Shoot for the sun!

[boolybooly]

Updated challenge.

After the arrival of Mun and since Kerbin + Mun now orbit Kerbol the challenge is now to orbit the sun outside the Kerbin+Mun system for at least one full orbit and reach a periapsis of one half of Kerbin\'s distance from its star Kerbol or less during that orbit. Then you have to get back to the planet and aim for the Kerbal Space Centre terrain as per the original challenge.

Thanks for reading and good luck...

Ladies and Gentleman after much conjecture on these fora regarding the possibility of reaching the sun I am able to inform you that it is indeed possible.

With the advent of beta 11x3 it became possible to compress time to 10,000x and using a stock parts ship travelling at approx 1096.9m/s after escaping Kerbal\'s gravity, it took Jeb and the boys 141 Kerbal days (fifteen minute real time) to pass the sun whereupon I was able to watch the ship pass it by.

Shortly after however disaster struck and the ship was lost with all hands due to a space dragon which attacked when I wasnt looking at some point after 15,000M and also locked up my PC requiring a reboot.

But you dont need to go this far to pass the sun as it is less than 14,000M away.

This is all the proof I have.

I know you cant tell from this if the ship is passing by close to the sun (as it was) or travelling 90° perpendicular to the direction of the sun and just very very far out from Kerbal. All I can say is I aimed for the sun and I am not hoaxing and you will have to check this out for yourselves because unless I am mistaken there is no screeny that will actually prove it.

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EDIT ok this wasnt very Kerbal (I was thinking of the golden age of sea exploration on planet Earth 18th - 19th centuries but this isnt Earth and its not the past and its not the sea) so I have changed it.

Missions.

The main challenge mission is to pass the sun (go as high as or higher than 13559M) and return to Kerbal to land as near to the KSC as you can.

If you do that you earned the tag of star pilot dude SPD. Also minimising ship size and reducing mission time adds cool factor. Props for exclusive use of stock parts.

• 
  [li]Anyone who can get out to the sun or thereabouts and return to Kerbin is undoubtedly a star pilot dude SPD.[/li]
  [li]Landing in launch pad terrain means you must be a pretty cool star spud CSS.[/li]
  [li]Making the outer ring of the launchpad means you are one slick star spud SSS.[/li]
  [li]Dropping into the center ring makes you are some kind of wiley star spud WSS.[/li]
  [li]Getting to land on the horizontal part of the launch platform earns you the title of unbelievable star spud USS.[/li]
  

Post your proof. [EDIT a screeny showing the craft at >13000M with the ship pointed at the center of the navball sky and the sun past the nose cone is good enough for a mention.]

Ticker Tape Parade. (Italicised script indicates v11 accomplishment).

Returning astronauts ride in the back of Bill Kerman\'s pickup truck.

Unbelievable Star Spud (Noone believes it ever happened, was filmed on a set in Kerbollywood.)

boolybooly (smallest v11 & v14 stock parts ship) (though I say it myself )

Wiley Star Spud (Got inside the launch pad bullseye central circle.)

Slick Star Spud (Got inside the launch pad bullseye outer circle.)

Cool Star Spud (Landed on Kerbal Space Center Terrain.)

One Winged Angel

Star Pilot Dudes. (Made it back to land on planet Kerbin.)

thorfinn (smallest v11 mod parts ship)

Salda007

nivvydaskrl

Ronox (fastest v11 non stock round trip)

comradephil

DeltaBravo

Spiz102

Omnivore

Arc

Bedazzled

bitbucket_

PackledHostage (fastest v14 round trip)

Lost in space.

Iskierka (should have added another booster)

Winston (pending payment of Kerbal Space Centre bar tab)

CarolRawley (missing, presumed lost, on account of having no engines)

DeadlyPear (aka 'the dragon magnet')(going out for a walk, may be some time)

Thirster (due back next century)

Jebediah Kerman (slightly singed)

Cannon_Fodder (going where the wild wind blows)

Killernooby (running out of crew)

Shedao (someone forgot to pack the parachute)

Zeroignite (far far away with no fuel)

Luigibro606 (well beyond the sun and no sign of slowing down)

ScruffyMcDuffy (skimped on the duct tape)

OtherDalfite (accidentally initiated cataclysmic event)

NovaSilisko (missed the burn for Kerbin, suspected satnav malfunction)

sagamore (space tourists didnt want to go home)

sneakeypete (snuck out but didn\'t sneak back)

Damonjay (lost by special request)

KnightWhoSaisNi (cooked to a crisp, baked to a cinder, this is an ex-Kerman)

Ignite A Light (a moon got in the way)

Wernher Von Braun (pressed the big red button marked 'dont press this big red button')

Flixxbeatz (double parked the space station on a star)

zarakon (did the timewarp again and got lost in space in 1976)

Raxael (whose ship was designed to spin out of control)

witekin (lost while breaking speed record for solar powered popcorn makers)

---

TLDR Go for 13559M altitude then land. Make one full orbit of the sun Kerbol, outside Kerbin+Mun, with a PE of half the altitude of Kerbin or less then land on Kerbin, aim for the launch pad as best you can.

some olde version 11 challenge related tips.

