Would this be pushing the game too hard? (and ion deplyment progress thread)

[XOIIO]

Alright, so, I love satellites, and I want to get the mod that makes them useful, but for now I want to start a massive deployment system for them, so I cam up with this.

It has 17,200 xenon gas, four ion thrusters at the bottom, 16 magnetic docking ports and eight of the biggest solar panels.

It's made to travel most of the interplanetary distance, carrying it's satellite payload then deploying them into orbit of the planet and any interesting moons. Each satellite also has a full range of sensors to detect gravity in orbit, and if needed, while entering orbit it can measure temperature and pressure, and transmit (hopefully fully) before crashing.

The problem is I was down to 10 fps from my usual 50-60, so, I removed all the satellites, I figure sending them up a couple at a time will work better, but the station still slows the game a decent bit. I am wondering in space and interplanetary orbit, will it just push the game too hard? I am also on an old core 2 quad, so that probably doesn't help :/

I am also wondering if you guys can think of a good way to get more than four ion engines at the bottom, even with four I think this thing will be pretty slow, especially fully loaded.

[Sirine]

Pitty myself. I don't know what to say. Admire your enthusiasm. A word or two...simple, Ion engines does not work well on high mass (Heavy) craft.

[TheDarkStar]

First, I suggest not using ion engines. They have good I_SP, but they have barely any thrust. Your rocket is probably already too big to use them unless you have a full day to use them on. Use LV-Ns instead; they are still very efficient, but have realistic (~half an hour or less, before physics warp) burn times. Your rocket will end up slightly larger, but it will take 1/10 to 1/50 of the time to get places.

Second, don't use the bicouplers. Use the white structural parts to make your own for much less mass and with many more places you can put things.

Third, solar panels don't really work at the distance of Jool, so at least have an RTG for a small amount of steering power.

For the small probes, I might be able to see using them, but I recommend using some of the small engines and fuel tanks instead. You don't need THAT much delta-v.

[XOIIO]

First, I suggest not using ion engines. They have good I_SP, but they have barely any thrust. Your rocket is probably already too big to use them unless you have a full day to use them on. Use LV-Ns instead; they are still very efficient, but have realistic (~half an hour or less, before physics warp) burn times. Your rocket will end up slightly larger, but it will take 1/10 to 1/50 of the time to get places.

Second, don't use the bicouplers. Use the white structural parts to make your own for much less mass and with many more places you can put things.

Third, solar panels don't really work at the distance of Jool, so at least have an RTG for a small amount of steering power.

For the small probes, I might be able to see using them, but I recommend using some of the small engines and fuel tanks instead. You don't need THAT much delta-v.

Alright, I guess I'll just make adjustments for a couple LV-N's. I will need to research the get the RTG though, I wanted to do that anyways.

How would I make my own bicouplers? I wanted to use the decouplers but I can't figure out a way to hook them on to the side of the fuselage, unless there is an adapter that I haven't unlocked or seen yet.

[The_Rocketeer]

I did something similar on a mission to Jool and its moons, but with a few differences.

I used 4 nuclear engines and a Rockomax Jumbo tank to get there. I had to use aerobraking to get into Jool orbit.

I only had 6 mini-satellites, and I arranged them into stacks of 3 using small-radius stack separators.

Once in Jool orbit, the stacks separated from the main rocket and made their own way to the respective moons under ion power.

A little advice:

You will become very bored during burns with ion-power only, because it's very veery veeeeeery sloooooooooow. If you're determined, I suggest you build an array of about 40 ion engines using gantries and radial attachment points. Make sure it attaches at its dead centre, has a megatonne of battery power and absolutely bury it in solar arrays or you'll have to stop thrusting every 20 m/s to recharge.

In my experience, spamming a planetary system (even Jool) with little probes isn't really worth it. The probes are mainly useless and are far less fun than more elaborate missions. (I'm currently building a science mission to Duna and Ike, with surface lab, 2 surface habitation pods, a rover vehicle and a return rocket for a 6-kerbal Duna surface team plus 2 orbital crew, on top of a 3-Kerbal Ike team with a relay satellite, 2-stage science lander and science rover).

[relin]

I'd skip using the quad-coupler if you wanna use multiple PB-Ions on a craft. Build your own, and put the number of engines you wanna use.

The above holds four engines with some fuel, and from that template, you can expand outward pretty much indefinitely. With how much fuel you're bringing, your only bottleneck would be electricity.

Edited January 15, 2014 by relin
wrong screenshot

[DrMonte]

Yep, LV-N's for the core. Even one might be enough.

In Jool orbit solar panels works in ~1/2 efficiency. No batteries or generators are good for Ion engines. Only direct sunlight at gigantor array and you'll need two per engine.

Docking ports are good if you are planning to dock to satellites later. If not and I think that you are not you should use decoupler. Put "Cubic Octagonal Strut" into the structure (reverse 180 deg) on the side and you'll have a connection node for the decoupler.

Think how many satellites you really need. There are only 1+5 bodies in the Jool orbit.

[-Velocity-]

Speaking of ion stuff though, you might want to make your own xenon fuel tanks for realism sake and to reduce part count.

The current xenon tanks have very poor (fuel mass)/(tank mass) ratios. The unit of xenon fuel used in KSP is 1 unit = 0.1 kg. Considering that xenon is a heavy gas and liquid xenon is about three times denser than rocket fuel, you can realistically store a HUGE amount of xenon gas in a tank the size of the Jumbo 64. Since the Jumbo 64 is, if I remember correctly, 32 tons full and 4 tons empty, and remembering that liquid xenon is 3X denser than rocket fuel, then you should be able to get almost 100 tons of liquid xenon in a Jumbo 64. 100 tons is 1000000 (one million) units of liquid xenon.

You can potentially get something like 100 km/s delta V with a spacecraft utilizing such tanks, if the payload is rather low, you use solar panels, and you are willing to go through DAYS of acceleration under 4X time compression. However, if you get any part pack with nuclear reactors, and you use those in conjunction with realistic ion fuel tanks, you really start to trivialize interplanetary transport (which is, however, quite realistic for that class of propulsion technology).