KSP time vs. Earth time

[Ultimate Steve]

A lot of people feel slightly guilty when they send Kerbals on long interplanetary missions, because you see the MET at 4 years and assume they've been in space for four years.

HOWEVER, although this is the case in Kerbal time, it is not the case in real time.

Kerbal years are 426 days long, which may lead you to think their years are longer, but the main factor in this is the length of the day. Days on Kerbin are only 6 hours long. Doing some calculations reveals that Earth years are about 3.427 times longer than a Kerbin year.

So, next time you feel guilty about sending your Kerbals on a 12 year mission to Jool, just remember that it's really only a 3 and a half year mission.

[Snark]

31 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

So, next time you feel guilty about sending your Kerbals on a 12 year mission to Jool, just remember that it's really only a 3 and a half year mission.

Yes, but kerbals have really short attention spans, so it seems much longer to them.

[numerobis]

Heading off on a 3.5 year mission in a normal KSP spacecraft is kind of like going to university, except you only have a tiny cramped pod to live in.

[Ultimate Steve]

5 minutes ago, numerobis said:

except you only have a tiny cramped pod to live in.

So, basically a dorm room, right?

I just launched a mothership with 6 Kerbals in it, and there is room for 65.

[Rath]

There is more room on most of my ships per kerbal than there is for my actual house.  I did not adjust for scale.

[NSEP]

Jebediah has been and laughing smiling for 12 3.5 years now, he never blinked or took a nap, is this healthy?

[Xavven]

5 hours ago, NSEP said:

Jebediah has been and laughing smiling for 12 3.5 years now, he never blinked or took a nap, is this healthy?

Kerbals most likely don't experience as many negative effects in microgravity like we humans do, given that they can stay in space for multi-year missions without dying. They are radiation-immune and don't get bored. That, or there's plenty of interesting stuff to do aboard the command pod and/or hitchhiker module.

[Rath]

I think that they just have large band photosynthesis so stellar radiation is tasty, not terrifying.

[ZooNamedGames]

They should add a clock for the ingame time for Kerbin days so I know what time it is when my pilots take off.