Modular Fuel System Continued v3.3 (OBSOLETE)

[NathanKell]

Clone how? Alt-click? Or clone the cfg?

[jrandom]

Clone how? Alt-click? Or clone the cfg?

Alt-click in VAP/SPH. (This is with B9 fuel tanks, if that helps.)

[Starwaster]

On the subject of insulation and refrigeration.

Radiators. Use them. That's your active refrigeration.

Insulation. I'm not sure just how much attention has been paid to real life values used by NASA but the best passive cooling techniques (insulation with reflective Mylar materials) will always result in boil off. You will never achieve zero boil off with only passive cooling. Ever. You can't insulate everything. Pipes and fittings will have to penetrate the insulation and they connect to uninsulated things like engines. Heat transfer occurs and hydrogen heats up to boiling requiring that it be vented off.

So in the interest of some semblance of realism, no. Active cooling is a must and the mod has it in the form of radiators. They're not just wicking away the heat, there's refrigeration involved.

Edit: there have been schemes investigated by NASA such as using H2 boil off as a sort of poor mans refrigeration. Same principle that lets you can boil water in a paper cup.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Starwaster

[jrandom]

Radiators. Use them. That's your active refrigeration.

Well hell, I didn't know we had those! Now I just have to find 'em amidst all these parts... *dig* *dig* *dig*

[metaphor]

Hmm, interesting! Cryo tanks already are insulated, with concomitant low boiloff rates. In v4 I want to try active refrigeration. Although as you implicitly point out, the amount of insulation is not configurable.

Yes, that is what I really meant, if the amount of insulation could be made configurable so you can have a trade-off between extra mass and better long-term storage.

Well hell, I didn't know we had those! Now I just have to find 'em amidst all these parts... *dig* *dig* *dig*

Same, I had no idea that radiator part helped to reduce boil-off.

On the subject of insulation and refrigeration.

Radiators. Use them. That's your active refrigeration.

Insulation. I'm not sure just how much attention has been paid to real life values used by NASA but the best passive cooling techniques (insulation with reflective Mylar materials) will always result in boil off. You will never achieve zero boil off with only passive cooling. Ever. You can't insulate everything. Pipes and fittings will have to penetrate the insulation and they connect to uninsulated things like engines. Heat transfer occurs and hydrogen heats up to boiling requiring that it be vented off.

So in the interest of some semblance of realism, no. Active cooling is a must and the mod has it in the form of radiators. They're not just wicking away the heat, there's refrigeration involved.

Edit: there have been schemes investigated by NASA such as using H2 boil off as a sort of poor mans refrigeration. Same principle that lets you can boil water in a paper cup.

You can't achieve 0 boil-off with passive systems, but it can be pretty low. NASA is working right now on passive low boil-off cryogenic systems. For example, this paper by Boeing says "Preliminary thermal results show that this simple depot is capable of supporting passive long duration cryo storage with less than 0.1%/day boiloff with opportunity for further improvement." And this one says 0.01% per day with passive cooling. 0.01% per day would be enough to do a crewed Mars mission entirely with hydrolox. It's not exactly current technology, but relatively near-future.

I was thinking that the "insulation" resource would represent anything you had to add to a tank to make it have less boil-off, no matter what kind of cooling it is, and that it would be configurable. But if you want to add external features like sun shields and radiators and power management, that would be great too.

Edited November 29, 2013 by metaphor

[123nick]

man, i was making a interstaller mission to duna but when i finnaly got there some of my liquid oxygen evaporated, dooming me. and now i see the use for MMH+n204.

[Starwaster]

Well hell, I didn't know we had those! Now I just have to find 'em amidst all these parts... *dig* *dig* *dig*

a bit of warning though, the ones the mod comes with are kind of bland looking. You should get the ones made by zzz for the interstellar mod. in fact, I was just thinking it would be cool if we could get them officially in this mod.... cant remember what sort of license he had them under...

[Starwaster]

Oh and I misunderstood metaphor I think. I thought he was talking like some kind of consumable. But you're really just talking about the ability to arbitrarily determine how much MLI goes on the tank?

