[1.8.x] DMagic Orbital Science: New Science Parts [v1.4.3] [11/2/2019]

[akron]

9 minutes ago, drhay53 said:

[x] Science claims to support custom biomes so I think the maintainer of that addon just needs to add in support for the new stuff.

If I am right, a custom biome should not really be an issue. What I meant is that the way DMagic's experiments were set, it is possible that an experiment can have a mismatch of its biome mask with the ScienceDef file, causing [x] Science to read incorrect expectations. I'll take a look when I get home

 

EDIT: I just looked at the Github files and it looks like the SIGINT is setup differently than the older DMAgic experiments so my theory is incorrect. FYI

EDIT2: Actually it looks like DMagic's experiments are all setup differently now.

Edited May 16, 2016 by akron

[DMagic]

Version 1.3 is out; get it on Space Dock.

This version makes some changes to the reconnaissance instruments introduced in version 1.2. The inline SIGINT dish has now been reduced to a 1.25m part (with a ~50m dish) and a new 2.5m part has been added. This part fits onto the end of a vessel and acts as a nosecone. It includes shrouds that can be manually jettisoned, activated through staging, or activated by deploying the dish. The old part is still included, but can't be researched or added to new vessels.

There has also been a change to how the experiments for the recon instruments works. The SIGINT dishes share the same experiment and the two recon telescope experiments have been combined into a new experiment. The smaller instrument for each experiment is only able to collect 50% of the total science, regardless of how many samples you collect. If there is 100 science to be collected from Duna's northern hemisphere for the recon telescopes, then the small instrument will be able to collect 50 science if the sample is returned, and 25 science if it is transmitted (the part has a 50% transmission level); the big instrument will be able to collect the full 100 science if the sample is returned. The same applies to the two SIGINT dishes (but both transmit at 100%).

There are also some changes to asteroid science. The asteroid spectral types now conform to those used by Custom Asteroids (there are five now, instead of nine) and it will pull the asteroid type data from Custom Asteroids if it is installed.

A few bugs with the TweakScale configs have been fixed and the new science experiment function has been implemented; smaller experiments cost more.

A few bugs in the API were also fixed.

 

Edited May 18, 2016 by DMagic

[cantab]

I had such a giggle when I checked out the original sigint dish. So huge I actually want to try co-opting it as a dome umbrella over a base, but supporting it could be a bit tricky.

Edited May 18, 2016 by cantab

[CobaltWolf]

I refuse to believe those two small solar panels provide enough power for that dish.

[blu3wolf]

1 minute ago, CobaltWolf said:

I refuse to believe those two small solar panels provide enough power for that dish.

I thought the point of SIGINT is to listen, not to transmit... in which case, the receiver does not need much power at all.

[DMagic]

@blu3wolf Yes, pretty much. Though I added a transmitter module to it later on, since it seemed silly to have such a big dish that couldn't transmit at all; it does use quite a bit of power.

The real thing supposedly needs a two relatively big solar arrays for power, but I have no idea how much power those would actually provide:

[blu3wolf]

One would imagine such a dish in orbit IRL would run into issues from micrometeorites.

[AG5BPilot]

Unfortunately, 1.3 breaks part of my existing career save game.

I have a few "long term orbital reconnaissance survey" contracts in progress, and the last item in the contract now says "Return or transmit data from at least 2 of the following experiments"  but no longer actually lists any experiments.  It looks like the contracts can no longer be completed.  These are "little brother" contracts.  It looks like the experiment name must have changed, so the contract is now referencing experiments that don't exist.   (I doubt you need the log, but just in case:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/10j62ive0atjc74/KSP.log?dl=0 ).

An existing SigInt contract seems to properly list the experiments.

 

[DMagic]

@AG5BPilot Just force those contracts to complete using the Alt+F12 Contracts menu.

[AG5BPilot]

That will work.

I really enjoy this mod -- as well as your other mods.  Thanks so much for everything you do!

[1valdis]

When I seen the new SIGINT dish at the first time, I would bet that it's real life inspirer is Mentor/Advanced Orion spacecraft

[DChurchill]

@DMagic Have you thought of maybe adding a botanical type experiment? You could have a little radial mount greenhouse type thing. Might fit nice as a precursor to some of the full fledged greenhouses in some of the base construction mods.

