Debdeb will be ~4 lightyears away from Kerbol System (Speculation)

[Missingno200]

9 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

But maybe that's why you crossed this out?

It was supposed to be a joke with basically no research behind it. If I'm crossing something I've written out, it's because I don't believe in it,

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

But then do we base the Kerbal parsec on our own AU or on the distance between Kerbin and Kerbol?

As I wrote way the start of my tangent, there is a design tension between educational and gaming aspects. I imagine the SI units are there for educational and STEM reasons as tempting as it may have been to Kerbalworldbuilden them away with things like tinier kubits based on the distance from a kerb's wee elbow to his muppet-like fingers.  And most distances in kilokubits

[The Aziz]

..and it still is all about the use of "year" in unit of distance. Year and day are the only units of time that don't match in Kerbal universe. 

It's like saying that kilometer and hour have something in common only because there's a commonly used kilometer per hour. And that the speed of a moving object will change if you use minutes instead of hours.

[SolarAdmiral]

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

And that the speed of a moving object will change if you use minutes instead of hours.

Yes I understand that a "lightyear" is a "fixed" distance as long as we agree on the length of the year used for the year part of the lightyear.

It is like using a kilometer per hour per year as a length of distance. And then asking would a kilometer per hour per month be a different length? Yes it would.

Lightyear is not a base unit. It is a formula. It is a derived unit. Like Pascals, like Kilometers per hour, like hertz. If the units that make up the unit change, so to does the unit itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_derived_unit

If we continue to use light(earth)years, now we have two differed length units called years in KSP. And we would have to note everywhere years are used in calculations if they are earth or kerbin years.

Because the kerbal clock we have in game in KSP1, uses a 6 hour day and a 426 day year. Meaning it's about 106 earth days per kerbin year.

 

So if your ship is traveling at 0.1 c. That is 10% the speed of light. You would expect it to take 10 years to cross 1 lightyear. Yes? But it will not, because the kerbin year, which is the measure of time the game uses, is shorter than the year used to calculate the length of a lightyear. Instead it will take 34.272 years for a ship moving 0.1 c to cover 1 lightyear. 

Most people, don't know off the top of their heads how long a lightyear is in meters. But people would notice if their ships are for some reason three times slower than it would appear they should be.

So to calculate we would need to calculate light(earth)years per (kerbin)years. And everything would need a correction factor in it of 106.2/365.24.

 

[SolarAdmiral]

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

..and it still is all about the use of "year" in unit of distance.

Yes. A lightyear is a unit of the speed of light x the length of  year (m/s*y)

Asking this is like changing the length of a second. Then when people ask does this also affect pascals or hertz saying "once again it is all about the use of "seconds" in a unit of pressure/resonance.

Pascal (kg/m/s) hertz (1/s)

[The Aziz]

40 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

If we continue to use light(earth)years, now we have two differed length units called years in KSP.

We don't. You're so focused on the year part that you forgot that a lightyear has nothing to with time. It's a distance light travels through a vacuum in precisely 31 557 600 seconds. Even if Earth's year gets longer in millions of years because of changes in orbit, the distance the light travels in 31 557 600s will not change.

26 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

Yes. A lightyear is a unit of the speed of light x the length of  year (m/s*y)

See above. It's not length of a year, it's, again, fixed amount of seconds . 

Edited January 3, 2023 by The Aziz

[SolarAdmiral]

12 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

We don't. You're so focused on the year part that you forgot that a lightyear has nothing to with time. It's a distance light travels through a vacuum in precisely 31 557 600 seconds. Even if Earth's year gets longer in millions of years because of changes in orbit, the distance the light travels in 31 557 600s will not change.

See above. It's not length of a year, it's, again, fixed amount of seconds . 

From wikipedia "A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (9.46×10¹² km), or 5.88 trillion miles (5.88×10¹² mi).^{[note 1]} As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days)"

Right there. As you linked earlier. A Julian Year. Which is a length of time based on the earth calendar. In KSP we have a year of 106.2 earth days.

