Rask & Rusk loss of individuality?

[t_v]

So, moon things aside because there are a lot of interesting things on the moon, Rask and Rusk still have the potential to be interesting despite being lifeless. I'll go point by point but this isn't a rebuttal to what you are saying, because the goal is to make planets interesting, and only the method is different. 

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

the plain truth is that the celestial bodies in KSP1 are very empty and boring. I want to have interesting things to discover - not land on a planet, do a few experiments, pack up and leave in 10 minutes and never come back because there is nothing more to discover other than a boring slab.

Agreed. KSP1's flat surfaces and low resolution provide next to no incentive to appreciate a planet. Even with stuff like Parallax, which I rarely go without, you can quickly run out of new surface features to find (not counting easter eggs, for which you have to design a mission specifically to find them). I still spend time on planet surfaces in KSP1 because I can appreciate the view on all these different planets (except for maybe Dres, where you can't even see the asteroids orbiting, which might be cool). But KSP 1 definitely does very little to encourage that, and it is up to the player to search for good visuals. 

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I want to come back (to Rask and Rusk) 100 times, because there is always something new to find

So, I have genuinely gone to the Mun dozens of times just to see the view. I know it is just a gray ball of rock, but there are several large craters with about three different levels of roughness and steepness, a big basin which is pretty flat and have nice ridge lines around the edges, a cool twin crater which has a pinch point in the middle, a canyon or two, and a bunch of small craters, some of which are atypical or dramatic. Already, this is a lot of different views. Standing on a ridge at the edge of the basin and standing on a ridge at the edge of a crater that you can see come back up on the horizon are two examples. And the Mun is not by any margin the most diverse lifeless planet in KSP1. I personally really like Pol for its colors (with my mods) and amazing dramatic terrain. Seeing a megalithic mountain peeking over the horizon from fifteen degrees away is fantastic. And all of this is in KSP 1, which has had a lot less resources to dedicate to interesting planetary features. 

Looking back at this image (the newer one) we see that Rusk has these smaller lava lakes, which already provide a difference from the larger lava lakes. Perhaps a good jumping challenge for future-tech rocket cars? There are also some really flat plains on the far left side of Rusk and some pretty large ridges between the small and large Lava parts. Oh yeah, that giant lava ocean should provide some nice views, especially since I see what looks like an island in the middle on Rask. Speaking of Rask, that looks like an absolutely immense canyon gashing its right side. It looks like it is a bit smoother than Rusk at the moment, but still with some pretty impressive features. And imagine having a big base on the poles, and watching the twin planet and the star rotate on the horizon perpetually. Also, is that a double crater I see on Rusk at about 25 degrees north? This planetary system already warrants two or three full bases, a half dozen big expeditions, and more joyrides across the surface than I will ever have time for. Even if you aren't as interested in seeing pretty rock formations, there are at least 5 places I see that you would want to explore thoroughly to get what you need from the planets. And of course, briefly visit all the biomes if science still functions on a per biome basis. 

TL;DR: Rask and Rusk are not only distinct in their features (little lava lakes, lava islands, canyons, etc.) but the features they have are distinct enough to be interesting and refreshing despite being just rock. Leave some coolness to the rest of the planets! (I mean, if what we have seen is anything to go by, nearly all planets will have just as many interesting things on the surface and those who don’t will have cool things visible from them. Looking at you Ovin)

[mcwaffles2003]

On 3/22/2022 at 1:22 PM, Vl3d said:

There are so many adventure / RPG sci-fi games out there for inspiration, so many thinks to see and discover and use. I think it's really sad to live in an austere, empty universe.

I think it's a tad unreasonable to ask that every celestial body have the detail of a modern RPG. Modern RPG maps measure in 10's of sq.km, sometimes a couple 100 sq.km... these are terrestrial planets....with 4*pi*r² sq.km where 100km< r < 1,000km and there will be 10's of them. That can mean total playable surface areas on terrestrial planets exceeding 10,000,000 sq.km easily...

 

It's just not in the cards friend.

