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[Fikes]

OMFG I did it!

After 1 complete orbit with a tank and a half of liquid fuel remaining, I decided to try a powered landing. I got distracted and missed KSC, but decided to say fuck it and "aim" for the next land mass. I slowed myself down and waited for reentry.

It was very hard but I resolved myself not to slow down at all until 2000 AGL. When I did, I throttled up too much and bounced somewhere between 600 and 100 feet. Finally I hit the sweet spot and my craft desended. It got closer and closer, going about 16m/s. Engines hit and exploded, fuel tank one hit and exploded, same with the second and third. The coupler I would have used to seperate the comand module in an an abort came loose of the command module but did not explode.

The command module landed on its top, destroying the chute, but leaving the Kermen alive!

I know I know, pics or it didn't happen. It did but no pics .

[GlyphGryph]

Question: Is it possible to kill one or more to the astronauts without killing them all?

[Sensei]

So far, I believe not.

[Akura]

You could pause->End Flight as it explodes. ^_^

[Sirian]

I finally managed to reach lightspeed and above, but right now high speeds and long distances are not properly handled so it's really buggy (your rocket will spin uncontrolably shortly after launch).

Anyway, if you want to do it, the key is to reduce the mass of stuff (notably the command module), and then even with a low thrust you can get to ridiculous speeds. My personal best was 6.6c (2 000 000 km/s).

[Rex_Nex]

Is this any sort of acheivement? Just got this game, so I dont know if this is common to get this high.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Update: Started losing altitude at 1,200 km up. I'm actually quite disappointed; faulty physics at work there. The gravitational pull on something 1,200 km from the planet would be way too weak to pull me down this quick.

[Rakonas]

Is this any sort of acheivement? Just got this game, so I dont know if this is common to get this high.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Update: Started losing altitude at 1,200 km up. I'm actually quite disappointed; faulty physics at work there. The gravitational pull on something 1,200 km from the planet would be way too weak to pull me down this quick.

Well, the lack of any other sources of gravity in the universe is a tentative issue.

[monk12]

Is this any sort of acheivement? Just got this game, so I dont know if this is common to get this high.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Update: Started losing altitude at 1,200 km up. I'm actually quite disappointed; faulty physics at work there. The gravitational pull on something 1,200 km from the planet would be way too weak to pull me down this quick.

Escape velocity is possible, just tricky. Not as tricky as orbit, mind- in my experience I achieved escape velocity twice in my attempts to circle the damn planet.

That said, any time your distance starts getting measured in Kilometers, you're pretty damn high up.

[BloodBeard]

Even if you lose 0.1m/s every real hour you haven't reached the escape velocity. It's not possible without another source of gravity (or some error on the programmers side)

[Rose]

no, escape velocity is when the force of gravity decreases faster than your speed.

[alway]

Ya; in Kerbal, the effective escape velocity is generally just about any speed above 1000m/s at the 100,000 km mark. Thus far my max speed @100megametres is a bit over 5500m/s. Once you reach the 100Mm, you lose very little velocity and so have effectively escaped the planet's gravity so long as you still have a decent amount of speed.

As far as 1200km: this planet's radius is approximately 600km IIRC; this would mean at a distance of 1800km (600km+1200km), the distance is tripled, and so the gravity would still be 1/9 of what it is at ground level. For an actual planet the size of earth (a bit over 10 times the size), you would need to go approximately 10 times further, or 12Mm to get the same decrease to 1/9 surface gravity. Sure, gravity drops off quickly, but you must also take into account the fact that planets are freeking massive.

[Geen]

Just downloaded, I got to 0.1 Gs, but then mah fuel ran out.

EDIT: Tried again, made it to around 120000.

[Sensei]

If you leave your computer and come back you'll find that you've fallen... it uses a mathematically realistic gravity model. There's always a force on you and you will be pulled back eventually. With the lack of a moon there's nothing to grab onto.

[Rift]

as the gravity approaches 0, and distance reaches infinity, i would think that even the slightest horizontal motion [ie, not directly away from the planet], would negate the effect the gravity would have on the shuttle[as to, how it decreases distance], as it would be in effect, in orbit. However i possibly have no idea what i'm talking about.

Edit:
after some though, its likely what would happen is you would get closer to the planet, then fly past it, in a crazy elliptic orbit, so your distance would [over enough time] go up and down, but you would likely never collide with the planet.

Edit2: after further thought, it will infact, collide with the planet, after insane amounts or elliptic orbits, likely after the universe ended... or some equally insane amount of time, as the orbits would slowly decrease in distance overall.. just insanely insanely slowly.

[Leyic]

"Escape velocity" is a bit of a misnomer. You'll never fully escape the gravitational influence of the planet, but it's certainly possible to have enough velocity that you'll never return to it, regardless of what other massive objects there are in the system. The technical term is "hyperbolic orbit". There's relevant (and supposedly correct) data on the Kerbal wiki for determining escape velocity at various altitudes.

Anyhow, the general mechanics are expressed by relatively simple algebraic equations which can be found on Wikipedia.