The Horrifying Implications of the Kerbin Crater

[Ace in Space]

I've been playing KSP for a little while, and I've been occasionally coming to lurk here on the forums, but the other day I had something of a revelation about Kerbin and wanted to share it with the community, so I decided to finally make an account. Sorry if something like this has already been posted at some point, but as far as I know this is new material. Now, before anyone comes in with "it's a space sim game with no plot; they weren't trying to design a world with a history or reasonable geography. Stop overthinking it!" - I know I'm overthinking it. But overthinking it can be fun - or horrifying, as the case may be - and overthinking things is what I do best. So why not share it with the community?

 

Anyway, let me tell you a bit about the extinction of the dinosaurs. You've probably seen it depicted in movies or on TV, but chances are what you've seen pales in comparison to reality. There's a pretty good half-hour documentary here if you're interested, but what I'm trying to get at is the sheer horror of the impact event and its immediate aftermath.

66 million years ago, an asteroid 10km (6 miles) across slammed into what's now the yucatan peninsula at around 80,000km/h (50,000 mph). The air around the meteor would have briefly been hotter than the surface of the sun, and obviously anything in the immediate vicinity of the impact site would have been incinerated on the spot. When this asteroid hit the water, it caused tsunamis at least 100m (330ft) high as it plowed through to the seabed below, and sent shockwaves through the planet that likely caused worldwide volcanic eruptions and massive earthquakes.

It kicked up a massive amount of debris into the atmosphere, including a lot of sulfurous material due to the location of the impact. This debris was thrown high enough to spread around the world. Then the heavier stuff began to fall down, heating up during atmospheric re-entry and causing a rain of fire that lasted hours. The surface of the earth heated up to oven-like temperatures (I don't need to describe what that would do to any animals that weren't able to take shelter). The heat was so intense that forests around the world may have spontaneously burst into flames.

Meanwhile, the lighter debris stayed up high, along with smoke from fires and volcanos, blotting out the sun. Estimates vary on how long this lasted, ranging from a few months to a year, but during this time, whatever plants survived the firestorms would have been unable to photosynthesize, cutting off the food chain at the base. The high amount of sulfur in the atmosphere would have caused acid rain on a massive scale, acidifying the oceans and further crippling the food chain. Even after the skies cleared enough for sunlight to filter through, the world still suffered a sort of nuclear winter that would last for about three more years.

This catastrophe wiped out about 75% of all life on earth. For the sheer scale of the devastation caused by the impact, the crater seems underwhelmingly small.

 

So what's all this got to do with Kerbal Space Program, you ask? How about that giant crater on Kerbin that you've probably never given much thought to?

That. Is a big crater. But Kerbin's a lot smaller than Earth, so it's not as bad as it looks, right? To get a true sense of the scale, I 'shopped together a picture of Earth and Kerbin to scale, based on their average radius as listed on Wikipedia and the KSP wiki respectively. I then overlaid that map with the crater outline onto Earth. Now, it's hard to see either crater at that scale without zooming in, so I drew a red circle over each.

Consider the sheer devastation caused by the impact that left the chicxulub crater. Consider Kerbin's size relative to earth. Consider that the crater on Kerbin is roughly the same size as chicxulub.

 

[SiriusRocketry]

@Ace in Space I'm reasonably sure such an incident blasted a hell of a lot of debris in to the Kerbin SOI (leading to the creation of the Mun) Minmus is stated to be a captured comet...so maybe that was a little while after?

[NSEP]

Cool! I think this huge asteroid is the reason why there are only Grass, Trees, Cacti, Invisible birds and Green Marsmallows left.

[[insert_name_here]]

Perhaps such a huge impact is the reason why there are so many asteroids near Kerbin?

[dangerhamster]

Luckily it only wiped out the Flat Kerbin Society. The rest of the population having already retreated to KerbTube proof bunkers. Some say the impact set back progress by many centuries but recent studies have shown that the immediate planetwide rise in IQ compensated for this.

 

[Bill Phil]

Kerbin's escape velocity is a lot smaller. The debris would thus have a higher likelihood of escaping and not falling back, so I'd say that it would be less devastating. Slightly...

[purpleivan]

Perhaps the impact was a lot more recent, i.e. after kerbal life evolved, and the whole game is some kind of KSP afterlife.