 

So let's make a new kerb light year in our game which is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in one kerbin year. Then we can still use it easily in any math.

 

If we want to use real Julian light years for KSP2 fine. But just be aware, you won't be able to use them properly in any calculations without applying the 106.2/365.24 factor.

 

As you ignored my example. A ship traveling 0.1c in ksp2 would take 34.272 years to cover 1 light(earth)year.

 

Yes I keep bringing up years. Because it's baked into that unit. Just like seconds are baked into pascals, Kilometers per hour, and hertz.

 

If time has nothing to do with lightyears, I challenge you to explain how time has something to do with pascals which is a unit of pressure. Yet is derived with seconds. If lightyears has nothing to do with time, why multiply the speed of light by 365.24 days to derive it? Was the number 365.24 pulled out of a hat?

Edited January 3, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[tstein]

We can always make things even more complicated and make light move at a different speed in kerbalverse

[SolarAdmiral]

Yes. Time has nothing to do with lightyears currently. You are correct it is strictly a measure of distance.

However. Time was used to derive the length of a lightyear. The length wasn't picked at random. The number of days wasn't picked at random. The length a lightyear was defined as is a result of the length of earth's year. If our year wasn't 365.24 days long, a different length in meters would have been chosen as the "lightyear". (NOTE was meaning if the earth's year was a different length from the start. Not meaning it will be changed if the earth's year changes in the future.)

So now? If we use the IAU defined Julian year light year in KSP2, it will be a useless number for any calculations. We wouldn't be able to use it directly to calculate speeds or distances.

 

It would have to first be converted either to kerbal light years to be used with speeds as a factor of c. Or it would have to be converted to meters to be used with speeds as m/s, then if we wanted to know years, we'd have to calculate it back into years either kerbal or earth years.

I posit, the IAU defined light year wouldn't be a useful unit of measurement for KSP2, because we wouldn't be able to use it unmodified in any math.

Edited January 3, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[Luriss]

We seem to be going in circles here so it might be better to try and break things down.

 

Light years are great because they put the ridiculous distances involved into human terms. The obvious problem of course is they're very Earth/Human centric..

Another possibility is to use human light years but downscale them by a factor of 10. This is however still quite Human centric but it does make light years 1/10th scale like the rest of the ksp universe. The problem however is now lightspeed is 10x too fast, and reducing that by a factor of 10 starts to do funny things to other physical laws.

Kerbal light years are also an option and they share the positive of being in kerbal terms. However its far less intuitive to us as a result (what is 234 kerbin years in Earth years off the top of your head? Then again maybe this doesn't matter if we have kerbal lifespans for reference.)

Alternatively we could just use metric and measure light years in petameters. This really helps dodge the whole time conundrum and as a added bonus keeps it neat and consistent with all other in game distance measurements. The problem however being you're now conveying only one piece of info instead of two; how long does it take light to travel 38 petameters?

 

Honestly? Kerbal light years are probably the way to go. If you put a star at some 4 kerbal ly from kerbol (1.16 ly) it'll take 40 kerbin years (12-ish earth years) to get there at 0.1c.

12 earth years might seem short, but what we can do is make kerbals have a lifespan of 80 kerbin years (23-ish earth year). Now that 40 kerbin ly trip is equivalent to a 40 human ly trip biologically. As a bonus we don't have to use human light years or change the speed of light.

[Jarin]

47 minutes ago, Luriss said:

it'll take 40 kerbin years (12-ish earth years) to get there at 0.1c.

You also won't be spending the whole trip at that top speed. Acceleration and deceleration time will increase it significantly.

[Pthigrivi]

And forgive me but what was the actual quote? I remember something along the lines “the nearest star is 4 ly away…you have no idea how far a light year is, thats a profound lesson this game will teach you.”

was there another quote about that?

Edited January 3, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[SolarAdmiral]

12 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

And forgive me but what was the actual quote? I remember something along the lines “the nearest star is 4 ly away…you have no idea how far a light year is, thats a profound lesson this game will teach you.”

was there another quote about that?

