ELCTR MARK 714 TACHYON - laser sail for KSP 1.12.x
by ELCTRSPHR - v10.1
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A 2.825 m canister that deploys a rigid 2 km light sail 1.5 km ahead of
your ship. A laser fired from far behind you runs past the ship, lands on
the sail, and the sail tows you along on its tethers.

REQUIREMENTS
  - Module Manager
  - Waterfall 0.10.5 or newer (draws the laser beam)
  - TweakScale (optional)
  - Shabby + Resurfaced (recommended): physically based materials - real
    metal, smoothness and reflections on the mirror, canister and fittings.
    Without them the part uses KSP's stock shaders.
  - Mirror Shields (recommended, to keep your ship in the beam's shadow)

INSTALL
  Delete any older GameData/LaserSail folder, then copy this LaserSail
  folder into your KSP GameData folder. The part is in the Engines tab
  (search "tachyon" or "laser"). Career: Experimental Electrics.

STATS
  55,000 kN, the same in atmosphere and vacuum
  Isp = speed of light, never runs dry (it burns "Laser Light", a hidden
  resource the part makes itself, so the delta-v readout shows a huge number)
  6 degrees of gimbal

HOW TO FLY IT
  - Mount it on the FRONT of your ship with its top node. The sail deploys
    1.5 km ahead and pulls the ship.
  - Put reflective shields at the BACK of the ship, facing the laser. The
    beam stops on them and your ship rides in their shadow.
  - Deploy Sail / Retract Sail from the part menu or the Toggle Sail action
    group (works in the editor too). The deploy takes 20 s: the iris doors
    open, the seed pod glides 1.5 km out paying out the tethers, the dish
    blooms open, spins out and locks into its ring truss, then the beam
    fades in. Retract plays it backwards.
  - Show / Hide Laser Beam (part menu or action group): a real laser is
    invisible in vacuum, so you can switch the whole visual off. Thrust is
    not affected.
  - Deploy before you burn, and only in space: the sail has no collider but
    it has a LOT of drag.

THE HARDWARE
  - 4K textures: carbon-composite canister in a twill weave with panel
    seams and fasteners, brushed-alloy interface ring, gold foil, carbon-
    nanotube iris doors; a mirror mosaic of ~2,800 plates; nanotube backing
    with its titanium support lattice and a gold thermal collar.
  - Every tether ends in a swaged socket and clevis, pinned to its own lug
    on a titanium confluence plate (the riser hangs from a swivel under it).
    At the rim each tether splits into a 5-line crow's foot off a yoke bar.

THE BEAM
  - A hollow column of laser red, white-hot at the walls, tapering back
    toward the transmitter. Brightness follows the throttle.
  - It lights the whole mirror evenly with drifting caustics, burns a ring
    of white fire just inside the rim, energises the ring truss, and the
    concave mirror throws faint reflected cones toward its focal point.
  - It stops on the first thing it meets on your ship, in that part's exact
    outline: a white-hot splash on its face and light scattering back off
    it. Its shadow falls on the mirror in the same shape.
  - It fits itself to any ship (Plugins/LaserSail.dll). Once the sail is out
    it measures what the beam hits and keeps the strike and shadow matched
    as you dock, undock, stage or change shape. The part menu ("Tachyon
    laser beam") shows what the beam stops on and the shadow size.
  - Want to tweak the look? Waterfall's in-game effect editor works on it
    (module "tachyonBeam"); the settings are in Patches/LaserSail_Waterfall.cfg.

TIPS
  55,000 kN is a lot of force. Use autostruts / rigid attachment, or the
  unbreakable joints cheat, if your ship comes apart.

FILES
  Parts/MK714/                      the part, model, textures, beam models
  Plugins/LaserSail.dll             fits the beam to your ship
  Patches/LaserSail_Waterfall.cfg   the Waterfall beam
  Patches/LaserSail_Shabby.cfg      physically based materials (Shabby + Resurfaced)
  Patches/LaserSail_TweakScale.cfg  TweakScale support
  Resources/LaserLight.cfg          the part's internal resource
  Source/ (in the download)         source code for LaserSail.dll
