Is the radius of Kerbin _really_ 600,000m? RESOLVED: F3's pants are on fire

[seanth]

On 10/1/2016 at 3:56 AM, foamyesque said:

The info screen is made of lies, basically. 

This.

I took a close look at all the travel times and speeds I have recorded over the past few months, limiting myself to stretches that go in more-or-less straight lines from the KSC: east to the peninsula jutting out int the ocean, and southwest to the tip of the continent the KSC is on.

It's tricky to look at recorded speeds since the speed recorded is the speed when reaching one of those points, and there is variability as the craft gets up to speed, changes during travel, etc.

Long story short: multiply speed by the travel time and the resulting distances are 1/2 what F3 reports.

• Dear Squad, wat? I guess this is a bug? Can has fix? Hugs and snugs, me

Thanks to everyone for helping me sanity check this. I didn't _really_ think Kerbin was a different size. I had too much orbital data supporting the accepted planet radius. I just didn't think that getting distances from the F3 info screen could be so wildly off. But it was nice to see people doing some real sciencey stuff to prove it has a radius of 600km.

Now I wonder if the 2x error is somehow caused by getting boats into the water using hyperedit, or whether it's just always wrong. 

[foamyesque]

28 minutes ago, seanth said:

Now I wonder if the 2x error is somehow caused by getting boats into the water using hyperedit, or whether it's just always wrong. 

 

Like @Red Iron Crown says, it's to do with Kerbin's rotation, though I'm not absolutely sure that's the only source of error (testing would be tricky). It's just a legacy screen at this point from back in the day where Kerbin didn't spin and you couldn't go anywhere else.

[GDJ]

Um....ask SQUAD how big Kerbin is?

Just throwing that one out there........

(I think Kerbin is a bit bigger than Ceres in real life)


EDIT: Consulted the KSP Wiki pages. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin
IT has a equatorial RADIUS of 600,000 m (600 km)

Therefore it has a equatorial diameter of 1,200 km.

I guess that means everybody got the answer in a round-a-bout way.

Edited October 3, 2016 by GDJ