[Ralathon]

It appears that the RLA engines aren't supported by this mod (yet?). Has anyone homebrewed a config for them, or do I have to make one myself?

[NathanKell]

The newest RLA engines will be in shortly. It's been a busy week with Thanksgiving. The LV-T5, however, has been in since v3 or so.

[Zander]

The newest RLA engines will be in shortly. It's been a busy week with Thanksgiving. The LV-T5, however, has been in since v3 or so.

Awesome. I was wondering if its possible for you to do something about units? Like when i see 10,000 fuel it means nothing to me. Could you change the resources so that they have units like 5000kg of fuel or 5000 liters of fuel or something.

[Ralathon]

The newest RLA engines will be in shortly. It's been a busy week with Thanksgiving. The LV-T5, however, has been in since v3 or so.

Great to hear that! I'll wait it out in that case. Really appreciate the work you're doing on this mod (And your others, I seem to be using all of your mods...). It gives so much more flexibility and complexity in design.

[Firov]

The newest RLA engines will be in shortly. It's been a busy week with Thanksgiving. The LV-T5, however, has been in since v3 or so.

Excellent news! On another note, will the new shuttle engines also be supported? The X3, X0, and BigBang 2 engines don't appear to be supported at the moment, from what I can tell.

[NathanKell]

Apologies. I'm not done with MFSv4 yet. Thanksgiving week was a bad time to expect I could get lots of coding done.

Zander: I will be reassessing MFS after .23 and tweakables, and I will likely move to m^3 as the units; we'll see.

Ralathon: Thanks! (Though apologies for delay, per above).

Firov: We'll do our best.

[123nick]

can you add updated space shuttle engines compatibility, along with the new fasa 3.00 mercury engines and such, also MrTheBulls mods compatibility would be neat

[Tyrador]

Can this mod work with Near Future Mod? Thank you.

[Spartan125]

How do you get engines to work with other fuels or is that going to be implemented in the future? Also LH2 doesn't appear to have any real benefit over Kerosene from what I've tested even in upper stages as you need large tanks to store it, even in terms of cost.

[AbeS]

It gives you less mass at launch, try flying a Saturn V without LH2

[Starwaster]

How do you get engines to work with other fuels or is that going to be implemented in the future? Also LH2 doesn't appear to have any real benefit over Kerosene from what I've tested even in upper stages as you need large tanks to store it, even in terms of cost.

Using LH2 in upper stages is primarily to increase available delta-V for the lower stages by decreasing upper stage mass. That was the reasoning behind why it was used in the Saturn-V

[jrandom]

Using LH2 in upper stages is primarily to increase available delta-V for the lower stages by decreasing upper stage mass. That was the reasoning behind why it was used in the Saturn-V

Exactly this! You can use Kerbal Engineer or MechJeb to see the weight differences. Using LH2 in an upper stage can dramatically reduce the size of the lower stages used to lift it.

[erbmur]

I've deleted and re-installed the mod but I still seem to be having an issue.

The B9 "T2 Solid Rocket Separation Booster" and "T2 Solid Rocket Separation Retro-Booster" seem to be having solid fuel capacity of 433 units? Anybody else getting numbers like this or is it just me?

[Starwaster]

I've deleted and re-installed the mod but I still seem to be having an issue.

The B9 "T2 Solid Rocket Separation Booster" and "T2 Solid Rocket Separation Retro-Booster" seem to be having solid fuel capacity of 433 units? Anybody else getting numbers like this or is it just me?

if they have 433 then thats because they were assigned 433. dunno why but you can save yourself additional reinstalls.

it's in engines.cfg if you want to change it.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Is this compatible with KER, i.e. does it show correct delta v?

[jrandom]

Is this compatible with KER, i.e. does it show correct delta v?

Yep. Although if you use it with stretchy tanks, there are some rounding issues and you'll need to dump and refill the tank after resizing it to top it off.

[erbmur]

It's in engines.cfg if you want to change it.

Thanks for the heads up!