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Surface area of KSP bodies, in perspective

Snark

By Snark
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Snark

Snark

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In the "Pointless But Kinda Interesting" department:

So, I happened to be reading a discussion (in another topic) about the pint-sized nature of the kerbal solar system, and it got me thinking.  Yes, they're "small"... if what you're comparing them to is our real-life planets in this solar system.  But they're still awfully big in terms of total surface area-- there's a lot of space to move around in, relative to the size of kerbals.  Even Gilly has a surface area of over 2000 km2.

So I thought it would be amusing to compare the surface area of the various kerbal planets and moons to real-life geographical areas, to get more of a sense of scale.

So, here you go.  All areas are for total area (land + sea), other than the quoted figure for Earth land area. Earth geographic entities in blue.  I've picked countries that are reasonably close to equivalent Kerbin bodies, plus American states (since I'm American, and tend to think of things in terms of "what state is that the size of").

Enjoy!  :)

  • Earth (total):  ~510,000,000 km2
  • Jool:  452,389,342 km2
  • Earth (land):  ~ 148,940,000km2
  • Australia:  7,692,024 km2
  • Eve:  6,157,522 km2
  • Kerbin:  4,523,893 km2
  • Tylo:  4,523,893 km2
  • India:  3,287,263 km2
  • Laythe:  3,141,593 km2
  • Mexico:  1,964,375 km2
  • Alaska:  1,723,337 km2
  • Duna:  1,286,796 km2
  • Peru:  1,285,216 km2
  • Vall:  1,130,973 km2
  • Ethiopia:  1,104,300 km2
  • Moho:  785,398 km2
  • Turkey:  783,562 km2
  • Texas:  695,662 km2
  • Eeloo:  554,177 km2
  • Spain:  505,992 km2
  • Mun:  502,655 km2
  • Sweden:  450,295 km2
  • California:  423,972 km2
  • Dres:  239,314 km2
  • Romania:  238,397 km2
  • Kansas:  213,100 km2
  • Ike:  212,372 km2
  • West Virginia:  62,756 km2
  • Bop:  53,093 km2
  • Costa Rica:  51,100 km2
  • Minmus:  45,239 km2
  • Denmark:  43,093 km2
  • Maryland:  32,131 km2
  • Pol:  24,328 km2
  • New Hampshire:  24,214 km2
  • Belize:  22,966 km2
  • Rhode Island:  4001 km2
  • Luxembourg:  2586 km2
  • Gilly:  2,124 km2
  • Mauritius:  2,040 km2

 

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Snark

Snark

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22 minutes ago, theJesuit said:

Is Jool area at the 'surface' or at top of the clouds?

Surface.

I've simply used the equatorial radius of all the bodies and treated them as perfect spheres.  Should be accurate enough as makes no significant difference, with the possible exception of Gilly (and maybe Bop).  The actual surface area of Gilly would undoubtedly be significantly higher, given that it has quite an irregular surface and a lot of areas with elevations that are big compared with its "radius", but I've got no good way of measuring or estimating that... so a sphere it is.  ;)

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Snark

Snark

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36 minutes ago, Puddle Jumper said:

They are indeed larger than I thought they would be. Gilly almost as large as Luxemburg.

Yeah, what blew my mind was the fact that Minmus is actually slightly larger than the entire country of Denmark, and nearly half again the size of Maryland.

"Toy planets", sure... but still an awful lot of elbow room.

Also helps to soothe my wounded ego.  I remember hunting for the kraken on Bop for-frickin'-ever, and thinking "why the heck is this taking me so long, Bop's a little place, I must suck at searching."  Until I realize that it's nearly the size of West Virginia.  "Oh.  Well, that's all right then."

Ditto trying to find the various easter eggs on the Mun-- the difficulty becomes more understandable when you realize that you're hunting around in an area the size of Spain, and considerably bigger than California.

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Puddle Jumper

Puddle Jumper

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4 minutes ago, Snark said:

Yeah, what blew my mind was the fact that Minmus is actually slightly larger than the entire country of Denmark, and nearly half again the size of Maryland.

"Toy planets", sure... but still an awful lot of elbow room.

Also helps to soothe my wounded ego.  I remember hunting for the kraken on Bop for-frickin'-ever, and thinking "why the heck is this taking me so long, Bop's a little place, I must suck at searching."  Until I realize that it's nearly the size of West Virginia.  "Oh.  Well, that's all right then."

