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Findthepin1

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    The Grand KSP 1.1 Discussion Thread

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    So. I'm building a Duna Lander and I noticed that I had forgotten a power source on my ship. It uses the 2.5m probe core, so it needs electricity. Anyway, I checked the problem-checker thingy where it points out dumb mistakes we made on our crafts (Engineer's Report) and the only thing it said was that a crew compartment was empty. Is this a bug? I can get a screenshot for proof. 

    Laythes' Secret Toxic Trace gas...

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    I think Laythe's unhabitableness is caused by excess carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, etc. released by volcanoes under the ocean. We can't breathe those things. There are so many other related things which are understandable if you read the following. I present to you, the Laythe Theory.

    So Laythe's orbiting with other large objects near it. Plus it's on rails. This means it goes through a lot of tidal stress as its mass is trying to move towards Vall and Tylo but the object is stuck in its current orbit. It actually doesn't get that much tidal stress as Io. See, Io orbits a 318-Earth-mass object. Laythe orbits an 80-Kerbin-mass object. Much less tidal force acts on Laythe. That is why the surface isn't molten completely, and Jool's low mass relative for a Jovian planet is also the reason why radiation doesn't seem to be a problem ingame on Laythe. Jool simply isn't capable of causing it.

    However, we need to address Laythe's water. Jool was much hotter back when it and its moons formed. This meant that no ice could accumulate around Laythe's orbit, it was all boiled away. Laythe needs to have gotten its water some other way, more recently. My theory is that geologically very recently, a small icy dwarf planet entered the Jool system, shattered into tons of tiny bits due to tidal forces, and most of the bits collided with Laythe. Remember, objects in KSP are on rails, but passing through an object's SOI can change your orbit. And tidal forces obviously exist in KSP, there are things that are tidally locked. That showered the moon in water. It already had a thick atmosphere, at Kerbinlike pressures, and an average temperature only a bit below freezing. The water vapour that entered the atmosphere began to heat the moon up as it deposited near the poles as ice.

    Now the moon is warm enough that it can have widespread water. Suddenly oceans appeared across the moon. The polar ice deposits, snowed on by water vapour put into the atmosphere by entering, evaporating ice asteroids, are beginning to melt. This explains why Laythe's former polar caps were grounded, even though they were well below sea level. They were there before the water was. So Laythe is eventually covered in a global sea.

    Let me tell you what happens with tidal forces. Yes, those are still important. They put stress on the crust and cause volcanoes to pop up everywhere. On Laythe, these are all underwater. Sometimes there is a mega-eruption that has effects above the shoreline. A few weeks ago, a fellow KSP player posted a picture of a very large region on Laythe looking "sick". It looked to me like dark volcanic sand. Probably a very large eruption happened and covered the old ground up. Anyway, when these are underwater, they have the effect of boiling a ton of water. This all goes to the upper atmosphere as water vapour. This means most of Laythe is covered by clouds at any given time.  Water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas. So it heats the atmosphere. It's also high enough above the bulk of the air that solar radiation can get to it. Solar radiation can't get to the surface, but at the edge of the atmosphere it's as strong as it should be. Laythe gets 1/16 the light Kerbin does. There is still enough to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, especially considering Laythe's lack of a magnetic field (spins too slowly) and its orbit being in Jool's main radiation belts. We have a crisis. Welcome to the Laythocalypse.

    Here is a preview on that environment's demise. The water vapour, which now makes up a significant part of the atmosphere, is breaking up into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is escaping. The atmospheric pressure in 1.0 (0.6 atm) is only three-quarters what it was in 0.90. The water vapour is heating up the moon. The average temperature in 1.0 (16 degrees, IIRC) is, like, 12 degrees higher than it was in 0.90. I am hearing preliminary reports that by 1.1, the polar caps are 100% gone. Not a trace. The milder temperatures are keeping water vapour from condensing for longer, letting more be split into hydrogen and oxygen. Volcanoes are causing massive changes to the land. The air is disappearing and the radiation in space is getting closer and closer to the ground because the air can no longer protect it. Eventually most of the air is gone and Laythe cools down again, this time to far below freezing as there are now frozen oceans to reflect light.

    TL;DR: Laythe got water from a shattered dwarf planet. It got oceans. Then Laythe clouds over, overheats, then loses most of its air and almost all of its greenhouse effect, and as a result it becomes a cold wasteland reminiscent of Duna. 

    If something doesn't make sense about this, let me know. 

    Breakthrough Starshot Initiative *Live Feed HAS ENDED*

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    7 minutes ago, insert_name said:

    I must ask what kind of science would these probes do

    As far as I can tell, there might not be much. It's supposed to accelerate to 0.2c and stay at that. A flyby of Alpha Centauri at relativistic speeds will not leave much time for science. A few hours at Earthlike or less range. I could see relativity experiments done with this but not much astronomy related things. Pictures, magnetic field measuring. It can't study planets because by the time it can actually see planets to study, it will not have told us until 4 years after it leaves the star system. We can't tell it to study them in more detail because we don't know if they exist, and giving it preprogrammed instructions to study anything that looks like a planet might cause a significant glitch. With eight years back-and-forth communication, we can't fix glitches in a sane timeframe.

    I would also like to see them focus ultra powerful lasers on a tiny sail weighing mere grams traveling at relativistic speeds straight away from them. By the time they are done with the lasers it will be past the Moon at least. Consider also that it is also probably less than a foot wide and needs to have the lasers PERFECTLY balanced on it so it doesn't spin ridiculously. 

    Astronomers have discovered a super-fast star system that breaks current physics models

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    Well, this is perfectly explainable. The previous theory says that supermassive black holes like the one at the Milky Way's core can slingshot stars out of galaxies, right? This must be a binary system that was slingshotted out of its galaxy by the central black hole, and now it happens to be passing us by. The old theory about hypervelocity stars is probably sometimes correct. :)

    What is the most furtherest planet you have got to?

    in KSP1 Discussion

    Posted

    With kerbals: I've been to and returned from Dres and Gilly (first ever interplanetary, officially). I've been to and been stranded on Duna and Eve. I've got a ship capable of Jool and back, but don't know where to send it. I've used debug mode to get to Moho and Eve. Minmus has carried uncountable bases. Mun has carried one. Duna has carried one. I may or may not have returned the colony from Duna, I don't think I've done that yet, maybe I will send that big ship there.

    With or without kerbals: Sun, Eve, Mun, Minmus, Dres (sort of-launched a probe into a resonance with Dres, ~150 years from launch to intercept), Jool (literally, I sent a probe into Jool).

    So far.

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