Would Laythe really be habitable?

[Brotoro]

Guys - chill out, and accept the fact that physic in KSP is different than ours. Mass and gravitation are different. Atmosphere behaves in different way. Kerbals don't die on the day side of Moho, even without any sort of protection except basic spacesuit. They can spend five years in tiny, little capsule without any health related problems. It's a game If devs decide to program life on Laythe they will do it, without deliberating about radiation, amount of sunlight etc. Heck, we don't even know for sure if there will be Laythe in full game.

Mass and gravitation are NOT different...otherwise our orbits would not be working correctly.

[Brotoro]

Since when is health of Kerbals a concern? I want my Laythe colony even if it would cost lives!

Whereas I would not want to deliberately post kerbals in a place that will kill them. So if the devs really intend to make Laythe into a radioactive death trap, it would be nice to know.

[iRommel]

is there a specific reason people keep saying laythe would have radiation problems? Io has radiation problems because the gas it vents gets stripped by Jupiter and comes back to it as radiation. Since laythe is keeping its atmosphere, the Io radiation wouldnt happen to laythe.

and it would seem that a planet having oxygen, but also having radiation problems is a better choice than say duna which has not enough atmosphere and no oxygen. bring radiation shielding, or bring oxygen?

assuming kerbals breath oxygen..... maybe they are plant people.

[Tada]

Main concern is because it has been stated by devs... Byt if they want to ruin Laythe as place of choice for colony I demand similar world... Maybe around discussed new gas giant? :-)

[sadron]

I think a Laythe colony is way off for me XD Hell I haven't even made a Mun base yet.

[AngelLestat]

We tend to point as negative any difference that we find between earth (live how we know it) and other sceneries.

But that is wrong. Big tidal forces in some examples can make life possible in places when seems impossible.

Also may be several ways for a planet like Laythe develpent a strong magnetic fields to act like a shield against radiation.

As we know. Maybe is more easy than life can appear in these scenerios (moons or planets orbiting gas giants) than in planets that are similar to earth.

Look at Avatar background info. They explain there the details than make all the things that you see in pandora possibles. And that is just one case.

Nasa is looking life in enceladus, titan, europe, also they dont discard that can be life inside the jupiter clouds. But well, I am loosing the point of the thread

Maybe Laythe will be not 100 % livable without any technology. Maybe masks or some suits will be needed.

Edited May 13, 2013 by AngelLestat

[Tw1]

I've suspected masks might be needed Laythe for a while now, at least for short periods, like how people use oxygen when mountaineering.

Maybe we'll get to develop medication in career mode. Mediation that reduces bone demineralisation, and medication like was seen in the very first story about the Daleks, that allowed people to survive on a very radioactive planet.

[Spatzimaus]

is there a specific reason people keep saying laythe would have radiation problems?

Io and Europa have radiation problems because they're located far inside Jupiter's equivalent of Van Allen belts. It has nothing to do with the gas Io vents, except that adding more particles to the radiation belts just increases the amount you're bombarded with. Those radiation belts are much more intense than Earth's, and Jupiter's magnetic field is far, far more powerful than those of its moons, so there's nothing stopping the particles in the belts from hitting the moons constantly. Jool would follow a similar pattern; it'd have an intense magnetic field just due to its composition, and there's plenty of small particles around gas giants (some of which are in rings).

But don't take our word for it. From the wiki:

"According to developer NovaSilisko, Laythe is planned to have volcanic activity and high radiation levels in later versions, making it a much more hostile moon than now (0.19.4)["

Guys - chill out, and accept the fact that physic in KSP is different than ours.

No, it isn't. That's the whole point of this game; the SCALES are different, with the planets and star being far smaller and denser than their real-life counterparts, but the basic equations of physics are identical to our universe. Sure, some of the physics is simplified at the moment (like aerodynamics), but those will be changed in the long term to be more accurate.

[Holo]

Guys - chill out, and accept the fact that physic in KSP is different than ours. Mass and gravitation are different. Atmosphere behaves in different way. Kerbals don't die on the day side of Moho, even without any sort of protection except basic spacesuit. They can spend five years in tiny, little capsule without any health related problems. It's a game If devs decide to program life on Laythe they will do it, without deliberating about radiation, amount of sunlight etc. Heck, we don't even know for sure if there will be Laythe in full game.

But it's not. The entire gameplay of KSP relies on the fact that physics apply. The whole appeal of KSP is completely centered around real life physics.

You have a lot of data on gas planets with a radius of 6,000 km (smaller than Earth)? I sure don't.

