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[1.0.5] Atomic Age - Nuclear Propulsion - Red Hot Radiators

Porkjet

By Porkjet
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Porkjet

Porkjet

Posted
Posted (edited)

More nuclear rockets for various purposes!

Unlike Humans, Kerbals never considered the use of nuclear power for weapons, and their fascination about the possiblities of this technology by far overcomes the fear of any possible dangers. Kerbals are well aware of the harmful effects of radiation though, but they know how to protect themselves from it and trust in their engineering skills and technology. The first successfull spaceflights of the LV-N nuclear rocket eliminated the last doubts about nuclear power and triggered Kerbals ambition to invent even more powerful technologies.

Active Heatsinks

* dispose of Engine waste heat

JvsBgmW.jpg

Nuclear Turbojet Engine

* Thrust: 105 kN @ 1atm

* Weight: 8.25t

* Unlimited Flight Time

* Runs in oxygenless atmospheres

vSLbSS8.jpg

"Candle" Radioisotope Rocket - An RTG turned into a little rocket

max Thrust: 3 kN

Weight: 0.15t

ISP: 100(sl) 650(vc)

Propellant: LiquidFuel

2UtprdN.jpg

LANTERN Engine (LANTR) - downscaled LV-N with a hot feature

Regular NTR mode:

max Thrust: 45 kN

Weight 2.1t

ISP: 200(sl) 720(vc)

Propellant: LiquidFuel

LOX augmented mode - Caution! overheats quickly!

max Thrust: 125 kN

ISP: 350s(sl) 455s(vc)

Propellant: LiquidFuel + Oxidizer (0.9/1.1)

UPjUqaa.jpg

KL0QtVf.jpg

Nuclear Lightbulb (Closed Cycle Gas-Core)

max Thrust: 450kN

Weight: 20t

ISP: 850s(sl) 1500(vc)

Propellant: LiquidFuel

lBcTBsN.jpg

Q38BQth.jpg

pretty custom emissives and FX

SIdlvBS.jpg

7PFTkk9.jpg

NOuMg8M.jpg

Download from SpaceDock

This mod goes well with Stock Fuel Switch if you want more LF in your tanks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This package redistributes the following mods/plugins, their license information can be found in the provided links:

ModuleManager - by Sarbian & Ialdabaoth

Community Tech Tree - by Nertea

Changes:

 

3.1 - 01.09.2015

* fixed a bug where radiators where sometimes not working

* added "Power Rating" in radiator description and "Waste Heat Rating" in Engine Description as an approx. indicator how much radiator is needed

* hid empty community tech tree nodes

3.0 - 03.07.2015

* added 3 active heatsinks, wrap around fuselage style

* added Nuclear Turbojet

* Increased heat production to challenge the new radiators

* many small stat tweaks

2.0 - 05.05.2015

* added KANDL Radioisotope Rocket

* LANTERN: Increased thrust, lowered vac ISP

* Lightbulb: added gimbal response speed, Careful - SAS doesn't like this

* customized effects and sounds a bit more

* New Tech Tree nodes for improved and advanced nuclear propulsion

1.0 - 25.12.2014

* LANTERN and Lightbulb

 

AtomicRocketSeal128.png ctt_small.png

Edited by Porkjet
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Kowgan

Kowgan

Posted
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Porkjet strikes again!

Thank you for this christmas gift, my good sir! :)

And merry christmas to you too!

-Edit-

Damn, editing those fuel tanks must've been painful! Extra snacks for you!

Also, is Firespitter required (even if already preplaced inside this mod)? Thank you!

Edited by Kowgan
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sashan

sashan

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Posted

One thing everyone misses while making emissives - actually, exhaust is cooled as it goes through the nozzle. That means the hottest part is the combustion chamber, or reactor for NTR's. Well, it is usually actively cooled, so that would be the throat, the narrowest part which is the hottest.

