[0.23]asmi's ECLSS Mod (current version - 1.0.15) - Life Support Mod

[Captain_Party]

Is there anyway you can add it to MFSC? So you don't have to add these tanks to your ship, they're beautiful, but they do stand out a fair bit... Just so you could fill up Stratus-V's with O2 and stuff

[Starwaster]

Is there anyway you can add it to MFSC? So you don't have to add these tanks to your ship, they're beautiful, but they do stand out a fair bit... Just so you could fill up Stratus-V's with O2 and stuff

It's trivial to do so. Just create new TANK definitions (nodes) whose name is the name of the resource (haven't actually checked to see what the resource name is)

Something like

// this adds it to the default tank type
@TANK_DEFINITION[Default]
{
    TANK
    {
        name = O2
        mass = 0.00001
        // forget what else should go here. It's not cry so no boiloff
    }
}

[Javster]

The only thing I dislike is the taking RCS from the actual ship. I could add RCS to all capsules though. How much to they use?

[Frederf]

I believe 100% EVA fuel is 100 units of mono-propellant which I think is too much. Based on a certain ISP assumption and mass of kerbal I believe someone's worked out what 100% EVA fuel equates to in MP units and it's near 1.0.

[asmi]

I'm going to remove this feature since it will be in stock in 0.23

[Captain_Party]

What feature ~

[asmi]

What feature ~

Using vessel's RCS when going to EVA.

[Frederf]

Check my math here to make sure I got it right.

Kerbal is 93.75kg. Monopropellant is 4kg/U. Assuming Isp of 100. EVA Pack provides 600 m/s dV.

dV = Isp * g0 * ln(Md+F/Md)

600 = 100 * 9.8 * ln (93.75+F/93.75)

0.6122 = ln (93.75+F/93.75)

1.8446 = 9.75+F/93.75

F = 79.18 kg of monopropellant

F/4 = 19.8 U of monopropellant

===

If the above assumptions and math are right a full EVA fill up should take about 20U which seems more reasonable that the roundified tank holds 40U. I still think it's silly that the EVA pack holds 600 m/s dV. At 1/5th that much it would hold 4U.

I really like the feature and would rather it stay in until Squad's change comes about. Having the EVA fuel matter would be a welcome change. If you modify the exchange ratio after double checking the arithmetic it improves. What would be nice however is an ability to select your fill. If I want to use my 50U MP to partially fill two EVA packs on simultaneous missions it would be welcome. I've found that RCS is mostly worthless apart from docking because all the reaction wheels are so OP.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Frederf

[Zander]

Using vessel's RCS when going to EVA.

I think this is a good idea. They don't use the same fuel in real life. The NASA MMU used pressurized nitrogen not monopropellant. The MMUs are refilled by mounting them on the charging unit which takes nitrogen out of the cabin air and pressurizes it.

So in real life as long as your ship has air left you can keep refilling your EVA thrusters.

Not to mention Accessing the monopropellant tank which is not contained in the crew cabin while in space is completely unrealistic. even if the mono-propellant tanks were accessible in the crew cabin it would be an enormous health and fire hazard to have leaked monopropellant floating around in the crew area.

please remove this

[asmi]

I think this is a good idea. They don't use the same fuel in real life. The NASA MMU used pressurized nitrogen not monopropellant. The MMUs are refilled by mounting them on the charging unit which takes nitrogen out of the cabin air and pressurizes it.

Technically nitrogen IS monoproperllant. What exactly makes you think that KSP's monopropellant is toxic? There are plienty of non-toxic monopropellants.

So in real life as long as your ship has air left you can keep refilling your EVA thrusters.

Not to mention Accessing the monopropellant tank which is not contained in the crew cabin while in space is completely unrealistic. even if the mono-propellant tanks were accessible in the crew cabin it would be an enormous health and fire hazard to have leaked monopropellant floating around in the crew area.

please remove this

So are you saying that infiniteRCS is more realistic?

Besides, that feature is going to be introduced in stock, so no point to discuss it now.

