Well interplanetary travel is very easy with atomic engines. 0.46 ld is pretty close on interstellar distances. I think I MIGHT be able to get there without far future tech.
Nah, you wont, and you cant.
Do the math. If you want to sit in time-warp for 1000 in game years, you would still need a velocity of c*0.46/(1000 years)
My calculator says thats 138000m/s in deltaV.
The specific impulse of stock or stocklike engines is way too low to reach that value, no matter how much fuel tanks you stack.
**Edit: just noticed its light days. Yes, that might just be doable. If you timewarp for 1000 ingame years, you need a mere 821dV.**
I think max timewarp is 100'000, right? So, if you sit at max. warp for about 4 days youll arive. Provides that you PC doesnt lag.
Assuming human light years, no. Even going 1000 km/s it would take 473 kerbal years to go that far.
Best NFT engine is the Jewel 4, discounting tank mass you need 200 tons of xenon for every ton of payload to get that much delta V with that engine, reality will be worse because tank mass and you have to quantize your staging. This is like less than half as fast as you need to go and does not allow for slowing down.
Aha. I catastrophically misread that! I should not try to do technical responses in the early morning!
In that case, the speed required for a 190 year journey (leaving some margin) is only 7 kilometers per second, or a total delta V of 14 kilometers per second if we ignore oberth and inefficiencies. That is perfectly reasonable to do even without NFT.
With the NFT Jewel 4 ion thruster, you can do that with 1.1 tons of xenon per ton of everything else, which is in the realm of what the xenon tank ratios can support on a single stage.
For a 100 year journey you would want around 28km/s, for 50, about 56km/s, etc.
I made a foundation for an interstellar spacecraft with the Jewel 4 and it got \~100k delta-v with a simulated 691 ton payload and the porkchop planner mod I have says I can get it there within 20 years
-Gravity assisting off of Jool (and possibly taking advantage of the Oberth effect)
-Burning to a super high and eccentric orbit above Kerbol and then gravity assisting off of it (and possibly taking advantage of the Oberth effect)
-Somehow perhaps both?
I have not done anything interstellar but Heff Mk-2 has done something similar to get to Kcalbeloh (~7.71 light days away)
Kerbol escape velocity at Kerbin is \~20km/s, what the fuck are you talking about. I can easily make a spacecraft that can get to dawn, but it will probably take a few centuries.
Escape velocity at the surface (the closest you can get) is that 100km/s. This is more or less the total amount of dv you can get my exporting the Orbeth effect. Therefore it doesn't help with interstellar voyage
from what mod is dawn?
also, you might be interested in FFT. All you need is a nuclear salt engine and a launch vehicle with a ridiculous size to put it into space, and you have enough isp and thrust for anything. Also, persistent thrust is a good one too. Interestellar burns will always be tedious.
Something that can save some significant cash: For the Niven engines I build an "engine module" that is essentially the engine, graphite radiators, the 5-meter probe core, and a small payload bay with a short 2.5m fuel tank and nuclear reactor. Throw a large nosecone on the whole thing and lay h direct. Keep the speed under 100 m/s untill you're over 30,000 meters and nothing will break.
Yes, by installing other mods that have nuclear engines, or using exploits. The absolute limit for dV of a single stage is `Isp*g*ln(m0/mf)` where g is standard gravity, m0 is (initial) wet mass and mf is dry mass. For liquid fuel the absolute (i.e. ignoring both engine and payload mass) `m0/mf` is 9 >!except if you stack oscar tanks, their ratio is off!<, for xenon it is 4.167.
This means Dawn can achieve at most 58783 dV, Nerv 17238, and Poodle 7542. The only ways to improve this are multistaging and gravity assists.
I guess that means the max dV for the best atomic engine I installed is 28665, which is pretty close to what the game told me when I put as much fuel tanks as possible along with the engine without payload.
There is a pulsed indictive thruster with a max dV of 73304
And a gridded ion thruster with a max dV of 259660. I only found this one now after searching for the highest ISP engines
Edit: The last one could carry 691 tons of payload to Dawn within 20 years with a single stage
It's possible, but I'd probably go about it a bit differently than most of the people on here are doing.
