..Hit the sun?

[eppiox]

Howdy, long time player of making rockets that can get quite far out.. but not great at aiming for things.

My attempts to hit the sun always fail in that once I leave Earths area of influence I normally have enough fuel but can never get the angle right... run out of fuel and orbit the sun.

Actually this is my problem all the time- I don't know in comparison to the map view what direction I am facing. This also causes me grief when aiming for the moon and such (but that is a little easier once I learnt how to orbit properly).

How does one work out these things? Or perhaps it is a marker on the ball that I have missed?

Thanks for any help.

[Cykyrios]

You can know which way you're facing using the prograde and retrograde indicators on the Navball (and knowing that celestial bodies move counter-clockwise).

To hit Kerbol (as it has no physical surface yet, you'll just explode at some point), you should try going faster than Kerbin: this will put you in a higher orbit, from where you can slow down very effectively (if your apoapsis is high enough).

Beware of the Kraken!

[Vanamonde]

I had a lot of trouble with disorientation when I was learning the game, too. Some things that helped me:

1. The navball always is using one of the worlds as its origin point. If you point the little -v- indicator at the yellow dot in the middle of the brown half of the navball, you will be looking straight "down" relative to that world, and your ship will be pointing directly at it. Note that when you transition to another world's gravity-simulating sphere of influence, the navball will jump suddenly because it's now using the new world as its origin point, even if your ship has not actually changed heading.

2. Similarly, you can point the navball -v- marker at the prograde indicator. Then you know that when you switch to map view, your ship is pointing directly along the pale blue projected trajectory curve.

Either way, once you know which line in space you are facing, you can switch back and forth from the live view to the map screen, and just roll the ship until the other two spacial axes line up with the map view. Then, fly the same direction in space as on the map view. Once you get used to that, you can line up on the sun, or a part of the background nebula, or a constellation, etc., whatever is easiest.

It also used to help me to put some little piece just above the door* of the crew cabin of the rocket, like the small hardpoint here:

because then I could tell at a glance that this direction was "up" for the navball.

*On the new 3-man capsule, it should go on the side with the windows, between them.

[sneezedr424]

Yes, you need buttloads of fuel to go inside the sun. I used the TARDIS mod from kerbalspaceprogram.net because it has unlimited fuel. You blast off, and dont stop going. Keep burning. look at your map. if you burn long enough, you'll start following this random green line. turn off your engine, and coast all the way past that line. If you dont use time warp, then it's gonna be a while. You'll pass that line, drift for a bit, then POOF! You're orbiting the sun. Then all you have to do is burn retrograde untill your orbit is small and thin enough that it goes through the sun.

WARNING: If you use any rocket (I may be wrong) other than the TARDIS, your ship will explode because physics engine goes against u. If you use the TARDIS, your time warp becomes disabled until you exit the sun. It's horribly boring, and I suggest you leave it alone untill it get away from the sun. Good luck!!

[maltesh]

You need significant amounts of fuel, but if flown right, you can do it for a lot less fuel than one might think. As alluded to upthread, a bi-elliptic sundive can cut the delta-V needed to attempt a sundive from a starting point in LKO by more than half, at the cost of spending a /lot/ more time doing it. The mission in the video below took over 1200 days to fly.

Things I'd do if I were flying that mission today, instead of several months ago.

-- I'd pick my starting point for the burn better. Ideally, what you want to do is to aim your departure direction along the direction of travel of Kerbin if you want to push your apoapsis further out from Kerbol. I'd also not have done the wasteful attempt at trajectory correction when it became clear that I wasn't leaving on the line I'd hoped.

-- I'd do all my burning for the distant apoapsis in LKO, to take advantage of the Oberth effect. In v.0.12, there were no patche3d conics, so I had to estimate how far an apoapsis I'd get

-- I'd have run most of the mission at 100k time instead of 10k time, which was the highest option then. Took nearly four hours to complete back then.

-- I'd have hit Kerbol at an altitude of about 4500 km instead of falling through it and being ejected at ludicrous velocities.

[sneezedr424]

Well congratulations! You did exactly what I thought was impossible... so basicly appiox.... you can either go his way, or my way. Good luck! Please reply here and show is what you did.