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

[Frostiken]

Let me add some unrelated thoughts.

1) No food / water demands. I don't know why but it just doesn't seem practical / feasible and kind of annoying to deal with that.

2) Allow the O2 candle to be a Tweakable setting. If it's adding weight to a pod I should have the option of throwing it out if I need to.

3A) How would people feel about expanding this mod to include internal crew temperature, something I don't think has been tracked by any life support mod yet? It always did bother me that a manned capsule has zero energy demands despite all the electronics within that would be needed to remain operational, much less keep a Kerbal alive and warm. The only issue with this I can see is causing some problems with early game crew power demands before you unlock extra batteries, but this is assuming you use antenna transmissions, which you honestly really don't need to do.

3B) Internal temperature would be affected by outside temperature. Capsules are insulated so obviously it would take quite some time for external temperature to reach the inside (Apollo 13 went three days without heaters and was kept above freezing just by the body heat output of three men... albeit barely). Climate control would be a simple on/off toggle. Temperatures below the comfort level would require some amount of power to counteract, temperatures higher (ie: near the sun) would require far more power to reduce the temperature. Heat generated by the air conditioning could also be generated as 'WasteHeat' and used on Interstellar mod's radiators. If you need to save energy, you can turn off the climate control and leave your Kerbals in some discomfort for a while (though it'd be nice if this had some impact in-game... the only thing I could think of is delayed crew reaction (ala RemoteTech's signal delay) but that might be 'too hardcore').

3C) Power could also be added to Kerbal EVA suits to operate climate control and their lights, though it's my understanding spacesuits don't really use heaters but instead use coolers because of the tight confines and high level of activity / exertion in them. Power would slowly trickle-charge from the craft's power stores, but would be one-way (ie: you can't charge your ship with your suit).

4) I think there should be a minute or so of 'leeway' when running out of O2 before Kerbals die. I accidentally misclicked and turned off O2 and they instantly all died which was fairly annoying.

5) Kethane integration?

6) In all honesty I do prefer the Ioncross method of CO2 / O2 handling, but Ioncross is no longer supported, has some broken features, and is missing critical things like real-time tracking of all vessels. This mod works, has real-time tracking and a nice (albeit pretty oversized) interface, and isn't TAC with its hideous and massive containers and food requirements, so I'll take this over that.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Frostiken

[Starwaster]

You can easily add electrical drain to a capsule with a generator that provides negative ElectricCharge

[Frostiken]

You can easily add electrical drain to a capsule with a generator that provides negative ElectricCharge

Looking for something a little more dynamic than that though.

[brooklyn666]

What about the possibility of resource transfer the same way fuel can currently be transferred in game? I dock an unmanned supply ship to my space station, fill up the o2 tanks, and then undock. That sort of thing.

[Frostiken]

What about the possibility of resource transfer the same way fuel can currently be transferred in game? I dock an unmanned supply ship to my space station, fill up the o2 tanks, and then undock. That sort of thing.

Is this currently not possible? Seems like kind of a big oversight if it's not. I haven't gotten to the point of needing to do that yet, but I was under the assumption that this was the case already...

[Paul Kingtiger]

Temperature could be really interesting, but we'd have to look into what the problems are. From what I understand the problem on the ISS is keeping it cool, as all the electrics produce waste heat as well as the crew and that has to be radiated away. One option is to use evaporative cooling, but then you have to carry and replace evaporant. On the ISS they have large cooling fins, which work like the solar panels but stay angled away from the sun. I don't know how this was handled on Apollo (I think maybe evaporant)

Either way having heat as a built up resource which can be dissipated by cooling fins and evaporant could be really interesting.

[Frostiken]

Temperature could be really interesting, but we'd have to look into what the problems are. From what I understand the problem on the ISS is keeping it cool, as all the electrics produce waste heat as well as the crew and that has to be radiated away. One option is to use evaporative cooling, but then you have to carry and replace evaporant. On the ISS they have large cooling fins, which work like the solar panels but stay angled away from the sun. I don't know how this was handled on Apollo (I think maybe evaporant)

Either way having heat as a built up resource which can be dissipated by cooling fins and evaporant could be really interesting.

Was the evaporant actually consumed though? Aside from having to use the much slower radiative cooling instead of atmospheric conduction, how would that seriously differ from how a conventional air conditioner heat exchanger works? Things that use freon as a coolant can go decades without needing to be recharged. An air conditioner only needs two outside things - an unbelievable amount of power and some sort of medium to discharge the excess heat. The latter can be solved by including a simple, small radiator panel with the 'wasteheat' resource that is shared with Interstellar.