EDIT rewrite.

[Kryten]

That \'turning\' was almost certainly the usual effect from passing over one of the poles.

[Capt'n Skunky]

You do realize the Sun is not a physical object but a point light source on the skybox? i.e. you can\'t fly to or past it.

Arrr!

Capt\'n Skunky

[boolybooly]

Yes you can, I did it. You just cant go too far past.

lol - I promise this isn\'t a Rick Roll. I have just completed the entire mission.

I batch processed a few selected screenies showing the different stages of the last mission into the attached folder for anyone who is interested. Numbered in sequence fairly low res, 12 screenies total 412kb.

Also the ship which did it (for 11x3) , but you have to fly that sucker, as I minimised the SAS.

[Iskierka]

Interestingly enough, he\'s right.

I don\'t have images since this was just an experimental launch, but I made a vertical ascent towards the sun to test. It becomes perceptible around 2000M, but you can really tell between 10000 and 15000M that the sun is moving.

And yes, this is nothing to do with poles. My highest speed over land is 69.5 m/s, I have not been orbiting.

EDIT: This took 51 days with an escape speed of 3422 m/s. I saved three and a half tanks of fuel though, I\'m going to try approach and locate it precisely.

EDIT2: T+116 days, the Explorer I makes its closest pass to Kerbol, appearing to be within two hundred thousand km, and estimating its distance at 13,500,000 km. Simultaneously, the mission was declared lost, as it was found the remainder of the fuel in their tank was insufficient to deorbit after the deceleration burn required to pass so close. Contact was lost T+169:09:55:05, the craft at 14425M, 1029 m/s, departing at approximately +350 m/s from Kerbin surface

[boolybooly]

cool! 8)

[Kryten]

And yes, this is nothing to do with poles. My highest speed over land is 69.5 m/s, I have not been orbiting.

EDIT: This took 51 days

69.5m/s is 252 km/h-hardly a small amount. Over 51 days, thats 300,000km-certainly enough to induce some weirdness from pole-shifting.

[Iskierka]

Only if that had been my average. That value was likely attained at high altitude, where the distance required to go around Kerbin would be 44 million km (based on an end height of 14 million). 300,000 is not a lot of 44 million.

Regardless, pole-shifting would not have the same sort of visual oddity as something you are approaching.

[boolybooly]

Too bad about the lost mission Iskierka, I had to aerobrake for four orbits with PE 40,000m.

One of the screenies (007.jpg in fact) in the zip shows where I dropped out of warp at about 7600M because the PE was visible and using some back of envelope ready reckoning I adjusted ship vector using very short perpendicular burns at lowest setting so the PE figure was inside the atmosphere using very little fuel.

[boolybooly]

Thought I would upload the screenies after all. These are numbered in sequence.

001 Escaping Kerbal

002 Liquid booster separation

003 Solid booster burn for the sun

004 Passing the sun A

005 Passing the sun B

006 Zero velocity beyond the sun

007 Adjusting periapsis for return

008 Aerobraking approach to Kerbal from escape vector

009 Resultant elliptical orbit after aerobraking and short retro burn

010 Reentry after fourth aerobraking manoevure

011 Approaching space centre

012 Splashdown

As you can see in #012 there is a problem with a negative altitude record, probably a bug.

[Winston]

I found it to be around 14,000M too.

[thorfinn]

So, one Kerbal AU is 13.5 million Km?

Well, it\'s consistent with the scale factor... Great find! I didn\'t think to try this, nor would I have had the patience.

I should try while I can, when Kerbin will be in a true orbit the delta V required will become much greater

Damn, that ship is unflyable on my computer.

[boolybooly]

Good going Winston.

Thanks thorfinn, Jeb was driving ;D

Sorry about the ship, it does give my PC a hard time until after the first stages, but I can just about steer it with the fins as long as I don\'t let it get too far off center under 10k altitude.

The mission could be done with a smaller rocket with more fuel saving tricks like aerobraking and adjusting periapsis at apoapsis or at least a long way from periapsis. Small is beautiful. Might try next week.

[thorfinn]

I did it, with a smaller rocket, a bit more slowly (1,7 Earth years total... ??? ).

Closest approach was probably about 1.5 million km. I confirm that the radius of Kerbin\'s 'orbit' is about 13,5 million km.

Is this enough proof?

Click to enlarge

Will post an image/craft file of my trusty Ghibli 346LP very soon.

Mostly standard parts. It requires Wobbly Rockets for the upper stage engine (K2-X) and decouplers, and the G-Parts to make the small liquid boosters. The rest is vanilla.

I don\'t know if it was just luck or not, but I could see the periapsis marker on the map immediately after the return-home burn, and with the RCS i could trim it down to a few thousands of kilometers while I was still 15 Gm out. The last midcourse correction was done at about 1 million km, and set periapsis to 21,7 km (direct reentry). I used half a tank of RCS fuel in the whole trip.

