[1.0.x] Habitat Pack v0.41

[hieywiey]

Can the new F.L.A.T. landing leg thing have a built in probe core, RTG/Solar arrays, wheels, fuel, and a matching engine that is a seperate part? Also it's hard to get back in once on the surface (without using the MMU thing). And some kind of nose cone/docking port/parachute device for on top.

[Starwaster]

Can the new F.L.A.T. landing leg thing have a built in probe core, RTG/Solar arrays, wheels, fuel, and a matching engine that is a seperate part? Also it's hard to get back in once on the surface (without using the MMU thing). And some kind of nose cone/docking port/parachute device for on top.

Well, the 'getting back in' thing probably needs a working ladder. See previous PJ posts about the ladder problem

Speaking of which (Porkjet), did you see my earlier suggestion about trying to do the ladder as a separate model and putting it in the config as a MODEL{} node?

[Senior Slaphead]

Thanks for the great parts.

I'm encountering an issue since the last update that may be a bug, so I wondered if anyone else was experiencing it. I use the centrifuges on all of my interplanetary ships and since the update I cannot get Kerbals into them on EVA... I get the 'already full' message. If Kerbals were in them prior to the update they can exit but cannot get back in. The only other habitable part on all of these ships is a docked Science Lab. Thankfully for the moment I can just bung the stray Kerbals in that.

When I get the opportunity I'll test this on a clean install but that's unlikely to be before tomorrow.

[Kerbonautical]

I'm having a lot of trouble with this mod. The spherical command pod is causing all staging to stop working and whenever I use any of the parts on a ship it spirals out of control instantly. Is there some sort of patch I've missed somewhere? I'm using the latest version.

[Pockrtplanesairways]

[*] No IVAs. They worked fine in 0.3, now they're not loading at all.

That's because he put those ******ed slashes in.

[Starwaster]

That's because he put those ******ed slashes in.

I'm confused, I'm not seeing them; could you paste the text that they're in plz?

[Tommygun]

Here is a work around for the ladder issue.

I placed a 2.5 m battery pack under the HAB and attached a girder from TurboNisu Part Pack.

Next just place a ladder at a 15 degree back slope. It looks OK after it is inflated, but awkward before. It may cause some stability issue when reentering on a surface with an atmosphere. I bring my HAB down with a skycrane like rocket set up on top.

[AlphaAsh]

I'm having a lot of trouble with this mod. The spherical command pod is causing all staging to stop working and whenever I use any of the parts on a ship it spirals out of control instantly. Is there some sort of patch I've missed somewhere? I'm using the latest version.

That sounds like a missing internal space. Check to see the internal is defined in the cfg and that the internal is in the spaces folder.

[veryinky]

Since the centrifuge is called "Small Centrifugium", will there be a large one?

[Streetwind]

Since the centrifuge is called "Small Centrifugium", will there be a large one?

Have you read the first post? Like, the "planned parts" section for example?

[Kerbonautical]

All the internals appear to be intact :s. Also I found a bit more out about the bug, it actually causes the staging to be hidden off to the left an completely unfunctional. However activating an engine bring the staging back into view, but also removes all stages and dumps them into a single stage. Any ideas?

[kiwiak]

All the internals appear to be intact :s. Also I found a bit more out about the bug, it actually causes the staging to be hidden off to the left an completely unfunctional. However activating an engine bring the staging back into view, but also removes all stages and dumps them into a single stage. Any ideas?

i hade same bug.

check if your rasterprop monitor version isnt outdated.

[LABHOUSE]

This needs to be implemented.

Mind adding a mars one style inflatable living space?

I can help with textures and maybe models if you convert them.

[AlphaAsh]

All the internals appear to be intact :s. Also I found a bit more out about the bug, it actually causes the staging to be hidden off to the left an completely unfunctional. However activating an engine bring the staging back into view, but also removes all stages and dumps them into a single stage. Any ideas?

That's exactly what happens when an internal is defined in a cfg that either has the wrong path or the internal itself is missing from the correct spaces folder.

[Kerbonautical]

That's exactly what happens when an internal is defined in a cfg that either has the wrong path or the internal itself is missing from the correct spaces folder.

It turned out to be the RasterPropMonitor version in the end, kind of a strange result from that but I can see how it would leave the internal as missing when compared to the definition it's looking for.