Kerbal space program's units are 10 times smaller than ours.

Therefore, 6,000 kerbal km = 60,000 km

We have plenty of data on 60,000 km gas giants.

Edited May 13, 2013 by Holo

[Holo]

-accidental double post-

[Brotoro]

Kerbal space program's units are 10 times smaller than ours.

Therefore, 6,000 kerbal km = 60,000 km

We have plenty of data on 60,000 km gas giants.

No, KSP's units are not smaller than ours by 10 times. The planets and distances are physically smaller than what you typically find in our solar system. If not, the physics of motion would not work out the way it does.

[Holo]

No, KSP's units are not smaller than ours by 10 times. The planets and distances are physically smaller than what you typically find in our solar system. If not, the physics of motion would not work out the way it does.

Ok.

Kerbal space programs distances and scales are compressed 10x for gameplay purposes.

Therefore, 6,000 kerbal km corresponds to 60,000 real km.

[Brotoro]

Ok.

Kerbal space programs distances and scales are compressed 10x for gameplay purposes.

Therefore, 6,000 kerbal km corresponds to 60,000 real km.

And are kerbels really 10-meter tall giants that ignore the square-cube law? No. Distances in KSP are what they are listed as. They don't "correspond to" or "are really" some other distance. You can't do that without messing up the physics.

[henryrasia]

Wait... do you mean that Kerbals are 10 human meters tall? (o.0)

Back on topic. I believe a submarine base would solve all problems. Water absorbs radioactivity quite well. Kerbal Rapture FTW!

[Holo]

And are kerbels really 10-meter tall giants that ignore the square-cube law? No. Distances in KSP are what they are listed as. They don't "correspond to" or "are really" some other distance. You can't do that without messing up the physics.

They do "correspond to" and "are really" some other distance. It's like saying Kerbin doesn't "correspond to" or "[is] really" Earth, or that Duna doesn't "correspond to" or "[is] really" Mars. It's pretty clear that it is.

Alternately: Is Kerbin really a 600km planet that ignores real material densities?

Alternately2: By the way, I'm not saying that the planets are LITERALLY only 6,000 km or LITERALLY only 600 km. I'm saying that it's useful to think of them as 600 km when discussing physics as it applies ingame, and useful to think of them as 6000 km when discussing hypothetical planetary science.

ExampleToIllustrateAlternately2: If you want to talk about an orbit around Kerbin, you have to think about it as 600 km or you get a nonsensical description of an orbit within the surface of a planet. If you want to talk about the internal structure of Kerbin, you have to think about it as 6,000 km or you get a nonsensical description of a 600 km asteroid that should have cooled and lost its atmosphere eons ago.

Edited May 13, 2013 by Holo

[Epthelyn]

They do "correspond to" and "are really" some other distance. It's like saying Kerbin doesn't "correspond to" or "[is] really" Earth, or that Duna doesn't "correspond to" or "[is] really" Mars. It's pretty clear that it is.

Alternately: Is Kerbin really a 600km planet that ignores real material densities?

Alternately2: By the way, I'm not saying that the planets are LITERALLY only 6,000 km or LITERALLY only 600 km. I'm saying that it's useful to think of them as 600 km when discussing physics as it applies ingame, and useful to think of them as 6000 km when discussing hypothetical planetary science.

ExampleToIllustrateAlternately2: If you want to talk about an orbit around Kerbin, you have to think about it as 600 km or you get a nonsensical description of an orbit within the surface of a planet. If you want to talk about the internal structure of Kerbin, you have to think about it as 6,000 km or you get a nonsensical description of a 600 km asteroid that should have cooled and lost its atmosphere eons ago.

If you think of it as a 600km ball of rock floating through space and then give that ball of rock a density beyond any known material it all makes perfect sense, apart from perhaps the heating but we can just assume Jeb put a fan heater at the core or something.

There's no point messing around with mass; everything is 10 times smaller but everything is also 10 times more dense. As far as gravity is concerned it's pretty much the same as real life.

[Holo]

If you think of it as a 600km ball of rock floating through space and then give that ball of rock a density beyond any known material it all makes perfect sense, apart from perhaps the heating but we can just assume Jeb put a fan heater at the core or something.

There's no point messing around with mass; everything is 10 times smaller but everything is also 10 times more dense. As far as gravity is concerned it's pretty much the same as real life.

That's the 600 km method for planets, and it works for many cases, but it's easier to convert it to real life sizes if you want to compare it to real life.