I'm not really sure how the environment controls in Apollo worked, but there definitely were heaters so there clearly was a requirement in some aspect that required keeping the crew compartment warm... though it is entirely possible that in normal operation the heater would never be used, but was included exactly in the case that they had to power down enough systems to lose the ambient heat they put out.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Frostiken

[brooklyn666]

The ISS has the giant radiators mounted to the truss, the shuttle had the radiators on the interior of the payload bay doors, and the Apollo sm had surface-mounted radiators (If you look at a picture, they're the white panels on the otherwise metallic hull of the sm).

Interstellar has radiators and heat build-up, so that might be something to look at in terms of integration.

[Guest]

Yeah, KSPI does waste heat pretty well. Only from panels and reactors, so far, but adding crew heat generation probably wouldn't be that big of a change. On the ECLSS mod's side, it'd have to implement adverse effects to overheating a module. Though there also needs to be some sort of way to disable it on reentry (or make independent of stock heat system), so that pods with integrated heatshield can work in DRE.

[Paul Kingtiger]

Was the evaporant actually consumed though?

If you're moving heat from one part of the craft to another then no. A fridge or AC system doesn't use up evaporant because in the end the heat is lost through the radiator at the back of the fridge or AC. So ultimately it's still radiated. In a loss evaporant system you vent the evaporant into space, carrying the heat with it.

[Frostiken]

Yeah, KSPI does waste heat pretty well. Only from panels and reactors, so far, but adding crew heat generation probably wouldn't be that big of a change. On the ECLSS mod's side, it'd have to implement adverse effects to overheating a module. Though there also needs to be some sort of way to disable it on reentry (or make independent of stock heat system), so that pods with integrated heatshield can work in DRE.

If you make the internal temperature 'insulated', I can't imagine any reentry would be long enough to affect the internal temperature considerably.

[dlrk]

How much O2 does a Kerbal consume?

[Paul Kingtiger]

How much O2 does a Kerbal consume?

It's settable in the Lifesupport.cfg file. The value is units per second (I'm assuming 1 unit is 1 liter).

The default in the mod is 0.006366 which is ~550 per day (24 hours). This is the average value for a human.

As side note, I've noticed through looking at this that the in game clock uses 24 hours to a day (earth day), even though 1 Kerbin day is actually 6 hours.

[dlrk]

Thanks for the info!

[Mecripp]

does any 1 have a problem go on eva as soon as i exit there gone ?

[andqui]

I've look and failed to see it mentioned...maybe I didn't look hard enough. I think I found a bug. A kerbal pulls MonoPropellant out of the vessel when he goes on EVA, instead of just however much he needs (default 20U), the entire tank is emptied. The kerbals EVA tank is put back, whatever he didn't use, but still considerably less than what it's supposed to be.

Ex. If I have 60U of MonoP in the tank, a Kerbal then takes 20U with him, well he is full at 20U. Going back to the vessel he came from...that 60U tank is now completely empty, so when the Kerbal comes back...whatever he didn't use does go back, but the tank is 40U short after it was emptied. Not good!

I'm using .23KSP, This (v 1.0.15), with a bunch of other mods, I'm going to go back and test with JUST KSP and verify if it's this ECLSS or if it's this in combination with something else.

Confirmed...with JUST KSP, ECLSS, & MM 1.5 a 60U MonoP tank empties when a Kerbal goes EVA, even though the Kerbal only has 20U on him.

Sorry for quoting this bit again, but I think the last one got buried; this is a huge problem. Right now, I have an RCS tank with 300 units of monopropellant. I then EVA, hang on the lader, and board, after which ~95 units of monopropellant have disappeared. The oxygen is returned correctly. If the RCS tank on the vessel has 10 units, the kerbal can't grab more than 10, and all are restored as expected. However, when you have more monopropellant than that on the vessel, huge chunks of it go missing simply by going in and out of the door.

[Frostiken]

I'm with you! I'm saying the tanks in the mod don't hold a realistic amount of O2, but when you add a realistic amount then they hold so much (because the tanks are so big) that it becomes too easy / pointless.

My solution is to use realistic O2 per volume of tank figures, but have smaller tank parts.

EDIT:

You can see the spreadsheet I used to work all this out on skydrive

http://sdrv.ms/1a1Sn2p

Great!

So... when do you turn that into values I can use to adjust the game and parts?

[Paul Kingtiger]

Ok, I've created and tested some rebalance files for ECLSS:

First up, assumptions and usage rates:

O2 requirements per 24 hours: 550 liters (real world value for an average Human)

CO2 production per 24 hours: 495 liters (real world value for an average Human)

O2 and CO2 storage attributes (based on real world values) http://sdrv.ms/1a1Sn2p

Conversion of CO2 to O2 using the reprocessor:

I have used the chemical equation 2CO2 --> 2C0 + O2

This is a real world reaction so it seems a good base. It does mean that the reprocessor is only 50% efficient and you end up with waste Carbon Monoxide. I'll talk about how to change this value below.

