KSP's "Skybox"

[7499275]

A couple days ago I was browsing the forum and saw a post infinite or finite. Many people replied with many different answers and none of them were the same!

I have decided to determine this answer. I have an old T-800 heavy lifter that has delta V around the 12,000 mark. That's a lot yes, but not enough in my opinion. All you need to do really is to get an "Escape trajectory" out of Kerbol. Even though you are always in its SOI. I can manage this with the T-800, but once I get passed Eeloo the speed is only around 3 or 4km per second. The faster you are going the less time it will take to reach "the end".

To test this out I am going to build a craft that is capable of going around 15-20 km/s once it is passing Eeloo's orbit. I am not good at doing science math so I have no idea how much Delta V the craft will need. The good this is, I have several mods helping me out.

• Mechjeb
  
• KW Rocketry
  
• AEIS
  
• Stretchy tanks
  
• Remote Tech 2
  
• 
  

Most of these mods adds new fuel tanks and engines to better my chances, although RT 2 is there to have a little challenge because this will be an unmanned probe that will be launched into the depths of space.

One idea I had was install Kethane, set up a small base on Eeloo, and build a craft in orbit around the planet. Although that is a pretty good idea, it would take many launches and much trial and error. I want to test this as efficiently as possible. That leaves two other options to pick from...

A. Launch a communication network with RT 2 satellites into orbit around Kerbin and build just one massive vehicle in the VAB and launch it see what happens.

B. Launch a communication network. Then assemble a interplanetary craft via docking ports in orbit around Kerbin. Fuel the ship and launch it from there.

Both of these options leaves me with one question. What is the most fuel effeicient engine to use in a vacuum? I am confident that it is the stock nuclear engine but since it only has a max thrust of 60 it isn't the best option. I need to find the engine with the best power to effeminacy ratio.

I will add some pictures once the craft is completed. I would like to see some suggestions on option A or B though!

Also if anyone would like to see a video of parts of this please show some instrest and I will get it happening.

Now onto the last part of this post! What are your predictions that will happen? The Kracken will attack and eat my craft alive? Or my craft will come to a complete stop once it reaches a certain altitude?

[Kasuha]

My suggestion is C: stick mainsail to a capsule and turn infinite fuel hack on.

What will happen? Probably nothing. Things that may happen theoretically but I have no idea in how distant future:

- when your distance from the Sun becomes too large compared to your speed, adding distance traveled to your position may stop changing the position value. That means your ship will stop advancing although the game will still report it's traveling at speed

- if you keep increasing your speed, your position may eventually exceed maximum value of a double precision floating point number. In that case, anything can happen but most probable things to happen are that either the game or your ship crashes.

[costermonger]

There is a mod (probably more than one) that offers larger (and smaller) nuclear engines with roughly equal ISP to the stock nuke. Getting off Kerbin and out to Eeloo's orbit requires slightly less than 7km/s (more than half of that is just to reach LKO) so you'd need to have a reasonably efficient craft with >22km/s as it sits on the pad. I've done that, but never very much more than that.

I don't know if you'll ever hit anything.

[Fiddlestyx]

The Kraken lives out there with his family. Good luck.

[Red Iron Crown]

If ever there was an application for ion power, this is it. You should build a tiny, tiny probe with an RTG or solar panels, a battery, a couple of xenon tanks and one ion thruster. It will have a tremendous amount of dV and an atrocious TWR, but the low TWR doesn't really matter for a mission of this nature. Get it into out of Kerbin's SOI with a chemical booster heading in the prograde direction. Point prograde and burn until the battery is depleted, cut the thruster and recharge. Repeat until all Xenon is consumed (this will be time consuming with likely several hours of burning, physics warp is your friend). Then push up the time compression to maximum and coast to the edge of the universe.

Note, this experiment can only prove that the skybox is finite, it cannot prove that it is infinite.

[baberbot]

a few extra options:

1. you could always use interstellar mods fusion engine its very efficient but has 250 thrust. (+ kethane?)

2. edit an engine.cfg file to give it 5 times the thrust of a mainsail and the efficiency of an ion engin. (+kethane?)

3. a pod attacked to many mainsails on the pad then turn on infinite fule.(+ kethane? just kidding:sticktongue:)

4. build an wackjob sized craft on the pad (+ kethane? [make wackjob proud])

5. build an scaled down wackjob sized craft in elloo orbit using kethane + docking

[blizzy78]

What is the most fuel effeicient engine to use in a vacuum?

The one with the highest Isp, which is an ion engine.

[Deadweasel]

What you'll end up proving is that it's REALLY boring to watch once you leave the local star system, and the only indications you'll ever have that anything is happening are the numbers flipping on your altimeter, and possibly on the speedometer if you're using infinite fuel to keep thrusting.

Otherwise, as far as the game is concerned, the player is the center of the universe. You'll never actually move from the center of the skybox; everything else ("Kerbol", planets, moons) will just shift progressively farther away from you, relative to your current vector.

At some point, the numbers representing your altitude will run larger than the variable used to hold them allows for, and the game will simply crash (assuming the math processes remain "balanced" enough to continue that far in the first place), since there's nothing in the game code to address that situation, which is almost guaranteed never to happen if you're playing the game as the developers envisioned when they wrote it.

A game dev wanting to have a little fun with the players might introduce a specific function to be run if that altitude variable overflows, perhaps throwing the player all the way back to a nice, perfect 100x100 Kerbin orbit, and use an on-screen message to blame the event on a kraken too sleepy to deal with your exploration shenanigans today.

[m4rt14n]

Instead of using mods and debug, why not try the Kraken drive and try to meet its maker.

[Vanamonde]

I need to find the engine with the best power to effeminacy ratio.

Either that was an autocorrect error, or a rather novel way to evaluate rockets.

[Starwaster]

I need to find the engine with the best power to effeminacy ratio.

Either that was an autocorrect error, or a rather novel way to evaluate rockets.

My engines are huge....

[KasperVld]

The way KSP works I don't think you'll be able to reach the Skybox. During bugtesting I've come across bugs that threw me away from Kerbin at multiple times the speed of light. Even when you're exometers away from Kerbol/Kerbin, you won't hit a magical boundary

[Whirligig Girl]

One of the first things I did in KSP was I got a probe core+Mainsail and burned outwards in hopes of finding the outside of the skybox. I left it timewarping overnight, and when I took a comparison screenshot, the skybox did not change.