Sterling Systems

Sterling Systems is a collection of parts in diverse categories, aimed at providing technologies and gameplay akin to those found in Far Future Technologies or KSP Interstellar Extended but with decently textured, less complex parts/functions and high modularity of the mod itself. That is: this mod is split across several individual downloads. Download what you want and not what you don't.

Available categories

As at May 2024 these are the available categories:

• Electrical
  • Batteries⁴
  • Generators³
  • Solar (photovoltaic) panels (Mostly wrapper forms)
  • Metal fuel cells⁵
• Engines
  • Nuclear thermal¹
  • Fusion
  • Antimatter
• Thermal
  • Fission reactors¹
  • Solar (thermal) panels²
  • Wrapper heatshields
  • Wrapper radiators
  • Exotic radiators
    • Liquid film
• Fuel Tank
  • Drums and spheres/pills for every occasion. In sizes: 2.5m, 3.75m, 5m

Elaborations

• 1: This mod primarily concerns itself with energy in the form of ThermalPower which is treated as 1 MW_th: 1000 units of heat energy as compared to 1 kW_e: 1 unit of ElectricCharge or electric energy. This is so because this mod concerns itself with far more potent and efficient technologies for producing and consuming/using thermal energy than are within the scope of the stock game or stockalike nuclear power system mods. Due to the generous applications of thermal energy presented here, the production and use of ElectricCharge is treated as secondary and must be opted into by installing generators into a vessel.
  • Nuclear engines in this mod require several (read: hundreds or thousands) of ThermalPower per second and can be quite powerful. From the Reliant to the Mammoth and even beyond in terms of thrust, and all with efficiencies greater than that of the NERV. The thermal nozzle families of engine become the new standard for main engines for shuttles and landers.
  • Nuclear (fission) reactors in this mod are mostly based on Gen IV reactors which run on such things as molten nuclear salts and fuel pebbles and are cooled by better things than water. Such reactors as these can use 100% of the energy of their fuel where water-cooled reactors are known to use less than 1% so expect reactors in this mod to be exceptionally fuel efficient. They also use these nuclear fuels because they can be pumped around unlike fuel rods (that is: EnrichedUranium) which make life hard when producing or servicing a reactor in-flight.
• 2: Solar thermal / Concentrating Solar is another aspect of gameplay where this mod distinguishes itself from other power system mods. Rather than produce ThermalPower from a finitely fueled nuclear reactor, the option is provided to produce this from the infinite power of the Sun. Together with thermal nozzle engines, solar thermal panels allow for solar thermal rocket builds -- capable interplanetary ships that have no need for on-board nuclear or chemical power sources.
• 3: Generators (thermo-electric converters) are the devices required for converting ThermalPower to ElectricCharge. All energy immediately produced in the reactor core is useful energy. Waste heat and the demand for radiators arises when that heat passes through a device which accepts it to do work to provide electricity (a heat engine). All heat is not destroyed but becomes lower quality and no longer potent enough to be useful to the same heat engine. This step is handwaved by stock-ish parts and parts mods, but not here.
• 4: Batteries in this mod are assumed to be of superior and not-quite-yet-known battery chemistry or of a known superior fuel cell chemistry. These parts are quite overpowered compared to stock balancing and are so because said balance actually makes batteries very underpowered, and players of interstellar or heavy industry games don't need that. Parts in other categories of Sterling Systems, when available, will make fittingly large demands on these batteries.
• 5: Fuel cells in this mod run on more readily available mixes of Oxygen (the oxidizer) and distilled pure metals (Aluminium, Silicon or Beryllium) mined from a planet's crust than from a fuel mix where the fuel needs to be hunted down or is a chore to maintain like Water (hard to find in high abundance) or Hydrogen (costly to resist boiling off).

Exotic radiators such as Liquid Film or Dusty Plasma are what happen when a ship's power source needs so much cooling that any regular (solid) radiator that tried would quickly melt or adequate amounts of regular radiator would start to look like a curtain that can shade a capital city, therefore, the radiator is built to directly expose the coolant to the vacuum, allowing it to cool even faster, then catching the coolant and re-circulating it. These radiators can either have immense surface area and remain relatively lightweight or can be compact and amazingly heavy (due to magnetic confinement components).

Wrapper heatshields, radiators and solar panels come in the standard sizes between 0.625m and 5m, including Mk2 and Mk3 and including height variants. Wrapper heatshields for the stock Mk2 and Mk3 cockpits also exist and properly protect them from reentry heat. Wrapper parts for the various stock adapter parts do not exist, however. This may change but not anytime soon.

Compatibilities

• Community Resource Pack
• Far Future Technologies
• Indicator Lights
• Kerbalism
• Simple Repaint (only the whites of parts will be recolored)
• System Heat
• Waterfall

Known Issues

• Part stats and models may change due to current pre-release state.
• dV calculators do not ignore massless resources other than ElectricCharge so it will be a pain to get the dV for engines that ask for ThermalPower (while in ship editors. Not so in flight).