Minmus' Regions (Pedant alert!)

[NaughtyMonster]

I was a smidge disappointed to discover regions called "Arctic Ice" and "Snowdrifts". Arctic refers to northern regions (arktos - the bear) and there seem to be regions of "Arctic Ice" all over Minmus, and the Snowdrifts I found all seem to occur quite high up on the slopes. I guess there's no wind to cause snow to drift any more in the lowlands, but why would it drift in the highlands?

I expect I'm being an unimaginative pedant here but wouldn't names like Ice Fields or Ice Wastes and Snowfields or Snow Barrens (like "Pine Barrens"!?) be a bit better?

Thoughts??

(apologies for the pedantry)

[Superfluous J]

I agree.

In Dyson Sphere Program, one of the planet types is "Tropical" and that similarly irks me.

[mikeman7918]

To be even more pedantic: the KSP2 devs have said that Minimus is not an icy world, but a glassy world.  A ceramic planet.  They could not justify putting an ice moon that close to the sun.  So why do the biomes still call it ice?

[rjbvre]

On 1/6/2024 at 9:17 PM, NaughtyMonster said:

I was a smidge disappointed to discover regions called "Arctic Ice" and "Snowdrifts". Arctic refers to northern regions (arktos - the bear) and there seem to be regions of "Arctic Ice" all over Minmus, and the Snowdrifts I found all seem to occur quite high up on the slopes. I guess there's no wind to cause snow to drift any more in the lowlands, but why would it drift in the highlands?

Agreed completely, the term Arctic stuck out like a sore thumb to me too.

1 hour ago, mikeman7918 said:

To be even more pedantic: the KSP2 devs have said that Minimus is not an icy world, but a glassy world.  A ceramic planet.  They could not justify putting an ice moon that close to the sun.  So why do the biomes still call it ice?

In game it's not ice. I'm guessing the reason they did this, or at least possible in-universe explanation, is for the same reason we still call the dark areas on the Moon maria, which is Latin for seas. It's what the Kerbals thought it was before they knew better, and serves as a tribute to KSP1.

[Kerbart]

The term “frosted” while suggesting winter and frozenness(?) can also refer to a glass texture, and would probably address this.

So you'd have the Frosted Fields and Frosted Barrens or something along those lines. One can even argue that these are historic names based on telescope observations, and kept, while it's not frozen, it looks like it's frozen even when it's glassy.