Fastest time round kerbin?

[GraviTykillz]

Hello

Been searchin here but cant find something like this.

IS there a fastest time round kerbin challange????

[blubbermonkeys]

Depends on what you're looking for, orbit or surface?

[GraviTykillz]

Depends on what you're looking for, orbit or surface?

Fastest flight time round kerbin

[vetrox]

Depends on your craft (assuming its atmo only engines)

I had a design that would get it to a 70km apoapsis and then come back close to ksc. I dont have a time though.

Most of my designs do it in about 30-40 minutes

[Tex_NL]

30-40 minutes corresponds with Low Kerbal Orbit. Anything orbiting should go round in roughly that time.

A properly designed jet-plane can most certainly get round and back to KSC within the hour.

[Kasuha]

If it doesn't involve starting on KSC, you can get on tangential trajectory with low PA when returning from e.g. Jool, aerobrake, then burn for another escape in a way which will let you circle Kerbin really fast.

[numerobis]

Several such challenges exist:

Unrestricted

Under 25 km

Also under 25 km

[gm537]

I took a slightly different approach to this idea and tried just orbiting at lower than orbital altitude. At around 60km your orbital period is just under 30 min.

Orbit Time: 29:56

The first and last image show me at nearly the same angle to prograde (which I believe is a good way to define an "orbit") the middle image is there to show that I'm not doing anything too crazy. Basically this method requires small inputs of thrust through out the orbit in order to maintain orbital velocities since there is still a small amount of air resistance.

[numerobis]

Outside the atmosphere (at, say, 70 km) you can go faster by going west instead of east: you get the planet moving at 175 m/s under you when you do that, so your circumnavigation ends up being less distance. Within the atmosphere, you have more drag doing that, for the same reason.

In order to stay in a circular trajectory, you need a centripetal force that grows quadratically with your speed. Gravity is the one you normally rely on when orbiting -- but nothing says you can't add to it with a bit of rocket force. So if you thrust downwards, you can spin around at a higher speed. With infinite fuel and a mainsail, I was able to go around in about 6 minutes; you could do a bit better with infinite-fuel sepratrons or the 48-7S. I had a roughly equal amount of time in liftoff and landing; you could do a lot better here, I was on parachutes for almost two minutes. The flight path was basically to get up to about 65 km orbit, then full throttle pointing increasingly down as my speed went up. Eventually I was at pitch -90.

[MajorThomas]

The centripetal force-by-rocket idea is fantastic, 6 minutes? That would be the hands-down winner, except for the infinite fuel.

Perhaps the OP might modify the rules to read "tangential burns only" which means you'd be constrained to flying in the atmosphere, as low and fast as you can go.

Which leads my thoughts to...

What is the "Von Karman" altitude of Kerbin? (Better yet, Von Kerman...) That's the altitude at which aircraft must be going so fast in order to fly that they're actually at orbital velocity. It's the traditional boundary between the realms of air and spacecraft. On Earth it's 100 km, and in practice it's a no-go zone, too high to fly and too low to orbit. This area is well explored by KSP users, so I bet I'll get an answer to this one.

[jacobgong]

The centripetal force-by-rocket idea is fantastic, 6 minutes? That would be the hands-down winner, except for the infinite fuel.

Perhaps the OP might modify the rules to read "tangential burns only" which means you'd be constrained to flying in the atmosphere, as low and fast as you can go.

Which leads my thoughts to...

What is the "Von Karman" altitude of Kerbin? (Better yet, Von Kerman...) That's the altitude at which aircraft must be going so fast in order to fly that they're actually at orbital velocity. It's the traditional boundary between the realms of air and spacecraft. On Earth it's 100 km, and in practice it's a no-go zone, too high to fly and too low to orbit. This area is well explored by KSP users, so I bet I'll get an answer to this one.

the speed you need to be going to fly is depended on aircraft design?

[MajorThomas]

the speed you need to be going to fly is depended on aircraft design?

It's more a theoretical construct, but interesting nonetheless. Check out the Wikipedia article.

Meanwhile I'll guesstimate the "Kerman" line on Kerbin is about 40 km altitude...

Edited January 28, 2014 by MajorThomas

[ihtoit]

The centripetal force-by-rocket idea is fantastic, 6 minutes? That would be the hands-down winner, except for the infinite fuel.

Perhaps the OP might modify the rules to read "tangential burns only" which means you'd be constrained to flying in the atmosphere, as low and fast as you can go.

Which leads my thoughts to...

What is the "Von Karman" altitude of Kerbin? (Better yet, Von Kerman...) That's the altitude at which aircraft must be going so fast in order to fly that they're actually at orbital velocity. It's the traditional boundary between the realms of air and spacecraft. On Earth it's 100 km, and in practice it's a no-go zone, too high to fly and too low to orbit. This area is well explored by KSP users, so I bet I'll get an answer to this one.

I would say anywhere between 45-70km.