Can we take planetary bodies off of rails in 0.24?

[nobbers12345]

I want to pull an asteroid redirect mission with Gilly later.

Edit: Yes, Yes we all know Scotty, lets stop mentioning him

Edited April 18, 2014 by nobbers12345

[Javster]

Unlikely. Maybe some mod will replace Gilly with a massive asteroid, or spawn one in Eve orbit.

EDIT:

Edited April 18, 2014 by Javster

[Robbii6]

I know that you cant do that but as Javster said you could probably get a mod

[nobbers12345]

Now I'm wondering how good ksp's mechanic of momentum is.

If we made asteroids indestructible, I could throw one at Moho and knock it into the sun.

[Tery215]

All planets & Gilly are far too massive to be pushed, therefore they cannot be pushed by even class E asteroids.

[nobbers12345]

All planets & Gilly are far too massive to be pushed, therefore they cannot be pushed by even class E asteroids.

Sure you can!, place the asteroid on a very highly eccentric orbit ( already almost exiting the solar system )

You now have enough energy on the encounter to push it to some amount.

[zarakon]

Sure you can!, place the asteroid on a very highly eccentric orbit ( already almost exiting the solar system )

You now have enough energy on the encounter to push it to some amount.

If my math is right, a 2000-ton asteroid would need to be going 1,263,180,850,000,001 m/s relative to Moho upon impact in order to change Moho's velocity by 1 (ONE) m/s. That assumes a perfectly inelastic collision (asteroid sticks to Moho). In a perfectly elastic collision (asteroid bounces off Moho like a superball) it would only need about half that speed, so only 631.59 trillion m/s

There is no point in taking the planetary bodies off rails because nothing you can do, other than extreme cheating, can alter their momentum in any significant way. They are all far too massive.

Maybe try editing your save file to make an asteroid weigh a few hundred trillion tons instead

Edited April 18, 2014 by zarakon

[Hans Dorn]

I'd like to see gravity implemented for the asteroids. It's what's holding them together after all, right?

This would enable you to:

Properly land on them

Orbit them

Or even make them orbit each other!

Sounds like fun to me...

[toric5]

I'd like to see gravity implemented for the asteroids. It's what's holding them together after all, right?

This would enable you to:

Properly land on them

Orbit them

Or even make them orbit each other!

Sounds like fun to me...

exempt that astroid os those sizes have negligible amount of gravity. as in, photon pressure is more powerful at the surface of the astriod then its gravity is. for astriod that small, is simply structural linkage(?) that holds it together.

[Syphus]

Considering we haven't gotten to 0.24 yet, I don't think anyone knows the answer to this. (But it still won't be happening)

Rather than something pointless like this, I'd rather continue my dream of upping the physics simulation so that while you are in an orbit of say, Laythe, Jool's SoI would still be affecting you.

[vexx32]

That's not that hard, Syphus -- if you don't mind sacrificing ever using time warp again. An n-body simulation can be run real-time fairly easily, but trying calculate future situations from it at a speed a thousand or million times faster than real-time is all but impossible. 100x is the theoretical maximum for the PhysX engine (last I heard of it, anyhow), but that would be physical time warp. As anyone who uses 4x p-warp frequently knows, p-warp is unstable enough even at 4x. 100x is basically guaranteed to make something fall apart in a fiery inferno.

[Pecan]

...100x is basically guaranteed to make something fall apart in a fiery inferno.

You say that like it's a bad thing ;-0

[Guest]

That's not that hard, Syphus -- if you don't mind sacrificing ever using time warp again. An n-body simulation can be run real-time fairly easily, but trying calculate future situations from it at a speed a thousand or million times faster than real-time is all but impossible. 100x is the theoretical maximum for the PhysX engine (last I heard of it, anyhow), but that would be physical time warp. As anyone who uses 4x p-warp frequently knows, p-warp is unstable enough even at 4x. 100x is basically guaranteed to make something fall apart in a fiery inferno.

Wrong. Why? Two words: symplectic integrators. This is a common misconception, KSP could easily handle full N-body at high warp and high object count, with all physics simulated both in real time and interplanetary levels of timewarp. It'd just take an expert on numerical integration methods to make this work. Algorithms have been developed specifically for the purpose of this sort of simulation, it's just a matter of implementing them, and making them work for the game. This is hardly trival, and would probably bump the CPU requirements a bit, but it's far from impossible.

In fact, this guy is doing just that, and he's just a student : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68502-WIP-Principia-N-Body-Gravitation-and-Better-Integrators-for-Kerbal-Space-Program I'm sure Squad could afford hiring someone with a PHD in this sort of maths.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Guest

[zarakon]

Wrong. Why? Two words: symplectic integrators. This is a common misconception, KSP could easily handle full N-body at high warp and high object count, with all physics simulated both in real time and interplanetary levels of timewarp. It'd just take an expert on numerical integration methods to make this work. Algorithms have been developed specifically for the purpose of this sort of simulation, it's just a matter of implementing them, and making them work for the game. This is hardly trival, and would probably bump the CPU requirements a bit, but it's far from impossible.

In fact, this guy is doing just that, and he's just a student : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68502-WIP-Principia-N-Body-Gravitation-and-Better-Integrators-for-Kerbal-Space-Program I'm sure Squad could afford hiring someone with a PHD in this sort of maths.

Even if it is possible, it would not end up being fun.

Any time you turned on 100000x warp to do an interplanetary mission, everything you have in orbit would get flung out or crash into something because there's no automatic stationkeeping to deal with the n-body perturbations.

[Guest]

You're exaggerating the effects of N-body model. The scenario you're describing won't happen (check out Principia, or any decent N-body sim), because stable orbits would remain stable. Case in a point: Saturn. Lots of totally uncontrolled objects of all sizes, yet they behave, and we can predict their position reasonably well. Orbits would be perturbated, and you'd need to plan your parking orbits while in Jool system, but everything stable will, by definition, remain so indefinitely. Automatic stationkeeping would be necessary only if you want to do weird stuff like sun-synchronous orbits, stations at Lagrange points and other unstable situation you'd want to remain in for whatever reason.

[Vanamonde]

Thread moved to suggestions & development discussion.

[Vector]

Definitely possible. Also definitely not fun.