[Brotoro]

They do "correspond to" and "are really" some other distance. It's like saying Kerbin doesn't "correspond to" or "[is] really" Earth, or that Duna doesn't "correspond to" or "[is] really" Mars. It's pretty clear that it is.

Alternately: Is Kerbin really a 600km planet that ignores real material densities?

Alternately2: By the way, I'm not saying that the planets are LITERALLY only 6,000 km or LITERALLY only 600 km. I'm saying that it's useful to think of them as 600 km when discussing physics as it applies ingame, and useful to think of them as 6000 km when discussing hypothetical planetary science.

ExampleToIllustrateAlternately2: If you want to talk about an orbit around Kerbin, you have to think about it as 600 km or you get a nonsensical description of an orbit within the surface of a planet. If you want to talk about the internal structure of Kerbin, you have to think about it as 6,000 km or you get a nonsensical description of a 600 km asteroid that should have cooled and lost its atmosphere eons ago.

You can't have it both ways. You can imagine what you like, but I have to follow the laws of physics as closely as I can in my thinking...it's just how I was trained. Kerbin is 600 km in radius. It says so right on the box. If not, the orbits I fly and the distances I read on my instruments would not work out. And, no, it would not lose its atmosphere (as a 600 km-radius minor planet in our solar system would) because Kerbin has sufficient mass to retain its atmosphere...otherwise its surface gravity would not be what we measure it as. We know Kerbin's mass from the laws of orbital mechanics. And from its volume, we know its density. Yes, this tells us that Kerbin has an amazingly high density. But you can't just ignore what the measurements are telling you and dream about Kerbin having some Earth-like interior...that is not science. The numbers tell me that the interior of Kerbin is not like the interior of Earth. Rather than trying to wish that data away, I would prefer to know what interesting states of matter exist in the Kerbal universe that allow this to happen. Is there quark matter in there? Is there a shielded black hole? I wish I could read the list of ingredients on the side of the box. You can't make the Kerbin we were dealt out of plain old rock and metal. You WOULD have a fighting shot at making Jool out of regular matter, since its density is not super high... take a Venus-like body out far from the central star, pile on a thinker atmosphere with some green stuff in it, spin it on its axis with a rotation rate of 10 hours, and you'd get something that looks a lot like Jool.

Anyway...enjoy your gigantic kerbals.

[Holo]

You can't have it both ways. You can imagine what you like, but I have to follow the laws of physics as closely as I can in my thinking...it's just how I was trained. Kerbin is 600 km in radius. It says so right on the box. If not, the orbits I fly and the distances I read on my instruments would not work out. And, no, it would not lose its atmosphere (as a 600 km-radius minor planet in our solar system would) because Kerbin has sufficient mass to retain its atmosphere...otherwise its surface gravity would not be what we measure it as. We know Kerbin's mass from the laws of orbital mechanics. And from its volume, we know its density. Yes, this tells us that Kerbin has an amazingly high density. But you can't just ignore what the measurements are telling you and dream about Kerbin having some Earth-like interior...that is not science. The numbers tell me that the interior of Kerbin is not like the interior of Earth. Rather than trying to wish that data away, I would prefer to know what interesting states of matter exist in the Kerbal universe that allow this to happen. Is there quark matter in there? Is there a shielded black hole? I wish I could read the list of ingredients on the side of the box. You can't make the Kerbin we were dealt out of plain old rock and metal. You WOULD have a fighting shot at making Jool out of regular matter, since its density is not super high... take a Venus-like body out far from the central star, pile on a thinker atmosphere with some green stuff in it, spin it on its axis with a rotation rate of 10 hours, and you'd get something that looks a lot like Jool.

Anyway...enjoy your gigantic kerbals.

I will . I guess it's because I see the KSP universe as our solar system with some fudged numbers, whilst you see it as it's own solar system with different laws of physics allowing the numbers to be different. I guess this also ties in with my Kerbals Are Humans concept, while your view is probably Kerbals are Aliens. All different points of view, and I do like them

[paleorob]

This gets back to my (old) rant about the resource chart. If things are as described objectively by the instruments in-game and by what we experience in-orbit (as Brotoro has stated) we cannot really view the Kerbal universe as using a slightly fudged version of real-universe physics. Too many little things are "wrong" to be explained by the scaling difference between us and KSP. It can sometimes be frustrating for some players (like myself) since we (being the Kerbals in-game) are using advanced materials and technology to get into orbit and yet know less about the material makeup of "our" planets than Lyell and Owen did in the 1800s. It is hard to reconcile this advanced stage of technology (interplanetary crewed rocketry, compact nuclear reactors) with a pre-Victorian level of understanding of the chemistry, biology, and (some of the) physics. It seems like the only physical laws the KSP universe obeys are basic Newtonian (and, apparently, nuclear physics: LV-N).