[boolybooly]

Looks good to me thorfinn, welcome to the very select club of solar explorers !

Interesting looking ship too, much more economical than mine.

I noticed we have confirmation from HarvesteR for the doubters that Kerbol is now an object which can be visited.

EDIT fixed broken link, sorry!

Mass: 1.756567e+28

Radius: 6.54e+07m

Gravity at surface: 27.94G

Distance from Kerbin: Approx: 13,559,014,750m

[HAWK_180k]

So, one Kerbal AU is 13.5 million Km?

KU? In the mean time nice work all, I gotta stop practicing LKO maneuvers and start exploring the outer orbits

[texasyojimbo]

Wait a second, if Kerbol has mass, then shouldn\'t Kearth be falling towards it (or the baricenter?)?

I take it that 3-body physics haven\'t really been implemented yet?

[boolybooly]

it isn\'t counted as an active celestial body yet

Same post, sorry the link was broken, so I fixed it.

Sounds like it has only been recently added and will later have some serious gravity.

[thorfinn]

Sounds like it has only been recently added and will later have some serious gravity.

If the numbers quote by Harv are definitive, the Kerbal year will be 106 days and a few hours long, and the orbital speed of Kerbin will be about 9,3 km/s.

Which means that future solar probes will require about 14 km/s of delta-V, right now we have had it reeeeeally easy

[Spiz102]

Surely we could do a flyby with less than that? Simply by having a 1KU x 0.1KU eliptical orbit or somesuch?

Thats a huge amoutn of delta-v o.O

[Jarnis]

Surely we could do a flyby with less than that? Simply by having a 1KU x 0.1KU eliptical orbit or somesuch?

Thats a huge amoutn of delta-v o.O

No, it really takes a lot of delta-v. That\'s why in the real world, it is equally hard to send probes to Mercury as it is to outer solar system and most probes use multiple flybys of Earth for gravity assist to get there.

Of course since Kerbal doesn\'t orbit the sun, you can\'t do that in KSP. Yet. Once it does, you will need to kill a lot of delta-v, but you can also 'cheat' with gravity assists (assuming the simulation supports them). Expect Jeb to get bored tho, as such a trajectory would take many orbits around the sun - months, perhaps even years.

[boolybooly]

Jeepers, its going to get tricky, we could do with a moonbase making fuel for low G refuelling.

At the moment the sun of Kerbin is just a shiney bauble.

I am travelling to a point behind the sun as I write, hoping to get a screeney of the ship facing the sun with nav ball centered on the down side.

EDIT

That was close, it crashed just after this screeny.

82M from the sun

[DeadlyPear]

Day 1: We have successfully escaped Kerbin\'s gravity. Traveling around 3,400 meters a second.

Day 10: We made a mistake. When using our engines for extra speed (Jebidiah\'s idea) we have about a 1/3 of a tank of fuel left. We may never return home.

Day 23: Just passed the 4.5 billion meter mark on our mission to the sun. Food still in good supply. Moral still low.

Day 38: We have just passed the 7.5 billion meter mark. Food should last us about 100 more days. Moral returned to normal levels after Jebidiah played a few games with the other crew member.

Day 69(heh): We have passed the 13.55 billion meter mark. This means we have passed the sun, and it means the mission was a success. Now we must attempt to get back to Kerbin within about 80 days lest our food run out.

Day 69 (part 2): We have the thrusters at a low thrust as to conserve the small fuel left, we are slowly decelerating towards Kerbin. I hope we have the fuel left.

Day 70: No fuel. We are lost in space with no hope to ever return to Kerbin.We have come to an agreement to evacuate the Mk1 Pod of all air and kill ourselves as there is no hope. If there was help coming our food supply would not last. We have sent out a beacon for help and when the 'help' arrives to find the Mk1Pod (bodies or not) it will find this recorded journal, the last letters to our families telling them goodbye, and the Last will and testament for us three.

This is Bill Kerman, over and out.

EDIT: Day 100 and the vessel is at about 18.22 billion meters

EDIT: Day 150. This is the date where no Kerb thingy would be left alive. Vessel is at 26 billion meters

Ship I used is attached to this post.

[thorfinn]

Booly, a question for you. In your attempts, did you go to escape by flying directly upwards? Suddenly I realized that going to a low parking orbit and then burning to escape from there is more fuel efficient. Should have known that, but I was never interested in straight-up velocity contests so I never thought about it.

Flown this way, the same rocket I used previously cut the round trip time to a little less than a year. Aiming is quite tricky, for now I settled to going in an elliptical orbit and then finishing the acceleration when I was in the 'straight' section pointing to the Sun. (This is suboptimal). Trimmed a bit by eye with RCS on the outbound leg, final error a little more than 2 degrees (I flew half a million km to the side).

[CarolRawley]

Trollolol. This is fun!