If Gilly had a space center, what benefits or disadvantages would it have?

[JERONIMO]

Imagine how cool it is to go to interstellar space with low dv, but imaging how painful it would be to get a sattelite around Gilly...

[Superfluous J]

Naaw that's easy. All you need is about 15 m/s of dV.

[JERONIMO]

56 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Naaw that's easy. All you need is about 15 m/s of dV.

i know but that's the problem, all engines are OP for gilly (Sometimes even ion!) so you get the idea...

[Geonovast]

I think Dres would be a nice low-gravity body for it.

Considering you can't sneeze on Gilly without hitting escape velocity, it would be all disadvantages and no advantages.

 

That said...

Go nuts.

 

[KerikBalm]

4 hours ago, JERONIMO said:

i know but that's the problem, all engines are OP for gilly (Sometimes even ion!) so you get the idea...

You can tweak the thrust limiters, and just have a single ant engine for maneuvering around Gilly, keeping larger engines reserved for ejection burns and the like.

It wouldn't be a problem.

dV requirements to get places would be very low. Eject from Gilly to a Pe just above Eve, burn there for lots of Oberth effect, profit.

Return aerocaptures would have to be done at Eve, and would be tricky to get right so that you can get a Gilly intercept after that.

Launch windows to Duna and beyond would be more frequent, launch windows to Moho would be somewhat less frequent.

Your kerbals would all be doomed because Gilly is uninhabitable, and can't support a large society.

[Gordon Fecyk]

Gilly doesn't have a flat enough area for a KSC. At least on Minmus there are actual flats.

If anyone can find me some coordinates, I could try sneaking another home world setting on the next release of Alien Space Programs.

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, JERONIMO said:

Imagine how cool it is to go to interstellar space with low dv, but imaging how painful it would be to get a sattelite around Gilly...

I have nothing good to say about Gilly.  I definitely wouldn't want to live there.  It's just not a fun place because:

• Nothing sticks to the surface
• All maneuvers inside Gilly's SOI take forever due to the walking-speed orbital velocities and the inability to warp time much if at all because of proximity.

I will only go to Gilly if I have a contract for it (and it pays enough to be worth the tedium) or I'm going to Eve on other business and feel compelled to make a clean sweep.  Then I will make a Gilly lander powered only by mono just to show my contempt for the place.

[purpleivan]

12 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Naaw that's easy. All you need is about 15 m/s of dV.

So Jeb grabs it by an antenna and gives it a good throw, then Val heads it footy style at the AP to circularise.

[cantab]

Despite the very low delta-V to orbit, Gilly might not be the best placed overall. The problem is that Eve's mass and Gilly's awful orbit means it takes a surprising amount of delta-V, around 450 m/s, to depart Gilly and get a low Eve periapsis required for efficiently going interplanetary. Compared to Kerbin you're also then further away from places, except for Moho. And Eve itself, while not too hard to land on, is very demanding to return from.

I'd propose Minmus as the best homeworld. Despite being a larger body than Gilly, it actually takes less delta-V to go from the surface of Minmus to a low Kerbin periapsis for your interplanetary departure burns. Overall I think everywhere except Moho and Eve is cheaper on dV starting at Minmus compared to Gilly. Many missions have shown a Minmus fuel stop to be very good for interplanetary flight. Closer to home, you have the Mun as an easy starting landing target though you'll need to deal with transfer windows. Kerbin itself will be quite challenging but not as bad as Eve as a parent planet.

These advanced delta-V charts are good for working out this kind of stuff. And really any mission where you're flying between various places rather than just going from and back to Kerbin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalAcademy/comments/1qu5jv/deltav_charts/

 

[JadeOfMaar]

4 hours ago, Gordon Fecyk said:

Gilly doesn't have a flat enough area for a KSC.

Man... There's not enough Gilly to build a space center out of. Much less launch anything with worthwhile size and dV. (Not that that actually matters with infinite mine-able resources in KSP).

[JERONIMO]

5 hours ago, Gordon Fecyk said:

Gilly doesn't have a flat enough area for a KSC. At least on Minmus there are actual flats.

I do not talk specificly about a KSC, i mean just launch a rocket, for example using Vessel mover building the rocket on Gilly, you could go to Eve and back easily, on the other hand, launching a satellite to gilly's orbit would be possible by building a huge pogo stick, attaching a small propulsion like ion engine, and you'r in orbit, thus lossing the fun of the game.

[Whirligig Girl]

Gilly would, as far as KSP is concerned, be basically amazing. Delta-v to launch, orbit, go interplanetary, everything, that's all extremely low. In real life, there'd be lots of problems due to the fact that it's doubtful such a small moon could ever be self-sustaining enough for a space program of its own.

I did want to make, as a stark contrast with the difficulty of Whirligig World, some kind of Asteroid Space Program mod where you start on an asteroid moon of a dwarf planet or something like that. I prototyped it and it was somewhat interesting, but there'd need to be a massive tech tree overhaul to make it interesting enough to devote a lot of time into. Something to look forward to late this year or some time next year if you're interested in starting on an asteroid.

[katateochi]

main problem with building a space center on Gilly is once you've built the space center there'd be no room left for the car park. 