Ditto trying to find the various easter eggs on the Mun-- the difficulty becomes more understandable when you realize that you're hunting around in an area the size of Spain, and considerably bigger than California.

Yeah, you can imagine my joy when I thought I saw a tiny dot on the Mun from orbit and discovered an Easter egg. I thought it was nothing or a glitch or something. Still curious I decided for a landing just for the heck of it. Turned out I found Armstrong memorial without even knowing it existed. Still one of the most awesome moments in the game I have had so far.

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Eriksonn

Eriksonn

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So making a round trip around the Mun is roughly the same as the height of Sweden(where i live). Damn…:confused: I havent even traveled that far irl but i am orbiting the mun at regular intervals. That really makes you think about stuff...

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The Aziz

The Aziz

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20 hours ago, Snark said:

West Virginia

MOUNTAIN MOMMA

 

sorry I had to

Alright, but given my knowledge about geography, I could not tell how big anything is based on that list - the closest country size I could more or less imagine is Spain here.

But I checked my belovehated Silesian Metropolis and it appears to be a bit bigger than Minmus.
Not that it's easier to navigate through this area...

But I learned one thing.
Bop is bigger than Pol.
Two times.

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Puddle Jumper

Puddle Jumper

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12 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

No Alabama, huh...?

Yeah. The area isn’t exactly small. Indeed, 600km radius is not small either. Just small when compared to our solar system’s planets. 

Alabama, like a lot of US states it is much bigger than my beloved Netherlands. You do have only 5 million people in it though. What do you need all that land for?

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Bill Phil

Bill Phil

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1 hour ago, Puddle Jumper said:

Alabama, like a lot of US states it is much bigger than my beloved Netherlands. You do have only 5 million people in it though. What do you need all that land for?

Well we used to run F-1 engine tests back in the day...

Almost a third is farmland. A good chunk is probably owned by the federal government. The rest is just land, I guess. A lot of places in the US are like that. Wyoming is bigger but with a lot less people...

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Puddle Jumper

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48 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Well we used to run F-1 engine tests back in the day...

Almost a third is farmland. A good chunk is probably owned by the federal government. The rest is just land, I guess. A lot of places in the US are like that. Wyoming is bigger but with a lot less people...

Ah, federal land. I recently watched a YouTube-video about it. Never delved into the subject before, but apparently you guys have land (sometimes quite a lot of it) that's not owned by the state but by the United States as a whole. We don't have something analogous here in the Netherlands. I guess that is an oddity that arises when you have a federalized country.

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Gargamel

Gargamel

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18 minutes ago, ExtremeSquared said:

You could make a ScanSat slope map and use secant values of every pixel mapped on a numerical scale to make it more fair to wrinkled bodies like Bop and Gilly. If you're in the mood to do something utterly asinine, that is.

See, that's the challenge that @Snark just may take up.   Prepare for the Giant Wall Of Text to appear.

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Snark

Snark

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On 2/14/2019 at 6:50 PM, ExtremeSquared said:

You could make a ScanSat slope map and use secant values of every pixel mapped on a numerical scale to make it more fair to wrinkled bodies like Bop and Gilly. If you're in the mood to do something utterly asinine, that is.

Well, the thing is... I think that way lies madness.

The problem is that surface area for irregular surfaces doesn't converge.  The finer-grained "ruler" you use to measure it, the bigger the area gets.  It's a runaway effect.

Of course, the bodies in KSP are somewhat-smooth lumps and not the effectively-infinitely-fractal surfaces you get in nature.  But the point remains that even if I were inclined to take the large amount of time to do something like that (which I am not), the actual number I came up with would be as much an artifact of the particular scanning / calculation method I choose to employ, as an actual reflection of "reality" (to the extent one can use that word about KSP).  It just seems like a mug's game to me.

Same reason why, if you look up the area of, say, Switzerland, they're talking about the _footprint_ area, not the area you'd get if you mashed it out flat.  ;)

If I were to try to take heightmaps into account (which I'm not likely to, mainly because I have other things to spend my time on), I'd want to do so in a way that does mathematically converge-- e.g. get a figure for the average elevation, then add that to the "official" radius before plugging that into the area-of-a-sphere calculation.

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