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

[DavidBowman]

Awesome as always!

Now that beta is here, isn't it time to give the ol'Habitat Pack some love?

[Starbuckminsterfullerton]

Nicely done! I remember when you posted the same shots of the Lantern ages ago in the dev threads, but the lightbulb is a wonderful surprise, and I've been waiting for just such a fuel-switching mod for ages!

If you're looking for suggestions, I think having one of the 7 lightbulb engines available separate from the cluster would be appropriate.

Edited December 27, 2014 by Starbuckminsterfullerton

[jfull]

I agree

a Nuclear Thermal Turbojet/Ramjet would be wonderful

If you wanted to do something truly amazing though... you could make a hybrid Nuclear Thermal Jet and Rocket

basically an engine that can use its reactor to superheat either air or liquidfuel

[BrianMcNett]

Not to detract from this awesome mod, but I've noticed a couple of bugs.

First, since this changes the fuel requirements for the stock NTR, existing ships will experience a drastic reduction in delta-v. I realize this is intended, but it can cause issues.

Second, this mod inadvertantly re-fills every fuel tank currently in space, including debris. This one is problematic as jetisonned debris may still be throttled up.

[Captain Sierra]

Hmm, I really hate working with MM. I was trying to modulemanager patch them to use NFP LiquidHydrogen (Nertea got the 0.90 fix out today!) but couldnt. Instead I just directly edited the files.

Also I bumped up the LANTERN's secondary mode to 570 ISP, purely out of taste. In case anyone is curious, the way I handled bimodal, is to leave the secondary mode as LFO and make the primary LH2.

[Whirligig Girl]

I actually had an idea for a stockalike mod just like this.

Except, I'm not porkjet and thus can not match the level of quality by even 0.02 percent.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Yes, but it doesn't look as cool.

Okay, in all seriousness, I know in many cases authenticity is extremely important, but I don't think this is that big a deal. I guess it would be better to have more authenticity, though.

I might have to switch out of Ven's Stock Revamp for a while, just so I can use stockalike mods again.

- - - Updated - - -

Are the engines realistically spec'd or are the scaled down to match the LV-N's low quality thrust?

[BrianMcNett]

Hey! Have you considered a tri-modal design? Merge the LANTR with a bi-modal design which generates electrical power when not producing thrust. Drawback is that you need large heat radiating fins, and the generating equipment adds weight. Pratt & Whitney did a design study some time back called "Triton" (TRImodal capable, Thrust Optimized, Nuclear) which did this. Let's see if I can find a link:

Somewhere down the page is a PDF 'AIAA 2004-3863'

[Captain Sierra]

I actually had an idea for a stockalike mod just like this.

Except, I'm not porkjet and thus can not match the level of quality by even 0.02 percent.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, but it doesn't look as cool.

Okay, in all seriousness, I know in many cases authenticity is extremely important, but I don't think this is that big a deal. I guess it would be better to have more authenticity, though.

I might have to switch out of Ven's Stock Revamp for a while, just so I can use stockalike mods again.

- - - Updated - - -

Are the engines realistically spec'd or are the scaled down to match the LV-N's low quality thrust?

I did some reading on nuclear lightbulbs and from what I gather, yes these are somewhat realistically spec'd. A nuclear lightbulb can in fact output an Isp of 1500s. Actually, it can output up to 3000s theoretically. I'd need to do more reading.

EDIT: ALso here's a direct link to the PDF the above post references: http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_Engines/AIAA-2004-3863_TRITON.pdf

[CptRichardson]

Weeee! Nuclear Mainsails! I die happy now. *Dies.*

[Haze-Zero]

This is just a heads up, I am not blaming anyone, nor do I expect PorkJet to do anything about it but TweakScale and this mod do not seem to get along very well. Tanks just don't want to hold their rescaled fuel and revert to their default fuel levels.

CORRECTION: The 'full version' of this mod and TweakScale do not seem to get along. The Engine only version seems to work fine.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Haze-Zero

[MaverickSawyer]

HALLELUJAH! Porkjet returns with yet another instant classic.

[sashan]

Had to bump it up after finding this video.

Emissives in real life!

[SkyRex94]

Porkjet has a new mod!! And again it has just the right stockalike look to it. I will try it.

I'm looking for good engine technology mods anyway to enhance the stock variety without getting overpowered, just getting more specialized, and this seems to fit.

Great new mod, and also changing the consumoption to only LF is super as making it finally more believable.

If you (Porkjet)might think of making this a bigger propulsion technology pack some ideas:

- Air-Augmented Rocket (really looking for a good one, could be useful for Big Eve missions in RSS, preferably with the intake not seperate, but directly at the part itslef, so no new ressource would be needed and it can run of air-pressure readings)

- Scramjet

- small Radioisotope engine (For small probes beyond Jool)

- Fusion Engine ( but non-exisent in RL yet and probably overpowered, so meeh, might scratch that)

[Porkjet]

Heyo!

Porkjet has a new mod!! And again it has just the right stockalike look to it. I will try it.

I'm looking for good engine technology mods anyway to enhance the stock variety without getting overpowered, just getting more specialized, and this seems to fit.

Great new mod, and also changing the consumoption to only LF is super as making it finally more believable.

