong really good? Not like for Planetary stuff but like for Interstellar stuff? I mean low thrust, really high ISP (not best but really good) and no power consumption. I think it deserves it's place in the tech tree

[Starhelperdude]

13 hours ago, MrFancyPL said:

I love this new parts!

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I shamelessly copied this rover, but without the manned parts 

[Captain Sierra]

12 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

Isn't the hammertong really good? Not like for Planetary stuff but like for Interstellar stuff? I mean low thrust, really high ISP (not best but really good) and no power consumption. I think it deserves it's place in the tech tree

Hammertong is able to produce dV numbers that approach that of the torch drives, but it has absolutely nada in terms of thrust. I think it's base TWR with just the engine and a tiny smidgen of fuel is like 0.3 and it only gets worse as you add mass. Now that said, it doesn't take a whole lot of fuel to get these numbers and if running it deuterium-rich, it has better helium-3 efficiency than both fusion torches. The torches are still ultimately in a league of their own, but the Hammertong is the only non-torch engine that can remotely compete in terms of dV. In a career environment, it may have some use still even when the torches come out if your helium-3 infrastructure is a bit lacking (the stuff costs a fortune on Kerbin).

[Starhelperdude]

which is the third torch? the Asimov?

[Nertea]

On 12/21/2020 at 1:20 AM, ra4nd0m said:

So I've been thinking about science mode balance and I can say that there are some problems around it. The main problem is that Hammertong is on the same tech level as the torch drives and there is absoultely no point on using it. The only reason to pick fusion over Unified Field is Ouroborous. I think it can be partially fixed by allowing to unlock unified field only when both previous nodes are researched not one of them

I'm not certain this is a big problem. We had decided that the torch drives exist on another level as they're quite cheaty no matter where they are in the science tree. 

[Captain Sierra]

19 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

which is the third torch? the Asimov?

The three torches are beam-core antimatter annihilation, gas dynamic mirror-cell fusion, and zeta-pinch axial-flow fusion engines. These are the three at have both good thrust power and insane delta-V, something everything else must choose between.

[Nertea]

FFT 0.9.12 (RC2)

• Updated CryoTanks to 1.5.5
• Updated SystemHeat to 0.3.1
• Updated CRP to 1.4.2
• Updated SpaceDust to 0.3.0
• Updated Waterfall to 0.3.0
• Minor bugfixes across the board
• Russian localization fixes

[lemon cup]

Some things I learned about He3 for use on interplanetary missions, and why this mod is called Far Future Technologies...

Can you spot the Kerbals?  This massive Helium-3 mining rig is the center point of the new interplanetary initiative that aims to see regular short-duration missions to Duna and Laythe using some of the more advanced FFT fusion drives. You can start to get a sense of why this stuff is so darn expensive. 

Spoiler

^Munar orbit was chosen as the building site for this Jool cruiser in order to make easier the shipment of liquid helium-3 fuel from the surface. The front is a docking cradle for an underslung SSTO. A helium tanker is docked there for the time being. 

Spoiler

^The propulsion system is the moderately efficient and moderately powerful Fresnel. To get it's intended payload out to Laythe in the desired 2-months, and back in the same amount of time, it needs a LOT of fusion products.

Spoiler

 

 ^To get a vessel like this mission ready, several truths must be assumed - a fully formed industry must be in place on the Mun for harvesting He3 (which can only be found in very tiny amounts on Kerbin). Fleets of logistics vehicles are needed, most if not all of which must be fully autonomous, and fully reusable. This tanker can haul up roughly 1.2 million funds-worth of stuff at a time, and a nuclear tug like you see in the second picture acts as both transportation to and from low orbit as well as an on-orbit propellant depot...

Spoiler

^But to do so requires an entire other industry to be present! A Hydrogen-Oxygen farm on the Mun's south pole processes all the Hydrolox fuel needed to keep the tankers in operation. We're talking two separate industries working non-stop over the course of several years (8 He3 harvesters working around the clock still only scratches the surface)  to provide the resources for one single interplanetary mission to get out of the gate...

Spoiler

After the long and demanding process of fueling the interplanetary craft, it fires its engine for the first time to transfer to Kerbin orbit and wait for the crewed SSTO before starting its journey. Without crunching the MW hours, I'd ballpark the total onboard power to be equivalent to months, possibly years of the combined power output of entire countries. 