Edited May 18, 2016 by DChurchill

[billkerbinsky]

3 hours ago, blu3wolf said:

One would imagine such a dish in orbit IRL would run into issues from micrometeorites.

well, it would certainly run into micrometeorites, but each one would only make a small hole, only slightly degrading the performance of the dish.   Large radio dishes are generally perforated/meshes to reduce weight, so there are lots of holes to begin with.

Other components of the spacecraft (like batteries or reaction wheels/control moment gyros) would likely fail long before the dish had enough holes to impair its mission.

[Sandworm]

11 hours ago, DMagic said:

@blu3wolf Yes, pretty much. Though I added a transmitter module to it later on, since it seemed silly to have such a big dish that couldn't transmit at all; it does use quite a bit of power.

The real thing supposedly needs a two relatively big solar arrays for power, but I have no idea how much power those would actually provide:

I love and use this mod, but with respect, that isn't what spy sat antennae look like.  They stopped being symmetrical many years ago.  Today, the standard config for large sats (GTO stuff) is for the large reflecting dish to sit beside the main body which holds the receiver and solar panels.  The above pic, with panels separated by such a huge distance would never happen.  I suspect it was drawn up for a media release and is deliberately dissimilar to any flight hardware. Why does is have a CIA label?  That isn't normal.  It should say NRO, the people who actually launch these things.  It appears to have been drawn by some outside company/person, hence the copyright claim.

 

Edited May 19, 2016 by Sandworm

[jordanjay29]

I just really want someone to make that SIGINT model into a gigantic Remote Tech dish for Kopernicus extra-kerbol systems.

[MarcRan17]

 dunno if it's DMagic or not, but something is screwing with the stock science experiments on my Save. It's telling me that the SC-901 Science Micro is "Not safe to open in this environment" when  I try to observe it. In addition, all mystery goo pods, the stock accelerometer, thermometer, gravimeter, and barometer are all unusable. Anyone know if this is related to DMagic at all? Sorry if this is the wrong way/place to post this. As iof right now I can't think of anything else that might be causing this...

Thanks! 

EDIT: Figured it out already. Turns out I had two versions of Science Revisited by Robau installed. Unfortunately there was the hiccup of some of my probes still having the old SR parts (which apparently aren't part of the new version), so removing the old version outright was not an option. Instead, I simply removed the .cfg files that were being intrusive, and disabled the science experiment modules on each of the parts. Not ideal, I know, but this spares all existing craft from accidental deletion, and solves my problem so I'll live with it.

Edited May 19, 2016 by MarcRan17
Solved the problem, sorry to bother you guys :)

[Sandworm]

I like the dish.  It is impressive ... but it took some fiddling in cfgs to see it,

"TechRequired = Unresearcheable"  Deliberate?

[blu3wolf]

8 hours ago, billkerbinsky said:

well, it would certainly run into micrometeorites, but each one would only make a small hole, only slightly degrading the performance of the dish.   Large radio dishes are generally perforated/meshes to reduce weight, so there are lots of holes to begin with.

Other components of the spacecraft (like batteries or reaction wheels/control moment gyros) would likely fail long before the dish had enough holes to impair its mission.

But thats half the problem! It starts out with lots of holes.. and gradually gets less holes!

[DMagic]

@Sandworm Are you looking at the SIGINT.cfg file? That is for the old version, the 2.5m inline part. The nosecone version is in the electronics node, the new 1.25m inline version is in the miniaturization node.

As for the accuracy of the dish, I might worry about that more if someone could find actual, concrete information about any of these satellites, or even just more than one source for all of the diagrams. All we know for sure is that the design of these satellites have grown significantly over that past 50 or so years, they are enormous, there are a lot of them, and they tend to use whatever is the biggest launcher at the time. There were several classified shuttle missions that supposedly dropped these off (and used the same type of booster as the Galileo probe to get into GSO), and more recently they seem to have made up most of the Delta IV Heavy launches (along with a few KH-11 telescopes).

Given how open the NRO has been about their telescopes (they put a KH-9 on public display for one day a few years ago) it seems a little bit surprising that almost nothing has been released about the signals intelligence programs. As one of your pictures demonstrates, the basic technology behind really big satellite dishes doesn't seem to be a secret, it is used in communications and radar science satellites.