Okay, it is a game. We don't really need to know if plate tectonics and planetary radiation belts exist in order to fly silly rockets around a solar system. True enough. I think that this debate over the amount of radiation a moon of a gas giant underscores the limitations that the game currently has. We have buggy instruments and a limited suite at that. We don't have Geiger counters, mass spectrometers, or even pH meters (to list just a few). Unlike our ancestors in the real world we can't really invent these new instruments in-game. All we can do is guess and deduce based on our incomplete (and potentially wrong) data.

Is Laythe habitable? Based on the data we have at hand it has to be. Kerbals sent there don't die. Unless something else comes along to change this we can only go with the data that is presented. Kerbals that go into the sun die. Kerbals that go into Jool die (usually). Kerbals subjected to blunt trauma can die. Kerbals on Laythe don't die so therefore in KSP it must be habitable.

tl; dr version: How can Kerbals build nuclear reactors but have no basic chemical data sampling? Also - Laythe is okay for Kerbals because no Kerbals randomly die when on Laythe.

[Holo]

The Gamicus Unfinishicus virus has many other side effects. For example, it can absorb radiation. It also taints chemical samples, making the useless. In addition, it grants you a knowledge of nuclear physics.

[paleorob]

The Gamicus Unfinishicus virus has many other side effects. For example, it can absorb radiation. It also taints chemical samples, making the useless. In addition, it grants you a knowledge of nuclear physics.

Yes, yes. The hand-waving explanation works for now since it is unfinished - and I accept that (I must have taken a real deep breath after my resource chart rant). I do hope that in the final version though there are enough tools to allow us to work out solutions to these problems, though. It doesn't have to be fed to us (because the majority of users wouldn't care) but don't leave the science geeks hanging. These questions can be answered or made answerable. It will flesh out the game and give it more depth, in my opinion.

[PTNLemay]

Io and Europa have radiation problems because they're located far inside Jupiter's equivalent of Van Allen belts. It has nothing to do with the gas Io vents, except that adding more particles to the radiation belts just increases the amount you're bombarded with.

Not exactly true, the Io venting does play a big part in the Jupiter radiation belts. I don't remember the exact details, but I know that Jupiter's own radiation is based on something highly energetic but non-penetrating (radiowaves I think), but they interfere with gas from the moons and this interaction generate high penetrating radiation (electrons I think) which mess with living cells and electronic circuits alike.

I acknowledge that the devs have stated that radiation (and volcanoes) on Laythe will ultimately make it uninhabitable, but until they actually implement radiation hazards into the game that kills your kerbnauts I will continue to see Laythe as a goal for colonization. I'd like to think that nature has contrived of a way to have Laythe's radiation levels be similar to that of cosmic radiation found in interplanetary space, in which case there's little difference between stationing your guys on the Mun, on a space station, or on Laythe (except that the Laythe base will get plenty of water and oxygen).

Laythe is important (to me at least) because it harkens back to the golden era of science fiction. Back when we imagined cities on Mars and jungles on Venus. Before real space probes scanned our entire solar system and determined that every world except for Earth is perfectly sterile, and thus effectively useless for adventuring and manned-exploration. In strictly technical terms, Antarctica is far more habitable than any extraterrestrial place in the solar system. But one look at Laythe's oceans and you get a renewed sense of wonder and a desire for exploration. You imagine what kind of sea monsters or other strange lifeforms you might find in that alien world. So yeah, TL;DR: rule of cool trumps realism, if you ask me.

(P.S. sorry if this is considered too old to bump, I felt that my small observation did not warrant creating a whole new thread.)

Edited August 23, 2013 by PTNLemay
typo

[lewille]

I still think that Kerbals are more or less immune to radiation.

Why? First of all they are using Nuclear Engines (sometimes in the atmosphere), crashing them close to the KSP facilities and yet we have to see one Kerbal having radiation health related issues.

Second, they can spacewalk freely anywhere in the Kerbol System without suffering from any kind of radiation disiness.

So we already have a race of supershielded beings therefore a colony on Laythe is doable.

[Galacticruler]

I admit I don't know much about astronomy/astrology/whatever, but wouldn't a (potentially) life-bearing planet orbiting a Gas Giant spend half its time in an ice age due to said Gas Giant being between it and the Sun during that time?

It might be more like the planet in this movie.