KSP and light speed

[Fearless Son]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Oh good, now all you have to do is to manage 30 times faster than that. 

Easiest way to do that is to paint it red:

[cantab]

2 hours ago, bewing said:

... aaaand those calculations are exactly why you don't use the engines to generate the speed. You have to use as many gravity slingshots as you can muster. Voyager is not zooming out of our system at super-high speeds because of an amazing set of engines.

It won't help. The theoretical maximum speed increase from a single gravity assist is twice the speed of the assisting body. A practical number of gravity assists won't get anywhere near what is required.

[Snark]

5 minutes ago, cantab said:

It won't help. The theoretical maximum speed increase from a single gravity assist is twice the speed of the assisting body. A practical number of gravity assists won't get anywhere near what is required.

A pity there aren't any convenient black holes orbiting in the Kerbin system.  An Oberth maneuver near one would be... effective.

[bewing]

1 hour ago, cantab said:

It won't help. The theoretical maximum speed increase from a single gravity assist is twice the speed of the assisting body. A practical number of gravity assists won't get anywhere near what is required.

It'll help a lot more than building a 10 quintillion ton rocket. Not to 1% of lightspeed, no. But an Eve, Duna, Jool, Kerbol full-powered sundive will probably get you way over 100 km/s. Maybe even add a Kerbin assist, and do the Jool assist twice.

Edited March 25, 2016 by bewing

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Forget the speed of light for a moment, has anyone noticed the speed of SOUND in this game?

Things explode 20 km away and you see the flash and hear the boom at the same time!  

 

Edited March 25, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[zarakon]

16 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Forget the speed of light for a moment, has anyone noticed the speed of SOUND in this game?

Things explode 20 km away and you see the flash and hear the boom at the same time!  

 

That's just your kerbals making sound effects with their mouths.  They've gotten pretty good at it

[cubinator]

19 hours ago, Snark said:

A pity there aren't any convenient black holes orbiting in the Kerbin system.  An Oberth maneuver near one would be... effective.

Or you could fly directly into it! If I understand correctly, you reach lightspeed when you reach the singularity. Of course, your ship would break from the tidal forces before you get there.

18 hours ago, bewing said:

10 quintillion ton rocket

You mean 17 nonillion tons 

[UmbralRaptor]

Short version:
There are no "legitimate" methods.

Long version:
0.01 c (just under 3000 km/s) is almost 73 times the effective exhaust velocity of the IX-6315 "Dawn" ion engine. This gets you a mass ratio of very roughly 4e31. Imagine a rocket with a fully fuelled mass of our sun (Sol, not Kerbol) and a dry mass of ~50 grams.

Kerbol-diving gets you closer, but with escape speed at the surface below 95 km/s, the Oberth effect runs out of oomph well beforehand. As noted upthread, you can can get hyperbolic excess speeds of 100+ km/s, but OP's question was for 30x that.

I see multiple flybys mentioned also. The actual number available is less than you think, and 100 km/s is a whopping 3% of what was asked. In more detail, let us consider a spacecraft that does a flyby at Kerbol's surface (Ve == 94672.01 m/s, distance from center == 261 600 000 m)

Situation	Speed at Kerbol periapsis (km/s)
Eve Apoapsis (9 832 684 544 m)	93.437
Kerbin Apoapsis (13 599 840 256 m)	93.774
Jool Apoapsis (72 212 238 387 m)	94.501
Infinite Apoapsis (Vinf == 0)	94.672
Vinf == 1 km/s	94.677
Vinf == 10 km/s	95.199
Vinf == 100 km/s	137.71
Vinf == 1000 km/s	1004.5
Vinf == 3000 km/s	3001.5

 

[bewing]

Depends on what you mean by "legitimate," as I said. There is an underwater crack in Kerbin's crust. If you go through it, you find out that Kerbin is hollow, with a Negative Gravioli generator in the center. As you fall towards it, you gain speed. Since the generator is very small, you gain a lot of speed, since the G forces increase with the square. In fact, you can get significantly over 1% lightspeed, before the Kraken gets you. So all you need is a submarine to fulfill the OP's specifications.

 

[The Optimist]

Take an OKTO, put a small aerodynamic cone on it, attach 16 sepratrons, turn on inf. fuel, win.

[FancyMouse]

On 3/24/2016 at 4:49 PM, Fearless Son said:

Easiest way to do that is to paint it red:

That just do 3 times, unfortunately.

[fourfa]

On 3/25/2016 at 8:24 AM, Snark said:

A pity there aren't any convenient black holes orbiting in the Kerbin system.  An Oberth maneuver near one would be... effective.

Interesting idea for a mod to spice up a OPM save?  Are black hole-like attributes possible in KSP?

[Snark]

Just now, fourfa said:

Interesting idea for a mod to spice up a OPM save?  Are black hole-like attributes possible in KSP?

You could certainly create a planet with a huge mass and a microscopically-tiny radius, but I expect that the game would have major physics problems if you got really close to it.

And you wouldn't get any of the other "black hole-like attributes" other than just having really strong gravity really close to a really small thing.

[fourfa]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

I expect that the game would have major physics problems if you got really close to it.

That sounds... entertaining

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

You could certainly create a planet with a huge mass and a microscopically-tiny radius, but I expect that the game would have major physics problems if you got really close to it.

And you wouldn't get any of the other "black hole-like attributes" other than just having really strong gravity really close to a really small thing.

Oh, you should see the first planet I made with Kopernicus...  It sucked those asteroids right in.

Imagine if it had N-Body physics...

[cubinator]

9 hours ago, Snark said:

You could certainly create a planet with a huge mass and a microscopically-tiny radius, but I expect that the game would have major physics problems if you got really close to it.

Having tried the Billiards Planet Pack, I can (somewhat) confirm this. The planets become invisible when you get close to them, and only reappear when you get inside their excruciatingly tiny spheres of influence. It doesn't calculate the flybys quite right in map view, but that's not physics. I haven't noticed any physics problems, but I'm sure if you made them much smaller some very interesting problems would arise.

Edited March 28, 2016 by cubinator

[FancyMouse]

And I suddenly remember - all those rocket equations become different when the speed reaches relativistic speed, right?

[fourfa]

KSP is classical physics, right?  I believe there is no simulation of relativistic effects.  Another interesting mod idea...