Jump to content

What sorts of stars do you think we will see? Will there be rough analogs of real stars close to the real Sun?


Recommended Posts

What sorts of stars do you think we might see?

Basically every planet in the Kerbol system is a rough analog to a real world one (smaller bodies are a different question of course). Is it safe to expect we might see analogs to real stars close to the Sun? Even if the planets are fictional for gameplay purposes and due to a lack of information on real life exoplanets, having analog stars to an extent shouldn't be an issue.

I would love to see a Vega analog, even though it is possible Vega has no planetary system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, B.Riches2500 said:

I would like to see a star (or multiple) without planets. That way, we will have more of a reason to send a counting missions first to see if there is even any point going to that particular system with a full colony. Just an idea.

No point (and waste of time). We, humans, can see whether a star has planets or not just by observation. Same with Kerbals. If they can do interstellar travel, they are certainly able to determine if there's a reason for sending someone there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’d expect to see a few different types of star, ranging from a white dwarf to a red giant, with some different characteristics for each e.g. power generation, resource distribution and so on. A star with no planets is unlikely and wouldn’t really add anything to the game (except possibly for gravity assists to another star further away), but each star system would need to have its own fully fledged solar system with a great deal of detail for each planet and moon in it so having more of them would increase the work involved

I’d expect a pretty limited number of star systems in stock to show off the various new features and to provide different challenges, with modded planet/star packs to add more as with KSP- and possibly some of the KSP planet packs might be remade for KSP2 as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, B.Riches2500 said:

I would like to see a star (or multiple) without planets. That way, we will have more of a reason to send a counting missions first to see if there is even any point going to that particular system with a full colony. Just an idea.

Instead of sending scouting missions I hope we instead get telescopes to investigate other systems. Space telescopes have always been there in our endeavors at space discoveries and mapping and I would like to see that reflected in KSP.

That said, I agree having some lonesome stars would be nice, even if just to make the universe a little larger.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We talked in another thread about the potential for stars' relative motion. A gimme would be something similar to the Alpha Centauri star system with a binary star pair (Alpha Centauri AB) and a red dwarf (Proxima Centauri) orbiting their barycenter. Proxima Centauri has 2 confirmed planets, including a rocky planet in the habitable zone thats 1.17x earth's mass (Gurdamma maybe?) It also has a gas dwarf thats about 40% the mass of Neptune. Proxima Centauri is also a flare star which might have implications for its appearance and maybe for radiation exposure as well. Bernard's Star is also a red dwarf and is thought to have a super-earth, maybe better described as a super-mars, about 3 times earth's mass and just outside the dim star's frost line. Wolf 359 and Lalande 21185 are also red dwarves with likely super-venus' orbiting very close and larger gas planets farther out.  Ross 128 b is also an near-earth size planet in the habitable zone, thought to be tidally locked and high in iron. 

Epsilon Eridani is also an interesting candidate. Its a very young star with high solar winds and coronal activity. It also still has its accretion disk and very likely a hot-jupiter, with other potential young planets forming. Epsilon Indi is a man sequence star with two orbiting brown dwarfs and at least one large planet, potentially 3x the size of jupiter and orbiting about as far out as Saturn (Maybe Glummo-like?)

And then you have your solar-similar systems like Tau Ceti and HD 219134, likely with a whole host of planets from hot super-earths to gas giants. Im sure Intercept has their work cut out for them coming up with fun planets and I'd rather see more planets per star than the other way around. So maybe its 3-4 systems with a host of analogues and a few wacky things like this we couldn't have imagined. 

 

Edited by Pthigrivi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man it'll be very cool to see new alien worlds with the effort required to get there making it an even better feeling, a top of the world feeling that so many games can't capture cause it becomes too easy or routine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Maybe the pic below is just theorhetical or exageratted, but it'd still be a cool idea.

It's definitely theoretical. We haven't imaged any brown dwarves at nearly the sufficient resolution to confirm it. (Though, we do have grainy, a few pixels across direct images.) But it's also very plausible. If the temperature is just right, weather(?) variations can form brighter patches of visible light in some areas. The contrast and color filters would have to be juuuust right, but I do think you can capture an imagine similar to above if you were to be in sufficient proximity of a brown dwarf.

