Capture the Mun

[PontoGames]

So, I've been wondering, is it possible to capture the Mun? Just like you do with an asteroid? Ok, I know the Mun is huge if you compare to a little asteroid, but, if you find enough time, pacience and determination to put a lot of rockets in some side of the Mun, would anything happen? Like, would your rockets push the Mun? Is it possible to bring the Mun to Kerbal? The Mun can move to somewhere outside its orbit? It's probably not possible, I think the Mun wasn't programmed to move outside its orbit on the game, just like almost everything on the game, but I just want to kill the doubt.

[KerikBalm]

no, its "on rails" and even if it wasn't, you'd need a rocket about the same size as the Mun. Even a 1,000 ton rocket wouldn't perceptibly move the mun's orbit if it was off rails

[BeeGeenie]

Scott Manley did a video on the subject a couple of years ago.

He used Gilly, the smallest moon in the game as his example.

He estimated it would take 4.4 Trillion tons of fuel to de-orbit Gilly... which could take several million years, depending on how many engines you bring.

His conclusion: even if the celestial bodies weren't on rails, it would be extremely impractical to try to move them.

[Megadeath]

Probably a question for elsewhere on the forum, but relevant here; is it possible to mod planets off the rails? 

[KerikBalm]

im pretty sure that is a no

[eddiew]

9 minutes ago, Megadeath said:

Probably a question for elsewhere on the forum, but relevant here; is it possible to mod planets off the rails? 

99.9% sure the answer is no. Hyperedit or Kopernicus can be used to change the orbits, but you can't make them into a body that can be affected.

And even if you did, as said above - you'd need trillions of tons of fuel to make an impact on anything. The game is also not designed to do anything if planets collide, because as far as the game is concerned, planet's cannot collide...

[Megadeath]

Oh, yeah, I was more interested as to what the issue would be with modding it that way: can't produce a soi if it's "real" or just too big for engine to cope if you give the planet physics? Something I haven't thought of? No interest on my part really in moving it afterwards.

[Draco T stand-up guy]

If you want to play with moving large planets around then you'd probably want to play in this sandbox.

[cantab]

1 hour ago, Megadeath said:

Probably a question for elsewhere on the forum, but relevant here; is it possible to mod planets off the rails? 

Yes. The mod is called Principia but it's somewhat experimental and not available for general release.

Fun stuff happens in the Joolian system - Vall very quickly gets its orbit perturbed, nearly crashes into Tylo, and is later ejected from the Joolian system altogether. I think Bop and/or Pol also get the boot. The latest Principia modifies the Joolian system starting orbits to stop this happening.

But as for deliberately pushing the celestials around - even then, I'd say it's not plausible. I also don't know if Principia actually considers either the gravitational effect or any thrust effect from spacecraft on celestials.

[tseitsei89]

41 minutes ago, cantab said:

 

Fun stuff happens in the Joolian system - Vall very quickly gets its orbit perturbed, nearly crashes into Tylo, and is later ejected from the Joolian system altogether. I think Bop and/or Pol also get the boot. The latest Principia modifies the Joolian system starting orbits to stop this happening.

I simulated this with matlab some time ago and got similar results. Vall is kicked out very soon and at least one of the smaller moons (Bob or Pol could have been both. Dont remember anymore) will also be ejected after some time. I also did simulations for whole solar system and the orbits of planets seem to be quite stable in n-body simulation also. Eeloo's orbit has some "vibrations" ( not sure what the correct term is here) but it seems to be somewhat periodic and eeloo is not kicked out at least for the first few million years. 

Edited May 26, 2016 by tseitsei89

[Charkim Paul]

one of my dream is the same as yours  i want to build many buildings on the mun and send lots of kermen to the mun but it is impossible in my opinion because it is just like build all the buildings on the earth by yourself,so i dont think it's possible

Edited May 27, 2016 by Charkim Paul

[Fearless Son]

On 5/26/2016 at 4:53 AM, eddiew said:

And even if you did, as said above - you'd need trillions of tons of fuel to make an impact on anything. The game is also not designed to do anything if planets collide, because as far as the game is concerned, planet's cannot collide...

Sounds like a job for SCIENCE!

[FungusForge]

There is a mod out there (gimme a minute and I'll find it) that adds miniatures of the planets as parts. One could give the Mun part the mass of the Mun in game, Hyperedit it out to the Mun's altitude and try and to de-orbit it. If you want to make sure the Mun doesn't interfere you could probably write up a quick MM config for Kopernicus to boot the Mun over to Moho or something.

However, without Warp drives or cheat engines, you will be at it for a good long time.

Edit: Found it!

Edit2: Not the same as using the actual planet, I know, but a hyper-dense part that can actually be loaded and manipulated is the best we can do in the game.

Edited May 27, 2016 by FungusForge

[kBob]

Need a good Kraken engine (anti-matter driven possibly) (and the above remove from rails mod).  That would have all the moon moving force you need (or some magical mass reducing gizmo like in some Star Trek episodes).  Or hmmm...maybe a different game entirely, like Planet Engineers (imaginary as far as I know), sounds fun.

[spacebrick3]

I think it could be done for much less fuel than Scott Manley imagined, and for one reason: ISRU. If you place your engines on the Mun (or whatever you're using) facing retrograde, and start mining and firing, you'll almost be able to fire constantly if you bring enough drills/converters. Actually, wouldn't the easiest thing to do be eject Minmus from the Kerbin system? It'd take less delta-v than deorbiting it, and the same method would apply.

[Ippo]

@PART[*]:HAS[MODULE[ModuleEngine*]]
{
	@MODULE[ModuleEngine*]
	{
		@maxThrust *= 1000000000000
		@maxIsp *= 1000000000000
	}
}

This + principia = deorbit anything. (Not sure about the syntax, I am writing from memory with no access to a valid patch atm).

Edited May 28, 2016 by Ippo
invalid MM patch

[awfulhumanbeing]

When I saw "capture" I first thought of aero capturing on the mun