[1.12.x] Whirligig World Planetary System: An Absurd Homeworld In An Alien Solar System. 0.13.0: Dermun! Ice worlds! Better Scatterer!

[hazard-ish]

Very, very interesting! I hope to see this progress further

[Whirligig Girl]

Coming soon: A pretty big update. I will be showing more later. For now, here are the minor bodies of Whirligig World.

 

Spoiler

Wolda is a hot potato.

What used to be two separate ice moons around the parent gas giant is now one ice moon that is slowly being evaporated down to their rocky cores.

A captured rubble pile around the new gas giant.

A trojan asteroid of the horrid homeworld Mesbin--and it's a binary. They're based upon Ceres and Vesta--if they orbited each other. Fun fact--if they did orbit each other in real life, Vesta would be brighter because despite its smaller size, Vesta is much more reflective than Ceres. Not quite sure it's true here. Without exposure adjustment, having very different albedos and brightnesses for objects is a tad impractical.

Here's Vizea.

Statmun, which has had its physical charactersitics changed to be physically correct within Kerbal scale--it still needs to be made out of mostly Osmium to keep from being torn apart!

Derminmus is not new, but it is a minor body, sort of. If it were scaled up to a real scale object, both it and stock KSP's Minmus would be considered Dwarf Planets.

Denna is the remarkably reddish inner moon of the new ocean world. It is a trojan of Rik.

Rik is not all that much larger than Denna though.

Plaph, the soft potato.

Fophie.

Mally is an icy piece of ice orbiting Reander.

Yawer has been redesigned. It's like a minature Mesbin in many ways. It is certainly fun to play around on.

You may see a couple of new planets in the background of these images. More on these later.

[Whirligig Girl]

Here's one of the new worlds coming in 0.3. Its name is Oshan It is based upon Chris Wayan's Oisin alongside its parent body which we will be seeing more of in the future. (Valyr)

Oshan orbits between the minor moons Plaph and Fophie, at around 4 times the Kerbin-Mun distance. It is a body which is very much a hybrid of Duna and Europa. Europa's ocean is there, frozen under a much thinner crust. It has four times the atmosphere of Mars, and much of it is nitrogen, but there is some oxygen in there too. But slowly the ice and water of Oshan has been dwindling away under the harsh UV rays of Kaywell's star. As a result, the continents of red-brown have slowly been emerging. They're proper continents too--there's enough tidal interaction going on here for not just cryotectonics, but real tectonics to crack the ice. Though most of the ice cracking is from the slow flowing of the ice.

Mesbin Space Program's finest telescopic images of Oshan.

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

Telescopic image of the giant planet Tyepolbynar. Historical records show that water and oxygen was detected during at least one transit by Kerbin telescopes (thought to be from one of its moons), but it was abandoned as a destination because it was so hot!

Tyepolbynar has four known satellites. Jifgif is just a small chunk in a low orbit, Aerious seems to be a captured asteroid. But between the two are some rounded bodies. Imterril is pale blue in color, while Tannor is a bright white. Calculations of its temperature based upon its reflectivity suggest that, despite the Tyepolbynar system being significantly closer to the Sun than Mesbin, Tannor could be made up of white ice.

This is one of the best pictures the Mesbin Space Program has of Tannor. There doesn't seem to be a significant atmosphere. 

Imterril, meanwhile, is covered in clouds. The blue we see could be water ocean like what we see on Kerbmun, but it could be the blue Rayleigh scattering from a thick atmosphere. 

Telescopic pictures of Jifgif and Aerious are limited to pixelated blobs.

[Whirligig Girl]

Whirligig World 0.3 has been released.

Github broke so I don't have a nice and complete changelog. But we do now have clouds and new planets and a lot of work and time.

[The Minmus Derp]

i give you my seal of approval

[Whirligig Girl]

MESBIN COUNCIL OF ASTRONOMY Press Release, Ninth of Tar, Two Hundred and Eighteen

Quote

Two important discoveries in the field of planetary astronomy have been made this week. The star Gememma, formerly known as Rodocer, has been known to have a small dwarf planet orbiting it very close to the star's surface for some time now. Recent radial velocity measurements have resulted in the discovery of another planet orbiting Gememma. The new planet has been named Lowel, after the ancient Kerbin astronomer. Lowel's mass is estimated at 0.2 M_kerbmun and its orbital period is 68.34 hours.

Earlier this week, the discovery of a new planet orbiting Kaywell was announced. It orbits beyond Reander, and has five moons, one of them very large. The three brightest moons of the new planet are pictured here alongside the two planets.

The largest moon of the planet has a mass and radius comparable to the parent planet itself, and this may be an example of a gas giant binary system. The discovery was made by conjoined twins Mandrake and Rutherford Kerman last month at the Doncline Equatorial Observatory's 24-inch binocular telescope--the only location where these astronomers could observe the planets at the same time.

The planet and its large moon have been given the nickname Mandrake and Rutherford's Planet. Its smaller moons have been given the provisional names S/MR 218-2, S/MR 218-3, S/MR 218-4, and S/MR 218-5.

