The Iron Planet

[Ryding]

SO I was thinking, "what if you could use docking ports to make a multi-part station that encapsulates a planet?"

[SkyRender]

This has been discussed dozens of times before; it can't be done. 1. The draw distance is not big enough. 2. There are no parts long enough. 3. The phantom force problem would rip it apart even if there were big enough parts.

[Whackjob]

4. You'd probably need a part count that requires two commas.

[nerdboy64]

5. In real life and possibly in the game, the centripetal/centrifugal/whatever-the-proper-term-is force would tear it apart as it would be more "spinning" than "orbiting."

[MarkusA380]

6. KSP Physics is not reality. KSP Physics is dominated by the Space Kraken. Not by laws.

[djnattyd]

7 RAM usage would be way higher than 3GB

[stringyquark]

Ohhh, dyson's sphere, denied

[Mr. Rogue Ace]

8. You might as well make a giant station that spelt the word "LAG"

[Whackjob]

8. You might as well make a giant station that spelt the word "LAG"

I might do this.

[ouion]

That would be 1% or 5% possible the Part count would be a Million or Billions Parts including Docking Ports and Tiny Engines.

[Giggleplex777]

Ohhh, dyson's sphere, denied

A Dyson Sphere is actually just a huge (really, really huge) array of satellites that orbit the sun.

[MockKnizzle]

Time for some math!

So let's make our job easy and pick the smallest planet, Dres (we wouldn't want to get ahead of ourselves, even a planetary-sized Dyson sphere is a big project). How many of the 2x2 structural panels would it take to completely cover the surface?

Dres has an equatorial radius of 138,000m, which gives us a nominal surface area of 2.393x10^11 square meters. The structural panel is 2.5m on a side (I think), giving us an area per panel of 6.25 square meters. Simply dividing the planet's surface area by the area of a panel, we can roughly estimate that we'd need...

...approximately 38,288,000,000 (38 billion and some change) panels!

I hope you have a decent computer

4. You'd probably need a part count that requires two commas.

Three, actually

[Tygroux]

I actually calculated it, in the hope of setting a refueling ring arount a planet.

For Dress, it would mean, by taking a 10km security altitude, a perimeter of 930km.

It might actually be doable, by using KAS and setting the cable lenght to a few kilometer, for a part count in the hundreds, a thousand tops.

Definitely doable without blowing up the memory limit, but the lag wall (read this article), might hit beetween hard and very hard.

The question i lack the answer, is from the physics calculation distance, and unloading distance. Will a kilometer long ship be loaded and calculated whatever his lenght, will physical calculations stop past some point? Will half of the ship even be unloaded?

I doubt ships are hit by the 200m physical limit, or stations would have a problem. But i never heard of anyone building a ship past 2km long. (distance at wich ships model are unloaded)

I might test this, when i will have time.

[djnattyd]

The question i lack the answer, is from the physics calculation distance, and unloading distance. Will a kilometer long ship be loaded and calculated whatever his lenght, will physical calculations stop past some point? Will half of the ship even be unloaded?

I doubt ships are hit by the 200m physical limit, or stations would have a problem. But i never heard of anyone building a ship past 2km long. (distance at wich ships model are unloaded)

I might test this, when i will have time.

Physics stops beyond 2.5km so a 1km long ship will still be calculated, as will all the parts that make up its structure. I'd imagine KSP would crash way before that purely due to part count needed to keep something that long rigid.

[Kimberly]

A Dyson Sphere is actually just a huge (really, really huge) array of satellites that orbit the sun.

In science fiction, it's also been imagined an actual solid sphere. One is not more correct than the other. (Although the constellation is a lot more realistic. )

[SunJumper]

You could just weld two ports to different parts of a planet. Boom! Planet spanning space station.

[Scotius]

I actually calculated it, in the hope of setting a refueling ring arount a planet.

For Dress, it would mean, by taking a 10km security altitude, a perimeter of 930km.

It might actually be doable, by using KAS and setting the cable lenght to a few kilometer, for a part count in the hundreds, a thousand tops.

Definitely doable without blowing up the memory limit, but the lag wall (read this article), might hit beetween hard and very hard.

The question i lack the answer, is from the physics calculation distance, and unloading distance. Will a kilometer long ship be loaded and calculated whatever his lenght, will physical calculations stop past some point? Will half of the ship even be unloaded?

I doubt ships are hit by the 200m physical limit, or stations would have a problem. But i never heard of anyone building a ship past 2km long. (distance at wich ships model are unloaded)

I might test this, when i will have time.

Someone tested how long KAS cables can be. As they approached 2 kilometer range bad things started to happen with physics. Explosive kind of bad things.

[tom1499]

you could just weld two ports to different parts of a planet. Boom! Planet spanning space station.

genius!!!!