New +10 room morale 7 dupe unmelted rocket with suit exit. Now with a micro-aerogel dispenser!

[Zarquan]

Because I want to play with my new micro-aerogel (natural tiles of about 0.116 mcg), I decided to redesign my rocket interior capable of dispensing this new micro-aerogel automatically.

This rocket is buildable in survival, but I built it in debug as a proof of concept.

What is micro-aerogel?

Spoiler

For those who don't know, the devs are changing the way thermal conduction works in ONI in the next patch.  Pre-patch, any tile less than 1 gram is perfectly insulating.  Using this knowledge, we created aerogel, natural tiles with a 0.1 g mass.  Post-patch, these tiles will no longer be perfectly insulating, so I went and made even better aerogel.  See, at high masses, thermal conductivity is the value that determines the rate of heat transfer.  But if the masses get small enough, it's thermal capacity becomes like a bottleneck, as the heat transfer becomes saturated.  Long story short, I learned how to create aerogel at about 0.116 mcg, or about 600,000 times smaller than the 0.1 gram aerogel.  I call this micro-aerogel.  Such micro-aerogel would be less thermally conductive than normal aerogel. You can see my journey to make it in the link below.  

I hope to demonstrate that while a micro-aerogel setup is annoying to create, once you have it, it can be very easy to use.

My rocket has two different configurations:  One for flying through space and once for having landed.
Here is a picture of my rocket interior in it's landed configuration:

Spoiler

 

And here is a picture of my rocket in its flying configuration.

Spoiler

 

I achieve my 10 morale by including a nature reserve (with 4 dashasalt vines and a park sign sticking out of the ceiling), washroom, and mess hall.  You can get an additional +1 from table salt and with food.

The main differences between my flying configuration and my landed configuration are two major component:  I have a canister drainer for oxygen instead of my mini gas pump and I have my rocket control station instead of a liquid meter valve and liquid shutoff valve.  That means this rocket is meant to have oxygen canisters loaded in to it as its oxygen source. Technically, the canister drainer is optional, as you can store oxylite in the liquid naphtha in the washroom and use an oxygen sconce for oxygen.

I don't expect my dupes to spend long enough flying to suffocate in CO2, and when landed, they can be provided oxygen from outside the rocket using a canister drainer.

I also include an optional Buddy Bud to decrease stress.

There are two major complicated mechanics here:  The micro-aerogel system and the CO2 pumping system.

Micro-aerogel dispenser:

Spoiler

After having done the work to get a measuring packet (as discussed in my post), I delivered it to the rocket via the built in port.  I'm using polluted water here, as I don't intend to use it for anything else, but it could be any liquid you are not using as aerogel.  It says the polluted water packet is 1000 mg, but it's actually ~999.999884 mg, precisely produced by the rather annoying one-time process somewhere else.

For my aerogel material, I'm using liquid carbon to make refined carbon aerogel, but this can be any liquid that you want to make tiles out of, like glass, steel, lead, tungsten, etc.  I plan on storing those in the free-standing liquid pipes to be swapped in and out as needed.  If you an get it as a liquid, you can make it in to aerogel.  Refined carbon is the best due to its high melting point, vast utility (as a starting point for heat batteries), and plant-ability, but it is also the hardest to get.

In the video below, I first trace the path the polluted water goes, then the path that my refined carbon aerogel goes, then the path that my remainder refined carbon goes.  I then activate the machine and let it dispense 4 aerogel packets, the first two in the pipe overlay, the second two in the automation overlay.  

The way the automation works all based on the polluted water passing the sensor.  That allows the polluted water to go past the shutoff and sets the buffer/filter gate combo.  This is essentially a delay that will, after 5 seconds, let the refined carbon out.  It also resets the conveyor meter (which is set to 0.001 kg). 

The order of events is this:  The polluted water triggers the sensor and goes through its shutoff valve.  It then goes through the meter valve, leaving the meter valve with a remaining amount to dispense of 0.116 mcg.  Then, the refined carbon is released from the shutoff valve, where it flows to the meter valve and is split in to one 0.116 mcg packet and the remainder.  The remainder flows back to the input of its shutoff valve.  The 0.116 mcg micro-packet follows the polluted water to its shutoff valve, but it doesn't trigger the shutoff valve and, instead, exits the rocket.