Here's the inside tempratures for NERVA, the stock emissive is pretty much correct:

image23.jpeg

Here's the usual liquid fuel engine (look to the left):

18g.jpg

Aside from that... Great mod! Pity I'm out of RAM on my ancient crap.

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Captain Sierra

Captain Sierra

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Ah, the Pork-meister has struck again! Good to see you back to your own work and no longer chained to a Squad desk.

Also, if I had space this would be a sig quote:

Well I do wanna jump into that [separate tanks] now and Firespitter Fuelswitch seems like an elegant way of doing it.
Edited by Captain Sierra
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mouzfun

mouzfun

Posted
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This is goddamn awesome. Believe it or not your lantern is practicaly the same engine i envisioned when i tried to model and texture myself, sadly i lost almost all of my free time and also some motivation because texturing is hard. Anyway, did you consider making a single-part 2.5m cluster(s) of them? There are already some 2.5m nukes availible (including your unique one), but i think cluster just looks and feels better, the only problem is that making it from 1m engines is clunky, increases part count and shroud is awkward, so, i'll be happy if you will make my idea real! :D

Edited by mouzfun
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kiwiak

kiwiak

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Dont you think that hydrogen tanks from near future pack fit quite well with these engines?

These have deep space look, fragile, covered with thermal isolation, sorrounded with construction frame.

Of course some module manager patch woudl be needed before these tanks coudl be used with porkjet engines.

http://i.imgur.com/3s00Sj4.png

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52042-0-25-Near-Future-Technologies-%2817-11-14-All-packs-CTT-compatibility%29

By the way, do you plan to include nuclear fuel decay?

Edited by kiwiak
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Porkjet

Porkjet

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Thanks for the comments and rep, guys :) Seems like i forgot to include the dependencies >.< but I'm sure you figured it out yourselves. Added em to the download now, just in case.

Nice, I almost thought you abandoned this when SPP was integrated into stock :D

Frohe Weihnachten.

It has been collecting dust in my shelf for quite a while yes x) The LANTR since around february 2014 actually! I had problems with the Lightbulb, particularly, it was a bit finicky to set up with its 12 piston gimbal (they are moved with FXModuleLookAtConstraint) and the texture of the autofairing very persistently refused to load, it almost drove me mad, until I finally tried just using MBM textures and voilà... so it turns out the PNG loader might be bugged too now...

Porkjet strikes again!

Thank you for this christmas gift, my good sir! :)

And merry christmas to you too!

-Edit-

Damn, editing those fuel tanks must've been painful! Extra snacks for you!

Also, is Firespitter required (even if already preplaced inside this mod)? Thank you!

Firespitter is required for the fuelswitch, since it provides the cfg module for that. I actually forgot to pack it in the download tho! >.< ... just added it in together with latest MM

One thing everyone misses while making emissives - actually, exhaust is cooled as it goes through the nozzle. That means the hottest part is the combustion chamber, or reactor for NTR's. Well, it is usually actively cooled, so that would be the throat, the narrowest part which is the hottest.

Here's the inside tempratures for NERVA, the stock emissive is pretty much correct:

http://www.intechopen.com/source/html/42786/media/image23.jpeg

Here's the usual liquid fuel engine (look to the left):

http://cs.astrium.eads.net/sp/launcher-propulsion/analytical-engineering/images/18g.jpg

Aside from that... Great mod! Pity I'm out of RAM on my ancient crap.

Thanks for that info! It's kinda difficult to get very clear info on those things, details seem to vary with different sources, it seemed to me that the upper middle part of the engine bell usually had the brightest glow, and images of running engines i found looked like that too, these were chemical engines though. And I've taken the liberty of exeggerating that a bit, I mean those rockets are super hot inside, so I want to see the whole thing glow dangerously, you know? :D But now that you mention it, it seems plausible that the narrow throat would get the highest pressure and temperature, I'll try that out some time later when I'm in the mood.

