Cold Starting

Cold Starting is a term used to refer to the act of using the Fuel cell or Battery to heat up the Reactor so that it may be able to start reactions to produce energy. The steps to cold starting in the software are below.

The ORBIT Engineering software gives the option to cold start or hot start at run-time where the hot start option puts the software in the state it would be in after a successful cold start.

Cold Start Procedures

1. Open the Engineering Software
2. Type c to select cold start

Habitat

1. Turn on fuel cell injector
2. Open up secondary bus
3. Connect fuel cell to bus
4. Connect containment to bus
5. Charge containment to 2000As
6. Disconnect containment from bus
7. Connect reactor heater (TEMP)
8. Let the reactor heat up till the fuel cell temperature is 110 centigrade
9. Connect battery to bus (The battery will aid the fuel cell and let the fuel cell cool)
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 till reactor temperature is 80 centigrade (Glowing)
11. Turn on reactor injectors
12. Disconnect fuel cell and battery
13. Turn off fuel cell injector

AYSE

1. Connect battery to bus
2. Connect reactor heater (TEMP) to bus
3. Heat reactor to 80 centigrade (Glowing)
4. Turn on reactor injectors
5. Turn off battery

Cold Start Races

Shortly after the development of the Engineering Software, members began competing to see who could cold start the Habitat the most quickly. Strategies included running the Fuel Cell to dangerously high temperatures and charging the reactor containment to less than the nominal 2000As.

Through these competitions, many tricks to running engineering were discovered. For example, the Fuel Cell will radiate heat away much more quickly at higher Temperatures, in accordance with normal physics.