[Vl3d]

The bar is high: Char, Mustafa, Mount Doom, Crematoria etc. I hope we can build huge suspended refineries with lava channels and lava falls.. plus smoke, ash and lightning.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Vl3d

[shdwlrd]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

The bar is high: Char, Mustafa, Mount Doom, Crematoria etc. I hope we can build huge suspended refineries with lava channels and lava falls.. plus smoke, ash and lightning.

But the images show have an atmosphere, Rask and Rusk obviously don't have atmospheres. They are barren rocks. We also don't know the gravity of these planets. Any off gassing, debris could be thrown directly into space. Any gasses that may remain, would be so thin it wouldn't matter much.

[t_v]

20 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

But the images show have an atmosphere, Rask and Rusk obviously don't have atmospheres. They are barren rocks. We also don't know the gravity of these planets. Any off gassing, debris could be thrown directly into space. Any gasses that may remain, would be so thin it wouldn't matter much.

That’s another thing, super volcanoes on atmosphere-less planets would look very different. Maybe you could see the ash trail streak across the sky or there could be a very faint tinting from all of the airborne particles at the time. In any case, Rask and Rusk will provide distinctive views precisely because they have no atmosphere. 

[Vl3d]

"6. How can volcanoes work if there is no atmosphere?

Without an atmosphere, lava can still be forced out through a volcano and flow onto the surface – controlled by gravity. However, without an atmosphere to insulate the lava, it would cool very quickly on the surface." source

"In the absence of an atmosphere, the expansion of gas (derived from volatiles either dissolved in or encountered by the magma) is uninhibited once any bubbles have burst, and explosively ejected particles of all sizes follow ballistic trajectories once they are clear of any gas jet. An atmosphere impedes bubble expansion, decelerates smaller ballistic particles preferentially compared with larger ones, and introduces the possibility of a convective plume (i.e., an eruption column) able to loft fine particles to much greater heights than would be possible ballistically. Atmospheres also enable the formation of ground-hugging pyroclastic density currents that have no equivalents on airless bodies." source

1 hour ago, t_v said:

airborne particles

from

1 hour ago, t_v said:

super volcanoes on atmosphere-less planets

:))

[Bej Kerman]

21 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I appreciate the beautiful words, but the plain truth is that the celestial bodies in KSP1 are very empty and boring. I want to have interesting things to discover - not land on a planet, do a few experiments, pack up and leave in 10 minutes and never come back because there is nothing more to discover other than a boring slab. I want to come back (to Rask and Rusk) 100 times, because there is always something new to find. Don't you think that if we found some unique and interesting stuff on the Moon we would have been back there? But no, people thought it's an empty place and did not put in the effort to visit it again for 50 years.

The plain truth is that a complaint like this in a forum thread won't convince the devs to delay KSP 2 for another 50 years so we have the technology and hardware to simulate the more intricate activities rovers IRL do. Besides that, KSP 2 is only being realistic by depicting planets as boring balls of lava spiralling slowly to their doom - totally unexciting! Right?

On 3/22/2022 at 5:22 PM, Vl3d said:

I think it's really sad to live in an austere, empty universe.

It's naive to think the Universe is like how it's depicted in Star Wars or No Man's Sky. That's not an attack, it's just a matter-of-fact observation. The plain truth is that the Universe is "austere, empty", but that doesn't mean it's not exciting. You call planets "boring slab(s)" under a post regarding two planets spiralling towards each other, like a realistic version of the Hourglass Twins from Outer Wilds, which goes to show how seriously we should take this idea that KSP 2 isn't going to be exciting for the sole reason that real planets don't have all the rich variety as single-biome planets from your favourite sci-fis. If you ask me, you should drop the idea KSP 2 won't be exciting just because rocks are usually grey and lumpy (of course) and that planets made from rock usually possess grey and lumpy appearances. Like Dres or Kerbin, most of the planets in KSP 2 will probably have fun landmarks to set colonies upon.

