Centauri Dreams' Star System

[hikoriyami]

Centauri Dreams has been a pet project of mine for a little over a year now. I'm proud to share it with the community, and thought that I would offer a write up about the Star System as well as the science behind the creation of it.

As I am sure you have all heard, Pale Red Dot found a planet around Proxima Centauri this summer. While this was not the initial reason I started developing my theories into a KSP mod, it did help to support some of my ideas with facts. 

I will add more to this eventually, including details of how the planets where textured and modeled. Please let me know if there are any questions or suggestions having to do with my math or the planets themselves. 

Please take a look, and if you would like to try out the mod it can be found here
Elcano:

 

Stats:
Day Length	21.15 hours
Gravity At Sea Level	0.788
Atmosphere:	Yes
Oxygen	Yes
Atmosphere at ground Level	1.26 Atm
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Alpha Centauri A
Semi Major Axis	135 Mkm
Inclination	19.14

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally, Elcano was going to be Earth 2, but I decided that I would be stretching the reality of it a bit thin. In all Likelihood a planet orbiting this close to Alpha A would be Hot Mars, and that is what I have modeled it after, albeit with a thicker atmosphere and lakes of silicate bearing water. 

To give it something interesting, I decided that it had a thick ozone layer that would allow for operation of modified air-breathing engines. It also would lend some believably to why humans would choose to land on a barren desert. The high levels of ozone³ could lead a species to believe that there was oxygen (well, there is) on this planet, and therefor life. This theory would be supported by the large lakes of water on the surface of Elcano and the strong magnetic field protecting the atmosphere from the intense stellar winds. It is possible that at one point Elcano supported life, or that it one day might, but when we arrived it was dead. 

Hawking:

Stats:
Day Length	30 hours
Gravity At Sea Level	0.0212
Atmosphere:	No
Oxygen	-
Atmosphere at Sea Level	-
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Elcano
Semi Major Axis	33,000 km
Inclination	18.15

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newton:

Stats:
Day Length	23.9 hours
Gravity At Sea Level	0.512
Atmosphere:	Yes
Oxygen	No
Atmosphere at Sea Level	1
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Alpha Centauri A
Semi Major Axis	207 Mkm
Inclination	18.34

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gas giants are weird. The term "sea level" does not mean area where there is sea, or area where there would be sea if the was sea as I thought when I started this project. Sea level refers to the level at which there is 1 Earth atmosphere present. The misunderstanding of this led to some hilarious miscalculations in mass and atmosphere density in my first version of this. So the gravity of Newton is way stronger than the stats lead you to believe but, that's the easiest way to state the data.

The rings around Newton are actually calculated to the Roche limit and the outer atmosphere, which makes them believably tiny asteroids that orbit around Newton.

Inertia:

Stats:
Day Length	23.9 hours
Gravity At Sea Level	0.23
Atmosphere:	Yes
Oxygen	No
Atmosphere at Sea Level	0.087
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Newton
Semi Major Axis	170 km
Inclination	18.14

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inertia is the first Newtonian moon, it's kind like Mars. I wanted a moon that shows the effects of tidal locking over a large period of time. Inertia may have had a thick atmosphere eons ago, but due to its close proximity to Newton it has been slowly siphoned off. This has lead to a high level of tidal heating, tectonic activity, and the formation of large volcanoes and mountains.

Magnitude:

Stats:
Day Length	23.9 hours
Gravity At Sea Level	0.359
Atmosphere:	Yes
Oxygen	No
Atmosphere at Sea Level	0.514
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Newton
Semi Major Axis	295 km
Inclination	18.54

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magnitude is the polar opposite of Inertia, having large oceans and water as well as a thick atmosphere. This is because of its distance from Newton. The extra one hundred kilometers allows for this moon to keep its atmosphere and possibly even collect Inertia and Newton's atmospheres. 

Acceleration:

Stats:
Day Length	38 hours
Gravity At Sea Level	0.0512
Atmosphere:	No
Oxygen
Atmosphere at Sea Level
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Newton
Semi Major Axis	465 km
Inclination	27.14

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kelvin:

Stats:
Day Length	168 Hours
Gravity At Sea Level	1.34
Atmosphere:	No
Oxygen
Atmosphere at Sea Level
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Alpha Centauri B
Semi Major Axis	7.7 Mkm
Inclination	18.19

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kelvin is rumored by several studies to actually exist in this general area of an orbit and at roughly this mass. Due to its extreme proximity to Alpha Centauri B, it would be tidally locked, leaving one side in permanent darkness and cold while the other burns.

It was VERY hard to correctly model this in game. It basically is half Moho half Eeloo, but getting it to rotate and keep the correct side away from the star was quite difficult. I have yet to actually land on this one legit, as the high orbital velocity of Kelvin combined with its mass requires something like 9km/s of delta V to land.   

Von Braun/Proxima b

Stats:
Day Length	175 Hours
Gravity At Sea Level	1.218
Atmosphere:	Yes
Oxygen	Yes
Atmosphere at Sea Level	1.26
Orbital Characteristics:
Orbital Parent	Proxima Centauri
Semi Major Axis	7.2 Mkm
Inclination	18.15

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everybody's favorite planet: Proxima b. Modeled in the most optimistic way, it has a 3-2 orbit rotation which allows it to keep its atmosphere. Who knows; perhaps it has life? We'd better send a probe to check it out.

 

Edited November 10, 2016 by hikoriyami