Challenge: speed

[Strychnine]

So, I think I figured out what happened. I tried the same thing on the pc version to see if I would get the same results, but I paid close attention this time.

once I got to about 33k-34k m/s my periapsis made its way to the far side of the sun. The next thing that happened was that my projected orbital path disappeared and the apoaposis changed to 0.0.

I think, and I could be wrong, that I am traveling so fast the sun can't keep me within it's SOI. If that's true then we know the escape velocity for the solar system.

 

[Altaïr]

Yes, I've noticed this too. The projected orbital path disappears when you reach the escape velocity.

Your interpretation is good. When this happens, the trajectory becomes hyperbolic (before that it was elliptic), so your ship has enough speed to get to an infinite distance from the Sun. That's why there is no more apoapsis.
The reason why the path disappears is probably because SFS can't display an infinite trajectory. Technically the Sun has no SOI (or you can consider it has one with an infinite radius), you need to orbit around something else to have a SOI. So there is nothing to limit your trajectory like for a planet.
Just a warning regarding the escape velocity: actually it's not a constant, it varies with altitude. But the information is still interesting

 

[TtTOtW]

The apoapsis doesn't change to 0 when your trajectory breaks out of the SOI, it does so much later. Maybe check that out?

 

[Altaïr]

The apoapsis doesn't change to 0 when your trajectory breaks out of the SOI, it does so much later. Maybe check that out?

The fact that your trajectory breaks out of the SOI just means that the apoapsis is greater than the SOI radius. In this case your trajectory is a very elongated ellipse, so there is still an apoapsis.

 

[Asgad]

I tried hard to crack the 100 km/s but couldn't do it. Anybody able to do it?

 

[TET]

i had a spaceship i send to outer space using 5 gravity assist, it was going so fast that it's trajectory dissapeared, it reached over 200,000 m/s, i used ion engines and gravity assists, ima try to replicate that in a moment, lemme load my SLS block II

 

[TET]

i had a spaceship i send to outer space using 5 gravity assist, it was going so fast that it's trajectory dissapeared, it reached over 200,000 m/s, i used ion engines and gravity assists, ima try to replicate that in a moment, lemme load my SLS block II

i actually mean 20,000 m/s, not 200,000

 

[Asgad]

i actually mean 20,000 m/s, not 200,000

 

[TtTOtW]

If you have no life you might take a massive tanker to orbit, refuel it there and drive it to infinity and beyond with a single ion engine at 0.1% throttle using gravity assists aplenty to orbit with periapsis at 300km above sun surface, and expand the orbit until it disappears and then just accelerate into the expanse of outer space until you run out of fuel. I'm certain you'll reach light speed eventually.

 

[Asgad]

well.... one of the conditions was "one rocket in one launch, no refueling", so that's not an option.

 

[TtTOtW]

well.... one of the conditions was "one rocket in one launch, no refueling", so that's not an option.

I did miss that part.

 

[Asgad]

If you have no life you might take a massive tanker to orbit, refuel it there and drive it to infinity and beyond with a single ion engine at 0.1% throttle using gravity assists aplenty to orbit with periapsis at 300km above sun surface, and expand the orbit until it disappears and then just accelerate into the expanse of outer space until you run out of fuel. I'm certain you'll reach light speed eventually.

I was curious if that would actually work, without gravity assist. So I wrote a little python script (attached if anybody is interested) to simulate the massive tanker. What it told me: 40 tons of fuel will result in 26 km/s additional speed, 800 tons in 53 km/s and the ship would need to weight 140000 tons (3500 of the big tanks) to even reach 100 km/s this way. Would also take 3.7 years, if a single ion engine is used.

So what I gather from this is: neither in game nor in real life you can get anywhere close to c with a conventional reaction engine.

 

[Danny Batten]

I think I’ve been over 200000m/s but only with no drag and utilising glitches. Unfortunately I didn’t get a pic, it was a while ago