What is the best flight for maximum escape velocity?

[ThreeWholePunch]

The goal is highest velocity escape from kerbol.

The fastest escape from kerbol that I have achieved was building a small satellite with a nuclear engine, getting it to as close to kerbol as possible for a slingshot, then at peri fire the engine until all fuel was depleted.

On a save that I have since lost with no screenshots to prove it I was able to get around ~20k m/s....I think.

What say you? Is a tight sligshot around kerbol the best way to achieve a speed record? I went west from kerbol but maybe eastward is a better approach.

Or, is using a combination of planets better? Or something else?

[draeath]

You want to hit as many planets, and the sun, in both directions, as possible. Heck, multiple passes as the sun (burning as you near it) can really crank your speed up as well.

[peadar1987]

I'd imagine the quickest (non-ridiculously complicated) mission profile would be:

-Burn prograde from Kerbin with a Munar gravity assist for a Jool intercept.

-Use Jool+Laythe gravity assists to drop your periapsis as close to the sun as you can get it.

-Burn like a crazy person at your solar periapsis

-If possible, get another gravity assist from a planet on your way out (but only if you're close to an encounter already.

If you're feeling particularly fancy, I suppose you could use course corrections to adjust your inbound trajectory towards the sun so you would get an intercept with a planet on your way out. However, that's some pretty advanced orbital black magic we're talking about!

[Sof]

I'm pretty sure you just need to unleash the kraken, and have something fly off at many millions of times the speed of light.

[Space_Meerkat]

I'm pretty sure you just need to unleash the kraken, and have something fly off at many millions of times the speed of light.

Yep. Thats the most obvious, just build a ship which is good enough to get the krakens attention, then it'll wake up.

[FREEFALL1984]

just time a multiple gravity assist around jool, with all the orbiting bodies you can gain so much speed and drop your kerbol peri to as low as possible then burn almost all your remaining fuel at peri then hopefully hit a nice moho encounter on the way out. The jool system is handy because there are so many GA opportunities, tylo being the obvious culprit. I've lost a few probes to interstellar space simply by forgetting to stabilize their jool orbits

[linkxsc]

I think my record was a small probe that managed ~60km/s after it got itself 2 solar and a jool assist. And lotsa burning. It was with a microwave assisted plasma thruster from interstellar though and you can get some pretty crazy delta-v with those

OT

What i want to try out when i get to a computer that doesnt suck. Is using the warp drive from interstellar to line up several passes of the sun and try to leave the kerbol system at a significant portion of light speed.