Face to Face with The Tyranny

[Archgeek]

21 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

a) it will still be more massive than Jool, so there will be *some* Oberth effect.

b) you're still saving a lot of mass in electric sources.

Also, you're coming in with a much lighter vehicle, so unless you dropped as much weight in engines as in fuel tanks, you'll have a better TWR.

Some, but possibly a lot less than Kerbol had.

...Maybe.  The ship I designed is set up to run its engines at full throttle out at Kerbin orbit.  However, depending on the strength of the target system's star, the sphere of insolation sufficient for running full throttle could potentially be annoyingly small.  The proffered ship would take around 18 hours to counter burn back down to as far as it can, and only 10 of those hours are at full power, you could wind up in Problem town. (and even with plenty of Oberth in play, the same fuel outlay will not slow you as much as it sped you up if the new star's not as heavy as the one you accelerated around, excepting dense things like neutron stars, where you can get real close).  I do so hope that enough energy to sail out to Kerbin's orbit around Kerbol isn't more than the amount needed to escape the target system.  That'd be inconvenient.  I probably should've mentioned that wrinkle to the OP when I blithely said you could just burn nearly half your fuel each way to get there fast.

Of course, the target star could be brighter, in which case I've just overbuilt a bit.

As luck would have it, the vehicle I'm using as an example would have around an hour from TWR .088 to .098, before promptly dropping to .033 and wandering up from there, having dropped that plate with 6 engines on it.  Though that is of course, at full throttle.