Moving Minmus

[tk5800thesecond]

Ok, I understand minmus is set in it orbit seeing how its a moon object in the unity engine (I think its unity)

But, hypothetically, seeing how there is such little gravity around minmus (With how little thrust you need to land on it) would it be possible to land giant rockets on minmus and fire them pro grade thus increasing the apoapsis?

hmmm..... can you theoretical change the orbit of minmus with a Saturn v sized rocket strapped to it (there we go, i think that makes more sense)

[Cooly568]

No. Minmus stays on rails. Basically, you can't move it. At all.

[AncientAstronaut]

Try the search bar.

[nibula]

Fail answers cmon we are thinking theoretically what force needed to move minmus if it wouldnt be on rails.

[Winter Man]

Any force would change its orbit hypothetically, but even something the size of a Saturn V wouldn't be anywhere near big enough to do anything appreciable. You'd need some kind of gargantuan Orion drive-like system to do anything worthwhile.

[royalkingofgames]

is that a challenge

[Letum]

If you want to change Minmus' speed by 1/ms then you would need a force of about 11,760,000,000,000,000 Newtons acting for one hour

That is roughly 350,000,000 Saturn rockets each with 10 times their usual fuel load so they could burn at full power for one hour. Do this and you will get a change of 1/ms.

In theory, not ingame of course.

Good look finding funding for that!

[tk5800thesecond]

XD thanks for crunching the numbers, now I see how impossible it would be........... or is it possible?

time for a long term minmus moon base

[Bluejayek]

Minimus has a mass of 4.234E19kg. That is 42,340,000,000,000,000,000kg. In order to change its orbital velocity by 1m/s, you would need to give it a momentum change of 4.234E19kg m/s. Assuming a rocket exhaust velocity of even 5000m/s, you'd need around 1E16kg of fuel exhausted out your rocket engine to get that velocity change.

That mass is something aproximately equivilent to the mass of all of the water in the north american great lakes. It is a LOT of mass. And this is only to get 1m/s of velocity change. If we wanted to stop its orbit say, 270m/s of velocity change, then youd need 270 times more reaction mass... Think of this as something closer to the mass of all of greenlands glaciers, looking at 3E18kg of fuel now.

If we then consider that we have to get this fuel from the surface of kerbin to minimus, call it a delta V of 8000m/s, assuming KSP engines with ISP = 300, hence Ve = 3000m/s, we require about 14x the payload mass of fuel to get our fuel to minimus. We're now looking at about 4E19kg of fuel on the launchpad.

To visualize this mass, think of the mass of all of antarcticas icesheets, and you get a pretty good idea.

Since kerbin is much smaller then earth, and has a mass of 5.29E22kg, we are looking at burning about 1/1000th kerbins mass in order to stop minimus in its orbit. The mass of earths water is about 1/1000th of earths mass, so we can assume the same about kerbin.

Therefore, in order to stop minimus in irs orbit you would need to use a reaction mass equivilent to completely draining kerbins oceans.

If you intend to do this, I reccomend you find some way to distract greenpeace when you drop the hose in the ocean to start draining it.

[tk5800thesecond]

I'm sure they wont mind when I say "there was an oil spill" XD