From the launchpad to the Mun in 13 seconds

[Ninety-Three]

Is the RCS block there just to give the craft a mass, to avoid dividing by zero on launch?

Struts aren't "nearly" weightless, they are not physically significant. That means no mass, no drag, no getting burned by exhaust gases, etc.

It really is just decoration. In the early designs I had a few theories on it being helpful, but they fell through. I kept it around because I thought it looked nice. The ship launches the same if you use a much lighter solar panel, or no decoration at all.

F = ma tells me it's inheriting 0.0508 t from somewhere, and I'm not sure where. Current theories include a hardcoded amount of mass added to all ships, and "Weightlessness is glitching it hard, and the speed it spits out just happens to be very close to a nice round number", but that theory's a bit weak because I've observed that my maximum speed scales very linearly with decoupler count.

Edited July 12, 2013 by Ninety-Three

[Commander Zoom]

But Plaid isn't just shooting off into space.

Plaid has a destination.

And that's where I lost it.

I am this close to falling out of my chair with laughter.

Bravo.

Edited July 12, 2013 by Commander Zoom

[numerobis]

It really is just decoration. In the early designs I had a few theories on it being helpful, but they fell through. I kept it around because I thought it looked nice. The ship launches the same if you use a much lighter solar panel, or no decoration at all.

F = ma tells me it's inheriting 0.0508 t from somewhere, and I'm not sure where. Current theories include a hardcoded amount of mass added to all ships, and "Weightlessness is glitching it hard, and the speed it spits out just happens to be very close to a nice round number", but that theory's a bit weak because I've observed that my maximum speed scales very linearly with decoupler count.

0.05t is very close to the mass of an RCS block... But indeed, it wouldn't be too surprising if there were a minimum mass, just to avoid dividing by zero (or, just a check against dividing by zero that happened to end up with the result you see).

[Ninety-Three]

0.05t is very close to the mass of an RCS block...

Like I said, the ship launches the same regardless of which, if any decoration you use. The ten times lighter solar panel and nothing also yield 0.0508 t.

[Goldham]

now send it to Duna

[Kogut]

I read your explanation of how you have to hit escape...

But I downloaded your plaid.craft, and when I hit launch, I get that lag spike, and then suddenly, it just explodes. on the launch pad.

Advice?

[justchad]

I read your explanation of how you have to hit escape...

But I downloaded your plaid.craft, and when I hit launch, I get that lag spike, and then suddenly, it just explodes. on the launch pad.

Advice?

after you send it to launch pad walk away and come back in 10 mins, give it time to load 100%

[Stelith61]

Have you tried pointing it at anything else? Like, Jool? Duna? Moho? The sun?

I'm sure hitting the sun at large fractions of c would be great for important science things.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Stelith61

[Specula]

Have you tried pointing it at anything else? Like, Jool? Duna? Moho? The sun?

I'm sure hitting the sun at large fractions of c would be great for important science things.

It would, but being able to do this manually is extremely difficult. It flies in a purely straight line and it's trajectory can only be changed by impacts or the gravity well of a black hole. Actually perfectly lining up to hit something by predicting it's orbit and launching when Kerbin is facing the exact right direction is going to be very, very hard.

[Trobby888]

Press space, and then immediately (during the three second, 1 frame lag spike) press escape. After the decoupler lag abates, you should end up looking at Plaid 1 frame above Kerbin with the game paused. Unpause and follow it out. For a few moments, KSP may refuse to show accurate numbers, but it'll get there quickly. Also, you may have to try the launch a second time, every now and then in testing Plaid would experience some problem and not exhibit the behaviour I documented here.

I tried that just now.. But it makes virtually no difference to what I would've got without pausing the game. All pausing does stops me at the screen where I see some sort of explosion. After that, it's just the same old accelerate 100ms-2 as of what I said in my earlier post. Tried this multiple times and still the same results.

