Going to Plaid! The extremely hot challenge

[problemecium]

This challenge is simple: The high score goes to he or she who produces the highest temperature on a part.

Participants must use the default thermal settings, save for checking "Ignore max temperature" in the Debug Toolbar's Cheats menu. Use any combination of high speed, engine exhaust, and even explosions to attempt to heat a single stock part to the highest temperature you can - let's see if we can make something glow blue!

Specific rules:

Cheats are allowed, including infinite fuel and of course the option of showing thermal properties in the right-click menus. This also includes thermal debug colors, but it will be less awesome if you don't make things glow out of sheer hotness

Any mods are allowed, as long as the following are true:

- the part being heated is a stock part

- any part used to heat that part, e.g. an engine, is a stock engine and the mod does not change its exhaust temperature

- the mod cannot change the atmosphere's thermal properties, so until I hear proof that it's kosher, I'm disallowing FAR and NEAR.

- you acknowledge that simply using HyperEdit to re-enter an atmosphere at ludicrous speed is a cop-out and will receive fewer awesomeness points.

This challenge can be attempted anywhere in the game except near Kerbol - for the time being I'm denoting this as any closer to Kerbol than Moho's periapsis and not in Moho's SOI.

You may use HyperEdit to put the ship in orbit, but your orbit before "going manual" must not be hyperbolic and must have a Periapsis outside the atmosphere of whichever planet you're orbiting.

The stat I'm using to score temperatures is the "Temperature", not the "Temp Ext" or any other measurements, so don't bother using physics-less parts as they don't appear to have their own temperature.

Proof of concept (not that it's hard to grasp):

My score: 2761.7. This should be pretty easy to beat

Leaderboard:

Serassa: 32976.2

TrainEngie: 27447.3

Teutooni: 16131.1

Smjjames: 15877.5

Norpo: 8985.3

sam.johnson841: 7234.8

Mad Rocket Scientist: 6659.8

Edited May 12, 2015 by parameciumkid
leaderboard

[MatterBeam]

How do you get the temperature display?

[oriramikad]

To Jool we go!!!!! If the Kraken doesn't kill us, anyway . . .

[Norpo]

Alright. I chose a currently firing NERVA engine as my target:

Decided to go with a similar "crapton of engines pointed towards it" strategy.

Peaked around 8985.3, when I took the picture.

EDIT: I just had an idea, brb sending part to Kerbol's surface

EDIT 2: Eh, couldn't get above 7k there anyways.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Norpo

[smjjames]

Alright. I chose a currently firing NERVA engine as my target:

Decided to go with a similar "crapton of engines pointed towards it" strategy.

http://i.imgur.com/Ncr2AFE.jpg

Peaked around 8985.3, when I took the picture.

EDIT: I just had an idea, brb sending part to Kerbol's surface

He says in the OP that anywhere closer than Moho's orbit (or periapsis anyway) is disqualified.

This challenge sounds pretty cool though, I have a few ideas myself which don't involve ramming into the sun.

Edit: Would powering my way to ludicrous speeds all the way through an atmosphere be admissible?

Edit2: Is it okay if I test multiple parts?

Edited April 28, 2015 by smjjames

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Edited April 29, 2015 by Mad Rocket Scientist

[problemecium]

Krakenfour: Alt+f12 for the Debug Toolbar -> Physics tab -> Thermal subtab -> "Show thermal info in context menus" or whatever it says along those lines.

Smjjames: Yes, you can heat the part solely through re-entry heating. You can heat up as many parts as you like, but only the hottest one will count for your highscore.

[smjjames]

Krakenfour: Alt+f12 for the Debug Toolbar -> Physics tab -> Thermal subtab -> "Show thermal info in context menus" or whatever it says along those lines.

Smjjames: Yes, you can heat the part solely through re-entry heating. You can heat up as many parts as you like, but only the hottest one will count for your highscore.

Well yeah, the hottest one will count, I have a suspicion which one will be the hottest though. I brought several parts so that multiple flights to Jool aren't neccesary.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

- you acknowledge that simply using HyperEdit to re-enter an atmosphere at ludicrous speed is a cop-out and will receive fewer awesomeness points.

Am I allowed to HyperEdit a craft into orbit and then manually go into a reentry trajectory instead?

