"atmospheric effects" for close to lightspeed travel.

[Insomn]

While doubtful that this would be seen in stock gameplay unless you were really clever, if you had a craft that began chasing its own light, I thought it might result in some interesting effects, similar to the atmospheric effects of re-entry.

Idea from a clip of Stephen Hawkings Universe http://www.discoveryuk.com/web/stephen-hawkings-universe/videos/?video=stephen-hawkings-universe-time-travel-starship

[astropapi1]

Not really that useful, is it?

[Captain Sierra]

But cool nun-the-less and besides? Don't you want cool effects when you are traveling between solar systems?

[OdinYggd]

It isn't impossible to reach the speed of light in KSP. Have a look at this flight I made:

No, the kraken did not do this. I left this ship at full throttle overnight using a highly modified version of the radial ant specifically for this task. It has 12 ants each producing I believe it was 3500 thrust- the maximum I could set them to without them flying off.

That mission elapsed time is accurate. With infinite fuel on and mechjeb holding prograde, it was allowed to operate at 1x and full throttle for the entire duration of the mission, ultimately reaching the speed of light.

Given that it took around 7 hours to reach the speed of light, and making the engines any more powerful than they were results in them snapping off the side of the ship (as it is if you stop that ship you cannot restart it without it breaking), I think adding such a feature would be downright silly because only the most determined of people would even reach it.

[phyrex999]

That's like, 95% the speed of light

[OdinYggd]

That's like, 95% the speed of light

Wikipedia shows the speed of light as 299792458 m / s

That vessel is going just a hair over it in that screenshot.

Also worth noting- KSP does not at all implement relativistic phenomena such as time and mass dialation, making it so that exceeding the speed of light in KSP is merely a time consuming feat even with specially prepared engines.

There is an upper limit to how much thrust an engine can make in KSP before the game engine is no longer capable of holding it securely to the vessel it is supposed to push after all. Exceed that limit and it breaks off instantly.

[phyrex999]

True. Sorry, I just did a quick estimation in my head. I wasn't sure of the exact m/s.

I've actually done a lot of testing to try and get to C, but to no avail. The Kraken always seems to gets me.