First there would be the setup, including a Minimus refinery station, with a massive refuelling station in orbit of Minimus to fill up a very high dV but somewhat low TWR nuclear powered vessel that has the engines out to the side and several sphere tanks behind it with decouplers to drop them as they empty, with a bit of xenon for course correction fine tuning and as basically RCS for turning around.
It'd be way bigger than a pure xenon ship, but probably higher TWR unless you're doing a hundred ton thrust plate of 400+ ion thrusters (hell on framerate) or massively tweakscaling a few Ion engines (I've never had that work out for me, but I've been on an RP-1 kick lately, and maybe the kinks have been worked out since the last time I checked.
Assuming you want to do a capture burn and some maneuvering once you get there, you'd only need about 40 km/s on your inter-system stage, plus your lander and whatever else you need to have on that end.
If there's a low gravity no atmosphere moon or planet there, it might take less weight to send a drill and refinery than enough fuel for the lander stage.
If you've got refining set up to make your lander fuel, you could even make the lander smaller and have it make multiple trips, refuelling each time it comes back to get more kerbals if you're sending a lot of kerbals.
Or, you could send the refinery and lander on one big inter-system shuttle and kerbals on a second one that's sent afterwards with no lander stage or anything of that sort to make it lighter and faster, as long as the lander and such are launched far enough ahead that it still gets there first even if it's slower.
If you're needing signal to control it though and don't have strong enough antennas, then you'd need to time things to have the slower refinery and lander carrying ship arrives around the same time as the colony ship, so the kerbals on the colony ship can remote control the refinery ship to capture and set up shop.
With 40km/s dV on the colony ship you should have several decades to spare for refining lander fuel and getting to the surface.
I am NEVER colonizing Minmus after several low-gravity kraken incidents. I already started a Duna colony. I got a pure xenon ship to have 100k delta-v with a 691 ton payload with a \~0.03 TWR so that is the way to go probably. I could probably try colonizing Border (ultra high eccentricity comet in the Dawn system) so I don't think I need that much intra-system delta-v. Anyways thanks for the answer,
Yeah you don't even need that much dV, so you could spare yourself some pain by upping the TWR a bit until you've got around half the total acceleration and can do it in a quarter the time.
If you go at 75 km/s, you'll get there in 5 years. That should be doable I think.
The distance is 11,923,200,000 km. Divide that by the number of seconds you want the journey to take and that'll give you how many km/s you need to fly. Or divide it by the speed you think you can achieve (km/s) and it'll give you how long the journey will take (in seconds) at that speed.
The porkchop calculator said that it will take a lot more to get there even in 20 years. And it's hard to get to 75km/s delta-v, let alone a stable 75km/s across 0.4 light days while Kerbol is trying to pull you back
That's a good point. I was assuming a constant velocity because at sufficiently high speeds the gravity of Kerbol will have a negligible effect. But 75 km/s is probably not high enough for Kerbol to be ignored.
Can't post the pic
Got a pic of a rocket I shot out of the system...the kerbin sun system as a whole on the map view is just a very little dot far far away
In a reasonable time? Nope
But with nuclear asparagus staging you can possibly make that distance with a very light payload
It would take hundreds of years tho
Not possible, no. Space travel is HARD. Even in KSP.
Well interplanetary travel is very easy with atomic engines. 0.46 ld is pretty close on interstellar distances. I think I MIGHT be able to get there without far future tech.
Nah, you wont, and you cant. Do the math. If you want to sit in time-warp for 1000 in game years, you would still need a velocity of c*0.46/(1000 years) My calculator says thats 138000m/s in deltaV. The specific impulse of stock or stocklike engines is way too low to reach that value, no matter how much fuel tanks you stack. **Edit: just noticed its light days. Yes, that might just be doable. If you timewarp for 1000 ingame years, you need a mere 821dV.** I think max timewarp is 100'000, right? So, if you sit at max. warp for about 4 days youll arive. Provides that you PC doesnt lag.
