The Horrifying Implications of the Kerbin Crater

[Nezclaw]

I will say that I have wondered about the number of asteroids in Kerbin's orbit, since the current definition of a planet includes having an orbit cleared of most debris.

[kerbiloid]

On 11/17/2019 at 3:59 AM, Gargamel said:

But that didn't form a crater, it formed the moon by tearing off a chunk of the planet.

Got it. Moon is a crater. Spherical. In vacuum.

Edited November 18, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Pds314]

Add: Consider that the density of Kerbin is roughly 10 times greater than that of Earth. That crater isn't like a crater on Earth in crust and mantle rock. At 2.6-3.2 kg/l. It's like a crater in tungsten or denser material.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Pds314

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

I am doctor evil, and I have sent Gilly on a collision course with Kerbin! Muhahaha

[Nezclaw]

On 1/15/2018 at 10:49 AM, Leafbaron said:

Interestingly enough, Kerbin had almost the same axial tilt as Earth before the impact. The tremendous stike rotated the planet to its near perfectly 0° axial tilt  that we see today.

actually that raises a question. do any planets in the Kerbol system have axial tilt?

[MR L A]

On 11/22/2019 at 1:44 AM, Pds314 said:

Add: Consider that the density of Kerbin is roughly 10 times greater than that of Earth. That crater isn't like a crater on Earth in crust and mantle rock. At 2.6-3.2 kg/l. It's like a crater in tungsten or denser material.

Only if you assume completely equal density between Kerbin’s Crust, Mantle, and core. 
 

I’d say it’s more likely that Kerbin’s crust is probably the same as ours (and therefore impact craters look/function the same) and the core is even denser than we would assume in your comment

[Mortimer Kerman]

On 11/25/2019 at 12:58 PM, MR L A said:

Only if you assume completely equal density between Kerbin’s Crust, Mantle, and core. 
 

I’d say it’s more likely that Kerbin’s crust is probably the same as ours (and therefore impact craters look/function the same) and the core is even denser than we would assume in your comment

An ultra-dense core?

[MR L A]

3 hours ago, Mortimer Kerman said:

An ultra-dense core?

yes

[Arugela]

On 1/14/2018 at 10:58 PM, Ace in Space said:

I've been playing KSP for a little while, and I've been occasionally coming to lurk here on the forums, but the other day I had something of a revelation about Kerbin and wanted to share it with the community, so I decided to finally make an account. Sorry if something like this has already been posted at some point, but as far as I know this is new material. Now, before anyone comes in with "it's a space sim game with no plot; they weren't trying to design a world with a history or reasonable geography. Stop overthinking it!" - I know I'm overthinking it. But overthinking it can be fun - or horrifying, as the case may be - and overthinking things is what I do best. So why not share it with the community?

 

Anyway, let me tell you a bit about the extinction of the dinosaurs. You've probably seen it depicted in movies or on TV, but chances are what you've seen pales in comparison to reality. There's a pretty good half-hour documentary here if you're interested, but what I'm trying to get at is the sheer horror of the impact event and its immediate aftermath.

66 million years ago, an asteroid 10km (6 miles) across slammed into what's now the yucatan peninsula at around 80,000km/h (50,000 mph). The air around the meteor would have briefly been hotter than the surface of the sun, and obviously anything in the immediate vicinity of the impact site would have been incinerated on the spot. When this asteroid hit the water, it caused tsunamis at least 100m (330ft) high as it plowed through to the seabed below, and sent shockwaves through the planet that likely caused worldwide volcanic eruptions and massive earthquakes.

It kicked up a massive amount of debris into the atmosphere, including a lot of sulfurous material due to the location of the impact. This debris was thrown high enough to spread around the world. Then the heavier stuff began to fall down, heating up during atmospheric re-entry and causing a rain of fire that lasted hours. The surface of the earth heated up to oven-like temperatures (I don't need to describe what that would do to any animals that weren't able to take shelter). The heat was so intense that forests around the world may have spontaneously burst into flames.

Meanwhile, the lighter debris stayed up high, along with smoke from fires and volcanos, blotting out the sun. Estimates vary on how long this lasted, ranging from a few months to a year, but during this time, whatever plants survived the firestorms would have been unable to photosynthesize, cutting off the food chain at the base. The high amount of sulfur in the atmosphere would have caused acid rain on a massive scale, acidifying the oceans and further crippling the food chain. Even after the skies cleared enough for sunlight to filter through, the world still suffered a sort of nuclear winter that would last for about three more years.

This catastrophe wiped out about 75% of all life on earth. For the sheer scale of the devastation caused by the impact, the crater seems underwhelmingly small.

 

So what's all this got to do with Kerbal Space Program, you ask? How about that giant crater on Kerbin that you've probably never given much thought to?