The new planet has a combined total mass of 0.158 M_Tyepolbynar, and are so far the least massive gas giant planets known to orbit Kaywell. The planets are noticeably blue in color.

 

Mandrake

Rutherford

System

Beagrid, the second of the barycentric moons.

Full Album (More moon pictures)

Full Album (Mandrake and Rutherford pictures)

You might recognize this setup. Yes, what I have done here, I have taken Pluto and its moons and scaled them up such that Pluto's mass was just shy of Saturn (and of course, scaled them to fit Kerbal scale of 1/10th radius and 1/100th mass).

I can't include Sigma Binary compatibility for this system, unfortunately, as you can not have barycentric satellites with Sigma Binary.

Instead of Pluto, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, we now have Mandrake, Rutherford, Lozon, Beagrid, Jancy, and Tatian.

Just as with their analogues, Lozon, Beagrid, and Tatian are in an 11:9:6 orbital resonance. Beagrid and Tatian are in a 2:3 resonance, and Lozon and Beagrid are in an 11:9 resonance. Jancy is left out in the resonance.

The moons do not have chaotic rotation because we don't have that in KSP yet! But they do have the non-locked approximate average rotational periods of their analogues, scaled up to the ratio of Charon's orbital period to Rutherford's orbital period.

 

As for Gememma's new planet, you'll just have to wait a little longer before I am ready to show it off. But I will give you a hint as to what it looks like! Lowel is named after Percival Lowell.

[darwinpatrick]

Wow, this is certainly interesting! Is this still being developed? Where is that, if it is?

[Whirligig Girl]

3 hours ago, darwinpatrick said:

Wow, this is certainly interesting! Is this still being developed? Where is that, if it is?

Yes! I'm going a little slow, but I've started to focus on this project again.

Here's some recent screenshots:

My current goal is to remake Mesbin's terrain, then Lito's terrain, and then I want to do more in the Gememma system, I've got some fun ideas for that one.

(Sidenote: I can give you no ETA except eventually^tm because for the past few days I've been thinking of how I can remake Mesbin's terrain, while not actually remaking Mesbin's terrain--I may decide to release the Mandrake and Rutherford update sooner rather than later--it really depends upon how fast my progress with Mesbin goes)

Edited August 25, 2018 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

Mesbin is finally getting that revamp I've been talking about.

[Whirligig Girl]

https://spacedock.info/mod/1805/Whirligig World

Whirligig World v0.4 for is released.

• Re-arranged the Reander System, Lito is now the closest moon to Reander.
• Move Gramun to orbit Tyepolbynar under the name "Etrograd."
• Move Dermun to orbit Mesbin where Gramun used to under the name "Graymun."
• Add Mandrake and Rutherford system, with four additional small worlds.
• Remake Mesbin and Derbin's terrain using modified Tectonics.js maps.
• Change texture for Shol
• Add correct sun intensity patches for Kaywell and Gememma (using inverse square-root law to approximate human vision)
• Mesbin ring moonlets only spawn in uninclined orbits now.
• Principia patch to make Mesbin oblate with their J2 feature.
• Kerbmun is now more similar to Kerbin.
• Denna and Rik are no longer coorbital.
• Added small subsatellite of Manonam named Didd.
• Make Valyr's ocean slightly less blue.
• Make Imterril's atmosphere shader a duller grey white color.

[darwinpatrick]

Wow! I love the new Mesbin! Now, for one big self-indulgent request:

I've always wanted to see a world with most of the land at, say, 40 km altitude with huge canyons. Canyons so big that they stretch back down to, and sometimes below, level 0- giving lakes at the bottom. The canyons wouldn't be all too wide- 90% of the land is the plateau. The kicker being that the atmosphere ends at, say 30 km with Kerbin-like conditions at sea level...

Call it Canyo while you're at it.

[Whirligig Girl]

1 hour ago, darwinpatrick said:

Wow! I love the new Mesbin! Now, for one big self-indulgent request:

I've always wanted to see a world with most of the land at, say, 40 km altitude with huge canyons. Canyons so big that they stretch back down to, and sometimes below, level 0- giving lakes at the bottom. The canyons wouldn't be all too wide- 90% of the land is the plateau. The kicker being that the atmosphere ends at, say 30 km with Kerbin-like conditions at sea level...

Call it Canyo while you're at it.

I don't think I have room for such a world in this planet pack, but something kind of like what you're looking for exists in Alternis Kerbol Rekerjiggered--Super-Tylo's atmosphere is crushed by its huge gravity into just 18 km above the datum level, and the terrain throughout much of the planet extends well above that. (A world like that isn't out of the question for some future planet pack)

[darwinpatrick]

Are science definitions something we can expect to see in the near future?

[Adstri]

Really cool!

[Whirligig Girl]

Statmun Expedition 13, Recovered Transmission

[Whirligig Girl]

I have just redesigned Mesbin's physical properties, and the rebuilt version will be available in the next update.

