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Post by apophys on Aug 25, 2018 23:18:28 GMT
By the way, why do you use polytetrafluoroethylene over polyethylene for your armor? Because this was made before polyethylene got buffed; back then, the top choice was either rubber (more expensive) or PTFE (more massive). I haven't updated to take the PE buff into account yet.  |
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 26, 2018 0:05:51 GMT
Shoot, and here I am coating all my spaceships in polytetrafluoroethylene hoping to take advantage of whatever magical properties it possessed. Serves me right for not testing it.
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 30, 2018 18:53:43 GMT
So, I was testing 10 of those 25MW laser from my ship against an enemy gunship. Range 1000km. I changed the laser armor out for polyethylene but aside from that it's to a T. To my surprise, in spite of the enemy only firing one laser and myself shooting 10 lasers each one with the destructive capability of 100 of their lasers, they were still able to break 2 of my laser turrets. They had an intensity of 125kw at 1000km. I'm starting to think using large arrays of small lasers en masse might be the better option. The lens is too huge of a target if even one of the turrets is able to be beaten.
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Post by Apotheon on Sept 2, 2018 21:50:11 GMT
Have you considered including a 10 kW radioisotope thermoelectric generator? Or ordinary hydrogen nuclear thermal rockets? A radioisotope thermoelectric generator saves crew in smaller ships, which may lead to overall mass/cost savings.
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Post by apophys on Sept 3, 2018 2:44:04 GMT
Have you considered including a 10 kW radioisotope thermoelectric generator? Or ordinary hydrogen nuclear thermal rockets? A radioisotope thermoelectric generator saves crew in smaller ships, which may lead to overall mass/cost savings. I'm considering a 1 kW & 10 kW RTG for vanilla, but mass/cost savings are unlikely. The main cost-effective RTG pellet, cobalt-60, produces a large amount of gamma radiation, which is very difficult to deal with (at least without abusing the bug that spider silk blocks it all). It would really only apply to unmanned drones, for which reactors are better anyway. Hydrogen is strictly inferior, performance-wise, to hydrogen deuteride for thermal rockets.
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Post by Apotheon on Sept 6, 2018 14:02:19 GMT
Have you considered including a 10 kW radioisotope thermoelectric generator? Or ordinary hydrogen nuclear thermal rockets? A radioisotope thermoelectric generator saves crew in smaller ships, which may lead to overall mass/cost savings. I'm considering a 1 kW & 10 kW RTG for vanilla, but mass/cost savings are unlikely. The main cost-effective RTG pellet, cobalt-60, produces a large amount of gamma radiation, which is very difficult to deal with (at least without abusing the bug that spider silk blocks it all). It would really only apply to unmanned drones, for which reactors are better anyway. Hydrogen is strictly inferior, performance-wise, to hydrogen deuteride for thermal rockets.
I'll be waiting in line then! One of my ships can save 15% mass with stock RTGs (optimisation won't make a difference since it's so light anyway) and if you can optimise away the cost, I might be able to save 15% cost also (whch is where optimisation matters).
By the way, according to the Solar System Organisation of Standardisation thread, hydrogen deuteride is difficult to produce... is there any truth to that?
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Sept 7, 2018 11:45:52 GMT
I'm considering a 1 kW & 10 kW RTG for vanilla, but mass/cost savings are unlikely. The main cost-effective RTG pellet, cobalt-60, produces a large amount of gamma radiation, which is very difficult to deal with (at least without abusing the bug that spider silk blocks it all). It would really only apply to unmanned drones, for which reactors are better anyway. Hydrogen is strictly inferior, performance-wise, to hydrogen deuteride for thermal rockets.
I'll be waiting in line then! One of my ships can save 15% mass with stock RTGs (optimisation won't make a difference since it's so light anyway) and if you can optimise away the cost, I might be able to save 15% cost also (whch is where optimisation matters).
By the way, according to the Solar System Organisation of Standardisation thread, hydrogen deuteride is difficult to produce... is there any truth to that?