I really like the feature and would rather it stay in until Squad's change comes about. Having the EVA fuel matter would be a welcome change. If you modify the exchange ratio after double checking the arithmetic it improves. What would be nice however is an ability to select your fill. If I want to use my 50U MP to partially fill two EVA packs on simultaneous missions it would be welcome. I've found that RCS is mostly worthless apart from docking because all the reaction wheels are so OP.

Since 0.23 is already in experimentals, it will come out pretty soon, so I'm going to hold off update until that happens. As for fill, I don't know if it would be possible to do at this point as it depends on how Squad implements it.

Edited December 8, 2013 by asmi

[Zander]

Technically nitrogen IS monoproperllant. What exactly makes you think that KSP's monopropellant is toxic? There are plienty of non-toxic monopropellants.

So are you saying that infiniteRCS is more realistic?

Besides, that feature is going to be introduced in stock, so no point to discuss it now.

RCS systems for space craft use small rocket engines not pressurized gas release. And it doesn't matter if its toxic or not. No space program would ever allow a situation where leaked rocket fuel is floating around in the crew cabin.

And not infinite RCS. But taking EVA pressurized thruster gas from your crafts air supply would be more realistic. Cause thats how it works in real life.

[Starwaster]

RCS systems for space craft use small rocket engines not pressurized gas release. And it doesn't matter if its toxic or not. No space program would ever allow a situation where leaked rocket fuel is floating around in the crew cabin.

And not infinite RCS. But taking EVA pressurized thruster gas from your crafts air supply would be more realistic. Cause thats how it works in real life.

except than in real life, astronauts on EVA have about 3m/s of delta-V available just in case their tether breaks and they start drifting.

(Sorry Clooney, yer grounded!

[Zander]

except than in real life, astronauts on EVA have about 3m/s of delta-V available just in case their tether breaks and they start drifting.

(Sorry Clooney, yer grounded!

Well wasnt clooney wearing an MMU not a SAFER? so a little over 20m/s but yes quite right!.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Zander

[Daid]

RCS systems for space craft use small rocket engines not pressurized gas release. And it doesn't matter if its toxic or not. No space program would ever allow a situation where leaked rocket fuel is floating around in the crew cabin.

Actually, sounds pretty kerbal to me :-)

But, in the idea of this mod, maybe converting CO2 to EVA fuel. Maybe pressurizing it using electricity first? CO2 is a "waste" material right now, except for re-cycling.

[Starwaster]

Well wasnt clooney wearing an MMU not a SAFER? so a little over 20m/s but yes quite right!.

Maybe Sandra didn't drift as far as she/we thought. And maybe the station was really just on the other side of the shuttle!!!

(And maybe a winning lottery ticket might fall out of my butt )

[Frederf]

Something is amiss with MFS and the Oxygen resource. To hold the equivalent of the small O2 tank (400U) you need to use the FL-T400 Squad tank which could be the house the former lives in and have done rather well for himself. To achieve the 1200U in the Mk1-2 pod the entirety of the pod would need to be devoted to it (one and a half X200-8s for comparison).

The closest container to the small O2 ECLSS is the KSPX StratusV at 40 units of volume and is roughly 25% bigger. To get parity about 13x as many units need to be packed in to the standard fuel tanks.

I do wish there was a smaller O2 tank. The smallest is quite big. Something akin to the bottles above the hatch on the ALCOR lander body would be dandy.

This life support mod also follows the pattern of previous by putting excessive amounts of oxygen internal to the pods. 400U per Kerbal is something like 7.5 days which is enough to orbit from Kerbin to the Mun 12 times before the thought of an external support supply even enters the mind. Why would I bother with extra? I figure how you balance this thing is by taking three cases:

A Internal supply mission

B External supply mission

C Interplanetary regeneration mission

Find what's a reasonable limit for mission A and tune internal supplies for that. Construct a craft that looks like a reasonable O2 burden for Kerbin-system travel and compare it to the duration of mission B to tune what parts hold what quantities. Finally make a reasonably burdened craft for Interplanetary travel and this time your free variable to tune is the regeneration efficiency so that X units last Y time.