Adjusting the parts:

This mod halves the scale of the ECLSS parts, so that the large tanks and reprocessor are now 1.25m parts and the single tanks are smaller. These new size parts have a storage capacity more in line with real world values.

Then I have added O2 and CO2 storage to all manned command pods, each has enough for either 1 day or 3 days supply (assuming fully crewed pods. You can select how many days by using the appropriate file (see below)

Using the Mod

First up install ECLSS

Next download the rebalance files here http://tinyurl.com/kaxdetu

Unzip the file!

In your KSP folder open GameData, LifeSupport and delete the two .cfg files

Then copy in the LifeSupport.cfg from the downloaded zip file

Finally select one of the other .cfg files from the downloaded zip file and copy this to the GameData,LifeSupport folder.

The 2 files allow you to select how much O2 is present on command pods, either a 1 day supply or a 3 day supply.

Note that these modulemanager files will add ECLSS functionality to any manned command pods (stock and mods) based on crew capacity.

More information and installation video avalalble at http://www.kingtiger.co.uk/kingtiger/wordpress/2014/01/02/mod-eclss-rebalancer/

Finally, Licence information:

This mod is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Feel free to share and modify the files, but please give credit to the author of this mod and to the authors of any mods referenced in this one.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Paul Kingtiger

[Paul Kingtiger]

If you want to change the efficiency of the reprocessor then edit whichever .cfg file you've selected (blue box above) and find the line:

@INPUT_RESOURCE[CO2]

{

@rate = 0.03

}

@OUTPUT_RESOURCE[Oxygen]

{

@rate = 0.015

}

The top value is the CO2 going in, leave this alone.

The bottom value is how much O2 comes out (currently set to half the top value.

SO to make the reprocessor 90% efficient you would change the bottom value to 0.027

So other values would be:

100% 0.03

90% 0.027

66% 0.0198

50% 0.015

33% 0.0099

Like I said above, 50% is the only real world reaction I know of, but there may be other, more efficient reactions, possibly using other compounds to capture the carbon.

[tygoo7]

Thanks for the rebalance files! I will try this out later

[Frostiken]

Shouldn't the "@MODULE[ModuleCommand]," part be removed from your updater, so manned parts that aren't command parts (ie: B9's passenger modules, maybe the hitchhiker storage container) have O2 as well?

[Paul Kingtiger]

Shouldn't the "@MODULE[ModuleCommand]," part be removed from your updater, so manned parts that aren't command parts (ie: B9's passenger modules, maybe the hitchhiker storage container) have O2 as well?

So I had it like that originally, but "something" caused an issue with non-command parts, namely the Hitchhiker cabin and the Science Lab. I tried putting the code direct into the Part.cfg to make sure it wasn't an issue with my module manager code and it was still happening. It appear to be an issue with the ECLSS mod which I don't understand enough to bug fix. The issue only happens in the VAB or SPH and in flight everything seems to work well, but I'd rather put out a limited but working mod than one with known bugs.

[Benno]

Paul, these changes are excellent. However, I noticed a mistake. The mass of the small tanks is too small by a factor of 10. According to your spreadsheet, the mass should be 31.08kg. However, in the config files it is set to 0.0031 tons (or around 1% the mass of the larger tank). I bumped it up accordingly. The following works fine for the 3 Day Supply:

@PART[ECLSS_tankO2S]

{

@rescaleFactor = 0.625

@mass = 0.031

@RESOURCE[Oxygen]

{

@amount = 2209

@maxAmount = 2209

}

}

@PART[ECLSS_tankCO2S]

{

@rescaleFactor = 0.625

@mass = 0.031

@RESOURCE[CO2]

{

@amount = 0

@maxAmount = 1989

}

}

These tanks all make much more practical sense now with your changes. Even the recycler (weighing in at twice that of a large O2 tank), now starts becoming useful for long trips at the point where you have many Large O2 tanks (but not for short trips, which is ideal). I also added in the code posted earlier to add EVA propellant to all parts, and it seems to work well.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Benno
Too long

[Paul Kingtiger]

...I noticed a mistake. The mass of the small tanks is too small by a factor of 10

Nice spot, thank you. I've updated the files.

[tygoo7]

Is there any way this can be integrated with the toolbar mod and use the KSP GUI skin or style? I don't really like the default unity skin. But this suggestion is just for aesthetics, still my favorite life support mod though.