Kerbal Space Program

[hobbsyoyo]

I mean this thing. I never really stopped and looked at the details, but I knew it was radioactive and it generated electricity somehow

Do these things just generate electricity with no fuel or any sort of other input? They seem to be heavy so maybe I just strap a whole crapload of these babies onto my sub and maybe that will do it. But it seems it'd need some sort of fuel... wiki doesn't seem to say so though unless i'm blind

yes, the fuel is internal, it's a piece of decaying plutonium or something it says on the wiki

Ok yeah what cardgame said. That's not a nuclear reactor, but a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. They are real things. Basically they convert the waste heat of radioactive decay directly into electricity. Real space probes like the Voyagers use them, as does the Curiosity rover on Mars. They produce a decent amount of power but weigh a lot. They are useful for applications where you need a constant base load of power or where you are too far from the sun to generate a lot of electricity. They operate on a very different principle from actual nuclear reactors - which have also been used in space (though with a mixed record).

Unfortunately the US shut down plutonium production and only just restarted it. This has compromised the design of real life probes like Juno which have had to rely on sub-optimal solar power generation. The KSP versions do not generate enough electricity for their weight though, which reduces their utility.

I was thinking on the stock plutonium thingies to make it simple, but there are a number of mods that adds reactors of all kinds. Near Future Technologies has fission and fussion. And KSP-Interstellar has even exotic ones as antimatter but since it tries to make them somewhat realistic it is bit complicated to make them work properly. You need radiators to dissipate waste heat and such.

I am not sure which mod I have that caused this but I have a ton of different engines that rely on exotic fuels but do not function correctly because I don't have the concurrent fuel mods. Also, I have some neat nuclear rocket engines that run on hydrogen and I do have hydrogen tanks but either it doesn't work correctly or the game models the rarity (un-density) of hydrogen too well. I have these massive tanks to fuel them and get a pittance of DV, which makes them useless.

 

[warpus]

See I thought they must have some sort of fuel like that, but that wiki doesn't mention it, unless I'm blind. So that confused me. I was hoping it'd be some material I can refuel, but it makes sense that it'd be something like plutonium that I can't.

I figured out that the density of the ocean on Laythe is different though. So a sub that's very very slowly rising in the water (without any fuel) like mine, could potentially in theory sink to the bottom of Laythe. I can't use hyperedit to test out that theory, because these days hyperedit seems to make the surface of any planet you warp to really messed up. I suppose I should probably try using it again to test my atmosphere and ocean entry mechanisms. Seems like what I gotta do is just parachute right into the water. Hyperedit used to work for tests like that, so I'll try it and see what ahppens. Last time I tried though the surface of Laythe was all moving around and you couldn't land on it.

Or actually, I will need to send this thing up with 0 ore, and then land on land, refill my ore supplies, and then drive into the water. That's not going to be easy. But each time I move this thing around under the water I have so much fun I keep coming back to this design so I'll probably end up trying it.

Ok yeah what cardgame said. That's not a nuclear reactor, but a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. They are real things. Basically they convert the waste heat of radioactive decay directly into electricity. Real space probes like the Voyagers use them, as does the Curiosity rover on Mars. They produce a decent amount of power but weigh a lot. They are useful for applications where you need a constant base load of power or where you are too far from the sun to generate a lot of electricity. They operate on a very different principle from actual nuclear reactors - which have also been used in space (though with a mixed record).

Yeah I vaguely knew about these 2 different types of nuclear powered.. things.. but I just never bothered to look into the details of what's in the game. Seems like the radioactive material is going to last a while, but I wanted something that lasts forever.

I wonder if I can just strap on enough battery packs to make this work. My sub will in theory sink to the bottom once I run out of fuel, and that's where I'll need to convert some of my ore back into fuel.. and then mine out enough ore to refill my tanks. I wonder how many batteries I'd need for that....

 

[hobbsyoyo]

In game the plutonium lasts forever in RTG's. This is basically the same in real life; the RTG's tend to vastly outlast the probes they are attached too. An exception is the Voyagers, which are looking like they will eventually shut down in a decade or so when the power levels from the RTG's are too low to run anything on the probe and they will shut down. Those things are good for decades.

 

[warpus]

Okay, that would explain why the wiki doesn't mention any plutonium or any other fuel for the RTGs. And maybe I just need to build a submarine out of RTGs. They don't produce a lot of juice it seems, but they are heavy, so this could be the beginning of something beautiful..

Yay for unrealistic parts in the stock game! (unrealistic in that the fuel doesn't run out) I'll report back this weekend with results

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I am not sure which mod I have that caused this but I have a ton of different engines that rely on exotic fuels but do not function correctly because I don't have the concurrent fuel mods. Also, I have some neat nuclear rocket engines that run on hydrogen and I do have hydrogen tanks but either it doesn't work correctly or the game models the rarity (un-density) of hydrogen too well. I have these massive tanks to fuel them and get a pittance of DV, which makes them useless.

Dont know. Interstellar have many exotic engines which are indeed only nozzles you must assemble to a reactor or something to make it work. It is complicated. Here is the manual: https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki

and some tutorials:

Never looked at it myself since my overmoded KSP always crash before i reach that far in the career.

In any case if you install mods with ckan only it will install all dependences so you shouldnt lack any required mod for those engines.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think my problem was that I dissallowed some of the mods that CKAN suggested because it wasn't clear that I needed or even wanted them. And yeah my game crashes to desktop very, very frequently. I do want more choices in the game but I'm kind of sick of the drawbacks.

Thanks for the link!

 

[warpus]

I think I'm still somehow against mods because I haven't installed any mods or even looked at CKAN. But.. I probably should

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You definitely should give a few a try, for the extra parts if nothing else.