That. Is a big crater. But Kerbin's a lot smaller than Earth, so it's not as bad as it looks, right? To get a true sense of the scale, I 'shopped together a picture of Earth and Kerbin to scale, based on their average radius as listed on Wikipedia and the KSP wiki respectively. I then overlaid that map with the crater outline onto Earth. Now, it's hard to see either crater at that scale without zooming in, so I drew a red circle over each.

Consider the sheer devastation caused by the impact that left the chicxulub crater. Consider Kerbin's size relative to earth. Consider that the crater on Kerbin is roughly the same size as chicxulub.

 

It looks more like it hit LA. And afterwords the landmasses got messed up and maybe the planet spewed out a lot of it's innards and the planet shrunk leaving the warped and somewhat iverted land masses. The upper portion look like korea and the bottom looks like central and south america we bent towards the pacific. Maybe possibly if the earth spewed out stuff from LA and shrunk down a bit?!

 

Above that Canada and russia got squeeshed together and I think Australia is on the other side.

 

 

Africa and asia and europe are a sitny island in the north middle past that desert area... MAybe the rest is new land? I think they used the earth as a model and rearange or shunk and increase the size of things.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Arugela

[LitteXMan808]

The asteroids like 1 Vigintillion meters away from Kerbol : Am I a joke to you?

[LitteXMan808]

I've been playing KSP for a little while, and I've been occasionally coming to lurk here on the forums, but the other day I had something of a revelation about Kerbin and wanted to share it with the community, so I decided to finally make an account. Sorry if something like this has already been posted at some point, but as far as I know this is new material. Now, before anyone comes in with "it's a space sim game with no plot; they weren't trying to design a world with a history or reasonable geography. Stop overthinking it!" - I know I'm overthinking it. But overthinking it can be fun - or horrifying, as the case may be - and overthinking things is what I do best. So why not share it with the community?

 

Anyway, let me tell you a bit about the extinction of the dinosaurs. You've probably seen it depicted in movies or on TV, but chances are what you've seen pales in comparison to reality. There's a pretty good half-hour documentary here if you're interested, but what I'm trying to get at is the sheer horror of the impact event and its immediate aftermath.

66 million years ago, an asteroid 10km (6 miles) across slammed into what's now the yucatan peninsula at around 80,000km/h (50,000 mph). The air around the meteor would have briefly been hotter than the surface of the sun, and obviously anything in the immediate vicinity of the impact site would have been incinerated on the spot. When this asteroid hit the water, it caused tsunamis at least 100m (330ft) high as it plowed through to the seabed below, and sent shockwaves through the planet that likely caused worldwide volcanic eruptions and massive earthquakes.

It kicked up a massive amount of debris into the atmosphere, including a lot of sulfurous material due to the location of the impact. This debris was thrown high enough to spread around the world. Then the heavier stuff began to fall down, heating up during atmospheric re-entry and causing a rain of fire that lasted hours. The surface of the earth heated up to oven-like temperatures (I don't need to describe what that would do to any animals that weren't able to take shelter). The heat was so intense that forests around the world may have spontaneously burst into flames.

Meanwhile, the lighter debris stayed up high, along with smoke from fires and volcanos, blotting out the sun. Estimates vary on how long this lasted, ranging from a few months to a year, but during this time, whatever plants survived the firestorms would have been unable to photosynthesize, cutting off the food chain at the base. The high amount of sulfur in the atmosphere would have caused acid rain on a massive scale, acidifying the oceans and further crippling the food chain. Even after the skies cleared enough for sunlight to filter through, the world still suffered a sort of nuclear winter that would last for about three more years.

This catastrophe wiped out about 75% of all life on earth. For the sheer scale of the devastation caused by the impact, the crater seems underwhelmingly small.

 

So what's all this got to do with Kerbal Space Program, you ask? How about that giant crater on Kerbin that you've probably never given much thought to?

That. Is a big crater. But Kerbin's a lot smaller than Earth, so it's not as bad as it looks, right? To get a true sense of the scale, I 'shopped together a picture of Earth and Kerbin to scale, based on their average radius as listed on Wikipedia and the KSP wiki respectively. I then overlaid that map with the crater outline onto Earth. Now, it's hard to see either crater at that scale without zooming in, so I drew a red circle over each.

Consider the sheer devastation caused by the impact that left the chicxulub crater. Consider Kerbin's size relative to earth. Consider that the crater on Kerbin is roughly the same size as chicxulub.

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by LitteXMan808
didnt load pictures

[Rutabaga22]

You need to use an image hosting site like Imgur to get pics on the forums.

This is a great theory tho! Maybe this is why there aren't cities on kerbin.

[LitteXMan808]

32 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

You need to use an image hosting site like Imgur to get pics on the forums.

This is a great theory tho! Maybe this is why there aren't cities on kerbin.

Ok, do you see the pictures? if not basicaly Kerbin is 600km in diameter and the crater on Kerbin is the same size of the chicxulub crater 180km or so.

[Rutabaga22]

31 minutes ago, LitteXMan808 said:

Ok, do you see the pictures? if not basicaly Kerbin is 600km in diameter and the crater on Kerbin is the same size of the chicxulub crater 180km or so.

