Most powerful rocket to Kerbol escape (To colonise a new star system)

[SunJumper]

In the interest of colonising Kla Kentauri, Kerbal Space Program wants you to design a spacecraft that can get a payload into Kerbol escape, and have enough fuel to stay in orbit. Rules:

1) No mods (NovaPunch pack is allowed)

2) You may burn directly into Kerbol escape within Kerbin\'s SOI. This actually is more fuel efficient than simply escaping Kerbin THEN escaping Kerbol

3) No sundiving (Minimum altitude 4,000,000,000m)

4) You need not aim for any particular star

5) You must have an ASAS directly under the command module (To simulate a sort-of service module)

6) Parachutes! Even though you won\'t use them in the next few years!

7) Final speed doesn\'t matter; you may be on a perfectly parabolic trajectory, and your score will not differ from the player that leaves at 20km/s.

8) You will be scored on the potency of the escaping craft. To test this, get your craft pointing as close to prograde as possible, and burn all the non-RCS fuel in that direction. Your score is your change in speed. Do this after you reach periapsis.

9) You may only manually mod parts to have the SAME characteristics as a stock engine; if you happen to use the Demo.

My score: 6040m/s (Use 3 sig. figures). I used the NovaPunch pack; stock attempts will be separate.

Note: Suggested escape velocity within Kerbin\'s SOI is 4.2km/s.

My results with all-stock:

Beyond Infinity I on the Launchpad

Bottom part of Beyond Infinity I

Beyond Infinity I after Kerbol escape

Beyond Infinity I after finding out the power left...

Crashing, because it\'s fun 8)

This gives me a stock score of... 2440 (miscalculation).

I retried this with a different design. The middle rocket is one stack of four, and uses the high thrust engine. The outer six are now eight, and beyond those is another eight stacks of four. Other than that, no difference. I got a score of roughly 4260. I am trying this again, and I know I didn\'t beat my last score... This time Jeb, you\'re coming home... (But I\'ll treat him to a Lunar flyby )

For those of you using stock, aim to beat a score of 4260.

Leaderboard:

1) maltesh (7460)

2) SunJumper (4260)

[ggPeti]

How does sundiving help escaping in the first place?

[Fulbert]

How does sundiving help escaping in the first place?

Flying in the vicinity of a massive body such as a planet gives you a large speed boost, similar to a slingshot. The boost you get depends on how massive the body is and how close to its gravity center you fly.

Now, the Kerbol is immensely massive - in fact, it\'s the most massive body in the whole system, just like our Sun. Unlike the Sun, though, it cannot burn you to death (not yet at least) and it doesn\'t even have a geometrical body (again, yet), so you can exploit this by diving into it and flying ridiculously close to its gravity center for MASSIVE BOOST and no damage at all. Not quite fair.

[SunJumper]

Actually, flying directly to the exact centre of Kerbol causes your speed to increase to relatavistic speeds. I will mention however, that this tears spacecrafts apart. Anyway, it takes roughly 4km/s delta-v to escape Kerbol and Kerbin (at once), and over 9km/s to sundive.

[ggPeti]

I\'m pretty sure it has a surface, I crashed into it several times. It\'s just not visible.

[maltesh]

Actually, flying directly to the exact centre of Kerbol causes your speed to increase to relatavistic speeds. I will mention however, that this tears spacecrafts apart. Anyway, it takes roughly 4km/s delta-v to escape Kerbol and Kerbin (at once), and over 9km/s to sundive.

You can sundive at roughly 4.5 km/s if you do a bi-elliptic transfer instead of a Hohmann descent. It just takes much, much, much longer.

If it weren\'t for the Kraken, you could then scrape Kerbol\'s surface (in the paid version, Kerbol will kill you at closer than a few thousand km) for a powered gravitational slingshot and use the Oberth Effect to carry even more velocity off into the void.

[SunJumper]

Getting close to Kerbol and utilising the Oberth effect is allowed. In order to prevent the weirdness of Kerbol\'s insides from corrupting the challenge, you may not pass below four million kilometres.

[Phoenix Aerospace]

Says the one named sunjumper.

[gabyalufix]

Behold, the Vast Interstellar Colony of Armageddon-Readiness. AKA the V.I.C.A.R. Mk I!