[Vl3d]

18 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

You call planets "boring slab(s)"

I was actually referring to monoliths. And actually i think planets should be packages containing: interesting travel, orbital and landing problems (gravity / atmosphere / journey there) + amazing views + useful resources + unexpected things to discover (I want more of this in particular).

What do you think about this idea? Rask & Rusk would have a common atmospheric bridge, because of all the vulcanic gasses, that you could use to travel between them with aircraft or airships.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Vl3d

[mcwaffles2003]

5 hours ago, Vl3d said:

What do you think about this idea? Rask & Rusk would have a common atmospheric bridge, because of all the vulcanic gasses, that you could use to travel between them with aircraft or airships.

Why would gas stay between the planets? The barycenter between 2 orbiting bodies is an unstable equilibrium point, just like balancing a pencil on a table by its pointy end.

Edited March 24, 2022 by mcwaffles2003

[Vl3d]

Maybe they exchange gas, or the gas is shot out from volcanoes, or it's like the bulge of the tides but for very dense gas instead of liquid - both planets would have atmospheric tides that would almost meet in the middle. It'a just a crazy idea.

[mcwaffles2003]

55 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Maybe they exchange gas, or the gas is shot out from volcanoes, or it's like the bulge of the tides but for very dense gas instead of liquid - both planets would have atmospheric tides that would almost meet in the middle. It'a just a crazy idea.

It is crazy, because it's physically impossible. This game's physics intend to be based in reality, not fantasy. There's plenty others out there that can scratch the itch it sounds like you have, this isn't that game. They didn't bring in an astrophysicist to develop an unrealistic universe.

 

Gravity doesn't make orbiting bodies bulge toward one another. The closer parts, being in a lower orbit want to orbit faster and the farther parts want to orbit slower. At the Roche limit the forces implied exceed that of gravity and the celestial body disintegrates into a ring, it doesn't lava lamp out and merge with the other body. Inter ring interactions will cause the particles within the ring to lose energy in their normal and radial vectors and everything evens out along the average plane of angular momentum which makes the ring flat and sharp. This game already has ring worlds to enjoy, Rask and Rusk are not them, though they are on the borderline of what becomes them. 

Tidal forces within the bodies over the course of ages will cause the planets to fall apart and the most dense matter in the planets will slowly migrate as they cool to form off center cores, just as is the case with our moon.

Edited March 24, 2022 by mcwaffles2003

[Catto]

If we get news tommorow, it may be about them

[Vl3d]

8 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Gravity doesn't make orbiting bodies bulge toward one another.

What are you talking about? You need to step out of your POV. Is our atmosphere orbiting the planet? No. Then why make that comparison?

There is no need to school me and put me down just because I want to bring a little bit of creativity and imagination to the conversation. Furthermore, please refer to ideas being discussed, not what you would like to be discussed in order for you to prove a point. Thank you!

[Bej Kerman]

22 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I was actually referring to monoliths. And actually i think planets should be packages containing: interesting travel, orbital and landing problems (gravity / atmosphere / journey there) + amazing views + useful resources + unexpected things to discover (I want more of this in particular).

No, just no. These milestones have to be accomplishments, not things the player stumbles on by accident.

22 hours ago, Vl3d said:

What do you think about this idea? Rask & Rusk would have a common atmospheric bridge, because of all the vulcanic gasses, that you could use to travel between them with aircraft or airships.

16 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Maybe they exchange gas, or the gas is shot out from volcanoes, or it's like the bulge of the tides but for very dense gas instead of liquid - both planets would have atmospheric tides that would almost meet in the middle. It'a just a crazy idea.

Completely unrealistic. Just no. Something in the barycenter will fall towards Rask or Rusk. How creative or imaginative this is is irrelevant, utterly irrelevant.

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

15 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Gravity doesn't make orbiting bodies bulge toward one another.

What are you talking about? You need to step out of your POV. Is our atmosphere orbiting the planet? No. Then why make that comparison?

There is no need to school me and put me down just because I want to bring a little bit of creativity and imagination to the conversation. Furthermore, please refer to ideas being discussed, not what you would like to be discussed in order for you to prove a point. Thank you!