Also Kerbal Engineer is a godsend (calculates deltav and some other parameters, but is not an autopilot). There is a science mod that automatically cycle experiments if there is a scientist on board, which is also a huge help. Then there's a mod to move/resize the navball and another to give you more exact inputs for manuever nodes. All helpful stuff that doesn't break immersion or feel like cheating.

 

[warpus]

I have forced myself to play without kerbal engineer or mechjeb, to get better at docking, landings, other maneuvers, etc. So maybe that's why I'm in a "no mods allowed" sort of mode. But I think I'm pretty good at all that now so mission accomplished, and I'm installing it now . It's happening

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have never used mechjeb but there's no reason not to use Kerbal engineer. The game should absolutely provide that data to begin with; it's a major point of frustration with players.

I can't think of any game that uses a fuel system that doesn't tell you how much gas you've got in the tank. It just doesn't make sense.

And it didn't fundamentally make me a worse player or take away from my skills. It just made the game more enjoyable by taking out some unnecessary trial and error and nasty surprises. It also allowed me to better plan things which is more fun overall.

 

[warpus]

Yeah I've basically been playing with weights on my legs. Now I want to take them off, I installed a couple mods using CKAN (EVE, the EVE addon for clouds, engineer, space plane parts), and applied it, launched game, and nothing changed. But I've been drinking tonight (for a good cause, we entered a team in a trivia contest at at beer brewery that's supporting a not for profit dog friendly business, so you know, the more you drink, the more money the dogs get, and I like dogs) so it's probably something simple I'm missing that I can figure out tomorrow. Am I missing some obvious step? CKAN seems to have found the install of KSP from what I can tell

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Hmm I'm not sure what could be wrong. Sorry dude

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Yeah I've basically been playing with weights on my legs. Now I want to take them off, I installed a couple mods using CKAN (EVE, the EVE addon for clouds, engineer, space plane parts), and applied it, launched game, and nothing changed. But I've been drinking tonight (for a good cause, we entered a team in a trivia contest at at beer brewery that's supporting a not for profit dog friendly business, so you know, the more you drink, the more money the dogs get, and I like dogs) so it's probably something simple I'm missing that I can figure out tomorrow. Am I missing some obvious step? CKAN seems to have found the install of KSP from what I can tell

Have you clicked the "apply changes" icon in ckan after selecting the mods from the list?

 

[warpus]

Yeah I clicked the "install" checkbox for each mod on the left, and then up top clicked "Apply changes". Then I clicked the "Launch game" button, and none of the mods seemed to be applied.. Unless I need to do something in-game to enable EVE and the other graphical mod I installed? I wouldn't think so, but..

 

[cardgame]

you have to wait for the mods to download and install first

 

[warpus]

I clicked around and that seems to have happened before I launched the game the 2nd time. I'll take a look again today, thanks for the idea. Could very well be something stupid like that, but I don't remember seeing any visual indicators that things weren't done downloading yet

 

[cardgame]

You installed EVE, that means you installed a texture pack in the hundreds of megabytes, it should have been noticeable.

 

[warpus]

Hmm yeah that makes sense.

Why do I always play this game when I'm intoxicated? I'm not sure

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Here's the results of my sample return mission.

This is the core booster stage after the SRB's separated:

Spoiler :

Here's the upper stage that took it to Minmus. It has the comm relay that I talked about and it will remain in Minmus orbit to support future missions indefinitely.

Spoiler :

The landing proved to be excruciating to pull off. The CG of this vehicle is too high up for one thing. For another, the extremely low gravity of Minmus meant that it always bounced severely, no matter how gentle I put it down. I had to reload several times to get it right. I initially wanted to land in the highlands but I had so much trouble with touchdowns I stopped caring and put it down in the lowlands. Then I saw that I had an extreme amount of fuel left in the lander so I took measurements (and stored them in the storage locker) and then did a hop over to the flats. This allowed me to use both of the mystery goo containers on the capsule and get full science measurements from both spots. Here I am in the flats-

Spoiler :

The high thrust of the lander really wasn't a problem, in the end. I was able to throttle to get a very gentle landing every time. The problem was the top-heaviness of the design and the extreme bouncing that occurred after touch down.

Lift off of the ascent stage was smooth and it had enough Delta-V that I was both able to return and circularize without any trouble.

Spoiler :

Re-entry exposed another design flaw in this system. The design used a quad stack of RCS modules with side mounted engines. At the top there is a mini quad adapter to shrink the four-stack down to just a single stick to mount to the return capsule. Unfortunately, due to an unknown construction error, the ascent stage quad stack failed to jettison from the return capsule. It stayed stuck to the capsule and glitched out during descent. The whole vehicle tumbled violently until finally aerodynamic forces managed to eject the ascent stage at the last possible moment. Here is the capsule coming for a successful splashdown. I got soooo much science from this mission.

I think I will modify the design and try again for other bodies. But first I'll have to build out my orbital relay network. Even though this carries a relay with it that stays in orbit, I want to make sure I have a good connection at all points in the mission going forward.

Spoiler :

 

[warpus]

That's a cool design, I would have totally overengineered a mission like this. Is it possible to pick up a soil sample on an unmanned mission?

I am having big problems during Laythe landing tests. I took out all the ore out of the sub, outfitted it with a lot of chutes, and it makes it all the way to the surface just fine, but then crashes into it. It's impossible to orient and/or control the craft, so I can't use boosters to slow down during descent. I might just turn to a mod for submarine designs instead and start from scratch.

Speaking of mods I am now running mods. Visually everything is looking better, so I'll probably return to the game sooner rather than later to design a new sub. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong yesterday, but last night there was much joy when I saw popups when I launched the game asking me yes/no questions about the mods I installed