Every time the refined carbon is dispensed, the counter signal increased by 1, letting you know how many aerogel packets have been/are going to be dispensed.  This system is set up to be able to notify you of any number from 1-10 aerogel packets and any multiple of 10 to 100 packets.  If you want to be fancy, you can put a NOT gate under the aerogel and manually increment the counter to have it notify you at any number.  But it's mostly there because there's a lot happening and the counters let you know how many you've dispensed by looking at the numbers.

This build is stable as long as it has power and you don't load when the polluted water is in the wrong place.  I recommend cutting pipes to prevent the polluted water from cycling to protect against loading and blackouts, and to protect yourself from potentially annoying automation sounds.  Due to limited space in the rocket, I don't believe I can make this blackout safe.  Given more space, this can be made blackout and load safe.  To be on the safe side, I would store a micro-packet or two in the free-standing pipe segments to remake the measuring packet if lost.

CO2 Pump:

Spoiler

My CO2 pumping mechanism makes me really happy.  I don't have the ability to measure the actual CO2 levels in the bottom with an atmosensor to directly determine when the pump should turn on, and I would hate to throw away perfectly good oxygen ever, so I created a system that detects when the CO2 gets too high, then detects when the pump is pumping less than its maximum amount due to low pressure.

If the gas element sensor detects CO2 for 10 seconds straight, it will trigger the mini-gas pump for 20 seconds.  That will reliably send 50 g packets up the pipe to the gas valve for a time.  Then I send it to my '50 gram packet' detector.  That will split the packet in to a 49.9 g packet and a 0.1 g packet as long as there is more than 49.9 grams in the pipe.  The 0.1 g packet goes past a gas pipe element sensor that detects CO2.  If it detects the packet, it keeps the pump running.  I have a buffer gate in case I want to keep it running for a certain amount of time, but for now it's set to 0.1 seconds.

This system causes the CO2 to drain until it is all the way to the bottom, at which point it stays dormant until the CO2 builds up again.

My dupes don't spend too much time flying, so I only have the mini pump when landed.  I can hook the gas element sensor's filter gate to the notifier if I expect my dupes to be in space for a while.

 

I also have a few other interesting things.

Combination sublimator+temperature safe storage.

Spoiler

In all my rockets, I like to have a place to put my super hot and super old stuff.  I use a one tile liquid lock to maintain the vacuum.  It sits on top of a micro-aerogel, ideally made of lead due to its low specific heat capacity (the thermal conductivity is saturated, so SHC is more important).  Here, I put a wide variety of temperature controlled substances, from the obvious deep frozen food to the slightly less obvious bottled liquid uranium, supercoolant, hot water, or other potentially hot materials for transport without heating the rocket, to some that may seem...unnatural, like rocket fuel (steam canisters, liquid oxygen, and liquid hydrogen).  By doing this, I can always reach my destination, refuel, then come back.

Ideally, you would use a non-spoiling food like berry sludge to force the dupes in to the nature reserve when in flight.

I use naphtha so it can be high enough mass to store oxylite without it offgassing.

Conveyor dumper:

Spoiler

I like making my rockets multi-purpose, so this rocket doubles as a mining rocket.  So, I put a conveyor loader fitting in the rocket to unload the cargo bay as it is being filled, allowing me to fully use a drill nosecone while in flight.

Bathroom and mess hall:

Spoiler

I hate wasting water, especially when it may be rare or nonexistent at my destination.  So, my bathroom is set up to use a lavatory and save the polluted water in the liquid cargo tank module.  If that is full, it will dump out of the rocket.  The washroom bonus is given because of the partially buried hand sanitizer.  Space dupes need not wash their hands, as the radiation will de-germ them before they finish eating.  I can clean up the water when I land. 

For the mess hall, there is only one mess table.  That means each dupe must be on their own schedule so that they can share the table and each get the benefit.

I usually build a base on my new asteroid with a better bathroom setup (and a banquette hall) upon landing.

Modules:  

This rocket assumes you have a liquid cargo module for water, a battery module, and a couple solar modules to maintain power.  

 

Edited April 2 by Zarquan

[PatrykC159753]

do they sleep on flor ?

[Zarquan]

8 hours ago, PatrykC159753 said:

do they sleep on flor ?

Yup.  I build a base for them at the destination.

None of the bad parts of not having a bed matter when in space.  There is no way I'm fitting 7 beds on a rocket, so I'm only putting in things that are shared.

Edited Sunday at 06:15 PM by Zarquan