MESBIN

• MASS = 3.777e24 (same as before)
• POLAR RADIUS = 1392609 (64% of before)
• EQUATORIAL RADIUS = 2367436 (64% of before)
• SPHERICAL DENSITY = 136 g/cm^3 (near four times greater--massive planets have a LOT of internal compression which shrinks them down)
• POLAR GRAVITY = 13.2 G
• TRUE EQUATORIAL GRAVITY = 4.58 G
• APPARENT EQUATORIAL GRAVITY = 1.286
• ROTATION PERIOD = 1701 s (28 minutes.)

The result is that getting to and from orbit is easier, Statmun orbits much lower, and escaping and getting to high orbits is more difficult.

I've also been working on the technology tree. The changes are based upon both the different gameplay style, and the lore of Whirligig World, that is, starting from a society that already understands how to build vacuum-tight structures underground. I might also move many of these changes over to Tylo Space Program, as they have similar premises.

The major changes so far:

• Aviation node merged with Aerodynamics, and therefore those parts are later in the tree.
  • The aerodynamics section is subject to change even more...
• Field Science Node is now where Aviation was before.
• Science cost and node connections have been rearranged appropriately to fit.
• Changed Survivability from basic landing parts to probe cores. It's survivable because it's robots.
• Changed Stability icon from a winglet to the flight control icon, along with a few other icon changes.
• Landing node now contains the small parachute, the radial drogue chute, and the radial parachute, as well as all heat shields up to 2.5m.
• Unlock monopropellant and the linear RCS thruster in Stability.
• Both the radial decoupler and the 1.25m decoupler are unlocked in tier 2: Basic Rocketry and Engineering 101 respectively.
• Thermometer and Mystery Goo swap places.
• Barometer is unlocked earlier--and rebranded as AtMoCo surpluss cavern pressure sensors from a cave-city that lost all its air due to a tragic mistake.
• Added a scaled up Stayputnik clone called the Kaptunik, which is very heavy and lacks the internal antenna, BUT it does have full SAS autopilot (Prograde/Retrograde, Radial In/Out, Antinormal/Normal, Full Thrust/Cut Thrust, and Stage.) When you unlock the antenna you of course get all of that and manual control, but it's still really heavy. I may nerf it since I made the normal probe core appear earlier. It will have its own model in the future.
• The small ISRU parts are unlocked earlier, so you can take advantage of mining asteroids earlier on.

Also, Mesbin has biomes.

Though I need to investigate a problem--you can get northern science at the equator.

the Reander System is now more populated. In order we have Reander, Lito, Yalthe, Yokane, Dakkonme, Totoöa, Mally (trojan), and Yawer (offscreen).

Lito has been redesigned.

I may show the surfaces of the moons closer to the release of this update.

Gememma is now much closer to Kaywell.

I added a sub-subsatellite of Didd: Diddmun.

Adjar has been renamed Egad and has a better texture and a green atmosphere.

And a moon! It's not finished yet though.

Mally is now less extremely boring, and is now only a little boring.

Statmun is cool now. I am probably going to rename it to something more like "moon mountain" or something, as it looks like a floating mountain hovering over Mesbin.

[Whirligig Girl]

[Ultimate Steve]

...Why am I only noticing this now? I sort of want to start a career in this and see how it goes! Maybe make a YouTube series out of it, but that would probably take too much time.

[Ultimate Steve]

I've started a career mode mission report in this pack, just to let you know! 

 

[Whirligig Girl]

Mandrake and Rutherford now orbit Gememma, roughly coplanar with Lowel. It gets about as much light from Gememma as it does from Kaywell!

[Whirligig Girl]

[Ultimate Steve]

Nice work on both stuff you've already done and stuff you're working on!

Two things.

In your mind, what is Kerbmun's atmosphere made of?

And if it helps, whenever the root part explodes on the way to Kerbmun it's at about 1495km consistently, which is about the height of the space center.

@GregroxMun

Edited October 7, 2018 by Ultimate Steve

[Whirligig Girl]

4 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Nice work on both stuff you've already done and stuff you're working on!

Two things.

In your mind, what is Kerbmun's atmosphere made of?

And if it helps, whenever the root part explodes on the way to Kerbmun it's at about 1495km consistently, which is about the height of the space center.

@GregroxMun

Kerbmun has air--nitrogen oxygen air.

You got to quicksave and quickload when you're in mesbin orbit to fix the root explosion bug. I did know it was related to KSC altitude, never noticed it was the SAME altitude that the explosion occurs at.

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, GregroxMun said:

Kerbmun has air--nitrogen oxygen air.

You got to quicksave and quickload when you're in mesbin orbit to fix the root explosion bug. I did know it was related to KSC altitude, never noticed it was the SAME altitude that the explosion occurs at.

Okay. Thank you. Are jets supposed to work on Kerbmun? In my attempts they have not.

Just sent two more things to Kerbmun - can confirm it happens at 1500km, you'll overshoot that if you're in time warp.