It's right near the start of the interstellar travel episode 5 of the videos. I can't transcribe it now. But I believe you have it mostly correct yes.

I remember he says "in the game, like in real life, the nearest star will be about 4 lightyears away..." leading into what you said. 

I admit the exact wording does seem to lean a bit towards "real" light years. But I think it is still open enough to be meant more as "giving you a sense" of lightyears size.

And as pointed out ad nauseam through this thread. Using "real" sized lightyears might give them the wrong "sense" when compared with the rest of the game. Shorter kerbal years and the smaller kerbal system would make real light years seem much larger than they actually are.

And it might be that using smaller scaled lightyears will give players a better "sense" in context.

 

Edit

 

Looks like about 1:15 into the episode 5 interstellar travel video

Edited January 3, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[obney kerman]

6 hours ago, The Aziz said:

We don't. You're so focused on the year part that you forgot that a lightyear has nothing to with time.

Can we please stop acting like a measurement with "year" in the name is completely arbitrary and unconnected from any earth-based convention?

Okay, look. Here are the pros and cons of the different ideas, as I see it:

Earth light years (distance light travels in one Julian year):

Pros: SI unit, accurately demonstrates interstellar scales, preserves realism in the distances between stars

Cons: Requires constant conversion between Julian and Kerbal years, very blatantly Earth-based measurement in a setting without Earth, excessive travel times of 100+ Kerbal years

1/10th scale light years (distance light travels in 1/10th of one Julian year)

Pros: Scales better with Kerbol system, manageable travel times while still demonstrating the incredible distances involved in interstellar travel

Cons: Misleading name (does not correspond to any measurement of a year whether Human or Kerbal), arbitrary unit, possibly overly small

Light Kerbin-Years (distance light travels in one Kerbal year):

Pros: Corresponds with measurements of time in-game, keeps scale relatively large while still fitting with the miniaturized distances of KSP, believable as a Kerbal metric while keeping gameplay smooth

Cons: Not an SI unit, little correspondence with real-world measurement

Personally, I'll take the one that works best for gameplay and doesn't make me have to convert between 365.25 and 106.5 constantly.

[Drakenred65]

And the reality is that the Devs have already decided what they are going to do.

[The Aziz]

Correct, it's only a matter of discussion between potential players. I'll take what they give me but I will stand by my words.

Also, one another thing worth considering - moddability. If a lightyear, say it's a Kerblightyear, is a hardcoded value, there will be a lot of headscratching once planetary mods arrive. When starting home planet becomes something other than Kerbin in its original position, be it anything from Galileo's pack v.2 to New RSS... You wouldn't want to see Proxima Centauri in other distance than 4.22ly.

[t_v]

17 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Also, one another thing worth considering - moddability. If a lightyear, say it's a Kerblightyear, is a hardcoded value, there will be a lot of headscratching once planetary mods arrive. When starting home planet becomes something other than Kerbin in its original position, be it anything from Galileo's pack v.2 to New RSS... You wouldn't want to see Proxima Centauri in other distance than 4.22ly.

Why would lightyear be a hardcoded value? There's nothing in the game that explicitly needs lightyears to work, unless you want some sort of ruler function to measure the distance between stars. If you are traveling at 0.1c, then it should take 10 Kerbin years to cross 1 Kerblightyear and 10 real-life years to cross 1 real-life light year. If you replace the Kerbol system with RSS, things work properly because the length of a year changes. And if you are getting into other modded systems, you should expect that it will take different amounts of years to cross different distances.

[Strawberry]

Why would they use non SI figures in game all of a sudden? Like even if they suddenly decide to not have the distance between stars be like they are in real life, like they've said explicitly before, I feel like there's much more teaching value to going "oh the thing is .4 light years away" instead of "4 kerbal lightyears", because for the former a person can go wow this is only a tenth of the distance we'd have to travel irl? Interstellar is hard. While for the latter its oh thats a number I guess.

[The Aziz]

9 hours ago, t_v said:

If you replace the Kerbol system with RSS, things work properly because the length of a year changes.