A brown dwarf star system might be a bit dull to explore, though. There wouldn't be nearly enough starlight to light the planets and moons. So I think the only good place for one is as a part of a binary star system, which kind of makes it sound even cooler, so I'm all for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, K^2 said:

It's definitely theoretical. We haven't imaged any brown dwarves at nearly the sufficient resolution to confirm it. (Though, we do have grainy, a few pixels across direct images.) But it's also very plausible. If the temperature is just right, weather(?) variations can form brighter patches of visible light in some areas. The contrast and color filters would have to be juuuust right, but I do think you can capture an imagine similar to above if you were to be in sufficient proximity of a brown dwarf.

A brown dwarf star system might be a bit dull to explore, though. There wouldn't be nearly enough starlight to light the planets and moons. So I think the only good place for one is as a part of a binary star system, which kind of makes it sound even cooler, so I'm all for.

How about (and this is getting really theorhetical) trying to dive into one like you can with Jool?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, intelliCom said:

How about (and this is getting really theorhetical) trying to dive into one like you can with Jool?

Realistically, radiant heat is going to be a problem. Ever tried to hold your hand near a hot electric stove? Where it starts to burn your hand without any contact and not from hot air, but directly with infrared radiation? That's what you'd be dealing with. If it's hot enough to incandesce, the equilibrium temperature is going to be close to 1,000K. Hotter than surface of Venus. Now, while you are approaching it, and out of influence of atmosphere, there are ways to mitigate that. A thin foil shield, reflective on side facing the star and black on the side facing the craft, can give you about a 100x advantage on energy flow, and temperature ratio is fourth root of that, so we're talking a little over 300K, which is just a bit above comfortable room temperature, so that's perfectly fine. But you're not going to be able to maintain this arrangement going into the atmosphere. And because brown dwarves are large, you can't just go in for a quick dip. A glancing trajectory getting you into the atmosphere has you in atmosphere for a relatively long time. So now you have entry heat in addition to incandescent heat from bellow and very little in terms of where you can dump excess heat. You can probably get great data for a short while, but I'm pretty sure it's a one way trip for any probe.

How much of that would get implemented into the game is hard to say. Even if they add radiant heat, you might be able to cover your craft with enough radiators to offset that and go in for a dive. But, you know, that's why it's a game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, K^2 said:

It's definitely theoretical. We haven't imaged any brown dwarves at nearly the sufficient resolution to confirm it. (Though, we do have grainy, a few pixels across direct images.) But it's also very plausible. If the temperature is just right, weather(?) variations can form brighter patches of visible light in some areas. The contrast and color filters would have to be juuuust right, but I do think you can capture an imagine similar to above if you were to be in sufficient proximity of a brown dwarf.

A brown dwarf star system might be a bit dull to explore, though. There wouldn't be nearly enough starlight to light the planets and moons. So I think the only good place for one is as a part of a binary star system, which kind of makes it sound even cooler, so I'm all for.

I'm all for a supergiant being orbited by a brown dwarf with it's own planets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/12/2021 at 6:55 PM, B.Riches2500 said:

I would like to see a star (or multiple) without planets. That way, we will have more of a reason to send a counting missions first to see if there is even any point going to that particular system with a full colony. Just an idea.

 

On 7/13/2021 at 11:45 AM, PlutoISaPlanet said:

Gravity boost!?

Brown dwarf, neutron star binary. Letsssss goooo

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/13/2021 at 12:55 AM, B.Riches2500 said:

I would like to see a star (or multiple) without planets. That way, we will have more of a reason to send a counting missions first to see if there is even any point going to that particular system with a full colony. Just an idea.

1. That would the sytem(s) boring and would only serve to waste the players' time.

2. There will be other reasons to consider the risks and benefits of sending colonies. This is a non-problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a star system without any planets would not be completely empty. I would still expect some asteroids and comets orbiting it, and of course it would influence the interstellar material and planets. That would be interesting, to visit a star which has no planets but a network of asteroids which can be landed on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...