The Koyager Missions

[Misterspork]

Hello. I was wondering, I have heard a lot about people orbiting the sun or landing on the Mun, but nothing of escaping the solar system. I decided I would make a probe to escape the solar system at immense speeds using the Kerbal Silisko Edition. Unfortunately, I have failed. I will keep making new rockets and updating about them here.

Though, one question first. As you can see in the attached pictures, I was moving at 10,000 m/s while still in the Kerbin system. From my understanding Kerbin moves at 9200 m/s around the sun, correct? Doesn\'t that mean that in relation to the sun I should have an extra 9200 m/s added on? Please correct me if I am incorrect about that, but I ended with a speed relative to the sun of 9400 m/s.

The craft reached an apoapsis of 26,534,000,000 meters, and periapsis of 934,000,000 meters. Hopefully, in future versions another planet will be added between Kerbin and this distance, so that the gravity of it will propel the craft out of the solar system, or at least to a Jupiter type planet for another gravitational assist.

One last thing, anyone know if it\'s possible to insert an image from an attachment? I feel like it would be easier to understand what I am talking about if the image is right there in the text. I know about uploading to sites like photobucket, but I ran out of bandwidth with the site I use for inserting images.

[NovaSilisko]

The gravity assist would only work if you go the same direction kerbin is orbiting. If you go the opposite direction then you\'ll cancel out its orbital velocity and you\'ll fall toward the sun.

[Plymouth]

I guess i\'ve made escape rocket by accident, when i tried to make a rocket that had to take payloads to the mun. I\'ll test it out and tell you whether i managed to escape or not.

[mincespy]

Why must people put a \'K\' at the start of everything? Can people not be more original?

[XSP-Xenon Space Programm]

good old 'Lucia' Missions

to the sun and to the ...hmm.... nothing

I already think of a Voyager mission in later time (when we have more planets) i\'ll call them X.plore

[Double Timan]

I Have been experimenting with using a derivative of a rocket I used for landing on the mun that was made only from the base parts to escape the solar system and actually was able to reach a very high hyperbolic excess velocity and leave the system at a very high rate of speed. I left the system at top time compression all night and woke up to see that the whole system was barely visible in the map view and I was still travelling at over 10,000 m/s. The way I did this was essentially a dual gravity assist (sort of)

You start on a launch pad on Kerbin travelling around the center of mass of kerbin which has a the mun travelling around it and which travels around Kerbol. I started the mission and waited 4 night cycles by speeding up time right away and then launched eastwards into a minimum orbit just a hair over 70,000 m. the waiting had put the mun in the right position to perform the gravity assist as my intercept point would be the point in the orbit of the mun where it is traveling around kerbol faster then kerbin (outside of the orbit) Which also happens to be my launch direction. I came in behind the mun and lowered my hyperbolic trajectory to just 800m over the surface on the far side. When I reached close to periapsis, I fired the engine full throttle, shed my 'descent stage' and fired the ascent stage until cut out. this left me traveling faster then the mun by about 6000 m/s which was traveling faster then kerbin which in turn is traveling around kerbol...... all in all this left me in a trajectory about twice the velocity of kerbin (at periapsis) in the Kerbol system and I went sailing off with far more then escape velocity.

[Vostok]

I only just narrowly escaped the sun with my moon rocket. It, like yours, had an excess of fuel so I decided to give escaping a go. It only just ran out of fuel at the exact moment that the orbit went hyperbolic.

Now all I have is some RCS fuel and my surface lander for kerbin. (I use a stack decoupler attached to the pod with some landing legs as my re-entry stage, since I was plagued by problems of the pod exploding when \'chuting down on to land. So I made a lander to stop this happening.)

The Kerbals don\'t seem too happy to be on an escape trajectory!

[Misterspork]

Oh wow, this old thread. Almost forgot about it. I was such a noob back then XD.