Constructed to prepare for nuclear war, zombie plague, supernova, asteroid impact, or some combination of the four, this vessel is intended to carry a full complement of around 1000 Kerbins to another (hopefully less zombie infested, radioactive, asteroid-filled and/or exploded) solar system.

Caveat: I used my own mod pack as well as novapunch. I only used novapunch fuel tanks, but I did use my own decouplers, and I also used my own heavy engine, which is balanced to be equivalent to 7x vanilla engines strapped to a novapunch 7-coupler. I also used BACE, KOSMOS and Probodobodyne to build the payload, for purely decorative reasons.

The launch vehicle featured 19 x7 vanilla engines, each mounted beneath 2x novapunch tanks. A total of 133 damn engines burning all together. The outer rockets have fuel lines pointing inwards, so I drop tanks/engines as I go up, until I’m left with the last 7 in the kerbin escape launcher.

Once I’ve spent those tanks, there is a final pair of large 3-meter tanks and a final 7x vanilla engine to push me the rest of the way into solar system escape. I won’t bore you with my long explanation for what everything is for, but we’ll go over the basics.

The top of the colony ship has a large, 3-meter nuclear reactor, to provide power and heat in the cold vacuum of interstellar space. It also has a few RCS fuel tanks and a radio telescope array.

Beneath the nuke, I have a double-layered shielding wall, to protect the residents of the colony from the dangers of long term radiation exposure. It can also be pointed towards the sun during solar flares, in the early stages of the mission. Presuming they manage to get enough of a head start, it can also be used to protect against the radiation of the supernova, should one be forthcoming.

Then we have the habitation towers. 30x 2-meter habitation modules, each with room for 32 kerbins, each with a window of their very own. There are also 24 inflatable modules, some of which are used for work, and some for recreation. The 6 old-style command modules are used as break areas, where people can view the stars together. 6x multipurpose modules at the top of each tower contain each tower’s vital life support systems. Each tower has its own multiply-redundant life support system, to minimize the chance of catastrophic malfunction.

At the bottom of each tower, we see various miscellaneous modules. Two small shuttle craft will be used on the other side, to ferry workers to and from asteroids. A space telescope array can be used to study the new solar system. Two seperate docking nodes allow it to meet up with other spacecraft on the way out of the system, or even meet up and trade with other colony vessels. These colonies are very small, and only barely at the minimum viable population. They would maximize the chances of survival if they launched multiple independent VICARs.

[Imandreas]

Holy crap, have not seen one of your crafts in a while!

And holy crap, that thing is a MONSTER! (A good one)

[SunJumper]

Gabyalufix, that is an impressive rocket, but what is its total delta-v?

Edit: I am currently doing this stock...

[gabyalufix]

It only just barely reaches escape. JUUUST barely.

How do you calculate delta V, on a ship that is already most of its way out of the system? I don\'t think you can, not without either taking a screenshot of the velocity while still inside kerbin SoI or knowing the actual velocity vector.

[SunJumper]

Write down your velocity, point your ship prograde, fire until all your fuel runs out, write this new velocity. The difference between these velocities is your score

Edit: You may want to back up your persistence file first

[ggPeti]

That is completely false. This is not how you calculate delta-v. Stop spreading misinformation please.

[SunJumper]

It is the change in velocity that your craft can give that is how I\'m scoring this. Since most people would do this at Kerbin\'s height, the Oberth effect is usually minimal. More fuel does not equal more effectiveness.

[Pluto100]

Behold, the Vast Interstellar Colony of Armageddon-Readiness. AKA the V.I.C.A.R. Mk I!

Constructed to prepare for nuclear war, zombie plague, supernova, asteroid impact, or some combination of the four, this vessel is intended to carry a full complement of around 1000 Kerbins to another (hopefully less zombie infested, radioactive, asteroid-filled and/or exploded) solar system.

Caveat: I used my own mod pack as well as novapunch. I only used novapunch fuel tanks, but I did use my own decouplers, and I also used my own heavy engine, which is balanced to be equivalent to 7x vanilla engines strapped to a novapunch 7-coupler. I also used BACE, KOSMOS and Probodobodyne to build the payload, for purely decorative reasons.