Would explain the ease with which Jeb et al. get back on the roster after smashing into a planet at near supersonic speeds.

Kerbin... world of the dead.

[Just Jim]

I explain that crater in the Saga... That crater impacted about 1,000-1,200 years ago. The surface of Kerbin has just recently re-grown in the last few centuries or so, and the only surviving Kerbs were the ones that were warned to move underground before the impact by Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn... This is why the survivors built a pyramid for him...

Edited January 15, 2018 by Just Jim

[Kerbart]

8 hours ago, Ace in Space said:

Consider that the crater on Kerbin is roughly the same size as chicxulub.

But Kerbin is of course a lot more dense than Earth, mitigating a lot of that smaller size. Making it probably still a Chicxulub type event for the planet, but not magnitudes worse.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

18 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

But Kerbin is of course a lot more dense than Earth, mitigating a lot of that smaller size. Making it probably still a Chicxulub type event for the planet, but not magnitudes worse.

This was my thinking as well, I had always heard it said that Kerbin is both roughly 10 times smaller and 10 times denser than Earth.

Edited January 15, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[wumpus]

16 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

But Kerbin is of course a lot more dense than Earth, mitigating a lot of that smaller size. Making it probably still a Chicxulub type event for the planet, but not magnitudes worse.

Good question.  We don't know how much surface soil was blown off.  We might assume that any water blaster out might hit escape velocity, but the unobtanium that gives Kerbin its density rained back down.  I wonder if this is the source for Kerbal materials... While most equipment meets Earth spec well, the fuel tanks are redonculously massive.  It may have been a mixed blessing: killing much life while making valuable resources obtainable.

[0something0]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

But Kerbin is of course a lot more dense than Earth, mitigating a lot of that smaller size. Making it probably still a Chicxulub type event for the planet, but not magnitudes worse.

I disagree. If Kerb in was denser then Earth, then more impact power would have been needed to create the same sized crater. 

[Leafbaron]

Interestingly enough, Kerbin had almost the same axial tilt as Earth before the impact. The tremendous stike rotated the planet to its near perfectly 0° axial tilt  that we see today.

[Urus28]

I always find these discussions interesting.

A great addition to KSP would be to have some real data from science experiment in game to confirm some theories. I'm quite sure this has always been suggested for the game.

[ExtremeSquared]

Given his immortality, I assumed that was caused by Jeb's first attempt at a soft landing.

[Terryl]

This is what I love in games that you can't find as often.

Attention to detail. This little bit of Kerbin can lead players (specifically most of the people in this thread) to think & make their own little conclusions.

It gives us more to play with & think about, other than playing the game.

[Just Jim]

4 hours ago, Terryl said:

This is what I love in games that you can't find as often.

Attention to detail. This little bit of Kerbin can lead players (specifically most of the people in this thread) to think & make their own little conclusions.

It gives us more to play with & think about, other than playing the game.

Have you visited the fan-fiction section yet???  Some of us think about stuff like this way too much!!!  

Edited January 18, 2018 by Just Jim

[RocketSimplicity]

Reminds me of the old Kerbin geographical club or whatever it was called. This thread and interest into it may start the club back up... The good ol’ days will come back for some of the members who have been here for a long time...

 

Looks maybe a few mil old? Been flooded by water, maybe made the mun and the core of minmus?

[Mortimer Kerman]

On 1/15/2018 at 5:49 PM, Urus28 said:

I always find these discussions interesting.

A great addition to KSP would be to have some real data from science experiment in game to confirm some theories. I'm quite sure this has always been suggested for the game.

Okay, I make a « true science » version of the experiments and i send a download link.

[Richy teh space man]

I suspect this disaster was the impetus for Kerbals starting their space program, to prevent catastrophes like this from happening again

[Mortimer Kerman]

55 minutes ago, Richy teh space man said:

I suspect this disaster was the impetus for Kerbals starting their space program, to prevent catastrophes like this from happening again

I love this

[Nezclaw]

Could it also be a crater from a supervolcano?

[kerbiloid]

Unlikely it could be such round, accurate, and with the central peak.

