[WIP] Dying Duna

[KerikBalm]

A long time ago I made this mod of Duna, before I decided to use mars as a template instead and make my Rald Planet.

So, this adds an ocean* to duna, and O2 to its atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure is doubled, but the MW of the atmosphere is decreased a bit (to a MW representing 70% CO2, 15% O2, and 15% N2). Also, the ground near the shore is tinted green... sort of. The ocean is sort of a blue-green color, and the idea is that there is life in the ocean. 

* Well, its not really an ocean, its just a collection of lakes, channels, and seas, most of the planet is still dry. The idea is that its in the process of loosing its oceans, but they aren't gone yet. Hence, the name "Dying Duna", not "Dead Duna".

To make the oceans, I applied a 750 m offset to the height to lower the terrain below 0 altitude, so I then increased the radius of the planet by 750 meters, so that it should be the same size as before. To keep ike's orbit period the same, I slightly lowered the gravity at the surface (to be equal to the gravity at 750m on stock Duna). I also deepened some valleys, so the height map is not quite identical, but in most places the terrain should be exactly the same as stock duna

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p2hat7zj2024hxu/DyingDuna.zip?dl=0

^ Note, the above images were taken when playing a 3x rescale (Sigma Dimensions mod) with vertical height only rescaled 1.5x. The uploaded version is "stock" size.

Any yes, I know some areas right near the shore are red, I plan on fixing that.

 

I figured I'd release this anyway in case someone is interested in it. As with my planet Rald, textures that look super green from orbit don't look so green from the ground. I intended for the shores to be green, but they seem to simply go from red to brown instead of from red to green. I may come back to this later.

Also when scatterer updates, it will get a config for scatterer, and a nice greenish ocean... I'm thinking of colors like this (from the scatterer album)

But this would be going too far:

Spoiler

^ Again, this is from the scatterer mod's album, I claim no responsibility for that color

 

 

[Nightside]

That looks so cool!

[KerikBalm]

Somebody poke me when scatterer updates, I think this will look a lot better with a decent ocean and other scatterer atmo effects

[NISSKEPCSIM]

*drools*

Will this affect the orbits of, say, stations around Kerbin or other planets, what with the minor gravity changes and all that?

[KerikBalm]

No, it certainly won't affect anything outside the SOI of duna.

I think I did the gravity calculation slightly wrong for Duna, I need to go back and check, if I did, then Ike will ever so slowly drift across the sky.

If you had something in orbit of Duna, its orbit parameters won't change (ie, SMA, eccentricity, inclination, APe), all it would affect is orbital velocity - and that would be very minor even if I did nothing to adjust for the slightly increased radius of what the game considers to be 0 elecation.

If I do the calculations right, then everything even within Duna's SOI should be the same as far as gravity, SOI, and orbits are concerned.

Note that at stock scale, air breathing engines are pretty overpowered for this version of Duna, getting to 1,500 m/s with rapiers will give you an obscenely high apoapsis. This version of Duna makes getting back to orbit really really easy if you took airbreathers (even the panther does well for SSTO Duna spaceplanes)

*edit* yep I checked again, I did the gravity calcs slightly wrong for Duna.

The surface gravity in the config should be: 0.298700693093617 and not 0.298002250319431.

Its a 0.2% difference, but it would break the tidal locking of Duna to Ike (though it would take a very very long time to notice.

I'll fix that number when I add a scatterer config, which I'll do when Scatterer updates

 

Edited July 5, 2017 by KerikBalm

[KerikBalm]

I'll be uploading a new version for scatterer soon, I also fixed some problems with the ground color.

Pics (taken with a 3x resize mod as well)