AIM (part of AIDA)

[Nikolai]

I wish this sort of thing were possible in KSP. Alas, asteroids in KSP do not have their own gravity (they're treated like spaceship parts, not astronomical bodies), so this is impossible. (It also means you can't set up a gravitational tractor.)

I don't mean to detract from KSP in any way -- it's an excellent game, and I have no complaints. It's just my weird fascination with impactor deflection techniques.

[PB666]

They would not have noticable gravity anyway, they are sosmall you can carry them around like a dead ship.

[Nikolai]

They would not have noticable gravity anyway, they are sosmall you can carry them around like a dead ship.

It's not an immediate thing. Gravitational tractors work on the scale of years and decades to deflect the thing only a handful of miles from where it would have ended up otherwise.

If I wanted to fly this realistically, I wouldn't be wanting it to have "noticeable" gravity. But I'd also be able to design in systems for station-keeping and other things that treat science differently from the way KSP does.

Again, don't get me wrong. KSP is excellent at what it does. But it can't do asteroid systems, and it can't do long-term accumulation of very tiny effects, and it can't do design of scientific instruments. I wish there were something that did -- but I can't really complain too much, since I'm not willing to spend the time to build it myself.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Nikolai

[MaverickSawyer]

Meh. I prefer to harpoon them with KAS equipment and tow 'em with a few NERVAs.

[NuclearNut]

Meh. I prefer to harpoon them with KAS equipment and tow 'em with a few NERVAs.

I just send a low yield nuclear bomb over there to push it out of the way.

[Nikolai]

And your preferences are fine, MaverickSawyer and NuclearNut. I'd prefer to have more options than just those -- as many options as possible, with different asteroidal compositions and different impact scenarios affecting the effectiveness of different strategies (sometimes, harpoons and nukes are the wrong way to divert an impactor). I've had my fun with clamping rocket engines on and pushing, and I've done a whole bunch of blasting asteroids out of the way; I'd like to see how I could use that to change an asteroid system, or how different strategies would have different levels of effectiveness for different types of impactor, or how we can build systems that learn about the scenario in situ and adapt to the specifics found accordingly. But your mileage may vary, and probably will.