EDIT: For the complete mission report and pictures of the  fully assembled vessel, check out the official thread  

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by lemon cup

[Starhelperdude]

3 hours ago, lemon cup said:

Some things I learned about He3 for use on interplanetary missions, and why this mod is called Far Future Technologies...

Can you spot the Kerbals?  This massive Helium-3 mining rig is the center point of the new interplanetary initiative that aims to see regular short-duration missions to Duna and Laythe using some of the more advanced FFT fusion drives. You can start to get a sense of why this stuff is so darn expensive. 

  Hide contents

^Munar orbit was chosen as the building site for this Jool cruiser in order to make easier the shipment of liquid helium-3 fuel from the surface. The front is a docking cradle for an underslung SSTO. A helium tanker is docked there for the time being. 

  Hide contents

^The propulsion system is the moderately efficient and moderately powerful Fresnel. To get it's intended payload out to Laythe in the desired 2-months, and back in the same amount of time, it needs a LOT of fusion products.

  Hide contents

 

 ^To get a vessel like this mission ready, several truths must be assumed - a fully formed industry must be in place on the Mun for harvesting He3 (which can only be found in very tiny amounts on Kerbin). Fleets of logistics vehicles are needed, most if not all of which must be fully autonomous, and fully reusable. This tanker can haul up roughly 1.2 million funds-worth of stuff at a time, and a nuclear tug like you see in the second picture acts as both transportation to and from low orbit as well as an on-orbit propellant depot...

  Hide contents

^But to do so requires an entire other industry to be present! A Hydrogen-Oxygen farm on the Mun's south pole processes all the Hydrolox fuel needed to keep the tankers in operation. We're talking two separate industries working non-stop over the course of several years (8 He3 harvesters working around the clock still only scratches the surface)  to provide the resources for one single interplanetary mission to get out of the gate...

  Hide contents

After the long and demanding process of fueling the interplanetary craft, it fires its engine for the first time to transfer to Kerbin orbit and wait for the crewed SSTO before starting it's journey. Without crunching the MW hours, I'd ballpark the total onboard power to be equivalent to months, possibly years of the combined power output of entire countries. 

Amazing crafts! 

[Nertea]

3 hours ago, lemon cup said:

Some things I learned about He3 for use on interplanetary missions, and why this mod is called Far Future Technologies...

After the long and demanding process of fueling the interplanetary craft, it fires its engine for the first time to transfer to Kerbin orbit and wait for the crewed SSTO before starting it's journey. Without crunching the MW hours, I'd ballpark the total onboard power to be equivalent to months, possibly years of the combined power output of entire countries. 

This is ridiculous and awesome and I love it.

Can I use some of these screens?

[lemon cup]

3 minutes ago, Nertea said:

This is ridiculous and awesome and I love it.

Can I use some of these screens?

Absolutely, I'd be honored.

I forgot to mention (I'll throw an edit in my post above) I plan to do a full write-up and picture dump in the Mission Reports forum when this thing finally makes the round trip, in a couple of days. I'll @ you in that, and you can grab whatever you like. 

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, lemon cup said:

Absolutely, I'd be honored.

I forgot to mention (I'll throw an edit in my post above) I plan to do a full write-up and picture dump in the Mission Reports forum when this thing finally makes the round trip, in a couple of days. I'll @ you in that, and you can grab whatever you like. 

I look forwards to it.

Just collecting an update album for tomorrow

[Lach_01298]

Was that munnar VAB and pad made using kerbal constructs?

[SpaceFace545]

53 minutes ago, Lach_01298 said:

Was that munnar VAB and pad made using kerbal constructs?

looks like it

[Wilhelm Kerman]

9 hours ago, lemon cup said:

Some things I learned about He3 for use on interplanetary missions, and why this mod is called Far Future Technologies...

Can you spot the Kerbals?  This massive Helium-3 mining rig is the center point of the new interplanetary initiative that aims to see regular short-duration missions to Duna and Laythe using some of the more advanced FFT fusion drives. You can start to get a sense of why this stuff is so darn expensive. 

  Hide contents

^Munar orbit was chosen as the building site for this Jool cruiser in order to make easier the shipment of liquid helium-3 fuel from the surface. The front is a docking cradle for an underslung SSTO. A helium tanker is docked there for the time being. 

  Hide contents

^The propulsion system is the moderately efficient and moderately powerful Fresnel. To get it's intended payload out to Laythe in the desired 2-months, and back in the same amount of time, it needs a LOT of fusion products.