If you (Porkjet)might think of making this a bigger propulsion technology pack some ideas:

- Air-Augmented Rocket (really looking for a good one, could be useful for Big Eve missions in RSS, preferably with the intake not seperate, but directly at the part itslef, so no new ressource would be needed and it can run of air-pressure readings)

- Scramjet

- small Radioisotope engine (For small probes beyond Jool)

- Fusion Engine ( but non-exisent in RL yet and probably overpowered, so meeh, might scratch that)

Sounds cool, I've been thinking about air augmented rockets and scramjets for a while, maybe not in this specific pack tho, but nuclear turbojet and ramjet would fit perfectly.

Also this is the first time I heard about Radioisotope engine, it could bridge the performance gab between 0.625m chemical rockets and ion engine, would fit the theme rather well!

According to this paper such an engine is estimated at:

ISP: 750s - 800s

Thrust: ~ 1N or 0.001kN (lol...) that's in the range of real life ion engines, so could be cheated up like the KSP ion engine

weight: 0.187t ("double shell design") / 0.085t ("Lightweight Design")

In KSP this could be:

ISP ~ 650s - 750s

Thrust: ~ 2kN (similar to ion)

weight: ~ 0.2t (bit heavier than chemical counterparts, lighter than ion engine and electric systems and less complicated)

Propellant: LiquidFuel

seems quite useful to me, would be fun to make

Had to bump it up after finding this video.

Emissives in real life!

Oh nice find thx! Looks pretty cool too, definetly will use this as reference for future emissives

[Captain Sierra]

Heyo!

Sounds cool, I've been thinking about air augmented rockets and scramjets for a while, maybe not in this specific pack tho, but nuclear turbojet and ramjet would fit perfectly.

Also this is the first time I heard about Radioisotope engine, it could bridge the performance gab between 0.625m chemical rockets and ion engine, would fit the theme rather well!

According to this paper such an engine is estimated at:

ISP: 750s - 800s

Thrust: ~ 1N or 0.001kN (lol...) that's in the range of real life ion engines, so could be cheated up like the KSP ion engine

weight: 0.187t ("double shell design") / 0.085t ("Lightweight Design")

In KSP this could be:

ISP ~ 650s - 750s

Thrust: ~ 2kN (similar to ion)

weight: ~ 0.2t (bit heavier than chemical counterparts, lighter than ion engine and electric systems and less complicated)

Propellant: LiquidFuel

seems quite useful to me, would be fun to make

Oh nice find thx! Looks pretty cool too, definetly will use this as reference for future emissives

Converted these over to Near Future LH2. Had to do some whacky stuff with the LANTERN but totally worth it. Porkjet you want me to send you the modified configs or no?

[Porkjet]

Yeah sure! I could convert them to module manager configs and provide em for use with NFP

[helaeon]

With the NFP LH2 configs could we get a standard fuel tank option to let us set those up with LH2 like you did for switching between liquid fuel-oxidizer and liquid fuel only?

[Captain Sierra]

With the NFP LH2 configs could we get a standard fuel tank option to let us set those up with LH2 like you did for switching between liquid fuel-oxidizer and liquid fuel only?

Okay the way I made the edits would not allow for this.

Its an MM patch (well right now its raw config edits) that I (or Porkjet) can send to Nertea for inclusion in the "HydrogenNTRs" folder of optional patches in the NFP download. Because of this I made the edits on the fundamental assumption that you'd already have NFP installed so there's no point needing LH2 in the stock tanks. No reason to reinvent the wheel, especially when that wheel is Nertea's amazing 3D modelling. What I did was I made the primary fuel-only mode use LH2 (as one would expect). BUT, on the LANTERN, I made the afterburner mode use LFO, rather than LH2+O. This was a judgement call on my part because firespitter fuel switch bugs out on my install and I didn't want to depend on it for oxidizer only tanks. Porkjet, that one's your call. I'll PM you the actual .cfgs here in a minute.

[Robotengineer]

Anybody have a RF config for this mod?

[LambertStrether]

Anyone have an update on those NF configs?

[Tellion]

Cannot handle this level of fancy.

Sounds cool, I've been thinking about air augmented rockets and scramjets for a while, maybe not in this specific pack tho, but nuclear turbojet and ramjet would fit perfectly.

Oh yes please! Nuclear Powered Planes for Eve *dreams*

[Spin-Planet]

Not sure if I missed something. The big engine wide angle gimballing makes the movement look very brutal. What animation mod is doing that? I have AnimatedDecouplers, KineTech and BDanimationmodules.

Awesome mod

[lurkoholic]

Does the Lightbulb engine have small attach nodes for anyone else (size 1, I think)?

[Whirligig Girl]

It'd be cool to have a version of the LANTR that looks like Ven's Stock Revamp's LV-N.

Actually, now that I think of it, a tankbuttless version of the Nuclear Lightbulb would be nice too. And Fuelswitch for the small fuel tanks. And fuel-only "Shiba" mini-nuke. Turns out they do this already. And I discovered the Shiba did this too late. Dead-weight oxidizer was a bit of a problem when Jeb tried an imprompu landing on the Mun with what was supposed to be a Shiba-testing orbiter. But I succeeded.

Edited February 3, 2015 by GregroxMun

[passinglurker]

Hey porkjet if you ever expand SPP as a mod again how about adding more sizes of jet fuel fuselages to pull double duty being used with these without plugins or LFO compromises?