Hmm, kinda... but not really. TWR of the engine described there is orders of magnitude better than the one from his pack, and ISP is twice as high. This one has just enough thrust for a small ship to take off and make it to orbit, single stage. The engine seems almost OP to me as it is, but I'm open to suggestions, maybe weight could be lowered a bit?
I'd love to have that Nuclear Lightbulb just as a part, burning regular fuel mix. Is it possible?

Sure is possible. I was already expecting some people might want this so heres an alternative version with just the engines running on LFO https://www.dropbox.com/s/fkcoz91731jazez/AtomicAge_EngineOnly.zip?dl=0

Sweet, a engine to haul my oversized grand tour vessel. Speaking of grand tour, any plans on revisiting your inflatable habs? I'd really like some 2 meter stuff for larger vessels.

I'm gonna continue and overhaul that mod at some point, but I'm too busy with other things right now and in the near future. Maybe Roverdudes Orbital Kolonization system has what you're looking for http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79588-0-90-USI-Kolonization-Systems-%28MKS-OKS%29-%280-22-2%29-2014-12-24

Dont you think that hydrogen tanks from near future pack fit quite well with these engines?

These have deep space look, fragile, covered with thermal isolation, sorrounded with construction frame.

Of course some module manager patch woudl be needed before these tanks coudl be used with porkjet engines.

http://i.imgur.com/3s00Sj4.png

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52042-0-25-Near-Future-Technologies-%2817-11-14-All-packs-CTT-compatibility%29

By the way, do you plan to include nuclear fuel decay?

I've actually gone the whole way of making humongous 5m liquidhydrogen tanks for NTR's early this year, with nearly realistic resource density. I was crazy to make a copernicus MTV clone in KSP. They were great in that they required you to make ridiculously large ships with 95% of their volume made of fuel if you wanted to get anywhere near 5-digit Delta-V numbers, but that didnt turn out to be near as much fun as I expected and I was overall quite dissapointed and scrapped that idea. Really, it was just clunky and annoying. LiquidFuel feels like the right compromise.

As for nuclear fuel decay, I've thought about expanding this mod with nuclear fuel and waste later, basically just having the engines slowly consume nuclear fuel and generate nuclear waste. Maybe even make a simple reactor that runs on that principle, plus nuclear fuel containers to refuel and dispose of the waste. But there are other mods that do this in a much better thought out way, like interstellar and near future. I don't have the programming skills to make a proper competitor mod to those, so I guess I'll either make it as a compatible expansion to them or just let it be.

So you can make this but not update Habitat pack? ಠ_ಠ (not complaining, this is great :))

Is this the final release version???

Yupp, these engines have been dusting on my hard drive for very long now, it was about time to fix and release it. I would have some spare time to spend on habitat pack right now, but not nearly enough to get anywhere... I don't like starting things without finishing them, it kills my motivation.

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Kitworks

Kitworks

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Posted

Hmm, kinda... but not really. TWR of the engine described there is orders of magnitude better than the one from his pack, and ISP is twice as high. This one has just enough thrust for a small ship to take off and make it to orbit, single stage. The engine seems almost OP to me as it is, but I'm open to suggestions, maybe weight could be lowered a bit?

I like the lightbulb a lot, but... yeah, it is already borderline OP. Anything more would be too much. (Its not so OP that I won't use it though... of course...)

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passinglurker

passinglurker

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I say these look absolutely spiffy

I don't suppose there could be a nuclear thermal turbojet(mk3 size?) in the future too? So far whenever someone has aspired to it feature creep sets in and you have to cobble something together from "nozzles" and "reactors" and such it would be nice if someone would put out just a simple part that's functionality isn't totally reliant on plugins that get broken on updates.

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kiwiak

kiwiak

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Posted
I say these look absolutely spiffy

I don't suppose there could be a nuclear thermal turbojet(mk3 size?) in the future too? So far whenever someone has aspired to it feature creep sets in and you have to cobble something together from "nozzles" and "reactors" and such it would be nice if someone would put out just a simple part that's functionality isn't totally reliant on plugins that get broken on updates.

I think it is great idea.. Nuclear thermal turbojet woudl be great addition to this pack.

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