Well, it involves separation of isotopes (thankfully not as painful as with enriching uranium - deuterium is 2x the mass of ordinary hydrogen, rather than <1% difference, you can separate out heavy water fairly easily in comparison) and chemical reaction between normal hydrogen and deuterium source (typically heavy water and alkali metal hydride), plus deuterium abundance is quite low.
OTOH, unless economy or logistic considerations bite you deep, hydrogen deuteride is strictly superior to ordinary hydrogen - not only it is 1.5x denser (you can store more and pump/expel more using same volume - more efficient tanks AND better thrust), but atypically (since USUALLY it is a strict tradeoff) it gives you better exhaust velocity - HD might be more massive, but it happens to be sufficiently easier to dissociate to more than make up for that).
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Post by Apotheon on Sept 8, 2018 22:24:25 GMT
Why are there RP-1 and heavy water NTRs?
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Post by apophys on Sept 15, 2018 21:57:37 GMT
Why are there RP-1 and heavy water NTRs? Heavy water is a fair bit denser than RP-1, so it may find use if you have extremely thick armor. It is the densest available NTR propellant that has decent exhaust velocity and no issues with dissociation.
RP-1 NTRs have the best TWR, in addition to being a good density/velocity compromise for armored ships, so they are an auto-include.
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Post by apophys on Oct 2, 2018 14:13:58 GMT
Update! Vanilla module collection is now v1.6 Changelog: - Completely reworked the railguns. They are now built to mesh well with the 30 frames per second of the game's physics engine. The default payload is now a 200 mg 10 cm needle. The alternative flak payload has been rebuilt to match. - Updated reactors to not use diamond. They now use a similar volume of pyrolytic carbon instead. Together with a few other changes, they are slightly lighter, slightly more expensive, and leak about 50% more radiation. - Switched the armor of the 100 MW laser to polyethylene. It's now slightly cheaper. - Added Li-6 rad shields.
Updated installation instructions to take into account the bug in the current game patch.
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Post by anotherfirefox on Oct 6, 2018 15:02:20 GMT
BTW, what's the Osmium (No expanse) and Tungsten (No expanse)? I mean what does it represent irl?
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Post by apophys on Oct 7, 2018 22:29:25 GMT
BTW, what's the Osmium (No expanse) and Tungsten (No expanse)? I mean what does it represent irl? That's a hack to simulate having multiple thermocouple stages in the reactor. It allows you to have a higher total temperature gradient than you can achieve with one stage, because each stage has its own smaller gradient (which it can survive). If qswitched adds such capability to the game, I will use that instead, but I don't expect the modded reactors to change very much overall if that happens.
The hack just reduces thermal expansion by a few orders of magnitude, so that the game doesn't get any problem with thermal expansion stress. All other properties of the metal are unchanged.
It may alternately be possible to build the thermocouple under a heat gradient to begin with, so there is no expansion stress on the thermocouple at all while operating (instead, the stress would break it if it came to a uniform temperature).
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Oct 8, 2018 7:34:27 GMT
It may alternately be possible to build the thermocouple under a heat gradient to begin with, so there is no expansion stress on the thermocouple at all while operating (instead, the stress would break it if it came to a uniform temperature). That would probably be a bad idea - try scramming the reactor or doing any maintenance work with something like that. |
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Post by airc777 on Nov 4, 2018 1:47:50 GMT
I feel like the NTR's could be revised? Here I have a proposed competitor to the 100MN 6.43Km/s Methane NTR. I've matched the thrust, exhaust velocity, and armor profile (Although, why does it have anything other then graphite aerogel?). I've increased the thrust to weight ratio, doubled the gimbal speed, reduced the total size, slightly reduced the radiation hazard, and only marginally increased the cost. I feel like you could also add a 1.0GN and potentially a 5.0GN engine to the line up, although I don't know if it's possible to produce a 10.0GN engine with 6.41Km/s exhaust and greater than 1,000G thrust to weight ratio with only stock materials. Efficiency seems to drop off sharply at around 9.5GN with my engines.
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Post by airc777 on Nov 4, 2018 3:27:41 GMT
Continuing from my last post, here's a 6.42 km/s exhaust, 1.00 GN thrust, 1.28 kg t/w ratio engine.
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