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The real size of the KSP planets compared to Earth


ConsoleCoder

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nK3XhOu.png

This is all to scale, by the way. I did the math. The scale may be off by less than a pixel in some cases, but that's because I could only set the resolutions to a whole pixel resolution. The size of each object should be scaled correctly at least down to the nearest pixel.

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  On 9/12/2023 at 11:17 PM, shdwlrd said:

That's why the whole Kerbal universe is considered a toy universe by some. Unrealistically small celestial bodies.

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I saw a mod once that made the solar system 1/10 as small as it already was, and I believe it was already about 1/10 the size of our solar system in the first place...

It was called Toy Solar System, or something along those lines.

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  On 9/12/2023 at 11:17 PM, shdwlrd said:

That's why the whole Kerbal universe is considered a toy universe by some. Unrealistically small celestial bodies.

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Unrealistically small to have the gravity and atmosphere they have, at least.   Or the gravity constant of the Kerbal universe is just different than ours?  I'm not sure if anyone calculated a new gravity constant assuming Kerbin is Earth-dense, but that might be a reasonable possibility.

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Great image. It's always easy to say numbers but putting it on an image amps the impact.

  On 9/12/2023 at 11:20 PM, chimera industries said:

I saw a mod once that made the solar system 1/10 as small as it already was, and I believe it was already about 1/10 the size of our solar system in the first place...

It was called Toy Solar System, or something along those lines.

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I remember (not sure if they fixed it later) that the terrain features were not scaled so it was really funny.

 

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  On 9/12/2023 at 11:34 PM, chimera industries said:

Specifically 6.4? Shouldn't it be 9.5-9.6, if you're trying to make it earth size? At least, I assume that's what you're trying to do.

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Nope, I still want smaller planets for ease of play. What I want is smaller planets that are still at all plausible; 6.4x is about the scale at which Kerbin's orbit around a K-type orange dwarf puts it in the habitable zone, and the planet itself can be made out of a plausible mixture of elements and still have the correct density for 1g surface gravity.

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  On 9/12/2023 at 11:20 PM, chimera industries said:

It was called Toy Solar System, or something along those lines

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No, I think planet pack was KSS10 or something like that. The Toy Planet mod was a bunch parts ranging from 100m to 1.5m in the form of the Kerbin celestial bodies minus the sun. (I did make a Kerbin version of the solar system ship from Andromeda with them.)

  On 9/12/2023 at 11:32 PM, RocketRockington said:

Unrealistically small to have the gravity and atmosphere they have, at least.   Or the gravity constant of the Kerbal universe is just different than ours?  I'm not sure if anyone calculated a new gravity constant assuming Kerbin is Earth-dense, but that might be a reasonable possibility.

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People have already done the math for Kerbin in the past. The planet would have to be denser than Uranium or Plutonium to have the gravity constant the same as an Earth like planet. (Definitely possible in the grand scheme of the universal unknowns, but not with our current knowledge.)

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  On 9/13/2023 at 12:16 AM, shdwlrd said:

People have already done the math for Kerbin in the past. The planet would have to be denser than Uranium or Plutonium to have the gravity constant the same as an Earth like planet. (Definitely possible in the grand scheme of the universal unknowns, but not with our current knowledge.)

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Yeah that's why I'm suggesting a different gravity constant, the gravity constant for the universe is a physical constant... but that's just for our universe.  And changing it would certainly change a lot of cosmological-scale factors, but I don't think it would change too much about human/kerbal scale things, like it would if you changed other physical constants.

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  On 9/12/2023 at 11:27 PM, HephaistosFnord said:

I'm hoping KSP2 eventually gives us a 6.4x scaleup option in the 'difficulty' settings

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I'd like that too. If I am not mistaken, I understand that a scale of around x3 is more consistent with the characteristics of the parts.
I would even be willing to buy a DLC aimed at experienced players and that would include  one or several intermediate scales, among other things.

Once the core engine has been fine-tuned, I don’t think it will require much development effort.

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I don't believe that the way KSP is designed that the size reduction makes the gamer easier. Sure, if you keep everything else the same, then using true scale sizes would increase dV requirement and make the game harder.

But the engines and fuel tanks are all nerfed compared to real world parts, which offsets the effects of the size tweak. Lower stages real world engines have much higher thrust, upper stages have more ISP, fuel tanks have less dry weight, etc. With real world performances a single-stage-to-orbit rocket with a large payload would be very trivial in KSP.

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  On 9/13/2023 at 7:03 AM, MarcAbaddon said:

I don't believe that the way KSP is designed that the size reduction makes the gamer easier. Sure, if you keep everything else the same, then using true scale sizes would increase dV requirement and make the game harder.

But the engines and fuel tanks are all nerfed compared to real world parts, which offsets the effects of the size tweak. Lower stages real world engines have much higher thrust, upper stages have more ISP, fuel tanks have less dry weight, etc. With real world performances a single-stage-to-orbit rocket with a large payload would be very trivial in KSP.

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You're right.  This choice was made to make reaching orbit take less real time, as the shorter atmosphere plus lower dV means less total burn time, while keeping TWRs reasonable.

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I really really really would like to see the Real Solar System as an end-game interstellar destination. With the same parts and all, to represent a whole new challenge for KerbalKind, and maybe some additionnal bigger ones as an extension or (obviously) mods.

But it would be so fun to get to Solar System with some lore maybe, like dozens of thousand years after nowadays, humanking disappeared but left some artifacts, etc :)

I don't see how it won't happen through mods anyway ! ^^ After having fun for hundreds of hours spent on the original system and maybe 2 or 3 other "normal kerbal sized" system, it would be a big WOW factor to get the Real Scale solar one, very different that actually starting on it with RSS.

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  On 9/13/2023 at 5:41 AM, The Aziz said:

Oh how typical. 90% of the players struggles to land on the Mun even when it's this tiny

That 2% of mad people: MAKE IT EVEN HARDER

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The small size of planets is compensated by the low efficiency of kerbal's rockets. Empty tanks are too heavy; with such rockets we would not even reach orbit.

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