I also tried to wait for some time in my last attempt. But the velocity seems to be just doing that accelerate 100ms-2 forever. It's gone past 1 million and is still going at the moment...

Edited July 13, 2013 by Trobby888

[Ninety-Three]

By popular request, I've taken Plaid on a new journey.

Yeah, we're going into the sun.

Hurray!

[Ninety-Three]

To the people having trouble launching Plaid, it occasionally fails to launch correctly when I run it. There doesn't seem to be any technique, the game just isn't too fond of sixty million Gs, I suggest simply giving it another try, it works more often than not (though a warning, decoupler stacking is not fond of the "Restart Flight" button, so you should go back to the Space Center first).

I will mention that pressing escape isn't a necessary part of the launch, it just helps you get the re-entry screenshots.

[bigyihsuan]

I am laughing my butt off right now, any more stack separators and you'll get to Jool within a few minutes!

[KSK]

0.05t is very close to the mass of an RCS block... But indeed, it wouldn't be too surprising if there were a minimum mass, just to avoid dividing by zero (or, just a check against dividing by zero that happened to end up with the result you see).

RCS block plus relativistic mass increase?

[Werwolf]

This is incredible...

mind = blown.

[Mahmoud Kermadinejad]

Plaid needs to become the name of the next planet added. It just has to be that way, it's the least we could do for this amazing piece of "UP YOURS, PHYSICS" technology.

[Stun_gravy]

Expanding on your technique I figured out how to launch kerbals into space too. I'm planning on explaining in a YouTube video soon.

In case you cant read that, that is 6,130,561.6 meters per second, or approximately 2% the speed of light. Our speed is really only limited by our computer's ability to process a ridiculous amount of decouplers.

I'm trying to figure out something cool to do though, launching kerbals and struts into deep space is fine and all, but I feel like I need some crazy goal besides speed alone. There are a few ways I can influence exactly where the kerbal is launched. Just sending kerbals to their speedy doom on celestial bodies seems mean spirited though. Any ideas?

[Lazro]

This is all getting a little jules-verne-esque, don't you think?

[iDan122]

My jaw is literally on the floor.

[allmappedout]

You could always try flying this somewhere with a launch vehicle and using it as a return vehicle, Eve being the obvious candidate..

[Tassyr]

I... wha... ow...

This hurts my brain. I just. Huh. Physics is somewhere in a corner, curled into a ball, rocking and weeping.

... imagine if we had player-made craters. I bet you could crack a planet with this thing. If you could aim.

[vetrox]

Is there a minimum amount of decouplers. I.E do you have to use 300 to smash into the mun in 13seconds.

Could you use 150 and do it in a minute?

[DMagic]

I wonder if there is an upper limit to how effective this can be. I think we might need a 1000 decoupler mission.

[Tassyr]

I wonder if there is an upper limit to how effective this can be. I think we might need a 1000 decoupler mission.

Now THAT'S Kerbal thinking! Tell us if it works!

[Ninety-Three]

Is there a minimum amount of decouplers. I.E do you have to use 300 to smash into the mun in 13seconds.

Could you use 150 and do it in a minute?

I wonder if there is an upper limit to how effective this can be. I think we might need a 1000 decoupler mission.

Plaid goes so fast that it blows through Kerbin's atmosphere in a single frame. At this point, changing the decoupler count produces a corresponding linear change in speed. The only thing stopping you from exceeding the speed of light is your computer's ability to render the decouplers.

... imagine if we had player-made craters. I bet you could crack a planet with this thing. If you could aim.

Putting aside the physics of whether Plaid would burrow or explode, it's not actually that bad. Theoretically Plaid should be massless, but F = ma gives us 0.00508 t. I have no idea where that comes from, as it's not strut count or the RCS flair block. Using this mass, Plaid impacts the Mun with 1.86 * 10^12 J of kinetic energy, or 450 tons of TNT.

That said, you can

(say, to Duna), which will have significantly more mass.