The launch vehicle featured 19 x7 vanilla engines, each mounted beneath 2x novapunch tanks. A total of 133 damn engines burning all together. The outer rockets have fuel lines pointing inwards, so I drop tanks/engines as I go up, until I’m left with the last 7 in the kerbin escape launcher.

Once I’ve spent those tanks, there is a final pair of large 3-meter tanks and a final 7x vanilla engine to push me the rest of the way into solar system escape. I won’t bore you with my long explanation for what everything is for, but we’ll go over the basics.

The top of the colony ship has a large, 3-meter nuclear reactor, to provide power and heat in the cold vacuum of interstellar space. It also has a few RCS fuel tanks and a radio telescope array.

Beneath the nuke, I have a double-layered shielding wall, to protect the residents of the colony from the dangers of long term radiation exposure. It can also be pointed towards the sun during solar flares, in the early stages of the mission. Presuming they manage to get enough of a head start, it can also be used to protect against the radiation of the supernova, should one be forthcoming.

Then we have the habitation towers. 30x 2-meter habitation modules, each with room for 32 kerbins, each with a window of their very own. There are also 24 inflatable modules, some of which are used for work, and some for recreation. The 6 old-style command modules are used as break areas, where people can view the stars together. 6x multipurpose modules at the top of each tower contain each tower’s vital life support systems. Each tower has its own multiply-redundant life support system, to minimize the chance of catastrophic malfunction.

At the bottom of each tower, we see various miscellaneous modules. Two small shuttle craft will be used on the other side, to ferry workers to and from asteroids. A space telescope array can be used to study the new solar system. Two seperate docking nodes allow it to meet up with other spacecraft on the way out of the system, or even meet up and trade with other colony vessels. These colonies are very small, and only barely at the minimum viable population. They would maximize the chances of survival if they launched multiple independent VICARs.

That is just amazing! Good job!

[gabyalufix]

I\'m pretty sure that\'s not a valid measure of delta-V. You\'re not just dealing with the oberth effect, you\'re also dealing with the potential energy of your orbit.

I think a better measure would be your velocity at a specific altitude. But even that doesn\'t tell you how quickly you will leave the system, since for that you would need the direction vector as well (and a bunch of math, to boot).

For example, a velocity of 1000 m/s at 100,000m won\'t even keep you out of atmo. However, that same velocity at 100,000,000m will send you hurtling out of kerbin\'s SOI (iirc). So, for example, your ship might hit 4.2km/s at 100,000m, and still have less delta-V than another ship that only hits 3.8km/s, but at a much distance from kerbin.

Maybe a better metric would be something like: 'time taken to reach 50,000 million meters from Kerbol'. That\'ll give you a better idea of how much time it will take for your ship to reach it\'s interstellar destination.

[maltesh]

SunJumper is correct. It\'s a valid enough method of measuring the delta-V that your spacecraft\'s engines can produce on an escape course. To get more acurrate, you\'d have to have an accurate mass profile of your ship\'s remaining fuel and stages, and pull out the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation.

THe rules he provided are not \'Fastest spacecraft out of the Kertbol system.' They\'re 'Most delta-V left after setting up an escape trajectory from Kerbol.'

As a result, truth be told, the rules banning sundiving aren\'t actually neccessary. Your hyperbolic excess velocity can change depending on /how/ you spend the delta-V your ship is capable of, but the delta-V your ship is capable of remains the same.

Edit, at any rate. Submission.

Yanked out Sunspotter 4 and redesigned her a bit. Fully stock, now, double-layer Asparagus staging. Should have redesigned her more, unbalanced booster stacks result in a wicked spin that cost me a fair bit of delta-V under power.

We\'re parabolic here, so the escape trajectory\'s flickering in and out. Velocity. 13244.4 relative to Kerbol.

And with all fuel burned, we\'re at 20707.3 m/s relative to Kerbol.

Estimated delta-V, to 3 significant figures, 7460 m/s.

[hunter558]

Will there actually be other star systems in the future, or is this just an attempt to escape kerbols gravity for the fun of it?

[SunJumper]

Eventually yes, but for now, this endeavour is just for fun

[vexx32]

Hmm. All right... I may as well give this a go...

BRB.

[hunter558]

This is relatively easy to do, not much different than escaping the orbit of Kerbin or any other body, just gotta avoid the Kraken and your all good.