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Journey past Kerbol's SOI


VlonaldKerman

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Link to thread that led up to this mission: 

 

Here is my experience going past Kerbol's SOI. For this mission, I put a mk 1 command pod on top of a small fuel tank on top of a mammoth engine and turned on infinite fuel. I then accellerated to 2755 km/s and timewarped for ~1 hour to the edge of Kerbol's SOI

 

NOTE: link to screenshots for this post (lmk if this works I haven't used it before):  https://imgur.com/a/scxHwDL

Okay, here we go...

At this moment, Jeb has been travelling for about 350 years, with current velocity 2755km/s. He is at the edge of Kerbol's SOI, though the altimeter reads as 0m, and the parts of his small vessel are starting to separate, but there don't seem to be any effects from this. The craft is able to hold prograde as long as the engines aren't on. It starts to freak out when the engines turn on- spinning uncontrollably until it rips itself apart. So engines are off for now. Not really losing any velocity so it's fine. [Images 1, 2]

Once the craft exits Kerbol's SOI, the orbital trajectory disappears for a brief moment. [Image 3] Then, it returns, and this time, there's also a line going retrograde- like I'm in an orbit, instead of an escape trajectory. Visible at the far retrograde end of my orbit line is what appears to be another star [Image 4]. It is the same symbol that Kerbol has when you zoom way out in map view before exiting it's SOI (and after???- hard to see with overlapping icons). I try to EVA Jebediah, but it won't let me no matter what.

At this point, I switched to the tracking station, where the craft is visible, and it says, "Exiting Kerbol SOI". I switch to the craft again. The craft begins rapidly spinning and flies apart- though it doesn't explode [Image 5]. Now, when I exit to map view, and back to the normal view, I can't see the craft anymore- all I see is a yellow star (probably Kerbol), far closer than any star actually is to me [Image 6]. I tried to reload a quicksave to before the glitch, but the game gets stuck on "loading active vessel."

 

Now, I've travelled back in time to before Jeb exited Kerbol's SOI, and I'm burning retrograde. I'm gonna turn around and go in the opposite direction- towards the new, second star icon. Tune in soon for "Jeb tries to travel to another star, passes out from 30g's of acceleration sustained for 350 years, and dies, part two."

 

Edit: not sure if the thing in image 4 is actually a star- it looks like the orbit lines of the planets around Kerbol when viewed from a distance- but it's very hard to tell. Definitely weird. 

Edited by VlonaldKerman
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24 minutes ago, VlonaldKerman said:

At this point, I switched to the tracking station, where the craft is visible, and it says, "Exiting Kerbol SOI".

Dakota said the F/O button on the tracking station doesnt do anything but was a spoiler. Maybe it means full orbit after you exit the SOI?

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I have some further research. Edge of Kerbol SOI appears to be at

3Jz9iDK.jpg

...plus the *relatively small in comparison* the distance I was at. And since a lightyear appears to be about 9 460 700 000 000 Kilometers rounding down, my guess is that Kerbol SOI is about 1 ly in radius.

But there's more.

That line that ends nowhere? I found the furthest distance where AP shows up.

qt7DmOb.png

Of course it may not be that accurate because I couldn't fine tune the throttle enough for it to show up for longer than a single frame, so the actual number could be even higher.

Anyway that's nearly 2 quintillion kilomteres. Which is, after calculation, about 180 thousand light years. We're talking galaxy size here. And not a small one.

Edited by The Aziz
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Update: after reversing and exiting Kerbol's SOI on the opposite side, I can't see the star icon anymore. I'll leave the game running for a while tomorrow and see if anything happens.

 

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Anyway that's nearly 2 quintillion kilomteres. Which is, after calculation, about 180 thousand light years. We're talking galaxy size here. And not a small one.

That's wild.

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4 minutes ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Update: after reversing and exiting Kerbol's SOI on the opposite side, I can't see the star icon anymore. I'll leave the game running for a while tomorrow and see if anything happens.

Did you retrograde after you saw the star icon and reloaded? Or was that when things became uncontrollable? In what direction did you burn originally?

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10 hours ago, The Aziz said:

That line that ends nowhere? I found the furthest distance where AP shows up.

qt7DmOb.png

The Periapsis and Apoapsis have the same time stamp. Maybe this is the maximum time limit?

Crazy distances though!

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12 hours ago, darthgently said:

Is that a star icon or one of those SOI entry/exit concentric ring things?

Definitely NOT SOI exit rings- I think it's either orbit lines being rendered for another star, or a graphical artifact of my orbital trajectory line being extended so far.

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I have more research!

I went a little bit faster, thanks to the wonder of ion engines - figured out that you can last much longer burning on timewarp the more dV you have on board. So I was able to sit comfortably at 10000x warp, which I kept bumping up to 100 000x (after which it started going back to 1, a lot of clicking involved, but each click gave me a significant bump in speed)

So I went as fast as 8671 km/s, before, surprisingly, I ran out of electricity, despite having infinite Ec turned on. So I could no longer accelerate.

sTsnnbJ.jpg

Yes my ship was in pieces but I also had no crash damage and all those settings turned on. So I kept going. And made few observations.

Bg8PU26.jpg

I left the SOI. And the altimeter tape stopped rolling at 9.46... which proves my previous theory of the radius being 1ly. But despite that, and the disappearance of trajectory line, the craft kept going outwards. But the navball markers were glitching all over the place. And I got a framerate drop, from stable 60fps to 20. Soon after the sunflare appeared back.

But I got there in less than 150 years. (The picture shows UT, but I launched that particular craft some years after Y1)

Edited by The Aziz
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