Extrasolar: Planets Beyond Kerbol | Planet and Moon Discussion

[Planetace]

IDEA:

a small planet orbiting Valentina called CUPID (because valentina sounds like valentines, and cupid is, well you know...), it would be a planet around 500km in diameter and is icy, no atmosphere and has a massive mountain range at the middle... maybe add some canyons here and there and smaller mountain ranges everywhere...

[Andi K.]

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2016 at 5:35 PM, ProtoJeb21 said:

@AndrewDrawsPrettyPictures I've never played RSS before, so I have no idea how it works and how it can be edited. Sorry. 

Don't worry I figured it out. Apparently you have to put "AFTER:[RealSolarSystem]" instead of "AFTER:[Kopernicus]."

[ProtoJeb21]

I've been meaning to ask...Why are there no plans for moons for Fust?

[Norose]

I have a suggestion for a few additions to the pack if you're interested

 

A comparatively big Mars/Duna analog, with several moons. The planet itself could be between Laythe and Kerbin in size, with corresponding gravitational strength. Some relatively small ice caps, many small and medium sized craters, and little erosion to indicate a very old surface mostly devoid of water, but with an atmosphere somewhere between 20% to 30% as thick as Kerbin's, without oxygen. It would exist at the outer edge of the habitable zone of whatever star it orbited, so it would be a bit colder than Duna on average, but kept from day-night temperature extremes thanks to its comparatively thicker atmosphere. The planet would have a day longer than Kerbin's but not as long as Eve's, probably somewhere in the middle would be best. Just like with Mars, there can be a few smoother lowland areas mostly free of craters, indicating old basins long since dried up. However, these areas would only be small and few (two or three, and only a few hundred square kilometers compared to Mars' entire northern hemisphere basin).

Below are some suggestions for colours and other miscellaneous stuff because I got carried away.

Spoiler

The terrain in these low spots should be a light orange rusty colour, along with a few smaller rusty spots inside deeper craters and lower areas around the planet, but for the most part it should be a relatively dark rocky world, with areas of nearly black rock surrounded by lighter grey-yellow sandy areas blown by winds. The southern ice cap should be in more or less one piece, lying at a medium or slightly lower elevation, while the northern ice cap should appear much more broken up, with ice covering several ridges and mountains caused by old crater formations. The black rock areas of the planet should have features like craters, mountains, plateaus, hills, and so forth, but little sign of erosive features like canyons or wash outs. The lighter sandy areas should be comparatively smooth, with gentle rolling hills, flat areas, and areas of dunes. The biggest impact features should only be a few dozen kilometers across maximum, no giant impact basins or sprawling crater rims, but lots of little impacts, mostly in the black rocky areas.

 

My idea is for the planet to have a large family of moons, similar to a gas giant system but on a smaller scale. I'm thinking at least four 'large' moons, in an orbital resonance with each other, and a fifth much further out 'large' moon. I say large in quotations because they are not really that big, but they are large enough to form spheres and are not asteroid moons by far. In order of size from largest to smallest it goes 2, 3, 5, 4, 1. Moon 1 orbits about 7000 kilometers above the surface of the planet, and the following moons 2, 3, and 4 are all at altitudes corresponding to an overall 1-2-4-8 resonance pattern. Moon 5 is much farther away at an altitude of 95,000 kilometers above the planets' surface, and in game-lore is being slowly raised by the gravitational interaction it experiences with the other moons. Therefore, it used to be much closer the the planet when it formed, but since then has migrated outwards. The moons are all rather similar to one another (like the inner moons of Saturn), but also have a few characteristics that make them more diverse (like the Galilean moons of Jupiter). Moon 2 and Moon 3 are by far the biggest, and are both nearly the same size, a few percent smaller than Mun (Moon 3 being about 2% smaller than Moon 2). Moon 5 is the next biggest, halfway between Ike and Mun. Moon 4 is 150% the diameter of Minmus, and Moon 1 is 140% the diameter of Minmus. 

More coloration and terrain suggestions, I definitely got carried away again but I wanted to show i'm not just completely pulling this out of my hat haha.

Spoiler

 

As I said earlier, the terrain of all the moons share similar overall characteristics, with a few differences here and there. All the Moons are airless, predominantly grey and black colored with a few brownish patches here and there, and have sharply defined craters as well as old impact basins (think Mun). All the Moons are tidally locked to the planet except Moon 5, which retains an extremely long rotational period from when it was briefly tidally locked to the planet but since has been pushed farther and farther away (viewed from the planet the Moon appears to rotate fully once every 4.5 months (one month being a rotation of the Mun around Kerbin for reference)). All the moons are more heavily cratered on their leading hemispheres, but the innermost moons are cratered more than the outermost moons. Moon 5 has few large impact basins and more randomly distributed craters, Moon 1 has very rough terrain with a few 'fresh' craters standing out amongst the rubble, and 2 and 3 have large impact basins as well as many smaller craters. Moon 4 has a much smoother surface compared to 1, with most craters on its leading side and no sign of heavy bombardment in the past. 

Moon 1 is essentially a grey blasted rock with all the complex and volatile chemicals driven off by repeated impacts combined with its low gravity. It is rather dense for its size, having had most of the light stuff blasted away, so its gravity is slightly higher than one would expect, 80% that of Ike's. The terrain is mostly rocky and rugged, except for a few wide and shallow craters that had partially melted the ground they hit, leading to very dark but smooth and flat lava plains. 

