Is there something in the outer system?

[Trebuchet-Launch]

I decided to test a new heavy-lift booster by sending some Kerbanauts to the stars. After managing escape velocity, my projected orbit disappeared... but after I increased speed a bit more, I suddenly had a flickering on/off encounter with something. Because I have no clue where the heck it is, or what it is, I don\'t know how to firm up my course... or is it a bug, and I\'m chasing a phantom?

I hammered the heck out of the F1 key and managed two screencaptures of the flickering... whatever:

[Trebuchet-Launch]

Here\'s the other screenshot:

[Trebuchet-Launch]

I flew out further... if it\'s a bug, it\'s a consistent one! It also seems to be close to the plane of Kerbin\'s orbit.

[Crass]

It\'s just the Space Kraken, beware...

[Trebuchet-Launch]

Seems to just be the solar escape point. I don\'t think I\'ll wait that long...

[maltesh]

It\'s just what a hyperbolic course can look like when you\'re zoomed in a s close to one point of it as you are.

And technically, there shouldn\'t currently be a solar escape point; Kerbol isn\'t currently orbiting anything, so its SOI should have no exterior boundary. 68 years, 35 days... is very close to 2^31 secinds, implying that the time value given is merely the largest number that can be stored in a four-byte signed integer variable.

[luciencd]

There actually can be a kerbol escape speed, even if it is not orbiting anything.

If you go at a high enough speed the gravity will reduce your speed but as you are leaving that decrease in speed will not be enough to reduce it into an orbit.

[thorfinn]

As Maltesh said, it\'s a overflow in the patched conics code.

0x7FFFFFFF seconds = 68 years, 35 days, 3 hours, 14 minutes, 8 seconds

[boolybooly]

Mystery solved!

Another breakthrough for Kerbal cosmology.