How long is the RSS year? Does it take into account Earth's rotation, does it add leap years? Or does the sun rise 6 hours later every year? Ooor does the point between 365th day and 1st happen on different point on Earth's orbit? You don't deal with any of that in a lightyear because Julian year is a fixed number. Even Kerbin year is not equal to full days.

For the hundredth time, lightyear is not based on our calendar. Yes it's based on Julian calendar, but without any leap years, anything. If we used that, we'd still be in December last year.

And so, every modder would have to come up with their own length of a lightyear. Because if they use RSS year length, of exactly 365 days, they're off with their description of a LY by huge margin. And the more scientific part of the community would rise hands as to why.

Better to use seconds. We know how many if these there are in the equation.

[tstein]

10 hours ago, Strawberry said:

Why would they use non SI figures in game all of a sudden? Like even if they suddenly decide to not have the distance between stars be like they are in real life, like they've said explicitly before, I feel like there's much more teaching value to going "oh the thing is .4 light years away" instead of "4 kerbal lightyears", because for the former a person can go wow this is only a tenth of the distance we'd have to travel irl? Interstellar is hard. While for the latter its oh thats a number I guess.

Because speed in interstellar travel will very likely be in c (i.e percentage of lightspeed). So if you are traveling at 0.5c you will expect the ship to  travel 0.5 ly when the  calendar in game passes 1 year.

 

A solution would be to use light HOURS in distances because  hours is the largest unit of time that in KSP matches real world ones.

Edited January 4, 2023 by tstein

[SolarAdmiral]

4 hours ago, tstein said:

Because speed in interstellar travel will very likely be in c (i.e percentage of lightspeed). So if you are traveling at 0.5c you will expect the ship to  travel 0.5 ly when the  calendar in game passes 1 year.

 

A solution would be to use light HOURS in distances because  hours is the largest unit of time that in KSP matches real world ones.

Light hours might be a good solution. Especially if the max speeds we're getting are smaller fractions of c.

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

For the hundredth time, lightyear is not based on our calendar. Yes it's based on Julian calendar, but without any leap years, anything. If we used that, we'd still be in December last year.

For a real sized system using an earth calendar (any earth calendar) they could easily use real light years. The difference of +/- 0.01 of a day wouldn't affect calculations enough to be noticeable and would be lost in whatever acceleration is being done.

You could still say, 0.1c will cross 1 ly in 10 years.

 

The problem for the ksp scale is the differences between a 106 day year and a 365 day year is large enough to make any math useless unless you also correct for year length.

Once again, you'd take 32 years to cross 1 ly at 0.1c. You wouldn't be able to do any calculations with speeds and distances in c without correcting them to kerbal light years first.

 

 

(Also, you do realize that the Julian calendar is an earth calendar right? It's just an older defunct calendar that predates the gregorian calendar. It's kind of disingenuous to continually complain light years are not based on an earth calendar. Because it 100% is, just an older one with different leap years.

We all understand that the distance of a light year won't change even if Earth's year gets longer. When we say the light year was based on an earth year, we mean that's how the distance was originally chosen. If earth had a larger orbit in the 1800s and the year was 400 days long we would have a longer lightyear. Because it was based on roughly the distance light travels in one year.)

 

(Also also. The Julian calendar, even the one used to define the length of a lightyear, absolutely still has leap years in it. That's why a light year is the distance light travels in 365.25 days. The astronomical Julian year just makes the leap year day a 0.25 each year instead of a full day every year.)

Edited January 4, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[SolarAdmiral]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

For the hundredth time, lightyear is not based on our calendar. Yes it's based on Julian calendar, but without any leap years, anything. If we used that, we'd still be in December last year.

Maybe I can explain it this way, to head off continuing this argument. Because this isn't a relevant point. There's a discussion here about light years and we can disagree. But you continually keep saying this and no one here is disagreeing with you on that point.

