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ShotgunNinja / Kerbalism

Hundreds of Kerbals were killed in the making of this mod.
The Unlicense
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Smelting ore in order to create shielding #148

Closed basilicofresco closed 7 years ago

basilicofresco commented 7 years ago

Smelting ore in order to produce shielding seems more reasonable for a base than using pressed poo. :) I kept the same conversion rate of the Waste Compressor. Let me know what you think.

lordcirth commented 7 years ago

"Ore Smelter" sounds awfully vague. Also what metal is this shielding? Kerbalism processes usually include comments specifying what chemical reaction the process is balanced based on.

basilicofresco commented 7 years ago

It was just a starting point. :) Heavy metals extraction? Iron extraction? Lead is not common, but iron concentration is actually pretty good in Mars/Moon/asteroids soils.

basilicofresco commented 7 years ago

@lordcirth Apparently iron is actually used in lead-free radiation shielding applications, is just less effective then lead. For example with gamma rays it requires more or less twice the thickness of a lead shielding. http://www.eichrom.com/PDF/gamma-ray-attenuation-white-paper-by-d.m.-rev-4.pdf

Do you like "Iron Extractor --> Process Ore to extract metal, for use in radiation shielding"? Does "Iron Smelter" sound better?

lordcirth commented 7 years ago

Cool, good to know. So, I just looked it up in the source: https://github.com/ShotgunNinja/Kerbalism/blob/master/GameData/Kerbalism/Profiles/Default.cfg#L348
And apparently Kerbalism assumes that Ore is Ilmenite, which contains iron and titanium! So all you need to do is calculate the masses to balance your input/output. Although, iron being heavier than lead per shielding might be a problem...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilmenite

basilicofresco commented 7 years ago

@lordcirth I was not aware that real molten regolith electrolysis actually produces metal at the cathode. It is very interesting... I guess that we can discard the smelter idea and just insert shielding as byproduct of MRE.

I will do the math and I will write something on the forum because we should rethink a bit the MRE.