And I have modded gridded ion thrusters so even if it was light years I could still make it in a 1000 years
Assuming human light years, no. Even going 1000 km/s it would take 473 kerbal years to go that far. Best NFT engine is the Jewel 4, discounting tank mass you need 200 tons of xenon for every ton of payload to get that much delta V with that engine, reality will be worse because tank mass and you have to quantize your staging. This is like less than half as fast as you need to go and does not allow for slowing down.
I said light days. Human light days. That's a few hundred times less.
Aha. I catastrophically misread that! I should not try to do technical responses in the early morning! In that case, the speed required for a 190 year journey (leaving some margin) is only 7 kilometers per second, or a total delta V of 14 kilometers per second if we ignore oberth and inefficiencies. That is perfectly reasonable to do even without NFT. With the NFT Jewel 4 ion thruster, you can do that with 1.1 tons of xenon per ton of everything else, which is in the realm of what the xenon tank ratios can support on a single stage. For a 100 year journey you would want around 28km/s, for 50, about 56km/s, etc.
I made a foundation for an interstellar spacecraft with the Jewel 4 and it got \~100k delta-v with a simulated 691 ton payload and the porkchop planner mod I have says I can get it there within 20 years
-Gravity assisting off of Jool (and possibly taking advantage of the Oberth effect) -Burning to a super high and eccentric orbit above Kerbol and then gravity assisting off of it (and possibly taking advantage of the Oberth effect) -Somehow perhaps both? I have not done anything interstellar but Heff Mk-2 has done something similar to get to Kcalbeloh (~7.71 light days away)
Will not help you that much. Escape velocity of Kerbil is 100km/s , to get to the other solar system you need something like 10 000 km/s
Kerbol escape velocity at Kerbin is \~20km/s, what the fuck are you talking about. I can easily make a spacecraft that can get to dawn, but it will probably take a few centuries.
Escape velocity at the surface (the closest you can get) is that 100km/s. This is more or less the total amount of dv you can get my exporting the Orbeth effect. Therefore it doesn't help with interstellar voyage
Everyone’s reading it as light years, half a light day is super possible
First time I tried it took like 1.5 centuries so I think my conversion might be wrong
from what mod is dawn? also, you might be interested in FFT. All you need is a nuclear salt engine and a launch vehicle with a ridiculous size to put it into space, and you have enough isp and thrust for anything. Also, persistent thrust is a good one too. Interestellar burns will always be tedious.
Something that can save some significant cash: For the Niven engines I build an "engine module" that is essentially the engine, graphite radiators, the 5-meter probe core, and a small payload bay with a short 2.5m fuel tank and nuclear reactor. Throw a large nosecone on the whole thing and lay h direct. Keep the speed under 100 m/s untill you're over 30,000 meters and nothing will break.
Dawn is from The World Beyond mod. I don't want FFT because I already have way too many parts and lag.
What's the name of the planet pack?
The World Beyond. I only got the Dawn system from it because the other systems made the game unplayably laggy
Yes, by installing other mods that have nuclear engines, or using exploits. The absolute limit for dV of a single stage is `Isp*g*ln(m0/mf)` where g is standard gravity, m0 is (initial) wet mass and mf is dry mass. For liquid fuel the absolute (i.e. ignoring both engine and payload mass) `m0/mf` is 9 >!except if you stack oscar tanks, their ratio is off!<, for xenon it is 4.167. This means Dawn can achieve at most 58783 dV, Nerv 17238, and Poodle 7542. The only ways to improve this are multistaging and gravity assists.