  Hide contents

 

 ^To get a vessel like this mission ready, several truths must be assumed - a fully formed industry must be in place on the Mun for harvesting He3 (which can only be found in very tiny amounts on Kerbin). Fleets of logistics vehicles are needed, most if not all of which must be fully autonomous, and fully reusable. This tanker can haul up roughly 1.2 million funds-worth of stuff at a time, and a nuclear tug like you see in the second picture acts as both transportation to and from low orbit as well as an on-orbit propellant depot...

  Hide contents

^But to do so requires an entire other industry to be present! A Hydrogen-Oxygen farm on the Mun's south pole processes all the Hydrolox fuel needed to keep the tankers in operation. We're talking two separate industries working non-stop over the course of several years (8 He3 harvesters working around the clock still only scratches the surface)  to provide the resources for one single interplanetary mission to get out of the gate...

  Hide contents

After the long and demanding process of fueling the interplanetary craft, it fires its engine for the first time to transfer to Kerbin orbit and wait for the crewed SSTO before starting its journey. Without crunching the MW hours, I'd ballpark the total onboard power to be equivalent to months, possibly years of the combined power output of entire countries. 

EDIT: For the complete mission report and pictures of the  fully assembled vessel, expect to see a link here in the next couple of days.  

What kind of computer do you have and what kind of performance do you get with it?

This is really cool 

[lemon cup]

5 hours ago, Wilhelm Kerman said:

What kind of computer do you have and what kind of performance do you get with it?

Razer Blade 15 gaming laptop, a very decent system but by no means high-end. I keep my mod list relatively light (~45mods plus their dependencies) and well curated. Ships exceeding 100 parts cause notable stuttering so I do my best to implement low part-count techniques. If it looks especially purty, that is solely to the credit of TUFX, PlanetShine, and DistantObjectEnhancement, great graphics mods that take very little toll on performance.  

10 hours ago, Lach_01298 said:

Was that munnar VAB and pad made using kerbal constructs?

Yes sir, gotta make my life a little bit easier here and there. I like to build surface support vehicles the "proper" way (build, launch from Kerbin, rendezvous, and land) a couple times to validate the design, then take advantage of KK to do stuff like instant fuel transfer and vehicle spawn. Saves a ton of time and headache!

Again, keep an eye out for my thread in the Mission Reports forum, and I'll probably have an answer for any other questions you might have  

 

[SpaceFace545]

5 hours ago, lemon cup said:

“I keep my mod list relatively light ~45mods plus their dependencies”

 

Emphasis on relatively but yeah I try to stay in the same boat just to stay afloat. But I’m running this all on a laptop with 8gb of ram and no real graphics card or gpu.

[Nertea]

 

[SpaceFace545]

Merry Christmas everyone

 

 

and happy holidays

[computercat04]

3 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Merry Christmas everyone

 

 

and happy holidays

Same to you!

[Starhelperdude]

I'm asking wayyy to early, but what is happening next?

[Clamp-o-Tron]

20 minutes ago, Starhelperdude said:

I'm asking wayyy to early, but what is happening next?

Nert gets 2 weeks of rest.

Spoiler

According to the roadmap, possibly Cryo Engines Methalox.

 

 

[SpaceFace545]

50 minutes ago, Starhelperdude said:

I'm asking wayyy to early, but what is happening next?

I’m not sure but I think Nertea is probably going to revamp the kerbal atomics and the heat control parts.

here is a full list of his roadmap: 

 

[Starhelperdude]

Is there a Logo/Flag for the post-kerbin mining cooperation? If not, can somebody design a cool one?

[Captain Sierra]

13 minutes ago, Starhelperdude said:

Is there a Logo/Flag for the post-kerbin mining cooperation? If not, can somebody design a cool one?

There is definitely a logo and we can see it in the technical images in the FFT release album. I second making it into a flag when Nertea comes back from well-deserved vacation time.

 

And speaking of vacationing time for him, I want to use that to hijack this thread briefly for my own tangentially related purposes.   I wanna talk about these engines. Not the fusion tokamaks, the nuclear jet engines. I want people's opinions on the jet engines from NFAero, particularly when in use with Mk4 system (since they were originally a part of that). I personally have my own gripes with the balance and the mod FAQ even admits there's probably room for improvement on that front. So to that end, I want to pick the brains of other rocket engineers here on the topic.