[paul23]

On 1/15/2018 at 4:58 AM, Ace in Space said:

I've been playing KSP for a little while, and I've been occasionally coming to lurk here on the forums, but the other day I had something of a revelation about Kerbin and wanted to share it with the community, so I decided to finally make an account. Sorry if something like this has already been posted at some point, but as far as I know this is new material. Now, before anyone comes in with "it's a space sim game with no plot; they weren't trying to design a world with a history or reasonable geography. Stop overthinking it!" - I know I'm overthinking it. But overthinking it can be fun - or horrifying, as the case may be - and overthinking things is what I do best. So why not share it with the community?

 

Anyway, let me tell you a bit about the extinction of the dinosaurs. You've probably seen it depicted in movies or on TV, but chances are what you've seen pales in comparison to reality. There's a pretty good half-hour documentary here if you're interested, but what I'm trying to get at is the sheer horror of the impact event and its immediate aftermath.

66 million years ago, an asteroid 10km (6 miles) across slammed into what's now the yucatan peninsula at around 80,000km/h (50,000 mph). The air around the meteor would have briefly been hotter than the surface of the sun, and obviously anything in the immediate vicinity of the impact site would have been incinerated on the spot. When this asteroid hit the water, it caused tsunamis at least 100m (330ft) high as it plowed through to the seabed below, and sent shockwaves through the planet that likely caused worldwide volcanic eruptions and massive earthquakes.

It kicked up a massive amount of debris into the atmosphere, including a lot of sulfurous material due to the location of the impact. This debris was thrown high enough to spread around the world. Then the heavier stuff began to fall down, heating up during atmospheric re-entry and causing a rain of fire that lasted hours. The surface of the earth heated up to oven-like temperatures (I don't need to describe what that would do to any animals that weren't able to take shelter). The heat was so intense that forests around the world may have spontaneously burst into flames.

Meanwhile, the lighter debris stayed up high, along with smoke from fires and volcanos, blotting out the sun. Estimates vary on how long this lasted, ranging from a few months to a year, but during this time, whatever plants survived the firestorms would have been unable to photosynthesize, cutting off the food chain at the base. The high amount of sulfur in the atmosphere would have caused acid rain on a massive scale, acidifying the oceans and further crippling the food chain. Even after the skies cleared enough for sunlight to filter through, the world still suffered a sort of nuclear winter that would last for about three more years.

This catastrophe wiped out about 75% of all life on earth. For the sheer scale of the devastation caused by the impact, the crater seems underwhelmingly small.

 

So what's all this got to do with Kerbal Space Program, you ask? How about that giant crater on Kerbin that you've probably never given much thought to?

That. Is a big crater. But Kerbin's a lot smaller than Earth, so it's not as bad as it looks, right? To get a true sense of the scale, I 'shopped together a picture of Earth and Kerbin to scale, based on their average radius as listed on Wikipedia and the KSP wiki respectively. I then overlaid that map with the crater outline onto Earth. Now, it's hard to see either crater at that scale without zooming in, so I drew a red circle over each.

Consider the sheer devastation caused by the impact that left the chicxulub crater. Consider Kerbin's size relative to earth. Consider that the crater on Kerbin is roughly the same size as chicxulub.

 

Earth has had much larger craters. We had a collision that formed the moon.

 

Also remember than kerbin is about 2.5 times as small, and gravity is too. This means that a crater "look bigger", and less gravity means the ridges will become larger, and erode slower.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, paul23 said:

We had a collision that formed the moon.

But that didn't form a crater, it formed the moon by tearing off a chunk of the planet.   And, at the time, the whole planet was still somewhat molten (if it wasn't, it sure was after the impact).   There's a big difference between an impact that leaves a massive crater, and one that tears the planet to pieces and lets it reform basically from scratch. 

1 hour ago, paul23 said:

Also remember than kerbin is about 2.5 times as small, and gravity is too.

Kerbin, as stated above, is 10 times smaller with the same gravity as the Earth.    

 

1 hour ago, paul23 said:

This means that a crater "look bigger", and less gravity means the ridges will become larger, and erode slower.

Just the opposite, since the supposed weathering effects and gravitational effects on the crater formation would be very similar to Earth.    When you compare the Chixulub crater to the Great Crater they are apparently the same size geometrically (using the OP's nice map work), but relative to the total surface area of the planet, the Great Crater on Kerbin is far more massive.