Closest you have gotten to the Sun

[MythicalHeFF]

I can’t exactly remember the closest I ever got, but I believe it was around 300,000 km. 

However, in the New Horizons planet pack, as far as I can tell the sun’s luminosity is greatly increased in order to keep solar panel output the same at Kerbin, which orbits a gas giant Sonnah that is much farther from the sun than Kerbin normally is, almost 3x farther. 

This means that it would normally receive 16x less sunlight than normal (if it were exactly 3x farther with the stock sun) and solar panels would be highly ineffective. 

I also noticed this effect through the increased solar heating when I sent a ship to Arin, another planet added by the mod. It got so hot my Kerbals had problems staying on EVA for more than a few minutes without risking death by overheating. 

When I finally sent a probe to Ernus, the hottest and closest planet to the sun in NH, I built it as if it was doing a mission to get as close to the sun as possible, (with massive radiators, a service bay to try and protect the fragile science equipment, and a sun/heat shield) ,despite Ernus being around 800,000 km away from Kerbol. But with the increased luminosity the heat levels were akin to being only 270,000 km or so from Kerbol. So, technically Ernus is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the sun if you’re talking about how severe the heating was.

Highly recommend the New Horizons mod, I have gotten a lot of fun and challenging gameplay out of it and it gives the game a whole new experience. 

 

Edited August 21, 2018 by Jack Joseph Kerman

[KerbolExplorer]

13 599 840 256 m

Spoiler

Thats how far kerbin is from the sun

kerbol so

[GRS]

Necropost

Arkanus, a self made Sungrazer, and i actually return from it safely

Something like 500 000 Kilometers

Edited September 22, 2019 by GRS

[Space Nerd]

Probably close to 9832684544 m

Spoiler

The semi major axis of eve(I have been to gilly)

 

[RealKerbal3x]

I hit it once, so I'd say that's pretty close.

[TheKSPBeginner]

Highly elliptical Eve orbit.

[ExtremeSquared]

We've all seen the bugs where ships end up traveling multiple times speed of light and end up causing a cascade of further bugs. But you can actually do this with a normal mission that skims the sun. Build an ion probe with 20 km/s deltaV and good heat tolerance with side-facing heat shields, send it on a jool -- low solar orbit trajectory, and then burn all remaining deltaV at the low solar periapsis. It will be on a severe hyperbolic trajectory. It won't take that long in game for the "altitude" of that ship to start causing bugs when you switch to it and return to KSC.

Edited September 22, 2019 by ExtremeSquared

[Davi SDF]

4 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:

We've all seen the bugs where ships end up traveling multiple times speed of light and end up causing a cascade of further bugs. But you can actually do this with a normal mission that skims the sun. Build an ion probe with 20 km/s deltaV and good heat tolerance with side-facing heat shields, send it on a jool -- low solar orbit trajectory, and then burn all remaining deltaV at the low solar periapsis. It will be on a severe hyperbolic trajectory. It won't take that long in game for the "altitude" of that ship to start causing bugs when you switch to it and return to KSC.

So that's how KSP2 interstellar travelling will work! 

[ExtremeSquared]

Using a very low altitude solar slingshot and ion engines, this contraption is still going 48 km/s at 56 billion km in my career save. This equals a bit over 4000 AU. Solar light takes 24 days to reach it. Zero glitches used. Some value is so large that it mucks up the game if you switch to it and return to KSC:

Edited September 24, 2019 by ExtremeSquared
Bad lightspeed math.

[LitteXMan808]

1 billion meters with 0.1 gravity and infininte fuel

[LitteXMan808]

On 9/22/2019 at 11:19 AM, Davi SDF said:

So that's how KSP2 interstellar travelling will work! 

Lol I guess

[TheOrios]

i win (i landed on the star, somehow (the planet pack is ahoom)

[magnemoe]

Did some tests with this couple of months ago.  Was able to get within 90.000 km  form the sun with this design. Radiators are all well inside the shield and not overheating but the shield is close to burning up. 

Staging is to drop extra radiators and land the instrument module back at Kerbin who  I did. 
Note that time warp make high heat either easier at 5-100  but much harder at higher

[yoarebignoob]

600, i hit the death zone

[Eclipse 32]

i crasheded into it. repeatedly.