You don't need to shame mcwaffles for telling you what's what. What Waffles said is all correct: an atmospheric bridge is completely unrealistic regardless of how much you like the idea. You don't need to go off in an angry post because you can't accept that what you're asking for through all your posts is unrealistic, whether it's in the sense of unrealistic for KSP 2's deadline or unrealistic in how silly an atmospheric bridge is.

 

All in all, all I can tell you to do is play Outer Wilds (shown below) and stop badgering people awaiting KSP 2 because Outer Wilds seems to be the closest thing to the general sort of game you're asking for - it has rich exploration, fantastical planets that don't at all fit inside the column of 'realistic', and overall Outer Wilds is the best game I've ever played. Let's face it, you won't see the Hourglass Twins in KSP. It simply isn't realistic.

 

[Catto]

They are probably going to be a science farm. You could make a colony on one, and you would get alot of science.

Don't disagree with me, this will probably be true.

[Bej Kerman]

5 hours ago, siklidkid said:

They are probably going to be a science farm. You could make a colony on one, and you would get alot of science.

Don't disagree with me, this will probably be true.

Already a thing

[Catto]

31 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Already a thing

Hm? Is it Eeloo? Yes, Eeloo is also a science farm and i will probably colonize it. I am unsure if you're talking about another planet.

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, siklidkid said:

Hm? Is it Eeloo? Yes, Eeloo is also a science farm and i will probably colonize it. I am unsure if you're talking about another planet.

I misread, thought you meant a part like the mobile lab. What you call "science farms" is what we humble folks like to refer to as 'standard gameplay progression' or 'risk and reward'.

[mcwaffles2003]

15 hours ago, Vl3d said:

What are you talking about? You need to step out of your POV. Is our atmosphere orbiting the planet? No. Then why make that comparison?

There is no need to school me and put me down just because I want to bring a little bit of creativity and imagination to the conversation. Furthermore, please refer to ideas being discussed, not what you would like to be discussed in order for you to prove a point. Thank you!

I wasn't putting you down, or at least that wasn't my intention. Also, no, our atmosphere isn't in orbit, it lacks the escape velocity to escape the gravitational well. If you need a physical demonstration as to why an air bridge isn't possible I suggest you stretch out a bed sheet taut and put 2 weights on it separated by some distance. Note that the region of cloth between the weights is higher than the cloth under or directly next to the weights. The cloths curvature represents the potential well  of a gravitational field and it takes energy to move up its gradient. This is why air wouldn't be found between them, because it takes energy to maintain its location there, just the same as we can't just hover.

I'm trying to throw you some knowledge here on how the universe actually functions, a fundamental concept to this series. So please, don't take offense, be humble and learn.

Or ignore me, it's a free world and learning about it isn't a requirement...

[Laxez]

imagine landing on Rask and landing on Rusk instead... a Kerbal classic

[Vl3d]

9 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

So please, don't take offense, be humble and learn.

I am and I thank you for your patience, time and energy invested in writing the answers. Being humble and constantly learning of course applies to everyone.

I will avoid going into the physics, but the possibility of binary planets with shared atmosphere has been discussed before. It seems like they are not totally impossible like you were led to believe or at the very least it's controversial.

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4460/could-two-planets-be-tidally-locked-to-each-other-so-close-they-share-their-atmo

There's even a book series about the possibility, admittedly in another universe: The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw

And there are lot of threads on Quora about this topic also.

Besides, my initial idea was not of a stable system, but of an atmospheric transfer bridge caused by tidal vulcanism. Even though it would be low density, gaseous transfer could be possible.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I will avoid going into the physics, but the possibility of binary planets with shared atmosphere has been discussed before. It seems like they are not totally impossible like you were led to believe or at the very least it's controversial.

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4460/could-two-planets-be-tidally-locked-to-each-other-so-close-they-share-their-atmo

Two planets with atmospheres close enough to create a bridge of gas that's much denser than the ambient pressure of interplanetary space will break apart (as it isn't just atmospheric gases being pulled between the planets), and if the planets are made of strong imaginary materials that remain rigid at planetary sizes then they will both lose energy quickly, spiral into each other and crash.