If successful the tuning should yield short mission duration on internal, local planetary system mission duration with enough external tanks to be a design consideration but the regenerators aren't mass-justified, and interplanetary mission duration where regeneration is all but mandatory with a significant but not ridiculous appended supply.

[jrandom]

Not sure if this will help: I recently made a RealismOverhaul .cfg for IonCross Crew Support, and for the amount of oxygen in the tanks I used 80% of the total part's volume and 300kg/m^3 for how much compressed o2 would fit into that volume.

[Frederf]

Hmm, since ECLSS doesn't use volume in its calcs it should be a simple matter to adjust the density of the Oxygen resource to tune how much of it fits in MFS volumes, right? I have to be careful because it looks like "density" is already taken by the mass/unit value.

It looks like MFS assumes one "unit" is a certain "volume" and ECLSS is not made in that convention. Unless I'm missing a way to change mass-unit-volume relationship completely independently I'd have to scale the unit counts to make it all work.

[Starwaster]

Not sure if this will help: I recently made a RealismOverhaul .cfg for IonCross Crew Support, and for the amount of oxygen in the tanks I used 80% of the total part's volume and 300kg/m^3 for how much compressed o2 would fit into that volume.

That seems a bit high to me, but admittedly I do not know how high a typical cannister of O2 is pressurized. (At 300kg per m^3 that's ~225 atm. Is that typical IRL? Anyone know?)

Edit: (actually that 225 figure can't be right but it's a 'back of iPhone' figure)

Edited December 8, 2013 by Starwaster

[jrandom]

Hmm, since ECLSS doesn't use volume in its calcs it should be a simple matter to adjust the density of the Oxygen resource to tune how much of it fits in MFS volumes, right? I have to be careful because it looks like "density" is already taken by the mass/unit value.

It looks like MFS assumes one "unit" is a certain "volume" and ECLSS is not made in that convention. Unless I'm missing a way to change mass-unit-volume relationship completely independently I'd have to scale the unit counts to make it all work.

Just today I learned that the MFS "utilization" setting is what allows you to tweak how much of your resource goes into each MFS unit of volume. I have to figure this out on my end as well for IonCross.

[Frederf]

I tried Utilization = 13.0 and it didn't seem to like it. I wonder if 0-1 is the acceptable range. Utilization is supposed to be how much of the total tank volume is usable for the useful volume. 1-Utilization = Volume dedicated to structure

[jrandom]

I tried Utilization = 13.0 and it didn't seem to like it. I wonder if 0-1 is the acceptable range. Utilization is supposed to be how much of the total tank volume is usable for the useful volume. 1-Utilization = Volume dedicated to structure

That is correct. Normally you'd just use values between 0-1, but if you need to correct for resource compression (eg. compressed o2), you can set the number higher. The value I was given as a starting point was 50. Haven't tried it yet but will do so later today. I don't know how to calculate the correct value directly, so I'm going to trial-and-error it.

[Starwaster]

That is correct. Normally you'd just use values between 0-1, but if you need to correct for resource compression (eg. compressed o2), you can set the number higher. The value I was given as a starting point was 50. Haven't tried it yet but will do so later today. I don't know how to calculate the correct value directly, so I'm going to trial-and-error it.

1 means 100 percent but looking at the code it seems like it would break something if you go higher. Of course I am reading it on my tiny screen so I dunno for sure....

[jrandom]

1 means 100 percent but looking at the code it seems like it would break something if you go higher. Of course I am reading it on my tiny screen so I dunno for sure....

According to the mod maintainer, it should work if you go higher. I'll monkey with it after I've finished this current mission and see how well > 1.0 values work.

[Starwaster]

According to the mod maintainer, it should work if you go higher. I'll monkey with it after I've finished this current mission and see how well > 1.0 values work.

If I weren't stuck wrapping presents at barnes&noble I'd try it myself. But glancing at the code it's doing multiplication of 1-utilization.

...