Kerbin Versus Earth: A visual comparison

[Monkeh]

Thought this was interesting:

http://imgur.com/gallery/ckadxCa

[The Destroyer]

Oh hey, that was interesting!

[hugix]

That is a cool chart! KSP sure does make feel space exploration simple

But i do feel it kinda does miss the point of what KSP learns the players. It educates us in the basics of orbital mechanics and not so much the engineering tasks..

In KSP an engine or a fuel tank will always work (unless you destroy / overheat it deliberately), you have to be a bit clever to make advanced payloads for bigger missions but it is the same as playing with lego's. You slap some parts together and you know they will work. In the real world you have to test all of it. This chart doesn't even has 10% of what a space program has to do more than we KSP players. (radiation, heat shields, Signal delays)

[InfinityArch]

Regarding the higher delta-v requirements of real life spacecraft, do realize that real life fuel tanks are capable of significantly, significantly higher mass ratios than Kerbal tanks, and real engines have much higher thrust to weight ratios.

[regex]

Cool comparison image.

[Tataffe]

Very nice work!

Spaceflight sure is a fascinating thing to look at, given all the high tech stuff they have to use.

[Martonaut]

very good work, I enjoyed that

[Joshington]

Its stuff like this that makes me wonder how the space race was even possible.

[nettcod]

This is great. I'm going to put a link in this thread.

[Mr Shifty]

Thanks. Really enjoyed that.

[SkyRender]

Its stuff like this that makes me wonder how the space race was even possible.

Well, it helps that we don't have super-dense materials here on Earth like they do on Kerbin. When you actually scale things up to account for that, Kerbals do have an easier time than us, but not quite as much so as that chart makes it seem. It was more than a bit unfair to compare a 1-Kerbal minimalist lander to the 2-man decidedly-not-minimalist Apollo lander, also.

[petrichorAM]

Its stuff like this that makes me wonder how the space race was even possible.

What's even more amazing is that everything was calculated and run using a computer with less power than a basic smartphone!

[Rassa Farlander]

Thats super awesome! thanks for sharing that!

[Dispatcher]

Inspiring indeed!

[SkyRender]

For reference, a Kerbal equivalent to the Apollo lander weighs around 7.2 metric tons. So yeah, still lighter than the Earth version, but then, the Mun is a lot smaller than the moon...

[Kimberly]

What's even more amazing is that everything was calculated and run using a computer with less power than a basic smartphone!

A computer that was programmed using copper wire run either around or through magnetic cores, representing 1s and 0s. The Apollo software wasn't so much programmed as it was woven.

[The Jedi Master]

Thanks for making my achievements seem insignificant.

[Motokid600]

That quote at the end..was that Jules Verne?

66 years to go from the wright brothers to Apollo. That's amazing. It's less then one human's life span... W..tf happened since 1969. Humans just stop looking up or what?

Edited August 14, 2013 by Motokid600

[Mr Shifty]

What's even more amazing is that everything was calculated and run using a computer with less power than a basic smartphone!

My computer from 2003 has less power than a basic smartphone.

[NGTOne]

66 years to go from the wright brothers to Apollo. That's amazing. It's less then one human's life span... W..tf happened since 1969. Humans just stop looking up or what?

Humans haven't stopped looking up... the Communists stopped sending stuff to space, so there was nobody to compete with.

Hopefully soon the political element of spaceflight will be a remnant of a bygone era, as private interests take over the arena where government agencies once held a monopoly.

[epicbuilder333]

Humans haven't stopped looking up... the Communists stopped sending stuff to space, so there was nobody to compete with.

Hopefully soon the political element of spaceflight will be a remnant of a bygone era, as private interests take over the arena where government agencies once held a monopoly.

Well we have built the ISS, sent multiple unmanned rovers to Mars and Probes that are now on they way out of the solar system. A picture taken from Voyager 1 in 1990. Earth from 3.7 billion miles away. It's at a distance of about 125.12 AU (1.872×1010 km) as of 14 August 2013. One Au (Astronomical Unit) is 149,597,870,700 km (92,955,807.3 mi), or roughly the average Earth–Sun distance. (The distance from Earth to the Sun)

Edited August 14, 2013 by epicbuilder333

[razark]

What's even more amazing is that everything was calculated and run using a computer with less power than a basic smartphone!

It's amazing what a slide rule can do.

[Zeroignite]

It's amazing what a slide rule can do.

Aircraft pilots still use slide rules

hmmm... now I'm wondering what kind of useful hardware flight computers I could make for KSP...

[Mr Shifty]

the Communists stopped sending stuff to space.

??? Salyut, Lunakhoz, Mars, 1700 R-7 launches, Mir etc etc etc

[Diche Bach]

To the OP: great stuff!

I was tempted to make a joke about Apollo being a big hoax, but ah. Out of character, and probably not the most strategic moment to tickle that particular funny bone.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Diche Bach