It only goes back to the fact that what you're asking for is not possible. Two pools of water, topped with a millimetre of gas, pooling on a very flexible cloth will not exchange gas until both are too close to keep circling each other.

[mcwaffles2003]

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I will avoid going into the physics, but the possibility of binary planets with shared atmosphere has been discussed before. It seems like they are not totally impossible like you were led to believe or at the very least it's controversial.

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4460/could-two-planets-be-tidally-locked-to-each-other-so-close-they-share-their-atmo

Looking at the top reply I think they got their math wrong but looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit#Rigid-satellite_calculation there still is the equation for rigid bodies:

Quote

which can be simplified to the following Roche limit:

.

Assuming both bodies have a similar density that would mean d = 1.26R and d is still less than 2R, so two bodies of near equal mass and density won't actually disintegrate since going beyond the Roche limit would require the bodies surfaces to over lap. 

That said, this is the case for solid bodies and the case for fluid bodies, which lava worlds and geologically active bodies should fall under, is as follows:

Quote

The calculation is complex and its result cannot be represented in an exact algebraic formula. Roche himself derived the following approximate solution for the Roche limit:

In this case, assuming both bodies have a similar density, that would mean d = 2.44R which would imply the bodies must have a distance of at least 0.44 R between their surfaces less they succumb to tidal forces. My intuition leads me to think this would still be far too great a distance for their atmospheres to merge but in some extreme scenarios I could assume it's plausible, though extremely unlikely, yet plausible none the less. The planets would probably need some very very very thick atmospheres to have any form of recognizable air bridge. And I'm uncertain if it's even possible to have an atmosphere so thick without solar winds carrying it away, I can  see this getting really complex  requiring magnetic fields of planets to also be extremely high to form a great enough barrier to protect their atmospheres from escaping. Keep in mind, with earths atmosphere the Karmen line extend out to about .02 R meaning if it were 2 earths orbiting one another we would be off by a factor of 10 short. That all goes in the face that Rask & Rusk seem to have little to no atmosphere.

[Vl3d]

I agree, Rask & Rusk are probably already defined without atmospheres. But still fun and interesting to think about these weird possibilities. The universe is truly a strange place, way beyond our imagination.

[SciMan]

Well that was all fantastically off-topic, and perhaps should be moved into it's own "Rask and Rusk atmosphere bridge" post.

Anyways, I don't think it's very likely, since neither Rask nor Rusk are venusian-type planets (which seems to be a requirement).

And don't even get me started on the fact that you'd have to factor in the atmospheric drag of the two planets moving against each other, and the fact that they'd have fantastically violent storms due to uneven heating if they're tidally locked, and due to both tidal forces AND uneven heating if they're not tidally locked.

I mean, with a planet that has an atmosphere and is tidally locked to its parent star, what you usually get is fantastically violent storms at the sunward and antisunward sides of the planet (one cyclonic, one anticyclonic). This means that on such planets the ideal power source may in fact be wind power. And if there's water on such a tidally-locked planet, then on the antisunward side it will likely all be frozen, and on the sunward side it will be liquid (and also helping to drive those fantastically violent storms, thanks to the cycle of water evaporating, being carried to somewhere cooler, and precipitating out as rain or snow). In fact, this might drive most of the water to the antisunward side of the planet in the form of wind-carried snow and ice crystals, eventually forming into gigantic glaciers.

But all of that isn't about a planet with lava lakes over large points of its surface.

As far as making Rask and Rusk interesting compared to the other of the pair, I'm thinking the key's in the lava. Where it is, and how hot it is. Give each planet a "birth-mark" of sorts, in the specific shape of the lava lakes and other terrain features that involve volcanism and tectonic activity.
Or maybe one of them is the preferential target for incoming asteroid and meteorite impacts (large or small).

Also, maybe they're spiraling AWAY from each other rather than doomed to an eventual collision and merger (like the Moon is doing, year by year its orbit grows, and Earth's rotation slows).