Relativity in Kerbal Space Program 2

[t_brown]

I understand that other discussions about relativity (generally special relativity) being added to the game for more realism in high speed interstellar travel, that being the addition of time delays between different spacecraft moving at higher speeds, or even more recently about a relativistic doppler effect. I can understand from a game development standpoint they seem like they would be quite difficult to add to the game, however, there are other aspects of special relativity that could be added that I think could be quite interesting.

For example, as I previously mentioned, relativistic doppler effect (i.e. redshift/blueshift) could make stars in the front of the spacecraft's moving direction appear more blue and those behind appear redder. There is also a really interesting aspect of high speed travel in relativistic aberration, in that the angle of stars in the sky appear to converge at higher speeds, effectively changing the view of the sky. Think of approaching hyperspace in Star Wars, where the stars seem to stretch out as they go forwards, only in reality the stars would appear closer together in the direction you are moving and further apart behind you. I think that this could be a really interesting consideration to add to the game, and one that seems a lot less challenging than having different 'clocks' on each spacecraft.

These effects would only be noticeable at the really high speeds, and perhaps not necessary to add to the game depending on the gameplay of interstellar travel, but still an interesting suggestion I think. I realise that someone else could have also mentioned this previously, but it occurred to me recently how interesting it would be to see in this game.

Edited January 23, 2023 by t_brown

[zeekzeek22]

As cool as it would be to have an engageable level of relativity involved in the game...my guess is that in KSP2, light moves instantaneously, and there is no time dilation. But yeah going fast enough to see abberations would be cool if not nightmarish.

[Pds314]

I don't know that any of the propulsion tech available really allows for near-lightspeed travel. A few % to a few tens of % maybe but I'm not sure about actually pushing up against the light barrier and getting extreme time dilation, length contraction, and similar effects.

That being said, I feel like time dilation isn't *that* big of an issue considering that if they're including multiplayer the concept of different reference frames with different subjective time surely has to exist simply to support that.

[TomKerbal]

So no, with today and near future technology there is no way of getting a spaceship in relativistic speed regions. But in theory it's funny to think about it again.

The question of physical realism in the stock game is a very big one (that is why I only play with RO mods by the way). I absolutely understand the reasons. But for example thinking about the Kerbol star system and its super dense planets (which are by a factor of 3 or more more dense then every known material) made me think about an old idea: Since there is the theory of "island of stability" in nuclear physics there could be material with a much higher density than we have in our planet system. Well, that's SciFi, but a good one, since it is not fully fantasy nonsense (like space lifts   - must be ;-) ).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by TomKerbal

[FranFranz]

On 1/25/2023 at 10:45 AM, Pds314 said:

I don't know that any of the propulsion tech available really allows for near-lightspeed travel. A few % to a few tens of % maybe but I'm not sure about actually pushing up against the light barrier and getting extreme time dilation, length contraction, and similar effects.

That being said, I feel like time dilation isn't *that* big of an issue considering that if they're including multiplayer the concept of different reference frames with different subjective time surely has to exist simply to support that.

Just to add a nugget to the discussion: a 10 % shift in wavelength is enough to shift orange (600 nm) to green (550 nm), which would be quite a visible effect. You can check here:

 https://www.wolframalpha.com/widgets/view.jsp?id=5072e9b72faacd73c9a4e4cb36ad08d

Then of course you would have to be able to shift the colors of all the textures in the game...

As for the time effects, I would be fine with just the clocks slowing down. If one takes the space far from any massive object as reference, clocks would slow down proportionally to the speed of the spacecraft (time dilation effect) and to the gravitational potential around a massive body (general relativity). This shouldn't be too difficult, and a mod might do the trick IMHO. 

[mcwaffles2003]

21 hours ago, FranFranz said:

Then of course you would have to be able to shift the colors of all the textures in the game...

This would be unnecessary as all parts of the rocket would be moving in the same reference frame so they wouldn't experience the doppler effect

[FranFranz]

I was thinking about stars and planets. I wouldn't mind other rockets/stations as they would zip by quite fast...

[greenville]

On 1/25/2023 at 9:45 AM, Pds314 said:

I don't know that any of the propulsion tech available really allows for near-lightspeed travel. A few % to a few tens of % maybe but I'm not sure about actually pushing up against the light barrier and getting extreme time dilation, length contraction, and similar effects.

That being said, I feel like time dilation isn't *that* big of an issue considering that if they're including multiplayer the concept of different reference frames with different subjective time surely has to exist simply to support that.

It's simple, stage the interstellar rocket. And waste trillions for a faster trip time