Asteroid Mass

[Zosma Procyon]

I've been grabbing ever class D and E asteroid to pass Kerbin's SOI for weeks, and the E's have all massed 150 tonnes. But I just captured a D class asteroid in Dres orbit massing about 620 tonnes. Are Dres orbiting asteroids exceptionally dense, or was the mass of asteroids changed in the recent patch.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Zosma Procyon

[Alchemist]

150 ton asteroids was a bug in 1.1.2. Now they are back to the way they used be and the masses they used to have.

[johnsonwax]

Hmm. Getting back into KSP after a while. On 1.1.3 I just started a mission to recover a Class E. It's just shy of 100m in radius and weighs north of 4 million tons. Needless to say, it's a bit of a bear to move and seems to glitch physics from time to time (stops rotation as if it's anchored to the universe - but orbit still works).

I can very slowly move it with 4 LV-Ns, and it will take me around 50 years to mine out, but if my math is correct I can get it into a aerobraking orbit before impact in 26 days, but it requires continuous burning for around 20 days. I have a TWR of 0.0 and 0.0 delta-v (was 4,000 for a 75t ship prior to docking). The upside is that COM misalignment is barely an issue because of the mass imbalance. 

I don't recall them being so large. I wonder if the 150t bugfix caused Squad to miss a unit conversion in there and cause my 4,000,000 kg asteroid (4,000t) to be 1000x heavier than intended. Haven't seen any other reports of supermassive asteroids, though. 

[troyfawkes]

30 minutes ago, johnsonwax said:

Hmm. Getting back into KSP after a while. On 1.1.3 I just started a mission to recover a Class E. It's just shy of 100m in radius and weighs north of 4 million tons. Needless to say, it's a bit of a bear to move and seems to glitch physics from time to time (stops rotation as if it's anchored to the universe - but orbit still works).

Oh man, this made me want to capture an asteroid so bad... I'd love a 4 million ton asteroid in orbit. Apparently a 100m radius object made out of iron would weigh about 3.3 million tons, so they're not crazy off in weight at least, and that's assuming there's nothing heavier than iron in that rock (though it's also assuming there's nothing lighter).

[johnsonwax]

Ah, figured it out. I had installed USI-Asteroid Recycling Technologies without remembering it (CKAN be too easy sometimes) and apparently along the way RoverDude added a feature that increases the size and mass of asteroids, something I didn't realize was so easy:

@PART:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleAsteroid]] {
	@MODULE[ModuleAsteroid] {
		@density *= 33.3333333333333  // Stock asteroids will have density of 1.0
		maxRadiusMultiplier = 5.0  //Default is 1.25 so up to four times larger
	}
	@density *= 33.3333333333333  // Stock asteroids will have density of 1.0
}

So, my nearly 100m asteroid is 4x larger than stock and 33x more dense. So if you want supermassive asteroids, there you go. Might be contributing to my physics glitches as well.

Edited June 28, 2016 by johnsonwax

[The_Rocketeer]

5 hours ago, johnsonwax said:

Hmm. Getting back into KSP after a while. On 1.1.3 I just started a mission to recover a Class E. It's just shy of 100m in radius and weighs north of 4 million tons. Needless to say, it's a bit of a bear to move and seems to glitch physics from time to time (stops rotation as if it's anchored to the universe - but orbit still works).

...

I don't recall them being so large. I wonder if the 150t bugfix caused Squad to miss a unit conversion in there and cause my 4,000,000 kg asteroid (4,000t) to be 1000x heavier than intended. Haven't seen any other reports of supermassive asteroids, though. 

To quote Chaucer, 4 million tons (tonnes actually) doth not 4,000,000 kg equal. One is insane, the other merely extraordinary. Please clarify.

[johnsonwax]

No, it's really 4,500,000t. That's a 75t tug attached to it - gigantor solar panels and 4x LV-N in a puller configuration. PPD-1 Heavy Command module (3.75m) with a single engineer onboard to increase mining speed and to do some necessary KAS reconfiguration. 

 

I had theorized that when they fixed the 150t bug, they accidentally changed the upper bound from 150t to 5,000kg but accidentally made it 5,000t (or some such), but no, it's ART doing it. So, install ART and haul the Death Star around.