[Gryphon]

20 minutes ago, DMagic said:

Given how open the NRO has been about their telescopes (they put a KH-9 on public display for one day a few years ago) it seems a little bit surprising that almost nothing has been released about the signals intelligence programs. As one of your pictures demonstrates, the basic technology behind really big satellite dishes doesn't seem to be a secret, it is used in communications and radar science satellites.

Oh, you don't know? It's better than that. They've released a lot of information about their early satellite programs at http://nro.gov/foia/declass/collections.html and you can see the satellites themselves at the National Museum of the US Air Force:
KH-7 Gambit 1

KH-8 Gambit 3

KH-9 Hexagon

The funny part is that they've had the Discoverer XIV reentry vehicle on display for decades, and they still haven't updated the display to mention its true nature:
Discoverer XIV
 

But I guess this is all a little off the topic of big dishes on satellites.

[Sandworm]

4 hours ago, DMagic said:

@Sandworm Are you looking at the SIGINT.cfg file? That is for the old version, the 2.5m inline part. The nosecone version is in the electronics node, the new 1.25m inline version is in the miniaturization node.

As for the accuracy of the dish, I might worry about that more if someone could find actual, concrete information about any of these satellites, or even just more than one source for all of the diagrams. All we know for sure is that the design of these satellites have grown significantly over that past 50 or so years, they are enormous, there are a lot of them, and they tend to use whatever is the biggest launcher at the time. There were several classified shuttle missions that supposedly dropped these off (and used the same type of booster as the Galileo probe to get into GSO), and more recently they seem to have made up most of the Delta IV Heavy launches (along with a few KH-11 telescopes).

Given how open the NRO has been about their telescopes (they put a KH-9 on public display for one day a few years ago) it seems a little bit surprising that almost nothing has been released about the signals intelligence programs. As one of your pictures demonstrates, the basic technology behind really big satellite dishes doesn't seem to be a secret, it is used in communications and radar science satellites.

We actually do know lots about the big geostationary stuff.  They use the same tech as the communications satellites.  If you want to spy at a particular frequency, then you use an antenna very similar in construction to those communicating on that frequency.  The spy sats for many years were simple "bent pipe" rigs, exactly the same as any other com sat (they beamed down to either remote australia/canada). Now they are encrypted, but they still just bounce the signals back down.  The shape of fairings also indicates a similar packing regime.

http://www.isro.gov.in/gslv-d6/gslv-d6-gsat-6-gallery

http://www.boeing.com/space/boeing-satellite-family/#/gallery

Some of the stuff closer to earth has actually been imaged from the ground, note the asymmetry very similar to the Boeing say with the big antenna.  (The lacrosse sats are interesting because only a spy agency would have any need for such an antenna so close to earth.)

https://leaksource.wordpress.com/category/nro/

As for the optical sats, I think it safe to assume that they are tubes, with a big mirror at one end, large enough to fit inside the shuttle and/or whatever fairing they launched in ... very Hubble-like.

 

As for the nosecone version.  The cfg appears correct, but it isn't appearing anywhere on my tech tree.  I'll have a look around and try to figure it out.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Sandworm

[drhay53]

From what I've heard, the spy sats are very similar to JWST, as the DoD basically told NASA "don't worry about the mirrors unfolding. It'll work"

[cantab]

Hmmm ... wouldn't a JWST-like spy sat be rather obvious? It would be a pretty big thing, and if the mirror caught the Sun I'd expect an impressive flare. I think we'd know for pretty sure if one was in operation.

[DMagic]

The first four pages of the KSPedia entry, these cover the asteroid experiments:

Let me know if anyone has suggestions or notices errors. Note that some of the content shown here doesn't apply to the current version, as there have been a few minor tweaks.

I have at least another 10 pages planned, covering the basics (including some kind of table regarding the situations and biomes for each experiment), the non-standard experiments, and contracts.

[drhay53]

20 hours ago, cantab said:

Hmmm ... wouldn't a JWST-like spy sat be rather obvious? It would be a pretty big thing, and if the mirror caught the Sun I'd expect an impressive flare. I think we'd know for pretty sure if one was in operation.

I'm fairly sure from the people that I've talked to (I have many collaborators at STSci) that at least some of the DoD telescopes are of the unfolding design. That doesn't mean they're as large as JWST, and certainly wouldn't need to be as they aren't trying to detect galaxies that are 12+ billion light years away