[JERONIMO]

3 hours ago, katateochi said:

main problem with building a space center on Gilly is once you've built the space center there'd be no room left for the car park. 

true, but that's why ion sitting pods were created.

[Daniel Prates]

11 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

All maneuvers inside Gilly's SOI take forever due to the walking-speed orbital velocities and the inability to warp time much if at all because of proximity.

This. The main turnoff of flying in super-low gravity bodies is the time it takes do do everything.

[Mr. Peabody]

Just now, Daniel Prates said:

This. The main turnoff of flying in super-low gravity bodies is the time it takes do do everything.

Main turnoff? You mean drawback. 

[Daniel Prates]

10 minutes ago, The Dunatian said:

Main turnoff? You mean drawback. 

Do I heheheh? Double- 

Its a turnoff in the sense that I was all excited when I first went there, but the hour-long descent at 1m/s (yes I am exagerating a little) convinced me to never go there again. In my 1000+ hours of KSP, I have only been there once.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[Whirligig Girl]

5 hours ago, katateochi said:

main problem with building a space center on Gilly is once you've built the space center there'd be no room left for the car park. 

cars can't get any traction in Gilly's gravity anyway.

OK so here's the thing. Manuevers don't actually take substantially more time on Gilly than on other bodies. Orbital period for two bodies of the same density at the same multiple of the body's radius will be the same. Larger bodies may be much heavier, but they're also bigger around. Actual speed on Gilly is very slow, but you don't have to travel very far. Gilly isn't as dense as Kerbin or some of the other bodies, but Jool is slower in terms of orbital periods, despite orbital velocities being huge. What makes Gilly painfully slow is that you can't timewarp at all under 8000 meters, and that is a fairly simple fix with Kopernicus or BetterTimeWarp.

Gilly is in fact a lot faster than other planets because you don't have to mess around with this orbital mechanics nonsense. If you want to rendezvous with your space station on the other side of Gilly, you just trivially fly at escape velocity for a few minutes, and hey presto you're there and you can start docking. Orbits are more fragile to being bumped around but that's a decent tradeoff for easy brachistochrone transfers.

[ExtremeSquared]

It's slower to get things done in unmodded KSP because the max timewarp rules are extra strict on Gilly.

Also, the best part of a manned interplanetary mission is doing horribly inefficient transfers back to Kerbin with any left over fuel and plowing irresponsibly into the atmosphere at 6000 m/s.

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, GregroxMun said:

What makes Gilly painfully slow is that you can't timewarp at all under 8000 meters, and that is a fairly simple fix with Kopernicus or BetterTimeWarp.

True, but these aren't in common use except except with folks who have long since finished all they intend to do any closer to the sun than Sarnus.  Can't be mucking about at any of the "inner" planets (which includes Jool) if you ever want to get to the Outer Planets, and that requires higher warp speed than stock allows.  Nobody thinks of applying such mods just to maneuver on Gilly.

But even with such mods, you still have to land in real time.  And that's always a long, boring process.  You can speed it up somewhat by having up-facing RCS or pointing the nose at the ground and running the main engine a bit, but nothing really helps that much.  And all the while, the Kerbals are fidgeting, arguing about one's arm being over the centerline between their seats, and constantly chanting "Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?"  It's enough to make you deliberately crash just to shut them up  

[JERONIMO]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

You can speed it up somewhat by having up-facing RCS or pointing the nose at the ground and running the main engine a bit, but nothing really helps that much.  

Or you can use phys. time warp :D.

[Geschosskopf]

2 minutes ago, JERONIMO said:

Or you can use phys. time warp :D.

Well, an 8km descent at 5m/s or 20m/s is still too long either way

[JERONIMO]

Just now, Geschosskopf said:

Well, an 8km descent at 5m/s or 20m/s is still too long either way

True, that why i hack gravity use all three.

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Daniel Prates said:

Do I heheheh? Double- 

Its a turnoff in the sense that I was all excited when I first went there, but the hour-long descent at 1m/s (yes I am exagerating a little) convinced me to never go there again. In my 1000+ hours of KSP, I have only been there once.

Simply ignore orbital speed, look at it like currents inside an marina. 
You are in front of something turn around and do an 20 m/s burn towards it. 
One fun race is to see how fast an kerbal can circumvent Gilly, hint you will be above escape speed all the time. 

Else I agree with others its the obvious breachhead for Eve operations and nice for going to Moho 

[Daniel Prates]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Simply ignore orbital speed, look at it like currents inside an marina. 
You are in front of something turn around and do an 20 m/s burn towards it. 
One fun race is to see how fast an kerbal can circumvent Gilly, hint you will be above escape speed all the time. 

Else I agree with others its the obvious breachhead for Eve operations and nice for going to Moho 

Well that is true. If you have enough delta-v to spare, which in ksp is not a hard thing, you can just point towards where you want to go and blast away, and then deaccelerate when you are near your objective. Descents can be a lot quicker that way. I did that in the few ocasions I've been to Pol, with the benefit of prior knowledge on how low gravity bodies affect descent. And since the body's gravity is so low, your speed changes can be quite quick too. Baaically you can point directly to where you want to land, speed up to 200m/s or so, and in the last seconds kill all that speed very quickly.