Shoot for the sun!

[Luigibro606]

W-H-A-T

Epic glitch or hidden secret from HavesteR?

[boolybooly]

It\'s very easy to overshoot the pad...

Don\'t I know it! I guess the ideal vertical lander would need ASAS and RCS which makes it heavy and shortens flight time. But first you need to slow it down because flying by the seat of the pants with a terrain based target is very tricky, I suppose you could gamble everything on a disposable chute connected by decoupler, use that to slow the ship right down on reentry and then you get half a minute to hover and use RCS to position the ship to land.

OtherDalfite, strange, is that reproduceable? What were the conditions? Worthy of a bug report if it is.

[OtherDalfite]

Don\'t I know it! I guess the ideal vertical lander would need ASAS and RCS which makes it heavy and shortens flight time. But first you need to slow it down because flying by the seat of the pants with a terrain based target is very tricky, I suppose you could gamble everything on a disposable chute connected by decoupler, use that to slow the ship right down on reentry and then you get half a minute to hover and use RCS to position the ship to land.

OtherDalfite, strange, is that reproduceable? What were the conditions? Worthy of a bug report if it is.

Well, I just wanted to put the theory that the sun can be moved over is possible to the test. So I modified an engine to have a thrust of 10000 and set off for the sun. I accidentally hit M and the sun was moving there to! I decided to go to Kerbin in Orbit map and it showed me this. I was somewhere around 60000 GM and was coasting at 15600 m/s at full time acceleration. Pretty crazy, I don\'t think it needs a bug fix. I mean, seriously, I was practically breaking the game.

[Spiz102]

Is the sun a solid object? ie. can we ram it and destroy ourselves by hitting it at the moment or will we just pass through and out the other side?

[OtherDalfite]

Is the sun a solid object? ie. can we ram it and destroy ourselves by hitting it at the moment or will we just pass through and out the other side?

[NovaSilisko]

Currently en route:

Closest approach:

Retroburn:

Completely emptied my fuel supply:

Final position:

So add me to the lost in space category, please.

Going to try again though.

[Spiz102]

Excellent, now to abuse the MMI Ion Engine to do a 25km/s flyby

[NovaSilisko]

Initial launch:

Almost there:

SHE CANNE TAKE MUCH MORE

This may take a while:

Mission still in progress. 316 days and counting.

[NovaSilisko]

Forgot about the ongoing mission...

[Zeroignite]

Well done.

What was the altitude after that time?

[boolybooly]

Good effort Nova, worthy of recording on the roll of lost missions.

Have another go

EDIT I am working on a vertical lander, I nearly had it too, but I fluffed it at the vital moment and with just seconds of fuel remaining I could not quite get the ******* thing to hover over the pad itself, think I had the ASAS angle slightly off center, so I only got another wiley landing in the middle ring. Still, I will try again another day. I was lucky to get that close first try.

The turnaround reentry ship is in the screeny. And the ship itself below 'Batman 1'

[NovaSilisko]

ATTEMPT NUMBER TWO THREE

Liftoff:

First stage burnout:

En route:

Slowing down a bit:

'What can you see out of the windows?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'And I don\'t think I\'ll be able to see anything ever again.'

Commence retroburn:

Again I make the mistake of not enough fuel, but I have a backup plan!

And now we wait:

No fuel. Lost in space. Again.

I still managed to reach Kerbin\'s orbit again, at least.

[boolybooly]

Like your landing struts Nova.

Currently I am trying the controlled crash landing method, which may not be elegant but its very Kerbal! Its amazing what you can get away with if you have enough ship between the command module and the ground.

[boolybooly]

[Spiz102]

As my computer cant seem to handle building sufficiently awesome rockets to reach the speeds you are going at Im attempting to do it at 360m/s.

Should be able to stop at the destination but I have to wonder whether my return can be fast enough to prevent an overflow error....

We shall see.

[OtherDalfite]

SHE CANNE TAKE MUCH MORE

I lost my shit right there.

[boolybooly]

Let us know how it goes Spiz, small ships have their own special kudos, even if the mission fails your name will be immortalised on the roll of gave-it-a-go-but-got-lost-in-space-ness.

[Luigibro606]

Lol at you all and your massive Sun rockets. I\'ve gotten to 20,000M with this-

Lolz

Bob- 'It\'s hot in here.'

Jeb- 'Let\'s crash into it! Yeah!'

I had more pics of the ship, one of them all you can see is the sun but Tinypic isn\'t working with me today.

[Spiz102]

Well I was testing my new Otrag derived launcher for my standard orbital vehicle and ended up on an escape trajectory heading for the sun-ish at rather more than the planned 360m/s.

Since I did this by direct ascent and not by orbital injection this means that the former is either more efficient or that I just suck at orbital insertions.

As I was planning not to run this mission through I burned off too much propellant and ended up with ~1170m/s on the outbound leg and reached the sun handily.

This shows what I estimate to have been my closest approach, this is not quite as close as you guys tend to get but this wasnt supposed to be an actual mission.

I then proceeded to flip over and ponder whether I would have sufficient propellant to slow down. As it turned out I did have sufficient propellant to reverse my trajectory but only at a drastically reduced return speed.

Returning to Kearth at a sedate ~168m/s is only possible because of the Kerbals apparent ability to photosynthesise in the conditions found close to Kerbal, with a final alignment for atmospheric approach taking place during the return leg to ensure that the atmosphere would be impacted.

After over 1178 days in space, a blue dot was finally visible in the distance as the intrepid kerbonauts regained the ability to spot there home with the naked eye.

This rapidly grew into a blue and green ball as the crew prepared to make final preperations for burning off the remaining fuel on the NERVA engine and for reentry.

After nearly 1189 days of sterling service the thruster and support module was jettisoned as the command module pitched for reentry.

Within minutes the crew of the OTRAG Testbed were crushed by forces that managed to peg the G-meter at the top of the scale as they plowed into the atmosphere far to the north of the KSC.

But they survived as they always do to swing sedately under a triple parachute as they are visible against the sun that they have just returned from.

Overall mission success although with an enormous mission time.

Here is a screenshot of an identical spacecraft as I forgot to capture any of the original testbed on the pad due to this originally being a non operational mission.

The outer ring of six SRBs fires simultaneously until they burn out at an altitude of several thousand metres and are then released en-masse at which point the inner ring of six fire as opposing pairs one after another, with each being released as the next is ignited.

The NERVA powered mission stage then fires all the way to escape with RCS providing all stability control due to issues iwth the rigidness of the decouplers precluding stabilising fins.

[boolybooly]

Congratulations on your crew\'s safe return to Kerbin Spiz102. Nicely done if I may say so.

1189 days! Cool 8)

Adding you to the roll of Star Pilot Dudes who have succeeded in completing the challenge.

[nivvydaskrl]

Mm, I need to take another shot at this someday soon. Maybe with KW\'s pack, my tanks, and a high altitude drogue chute mod to make my 'pin-the-tail-on-the-planet' re-entry procedure a little less...harrowing.

[sagamore]

made it using addons

[Damonjay]

Next week I shall be attempting this. with stock parts

See you then

[boolybooly]

Grats to sagamore for reaching the sun, though it doesnt look like that ship is going home any time soon!

Good luck Damonjay, hf, would be interested to know how it goes.

[Damonjay]

put me in the Mission Briefing room:P