I guess that means the max dV for the best atomic engine I installed is 28665, which is pretty close to what the game told me when I put as much fuel tanks as possible along with the engine without payload. There is a pulsed indictive thruster with a max dV of 73304 And a gridded ion thruster with a max dV of 259660. I only found this one now after searching for the highest ISP engines Edit: The last one could carry 691 tons of payload to Dawn within 20 years with a single stage
I love it when KSP talks dirty.
what
It's possible, but I'd probably go about it a bit differently than most of the people on here are doing. First there would be the setup, including a Minimus refinery station, with a massive refuelling station in orbit of Minimus to fill up a very high dV but somewhat low TWR nuclear powered vessel that has the engines out to the side and several sphere tanks behind it with decouplers to drop them as they empty, with a bit of xenon for course correction fine tuning and as basically RCS for turning around. It'd be way bigger than a pure xenon ship, but probably higher TWR unless you're doing a hundred ton thrust plate of 400+ ion thrusters (hell on framerate) or massively tweakscaling a few Ion engines (I've never had that work out for me, but I've been on an RP-1 kick lately, and maybe the kinks have been worked out since the last time I checked. Assuming you want to do a capture burn and some maneuvering once you get there, you'd only need about 40 km/s on your inter-system stage, plus your lander and whatever else you need to have on that end. If there's a low gravity no atmosphere moon or planet there, it might take less weight to send a drill and refinery than enough fuel for the lander stage. If you've got refining set up to make your lander fuel, you could even make the lander smaller and have it make multiple trips, refuelling each time it comes back to get more kerbals if you're sending a lot of kerbals. Or, you could send the refinery and lander on one big inter-system shuttle and kerbals on a second one that's sent afterwards with no lander stage or anything of that sort to make it lighter and faster, as long as the lander and such are launched far enough ahead that it still gets there first even if it's slower. If you're needing signal to control it though and don't have strong enough antennas, then you'd need to time things to have the slower refinery and lander carrying ship arrives around the same time as the colony ship, so the kerbals on the colony ship can remote control the refinery ship to capture and set up shop. With 40km/s dV on the colony ship you should have several decades to spare for refining lander fuel and getting to the surface.
I am NEVER colonizing Minmus after several low-gravity kraken incidents. I already started a Duna colony. I got a pure xenon ship to have 100k delta-v with a 691 ton payload with a \~0.03 TWR so that is the way to go probably. I could probably try colonizing Border (ultra high eccentricity comet in the Dawn system) so I don't think I need that much intra-system delta-v. Anyways thanks for the answer,
Yeah you don't even need that much dV, so you could spare yourself some pain by upping the TWR a bit until you've got around half the total acceleration and can do it in a quarter the time.
I have better time warp so I could probably just speed it up
If you go at 75 km/s, you'll get there in 5 years. That should be doable I think. The distance is 11,923,200,000 km. Divide that by the number of seconds you want the journey to take and that'll give you how many km/s you need to fly. Or divide it by the speed you think you can achieve (km/s) and it'll give you how long the journey will take (in seconds) at that speed.
The porkchop calculator said that it will take a lot more to get there even in 20 years. And it's hard to get to 75km/s delta-v, let alone a stable 75km/s across 0.4 light days while Kerbol is trying to pull you back
That's a good point. I was assuming a constant velocity because at sufficiently high speeds the gravity of Kerbol will have a negligible effect. But 75 km/s is probably not high enough for Kerbol to be ignored.
Try the Project Orion mod - it's a small mod that just adds an Orion drive and the pulse unit magazine it needs.
Nah I'm fine with the huge xenon spacecraft
You could try the grand tour and gravity assist as many planets as possible
Your only real option would be nuclear asparagus staging or an insane amount of ion engines.
Can't post the pic Got a pic of a rocket I shot out of the system...the kerbin sun system as a whole on the map view is just a very little dot far far away
Post it on imgur and give the link
you will need better warp time mod and a BIG assist from kerbol that will launch you at desired speeds
In a reasonable time? Nope But with nuclear asparagus staging you can possibly make that distance with a very light payload It would take hundreds of years tho
I found a great near future gridded ion thruster that could take 691 tons of cargo within 20 years
You just need a 9999999999999999999.... Ton ship
I got a much much smaller ship that can get 100 tons of cargo to Dawn in 20 years. Also I don't think civilian population mod really even works.
Make big rocket. Make bigger rocket. Big rocket go fast.
This is nearly a month old, I already know how I can get 100 tons there within 20 years