I see them now

[Felsmak]

It all makes sense now! A huge asteroid impact wiped out all of Kerbal civilization along with all lifeforms except grass, trees and cacti. When the dust had settled (literally), space colonists from around the solar system established a spaceport on Kerbin as a first step to rebuilding their homeworld.

[LitteXMan808]

42 minutes ago, Felsmak said:

It all makes sense now! A huge asteroid impact wiped out all of Kerbal civilization along with all lifeforms except grass, trees and cacti. When the dust had settled (literally), space colonists from around the solar system established a spaceport on Kerbin as a first step to rebuilding their homeworld.

NOPE they knew about the asteroid ahead of time and made a rocket to minimus to escape but riots killed almost all the kerbals.

[Just Jim]

My comment here is NOT CANON. This is totally off-the-record, so to speak.
In Emiko Station I wrote that it was a comet, not an asteroid. They saw it coming, and the prophet and mathematician Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn realized it was going to hit and warned everyone, and many of the early Kerbals fled deep underground just in time.
This is why there is so little life on the surface, and no cities. And why the survivors built the great pyramid in Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn's honor.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Just Jim

[LitteXMan808]

What?

[Rutabaga22]

25 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

First off, this is NOT CANON.
In Emiko Station I wrote that it was a comet, not an asteroid. They saw it coming, and the prophet and mathematician Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn realized it was going to hit and warned everyone, and many of the early Kerbals fled deep underground just in time.
This is why there is so little life on the surface, and no cities. And why the survivors built the great pyramid in Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn's honor.

Emiko station isn't canon  I guess I shouldn't be arguing with the writer of ksp2 when it comes to canon lol.

[Just Jim]

10 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Emiko station isn't canon  I guess I shouldn't be arguing with the writer of ksp2 when it comes to canon lol.

I just want to make sure everyone knows my comment was un-official... lol

10 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Emiko station isn't canon  I guess I shouldn't be arguing with the writer of ksp2 when it comes to canon lol.

Oh, I'm sorry. I should have worded that better. I just meant my comment (and Emiko Station) are not canon, not this thread.
As far as the game, there is no official lore to explain the crater at this time
So please feel free to theorize and speculate what happened. This is fun.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Just Jim

[Nazalassa]

I see you read that:

[Beamer]

On 11/17/2019 at 1:59 AM, Gargamel said:

Kerbin, as stated above, is 10 times smaller with the same gravity as the Earth. 

That's only half the story though. The surface gravity is the same but its mass is over 100 times smaller than Earth's to accommodate for the smaller radius. I bet this would have some unexpected effects on impact ejecta, even when you disregard material properties other than density (like tensile strength and what not). With the same amount of energy, your rocks don't go up as fast as on earth, but they also don't have to go as fast to reach orbit. Or is that one of those things where everything cancels out and you end up with the same result...

Let's see, assuming the same size and energy a rock in the ejecta will only get 1/10th the speed it would get on Earth. But orbital speeds are only a factor of 3-4 lower than for Earth, not 10 times as low. So less chance for ejecta to reach orbit I would say, a lot more is going to fall back. And of course Kerbin also has a relatively thick atmosphere for its size further slowing down the ejecta. But in absolute terms it's thinner than earth's so the impactor is slowed down less (although that's probably negligible at the typical speed of a comet). We also have to keep in mind that most things in the Kerbin system seem to have a pretty high density, so the impactor likely would too. I wonder if Kerbin could have even formed a moon in the same way Earth presumably did. You'd need a lot more energy to get all that material in orbit, at which point you'd probably just smash the entire planet to pieces and create an asteroid belt like we have beyond Mars.

I fear this is beyond the 'back of a napkin' level, anyone from NASA around who can simulate an Earth-like moon-forming impact on a planet with 1/10th the radius and 10 times the density?

 

[Kerbalsaurus]

I think the crater is  leftover from the formation of Minmus or random asteroid impact. Not at all some Kerbal-killer. It definitely killed SOMETHING in Kerbin's past, and could explain why there is so little life there. It looks like the asteroid impact is only a few million years old, so the ancestors of Kerbals saw it happen. Maybe life is very scarce on Kerbin's surface, and also gets scared of Kerbals when they're nearby, which is why we don't see it. They'd be especially afraid if they Kerbals coming in on re-entry. If I saw a giant mechanical object fall from the sky near me, I'd run.

[Kerbal Engineering Systems]

On 1/15/2018 at 4:45 AM, Kerbart said:

But Kerbin is of course a lot more dense than Earth, mitigating a lot of that smaller size. Making it probably still a Chicxulub type event for the planet, but not magnitudes worse.

However, consider that the impactor was likely also made of the same density stuff as the rest of Kerbin...

[king of nowhere]

an impact like that would probably sterilize the surface completely. nothing would survive, except maybe some bacteria.

anyway, life arose from a lifeless planet already. i'm sure it could do it again after such an event.