Moon 2 has taken the bulk of the impacts that occurred in the system over the years, along with its sister moon number 3. Moon 2 is nearly the same coloration as described for moon 1, except with much more black than grey, as repeated large impacts kept the interior hot for a very long time, releasing lava flows into new basins as they formed. Because of this, the terrain of moon 2 is dominated by large flat areas of black lava flow, with paler grey crater rims sticking up in places and at higher elevations many overlapping craters formed in lighter grey rock. The majority of the black lava flows are on the hemisphere facing the planet as well as the prograde hemisphere, but the prograde hemisphere also has many more 'rim mountains' caused by lava filling an refilling impact basins as they formed. Moon 2 has a density similar to that of Moon 1, and so has gravity much stronger than Mun's, nearly as strong as Vall's. The poles of the moon are grey plateaus dotted with long crater chains and deeper impact features in permanent shadow. The polar plateaus gradually turn into rougher and rougher terrain until the highlands become mountain tops which become smaller ridges and rims until they blend in with the rest of the blasted landscape.

Moon 3 is like a good natured twin sister compared to moon 2. While it is still black and grey and rugged, it does not have nearly as much lava floodplain features and fewer giant impact features. It is also not as dense as moon 2, giving it a gravity only slightly higher than Mun's. The moon also displays polar plateaus similarly to moon 2's, except moon 3's plateaus extend further south and have fewer deep impact features. Interestingly, along with the usual rough leading hemisphere, moon 3 has a series of long impact chains on its trailing hemisphere, indicating that the strong gravity of moon 2 played a part in ripping apart impactors before hurling them towards moon 3 early in the formation of the system. Overall smoother, moon 3 has some crater rim mountains in its small lava plains, but it is apparent that the heat of impacting material was not enough to keep the moon molten long enough for such features to form in earnest. One recent crater on the leading hemisphere of moon 3 has produced bright rays of material the spread out from the point of impact, similarly to Tycho crater on the Moon. The crater these rays come from is rather small, sharp edged and shallow, indicating a head-on trajectory of a fast but small object. One other novel feature of moon 3 is the subtle patches of browns that can be found across the surface, indicating that there is a much higher presence of materials that would have been blasted away by impacts long ago if the moon was any closer to the planet it orbits. 

Moon 4 is a rather simple little moon, mostly smooth except for a few small, very shallow impact features, and is the most colorful of the inner moons of the planet. It has low gravity, much lower than moon 1's despite it being larger, and a surface that indicates it was protected from most impacts by the much stronger gravity of moons 2 and 3, as well as its distance from the planet. Moon 4 has fractures in its surface caused by tidal interactions with moon 5 before it was pushed away, and from these fractures vented large amounts of volatile chemicals along with minerals they carried. As a result the surface of the moon is covered in bright patches of rusty reds, oranges, yellows, grey greens and even blue-whites. These colors are a result of many different salts and sulfur compounds being vented and crystallizing on the surface, just a few inches down the regular black and grey and slightly brown rock remains. The fractures themselves wrap from trailing edge to leading edge in a wide band that also moved from the southern hemisphere to the north, then back down in a long arc. In between the fractures the terrain slumps slightly, only a few dozen meters. Only a couple very small craters dot the area coated by colorful deposits of minerals, and appear as shallow grey-white circular depressions in the ground. Moon 4 is by far the easiest moon in the system to land on, and is arguably the prettiest.

Moon 5 is the smoothest of the big moons, and has some deposits of color across its surface. It has a few large dark patches on it's surface that interconnect in one area near the south pole that could be old impact features. It has craters distributed randomly across its surface, most of which are wide and shallow, only a few formed proper mountainous rims. Moon 5 also displays some fracturing across its surface, though the fracturing is limited mostly to one crack in the northern hemisphere. In a similar process to moon 4, moon 5 appears to have vented some colorful material, though it is mostly white and light orange colored salt rather than the widely varied colors of moon 4. Moon 5 formed close to the other 4 moons of the system, but was too high to enter the same orbital resonance as the other moons, so instead of stabilizing it has been steadily pushed outwards by tidal forces over the lifetime of the system. During the early part of this process the tides were much stronger, and probably led to the fracturing of all three big moons as well as moon 4. Since then however, impacts have erased the evidence of these features on moon 2 and moon 3. Moon 5 was never fully tidally locked to the planet, and as it has been boosted upwards it has felt fewer tides from the planet itself and now seems it will never fully tidally lock. Its day relative to the planet is very long, but its solar day is actually slightly longer, because of the direction the moon rotates compared to the direction it orbits. The fact that moon 5 is quite large, formed and cooled quickly, and was never heavily bombarded after formation, indicates it may have comparatively large reserves of underground chemicals compared to the other moons of the system. 

 

 

I only gave the two altitudes because I don't at the moment have a way of figuring out what altitudes would be needed to form a 1-2-4-8 resonance with 4 moons, but I think with some playing around in hyperedit I could get something figured out. Also, if you'd like, I can whip up some concept art over the weekend (once I'm off work) to give probably a much better idea of what I mean, just let me know what you think. I don't know how much detail you like in suggestions so I figured I'd go all out ;)

Hopefully my idea makes the cut! Oh and if you do decide to explore this suggestion more I'd be happy to help with naming the planet and the moons. Cheers!