[WIP] [Kopernicus] Super Earth Space Programs: Are Super Earth Civilizations Condemned To A Single Planet?

[Whirligig Girl]

A few months ago, my internet went out, and I used that time to make a planet mod. It was designed to answer the question of what a space program on a super-earth-mass terrestrial planet would really be like, what would the limitations really be?

It's not an unpopular meme in the space flight community that if the Earth were even a little bit bigger, space travel would become impossible, or at the very least impractical. Why let the math speak for itself? Here's an RSS-scale mod that adds two different homeworlds: a world with twice the mass of Earth, and a world with twice the radius of Earth.

Ultragaia is a planet with twice the mass of Earth, but it is not twice as wide or twice as heavy. Its atmosphere is denser than Earth's, but not by much. Ultragaia has two moons: Duarph, which is a Ceres-sized moon in a low eccentric orbit; and Circumlune, which is very similar to Earth's Moon.

Dubulrad is a strangely colored planet with twice the radius of Earth, but it is 9 times the mass, and has 5 times the atmosphere. It is an altogether different challenge to launch from. Dubulrad has four moons which are roughly analagous to the Jovian moons, though around half the size--subject to change. They are Oye, Euor, Galan, and Calid. Galan is currently just a Tylo Clone.

In addition to those two homeworlds and their moons, there is also the planet Derjulan, a tiny sub-neptune with only 2 Earth masses, with an additional Earth mass in the form of its moon Aquarii, which is nearly identical to Earth.

All of this is in orbit around the K-dwarf Caldos.

Pics: https://imgur.com/a/pLoBoc9

Recommended mods:

Realism Overhaul OR

SMURFF

Kerbal Atomics

(And maybe an Orion Drive)

Required mods:

Kopernicus (And ModularFlightIntegrator and ModuleManager)

Kopernicus Expansions: Regional PQS (Included with Super Earth Space Programs)

DOWNLOAD: https://github.com/GregroxMun/Super-Earth-Space-Programs/releases/tag/0.0.1

click "Source code (zip)"

To change homeworlds, go to GameData/SuperEarthSpacePrograms/Settings.cfg and open that file with a text editor. Then change "homeworld = Dubulrad" to "homeworld = Ultragaia" or vice versa.

Incidentally, my analysis from a bit of gameplay is that conventional rockets are challenging to use on Ultragaia, but not to the point that space probes are impossible to launch. Conventional rockets are unusable on Dubulrad.

I was able to use the Kerbal Atomics nuclear aerospike to launch a few rockets comparable in size to a few Saturn Vs strapped together that had probe payloads capable of launching from Dubulrad and landing on some of Dubulrad's moons. One day I'd like to try with waterlogged open cycle gas core NTRs, which have much denser propellant, but I'd need to mod in that functionality.

But it is my opinion that on super-earth-mass terrestrial planets, the result is actually more capable space programs. Since chemical rockets are unusable, they will require powerful rockets such as Gas Core NTRs and Orion Drives, and those are also extremely capable rockets in space as well. A space program on a super-earth would start later, technologically speaking, but once it did get started it would be very powerful.

Incidentally real super-earths would likely have much thicker atmospheres than either Ultragaia or Dubulrad, though with worlds like Ultragaia, the earthlike atmosphere is at least plausible. Real super-earths seem to be almost like Neptune and Uranus, rather than Earth and Venus. Realistic super-earths would likely have very thick oceans that are extremely unlikely to result in technological civilizations, and that's the real reason that the inhabitants of super-earth-mass planets wouldn't have space programs.

Super Earth Space Programs is very much still a work in progress. There's not really any science experiments, the solar system is poorly fleshed out, and I haven't really worked on it in 4 months. But I've decided to release it early since otherwise I'm not sure when if ever I would release it. But if you want to have a go at launching rockets from super-earths, definitely give this a go. I'd be interested in hearing about your results, especially if you were to play using Realism Overhaul from Ultragaia.

Edited December 29, 2019 by GregroxMun

[Adstri]

First.

Will give this a go in time 

[KerbalKore]

This is quite interesting. I’ll give it a go sometime!

[Whirligig Girl]

Tweet thread going into some more detail.

[Whirligig Girl]

 let's do a random livestream here why not? EDIT: livestream finished.

Edited January 1, 2020 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

Doing another livestream now.

[Stone Blue]

23 minutes ago, GregroxMun said:

Doing another livestream now.

Linky?

[Whirligig Girl]

26 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

Linky?

same as above

[Stone Blue]

1 minute ago, GregroxMun said:

same as above

Oh, derp... Sorry... had reset my NoScript permissions, and the Twitch clip was not showing at all... I thought it was just a lot of unused black space :face_palm:

[BowmanA081]

The lesson of this mod is that high gravity breeds strong boosters.

[ssd21345]

does it have sci def? If yes gonna spam plane to everywhere on science mode

Edit: lol reread again it said it only has few

Edited January 3, 2020 by ssd21345

[noobsrtoast]

sorry for reviving dead thread but i was wondering what the latest version this mod works for is?  

[R-T-B]

It's just a config and art really (AFAIK?), so it's all up to the dependencies.  The Kopernicus parts should work fine with latest, I'm unsure what the status of the KopernicusExpansion Regional PQS portions are.

It's possible it'll just work, though.  Not sure.

Edited March 11, 2022 by R-T-B