I do have another bug occurring at the moment though, the small centrifugium (rotating habitat) can start rotating but there seems to be no way to turn it back off. It makes a good Kerbal slingshot but it's impossible to get back in once you get out.

[LMA]

Can't get Crew manifest to work with the rotating station habitat in 0.4 I have to EVA them out of it. It's only listed in crew manifest when it's not spinning and I can't stop it spinning while kerbals are inside it.

It's a great mod though.

[CannonFodder_833]

um... I might be a blind idiot here - but I couldn't find Habitat Pack listed on/in the Community Mods and Plugins Library sticky post.... had to run a Google search.

I really really really like this mod and it brings more to the table, in my opinion, than any other mod I can think of in terms of adding simple fun to the game. I really think it should be listed. ...and if it is and I somehow magically missed it - well, I'll be surprised and embarrassed.

Edited May 5, 2014 by CannonFodder_833
link setup and such.

[ozraven]

Can't get Crew manifest to work with the rotating station habitat in 0.4 I have to EVA them out of it. It's only listed in crew manifest when it's not spinning and I can't stop it spinning while kerbals are inside it.

It's a great mod though.

I've PM'd Porkjet with a fix for this issue, please stay tuned here and/or the CM thread for updates.

[Epoxide]

I just unlocked the centrifuge using the Interstellar tree. It doesn't show up in the VAB for me. Under what category is it supposed to be located? Is it possible to do a change in the persistent to change the availability of certain parts?

EDIT: Found it under utility, that was hard ;;

Edited May 9, 2014 by Epoxide

[Starwaster]

Can't get Crew manifest to work with the rotating station habitat in 0.4 I have to EVA them out of it. It's only listed in crew manifest when it's not spinning and I can't stop it spinning while kerbals are inside it.

It's a great mod though.

I think that's a problem with animation states in the stock generic animation module where an animation can only be detected in one state at a time. Literally the deployableHabRestrictor thinks that you deflated the hab when it started spinning.

Not sure what the solution is; there's other animation modules created by other modders that might help.... Or maybe the restrictor needs to be modified such that it keeps track of state through other means.

[loppnessmonsta]

i'm getting a "hatch is obstructed" error when trying to EVA from the orbital sphere. also using crew manifest and CLS, so maybe some problems there?

edit: hmm, appears it's not just the sphere, but any command pod i use with that craft. odd. maybe i need to re-build it.

Edited May 10, 2014 by loppnessmonsta

[Hattivat]

An idea: I've researched how realistic food production in space would look like, and it turns out that PA550's model would be almost ideal for the job, without any changes to its external appearance. It would be significantly more plausible than the greenhouses that other mods currently provide and should yield enough food to provide a varied and nutritionally adequate (ie. not just bare survival-level) diet to four kerbals.

If that interests you, bear with me, it will be a rather lengthy explanation, as I spent a large part of the past two days researching the topic. If Porkjet is interested, he can feel free to use the results of my investigation into the topic to create a new part for his mod.

Basically every single greenhouse model other mods have looks more or less like this:

While actual propositions for food production in space look more like this:

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/centers/kennedy/success_stories/Inflatable_Aeroponic_System_BBlinds.html

or this:

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/advasc.html

The first one (more likely to be plausible on a large scale) is an aeroponic system, ie. plants grow with their roots suspended in thin air and periodically sprinkled with mist of nutrient-containing water. It requires no soil and little water (very weight-efficient) and results in plants growing much faster than they normally do, additionally letting the grower fit more plants into the same space (since there is no soil, plants do not compete with each other for nutrients). In result this method achieves yields/sq m/year that are about 10 times that of a regular greenhouse and 60 times that of conventional agriculture. Obviously it has its drawbacks, which inhibit its application on Earth, namely the installation cost, relatively large energy consumption, the need for an almost sterile environment, and its dependence on technology for plant survival (they are basically on constant life support and die in case of equipment failure). Luckily, these are mostly irrelevant in space: cost and energy consumption are large relative to that of traditional agriculture but are still miniscule in comparison to the price tag and energy needs of a spacecraft, while dependence on technology for survival and near-sterile environment are already the default situation for any spacecraft.

The system above is obviously just a small-scale prototype. On a large scale the interior would look more like this:

Except in space it would probably be even more crowded, given how priceless every inch of ventilated space is out there.

