Maximum impact velocity

[thereaverofdarkness]

The challenge is simple: crash your rocket into the ground at as high a speed as you possibly can. You may use stock aerodynamic physics or FAR, but you must state which. You may try this challenge on Kerbin, Eve, or Duna, separate leaderboards for each variation of physics and planet. You may use any sort of stock engines and parts you want, but no mod engines, and no mod parts that assist your design in any way beyond being a structural element. You must crash your craft on surface within 500m of sea level (or under 1000 meters on Duna) to rate properly on the standard leaderboards. Really any entry is valid as long as you give the details of what you did and what you used, and a screenshot of the crash. I'll use the info to figure out what category to put your entry in.

For easiest entries, take a screenshot right after you hit. The final speed shows on the navball.

Bonus points for surviving craft parts, huge bonus if the majority of it survives intact or a Kerbal within the craft remains alive!

LEADERBOARD

Kerbin - Stock

1.) Laie - 4066 m/s - hit KSC outlying area after 8 year mission above sun

1.) Laie - 1514 m/s - used cockpit to reduce drag and discovered how to spare cockpit during impact

2.) Jolly Roger - 737 m/s

3.) totalitor - 605 m/s

4.) Imaginer1 - 382 m/s

5.) thereaverofdarkness - 368 m/s

6.) UpsilonAerospace - 346 m/s

Kerbin - FAR/stock parts

1.) Pds314 - 2505 m/s

Duna - Stock

1.) jackkymoon - 33,876 m/s (1245m impact) - skipped atmosphere

Jool - FAR/stock parts

1.) Pds314 - 41,649,103 m/s - skipped atmosphere

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skipped atmosphere means the craft reached such excessive speeds in vacuum that it was able to travel through the atmosphere with significantly lower drag than it is supposed to endure, due to the way drag calculation works.

Edited August 25, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[thereaverofdarkness]

my entry: http://i.imgur.com/Jk0pG6T.png

[ihtoit]

Terminal guidance via MechJeb to a drone target sitting on the runway. Direct hit under power, at 544m/s.

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*nothing of the missile survived. Stock drag physics. I don't think that's a stock SRB tho :\ it's sorta similar to the Rockomax big one (similar TWR I think) but bigger and with longer burn time.

Edited August 9, 2014 by ihtoit

[jlrdsr]

Ohhhhh, i like the look of this. Ill give it a go. Now, which of my 300+ twr missile designs to try? Mwaahahahahahaha

[thereaverofdarkness]

Terminal guidance via MechJeb to a drone target sitting on the runway. Direct hit under power, at 544m/s.

*nothing of the missile survived. Stock drag physics. I don't think that's a stock SRB tho :\ it's sorta similar to the Rockomax big one (similar TWR I think) but bigger and with longer burn time.

Not to be a spoil sport but you used a non-stock SRB. I believe it is one I've used before, and has reasonable stats, so I'd allow it but you also didn't capture your final velocity in an image so I don't see a way to verify it. You might have reached 544 m/s before you hit the ground and then slowed down. Like you can see in my image, the speed registers slightly above what I got for when I hit the ground. I should have showed a screenshot of the final speed, but the point is even below 400m/s I was rapidly decelerating when I came close to the ground. Edited August 9, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[cantab]

I was goofing around with fuelhack last night and decided to ram Jool at over 1000 km/s. The ship slowed down incredibly quickly, dropping to below 30 km/s in a mere couple of frames, and below 4 km/s in under 2 seconds. So picking up speed in space and impacting might not be very helpful.

FAR may make things different of course.

[hoioh]

Just slingshot around the sun and try to hit Duna, should get you up to a very nice 10K + velocity. (I can't do it myself, but I've seen people here that definitely can do this).

[thereaverofdarkness]

Marvin, that's amazing! Looks like you hit terrain with a pretty high altitude though. The air would have slowed you down a lot more if you had hit the low terrain under 1000m like it says in the challenge. I know it's difficult to aim at an exact part of the terrain, but it's important because it makes a huge difference to the impact velocity.

I put yours up on the leaderboard, but I'll defer first place to anyone else who gets a relatively good score on Duna on lower terrain.

[Commander Jebidiah]

On Duna the atmosphere is so thin it wouldn't have made a dent in his speed as he was travelling at 48km/s and duna's atmosphere starts at about 50km so that's about 1.000001 seconds between entering the atmosphere and hitting the ground even if he were to try and aerobrake into orbit with pe of 10 m he would only lose about 1000-2500 m/s of speed.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Commander Jebidiah

[thereaverofdarkness]

Yeah I guess Duna is a tough case with that thin atmosphere. Well I was really hoping for most of the entries to be on Kerbin. Laythe would be ideal too.