 

"A light year isn't based on the current length of earth's year. It isn't based on the calendar we currently use. Changing our calendar won't change the speed of light or the length of a light year in meters. Slowing down the earth won't change a light year. Dropping the earth into the sun won't change a light year. Living on different planets with different length years won't change the length of a light year. A light year is the same length here as it is on Mars as it is in alpha centauri as it is in Andromeda."

This. I understand this. You understand this. I'd guess most people in this thread understand this. We all understand this. Everyone understands this.

 

When I say "lightyears are based on earth years." I mean, once upon a time a scientist discovered the speed of light. Sometime after that time, we all decided a light year would be a good measurement to use for stars and distant galaxies. The length of a light year was chosen to be the distance light travels in 365.25 days. Based on (roughly) the length of earth's year. An older calendar, the Julian calendar, was chosen. Because 1, it is an earth calendar. 2 it is a defunct calendar that won't further be updated or changed the same reason Latin is used for naming things in science. 3 it makes the math easy because you don't need to remember leap years and leaving out leap years based on centuries.

I say, "light years are based on earth years" because, if humanity had evolved on Mars instead of earth, the number 365.25 would not have been chosen at that time. The light year would have been defined as a different length. If earth's year had been shorter or longer from the dawn of human history, the light year would have been different matching that length, because the number 365.25 would have been meaningless to us if the year was any other length. It was chosen because that is approximately the length of a year on earth, the planet that we live on, a period of time we are familiar with. Not because some cosmic rule of the universe deems the length of 365.25 days significant.

 

 

The discussion we are trying to have here is simply this. Should KSP2 use light years as a measurement and if so, should they be the same length as a light year as the IAU has defined based on the speed of light c over the length of one Julian year which is an earth calendar. Or perhaps instead use a measurement of a kerbal sized light year. We could even call it a kerbal light year to differentiate and make it clear it is a different unit of measurement.

 

There are arguments for and against real light years.

For - keep the length of a light year in meters the same as it is defined here in the real world.

Against - the kerbal system is set at a smaller scale than ours and using a full size light year would make them seem in relation much bigger. 

Additionally, engines and fuel tanks balanced to be used in system would wind up being significantly underpowered and engines designed to be used outside the system would be significantly overpowered. Instead of having all engines balanced to be roughly the same based on real world performance and theoretical estimated performance. It would make the impression that those engines deemed 'interstellar' are significantly more powerful in relation than they are actually expected to be.

Against - ksp uses a kerbin year. So any calculations done with a normal sized light year won't make sense without converting earth light years to kerbin light years. Ships traveling at 0.1 c take 32 years to cross 1 ly.

And travel times will seem significantly larger than they actually are. A journey that would normally take 10 years, the game would call it 30 years.

Between this point and the previous point, using real light years would ironically make light years seem to the player to be significantly larger than they actually are, somewhat contrary to the intention of the game to give an impression of what space is like.

Against - in universe reasons. Why do kerbals know how long a year is on earth.

 

 

Those are some points. I don't think anyone will argue any of these points aren't true. The difference is we disagree which are important. 

 

One side argues that keeping the length of a light year in meters is paramount. And that we shouldn't use kerbal light years as a different unit. And argue that all or some of the Against points aren't important.

My argument, is that this is unlikely to be even noticed when playing the game. The game doesn't have to come out and tell you each light year is x meters. The distances could simply be in light year. The speeds could be in fractions of c. The scale is so massive there will be no points of reference.  While playing the game, almost all players wouldn't even notice if the game is using real light years or kerbal sized ones. Either the game would have to flat out tell you, hey we are using light years and they are this long. Or you would have to do some math to calculate how long the light year they are using is.

 

 

So, I would rather kerbal light years be used because of those points listed against. Real length light years can be modded in for real size systems, or could even be toggled on in the settings of the base game if you want. Or we should use another unit that doesn't refer to years at all so the speed and distances and calculations all make sense instead of having to constantly convert kerbal years to earth years and back.

 

Feel free to disagree with me, that's fine. But don't argue that "light years aren't based on the length of earth's year." Because they demonstrably are.

 

Hopefully that clears things up.

Edited January 4, 2023 by SolarAdmiral