Let's compare:

Typical KSP greenhouse:

- glass windows + shutters

- rigid construction

- one layer of vegetation

- traditional greenhouse or at most a hydroponic (no soil but uses plenty of water) system

Actually plausible space greenhouse:

- no windows (they result in more additional weight than it is worth)

- inflatable

- multiple layers of vegetation

- aeroponic system (more lightweight, uses much less resources, faster plant growth)

Obviously Porkjet's models are much closer to what a plausible space greenhouse would look like than the greenhouses that other mods provide.

Now it's time for the PA550 - specific calculations:

When fully inflated, the inflatable part of the PA550 model is a cylinder about 4 meters high and 5 meters wide, with a spherical cap, about 0.5m high, at each end. Assuming that one of the spherical caps houses the necessary equipment (pumps, control computers, etc.) and the other is filled with a reserve of required resources, we are left with a cylinder 4x5 cylinder of usable space. The height of 4 m is sufficient to consider it a 2-story structure, giving us usable floor space of 2*(Pi*2.5^2), that is around 38.4 sq meters.

Let's assume that 0.4 sq meters of space is lost due to the thickness of the walls. From what I've read it seems that the most efficient setup would be an extremely strong light source (probably LED) at the center, surrounded by shelves of plants, slowly rotated to simulate some minimal gravity. We can assume that about 4 sq meters will be needed for the light source and to leave some space around it. Plants can't grow directly on animal waste, it has to be first decomposed into nutrients by bacteria. In nature that's what the soil is for - it's the home for bacteria. In our scenario however, the food production bay would need to contain an integrated bioreactor (basically a small scale biological waste treatment plant) to do the same. Such systems are relatively heavy but compact, so 4 sq meters should be more than enough, assuming continuous operation.

That leaves us with about 30 sq meters of effective floor space for actually growing plants. But how much space would be needed to provide minimal nutrition to a Kerbal? Sources are somewhat conflicting on this question, as the answer depends on an innumerable amount of assumptions, but it seems that 4 sq meters is a minimum to provide year-round subsistence to a human. That's assuming a high-efficiency aeroponics system cultivating a single plant variety, selected for its effectiveness (most likely a genetically engineered sweet potato), resulting in an extremely monotonous diet composed almost exclusively of carbohydrates (but adequate calorie-wise). Given that kerbals are significantly smaller than humans, we can assume that they would require half as much, resulting in a minimum of two sq meters per kerbal. Let's make it 2.5 sq meters per kerbal to have some safety margin. So for a 4-kerbal crew, the minimum would be 10 sq meters of aeroponic greenhouse. Proteins and fats are much more costly to produce, but given that 10 sq meters already cover the carbohydrates, I think we can safely assume that the remaining 20 sq meters of space inside PA550 would be more than enough to provide an adequate supply of proteins, fats and vitamins to our kerbals.

The result: Perfectly adequate and varied diet for four kerbals, year-round, independent of the amount of sunlight received, with a side effect of recycling all of the waste, waste water and carbon dioxide produced by the crew. Should be much lighter than a "typical KSP greenhouse" of comparable production capacity. The only drawback: high and continuous energy consumption (the equivalent of at least one large solar array's power production, imho).

If you've arrived this far, thank you for taking your time to read all this.

PS the adequate name for such a part would be "aeroponics bay".

[Itsdavyjones]

snip

Very well thought out, and i can also see it possibly being used in the centrifuge as well. One some missions i see the centrifuge as a source of food that easier to work in thanks to the gravity, probably wouldn't be able to aeroponics, , but may be hydropnics or even using soil to grow in, just depends on how he wants to interpret it.

[Hattivat]

^Thanks. Cetrifuge could certainly be applied to the same purpose, although it's much less space-efficient. From what I've seen the topic of how different plants react to zero-g environment is not too well-researched, but the results of these studies that were done so far were varied (some plants grew less well, while some actually grew faster without gravity), so it might very well be that some plants would require it for healthy growth

To clarify my previous words: I'm not saying that the greenhouses from Biomass and other mods are impossible or unrealistic. They are perfectly possible, and probably realistic as far as biology is concerned. The problem is that due to high mass and low efficiency they are an inferior solution from an engineering perspective, and therefore unlikely to be put into orbit by a realistic space agency. They are basically the equivalent of using a chemical rocket engine to travel to Jupiter - it does work but it's hardly optimal for the job.

[vanlock]

Very thorough and interesting investigation, thanks for your work !