Search the Community

It's been ages since I made a mission report or did a serious mission but I finally found some time. Kerbal Ministry of no better things to do (MONBTTD) unlocked some of the budget money and directed it into a first mission of its kind - to land a robotic probe on the hidden side of Ablate, a dwarf planet originally from historically important Planet Factory by Kragrathea, and one of the first custom made planetary bodies ever made. This is not the first time something has reached or landed on this scorched world, but it might even be the first time to do so on its dark side. AFAIK, there have been no such reports on the forum, but feel free to correct me. Unlike Mün, Ablate actually has a dark side because the body is tidally locked to Kerbol. This means it's been eons since anything except starlight or distant weak shine from other planetary bodies lit its surface. While the sunlit side bakes in excess of 1000 °C, dark side is expected to be extremely cold. I forgot to take screenshots of the rocket that launched the probe but rest assured it was gigantic. 5 m wide first stage with two largest solid rocket boosters. Last stage was a 5 m spheroid tank propelled by a 2.5 m LV-NB "Sisyphus" nuclear engine from KSPX. Ruh tug probe itself is propelled by PB-ION2 "Hayabusa", also from KSPX. Kerbal engineers included a "Banana for scale" mod, but the banana was not too happy about the arrangement. I took a lot more fuel than usual so there were no surprises. The probe entered orbit without problems. Dark side has been examined yet again with an infrared camera equipped with a shiny flashlight. Why, you'll find out soon. Landing will be difficult since the terrain is very jagged. After the tug released the lander I landed it in total darkness and without retrograde lock (old school, but I simply used a crappy probe!), relying on ground altimeter only. Upon touchdown, it tumbled few times but RCS helped in correcting its orientation. It's been a good idea to take an RTG unit along because temperature of Ablate's dark side is 2.7 K, or -270.45 °C. This is the coldest place in Kerbol system and it's been hiding on the hottest planet. Here's a panorama taken by the infrared camera. Ionizing radiation level (Kerbalism!) is around 49 mSv/h on sunlit side and 130 µSv/h on the dark side. Conclusion This planet is likely a blasted planetary core and if it existed in real life, its dark side, cold as the universe itself, would be covered by various deposited volatiles that distilled off from the sunlit side. Habitability? The Ministry concluded it would be possible near the terminator in the form of shaded pressure vessels connected to heat exchangers bathing in intense Kerbol radiation, but the thing that prevents viability of such colony is extreme difficulty of reaching it. Ablate is so close to Kerbol and requires at least 25 km/s of Δv starting from Kerbin. Leaving it would be easier once a fuel production facility is established since there would be large amounts of ice accumulated on the surface, ready to be converted into fuel.

I hope some of you will remember @Kragrathea's Planet Factory mod which has been resurrected as Sentar Expansion that still works (yes, I've checked). Most of its planetary body addons were experiments before Kopernicus existed and are not really interesting, but a handful deserves to be mentioned such as Ablate (the overbaked sungrazer), Ascension (the comet) and Inaccessable (dwarf planet rotating so fast that most of its surface is under upward acceleration, downright goofy and unrealistic but lots of fun). I've been working around Ascension. The idea around it is very good and I agree we need such body in stock solar system. If combined with Outer Planets Mod, you can see its periapsis is inside Moho's orbit, and apoapsis between Sarnus and Urlum. However, Ascension is too dense and too big for a comet even when translated into regular world's values. It's larger than Gilly which makes no sense. Thus, its surface gravity is 0.66 g which is completely silly for a comet. Comets in KSP should be a lot smaller than Gilly which is a pretty big asteroid (remember, everything is smaller in KSP by an average factor of 10) having a diameter of 26 km. After tweaking Ascension's CFG file to 0.001 g what seems very realistic (similar to average comets, used for simulations with 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and being convenient for Kerbals), its mass, standard gravitational parameter (GM), escape velocity and sphere of influence have changed, too. However, the radius is still the same as it's independent, so I did some calculations to make it reflect the nature of comets more properly. If we assume Gilly is an asteroid, and that average densities of asteroids and comets are 2 and 0.6 g/cm3, respectively, we could set up this ratio equation. ρGilly : ρasteroid = ρAscension : ρcomet 13.496328 g/cm3 : 2 = x : 0.6 x ≈ 4 g/cm3 It makes sense for KSP universe, doesn't it? If we plug this value into: g = 4/3 π G ρ r while using 0.001 for g, radius of Ascension turns out to be almost 900 m so we can approximate and set its diameter as 1800 m. Seems neat to me. I've yet to try all of these tweaks combined. Honestly, I have no idea what such reduction in size will do to the surface, but Ascension is very spherical so even if it gets all wrinkled, there won't be any harm as comets aren't spherical. I won't change its orbital parameters as it's unique to Ascension and Kragrathea made it like that. I'm just somewhat annoyed SOI is a constant. In case of highly eccentrical orbits, SOI should differ greatly. Please comment on this, I'd like to know what you think of the tweaks.