[smjjames]

This one actually IS at ludicrous speeds, 150km/s, except that I didn't use hyperedit, I actually thrusted up to that speed. So, it's probably kind of iffy. I'll do one at saner speeds, lol

It collides so fast that head on only lasts a few seconds and I think the heating even glitched out, this is the second one going sideways, lasted slightly longer, this is just before it completely gets krakenified.

After krakenification, you can see the temps glitching out on two of them.

Okay, heres my entry if the above is considered invalid (not to mention incredible speeds). Personally, I'm kind of iffy on those above two being valid due to the extreme speeds.

It peaked just as the aerodynamics were overpowering my SAS, probably would have gotten higher temps if that didn't happen.

Edited April 29, 2015 by smjjames

[problemecium]

Commissioner Tadpole: Yes, this is fine. Your orbit before "going manual" must not be hyperbolic and must have a Periapsis outside the atmosphere (this has now been added to the rules).

Smjjames: Wow, you just obliterated the current record! And here I thought I'd accomplished something when I retried the challenge and broke 9000 degrees.

[wossname]

I keep seeing this word "plaid" everywhere. What does it mean in the context of KSP?

[kahlzun]

plaid is a reference to the movie Spaceballs. I'll try to find a link.

(start from about 1:20)

Edited May 2, 2015 by kahlzun

[wossname]

Sorry I asked.

[John FX]

You may wish to know about a serious bug where if you have your thermometers on and multiple parts overheat they cause a massive memory leak that crashes your game.

F10 is your friend in this case.

[MissStabby]

Someone make a vehicle that does a crazy fast reentry and then having 8 engines pointed to a part in the middle, so you get burns + reentry heat

[Teutooni]

Ok here's one. Pure engines on the launchpad (104 of them). Temperature 16131.1 K. If I add any more engines I think my CPU will melt.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I was thinking of going to kerbol for this, but decided to see how far pure engines can go for temperature. Does kerbol have an atmosphere (presumably not) and do parts start to heat up near it? Either way I doubt the thermal flux is enough anywhere to take the temperature much higher. One thing someone might want to try is SRBs if they produce more heat.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Teutooni

[problemecium]

^ Nice. So far you're just barely in first place!

Don't bother going to Kerbol, because as mentioned in the opening post it's against the rules, since it's the SUN and all.

[MatterBeam]

I got my satellite to 1600 degrees just by flying past Kerbol at about 1-2 million km.

Kerbol does have an atmosphere. You'll overheat before you get there.

[TrainEngie]

When Scott Manley applied Seperatrons to a FAR craft, the craft burned an aircraft carrier.

Challenge accepted! Gas tank is on fiya!!!, lalala...

[sam.johnson841]

Using just a TON of mainsails I got this:

In the VAB

All systems are a go!

Highest heat (7234.8, i did go a few hundred higher but because of engines flying about, it was difficult to get the screen shot at the correct time)

- Sam

[problemecium]

Wow, we just keep getting hotter and hotter! 27000 degrees is not only several times the temperature of the Sun but around that of some of the hottest stars known to mankind (Type O blue stars). I never would have expected sepratrons to generate more exhaust heat than the bigger engines. o.O

[Tw1]

Wow, we just keep getting hotter and hotter! 27000 degrees is not only several times the temperature of the Sun but around that of some of the hottest stars known to mankind (Type O blue stars). I never would have expected sepratrons to generate more exhaust heat than the bigger engines. o.O

I'm not surprised. A few lightly inwards facing separatrons can shread your core stage, if you use them to separate large boosters.

[Serassa]

Wow, we just keep getting hotter and hotter! 27000 degrees is not only several times the temperature of the Sun but around that of some of the hottest stars known to mankind (Type O blue stars). I never would have expected sepratrons to generate more exhaust heat than the bigger engines. o.O

They don't generate more, they're just smaller so you can stack more. This challenge is over because a stacking method has been found. People can just keep stacking more until their PC crash, in the end the one with the best PC will win, like so many other challenges here.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Serassa

[problemecium]

Welp, you may have a point. I'm leaving the challenge open anyway though just to see how far people will be willing to go. If necessary I may split the leaderboard up into "Sepratrons" and "No Sepratrons" categories.