Hmm. ground impact on Kerbin..

It does not specify vertical..

that it does not =)

[Rainbowtrout]

Is infinite fuel allowed?

[thereaverofdarkness]

Is infinite fuel allowed?

I'll allow it if you're willing to be in a separate category. Shouldn't make much difference but it'll make a little.

[ihtoit]

Not to be a spoil sport but you used a non-stock SRB. I believe it is one I've used before, and has reasonable stats, so I'd allow it but you also didn't capture your final velocity in an image so I don't see a way to verify it. You might have reached 544 m/s before you hit the ground and then slowed down. Like you can see in my image, the speed registers slightly above what I got for when I hit the ground. I should have showed a screenshot of the final speed, but the point is even below 400m/s I was rapidly decelerating when I came close to the ground.

if you check the delta-V stats, you'll find I still had a lot of burning to do, and with a TWR of nearly 20 the thing wasn't about to slow down short a lithobraking event.

[GoSlash27]

I'll allow it if you're willing to be in a separate category. Shouldn't make much difference but it'll make a little.

Infinite fuel would make an incredible difference.

From 8:38 to 9:05. You could theoretically hit Kerbin at 15 times the speed of light!

[BagelRabbit]

I'll have a stab at this when I get back home. I can regularly hit the ground (completely unintentionally) at 900 m/s on Kerbin, using an infiniglider. I could probably get it up to 1300 or 1400 m/s, if I was careful and did a lot of trial runs. I'm pretty sure that if you're dealing with stock parts and no debug menu, infinigliders are the way to go.

Infinigliders can be ridiculously powerful and, quite frankly, obscenely terrifying. I'm thinking of using method three in this video: get to a good speed, turn on SAS, and... glory. It seems to maintain a relatively good amount of stability unless you travel at a ludicrous speed. Or unless you switch control to the lower infiniglider, in which case everything becomes terrifying. (Even more terrifying, I should say.)

Also, would you count the collision shortly after 1:10, at 345.9 m/s, for the time being? Does a VAB collision count?

[thereaverofdarkness]

It doesn't matter what you collide with, as long as it is rock solid and within the altitude requirements.

[Rainbowtrout]

Infinite fuel would make an incredible difference.

-snip-

From 8:38 to 9:05. You could theoretically hit Kerbin at 15 times the speed of light!

That was the plan, on a smaller scale. I could do it without infinite fuel though.

[Ziv]

Where is MarvinkitFox's entry?

[MarvinKitFox]

Where is MarvinkitFox's entry?

Deleted.

I'm cheating, after all.

[jackkymoon]

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Guess I should have used the rest of my xenon gas, oh well.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Deleted.

I'm cheating, after all.

You just landed a little high, I didn't see anything else wrong with yours. I'll keep it on the leaderboard. Jackkymoon gets first place though because of landing almost within 1000m.

I have to be a little flexible with Duna because there's so little ground below 1000m and when you go really fast it's hard to aim your landing.

P.S. I loosened the requirements in the original post, or rather re-worded it to reflect that I'll accept entries that might not fit in a given category and just put them somewhere else. I'm curious to see if a high-speed entry on Kerbin can maintain some of that velocity by the time it hits a mountaintop.

Edited August 13, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[MarvinKitFox]

You just landed a little high, I didn't see anything else wrong with yours. I'll keep it on the leaderboard. Jackkymoon gets first place though because of landing almost within 1000m.

So his 1245m is just *fine*, but my 1145m is cheating?

Yep. I can see where this is leading.

Please delete me from your leaderboard, i feel dirty for being there.

[thereaverofdarkness]

So his 1245m is just *fine*, but my 1145m is cheating?

Yep. I can see where this is leading.

Please delete me from your leaderboard, i feel dirty for being there.

There was nothing wrong with your submission, I just couldn't verify the altitude. It's probably pretty normal when you go at those speeds. I don't see why you feel dirty about it.

[Imaginer1]

When I make my entry I'm going to assume you have to bring your ship wherever it goes without hyperedit.

[Imaginer1]

I decided to not overthink this. The impactor is just a small fuel tank, an air intake, and a bunch of Separatrons.

I flew it upwards to about 10km and then pointed it straight back down again, activating the Separatrons at just the right moment. It took a couple tries to get the timing right (and if I was to keep trying I might be able to get a surplus of 400 m/s) but I settled for 381.7m/s.

The altitude is easily verifiable by the fact that I crashed on the Space Center.

100% stock, no mods, finite fuel, crashed at 70m above sea level.

Edited August 14, 2014 by Imaginer1