Van Allen Belts and Planetary Magnetospheres

[Fractal_UK]

Some people will be familiar with the idea of planetary magnetospheres from the work I've done in KSP Interstellar, the particle flux mechanics give me an excellent basis for trying to implement some wider radiation effects, however, the Interstellar thread is extremely busy and not a good place to discuss individually features or plugin mechanics so I wanted to start a seperate discussion about this.

I already have a basis for calculating the radiation dose received by Kerbals at various altitudes and applying some radiation shielding to them due to the composition of various command modules, though at the moment this is as far as it goes. In principle, I can use these mechanics to apply negative effects to Kerbals depending on radiation dose or to apply negative side effects to unmanned vessels in high radiation environments.

Additionally, I could also look at heightened radiation environments and solar flares from Kerbol as an additional hazard to interplanetary and high orbit travel.

The radiation environment is based on components from a hierarchical list of spheres of influence, e.g. the Laythe radiation environment is based on not only Laythe's magnetosphere but also Jool's magnetosphere and Kerbol's magnetosphere.

So, the point of this thread is to discuss mechanics that you'd like to see. What kind of side effects would you like for leaving your Kerbals in deep space, unshielded from radiation, for years on end? What kind of side effects do you want to see for unmanned vessels operating in high radiation environments, particularly those near say Jool. Also, what don't you want to see?

This is not a set of mechanics I want to rush into a release in the near future, just something I want to strike a discussion up about and make incremental progress on while working on other things.

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Pictures

[LaydeeDem]

Will radiation be be able to effect Kerbals? This looks like an incredibly interesting mod!

[nsnipe]

Awesome, I always wanted this in KSP. But as a separate plugin. Could it be possible to visualize those in map?

[Fractal_UK]

Will radiation be be able to effect Kerbals? This looks like an incredibly interesting mod!

Such is the hope but I'm not entirely sure how. Killing Kerbals off is easy but also not very entertaining as a sole game mechanic, death is better used as the result of ignoring a bad situation. There are local effects that could be achieved, for example within Interstellar the efficiency of a science lab is dependent upon the stupidity of the Kerbal (they are better at research if they are intelligent) so altering their stupidity could simulate their sickness and being unable to work at full capacity. That's a very specific impact and it'd be nice to be able to achieve something a bit more general, however.

Awesome, I always wanted this in KSP. But as a separate plugin. Could it be possible to visualize those in map?

Maybe, evaluating them for sufficient values to display any kind of 3D visualisation would be nightmarishly expensive computationally to do at a reasonable level of detail though. That said, there's probably some clever way of displaying some level of information.

[nsnipe]

For radiation belts it could be number of torus objects with some gradient textured halo shader. As for magnetospheres... - I have quite strong sense of dimensional space, but in this case i've no idea where to start... Or - both could be just plane with texture of intersection (2d).

[15nelsoc]

The idea sounds really cool, and more realism is always welcome. I feel that crew death, some kind of visual effect, or possibly response time to user input on unmanned vessels would really be the only possible effects of radiation within the game. Would radiation effect Kerbals in ships, if a given part did not have sufficient radiation shielding? If so a robust radiation shielding system would need to be created for manned parts and unmanned probes to model this. Also would atmospheres on certain planets provide protection from radiation?

[Fractal_UK]

Would radiation effect Kerbals in ships, if a given part did not have sufficient radiation shielding? If so a robust radiation shielding system would need to be created for manned parts and unmanned probes to model this.

Yes, I've created a system that automatically attenuates radiation by a certain amount depending on the mass of the capsule and the amount of crew it hold. The base value is for the 3 man pod, which attenuates radiation by 10x (my research suggests that's about the right factor to go from spacecraft to EVA).

Also would atmospheres on certain planets provide protection from radiation?

Yes, at the moment the radiation drops to 0 the moment you enter the atmosphere though I can make it attenuate with atmosphere rather than cut off completely, that would mean Duna wouldn't be completely protected from radiation even on the surface. I could likewise use my new resource system to generate some radiation hotspots on the surface of various celestial bodies so there would always be some background radiation. I need to map Uranium and Thorium deposits on planets for my nuclear resource system anyway, so I could base the radiation dose off the concentration of those materials at a particular point.

[CalculusWarrior]

Wow, Fractal you are truly an amazingly talented individual. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this mod and excited for what's coming in KSP Interstellar!

[KhaosCorp]

Well, most obvious effect on manned craft would of course be radiation sickness/poisoning, but this really shouldn't effect kerbal till high rad count or over very long periods of time. Here is interesting little tidbit: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/15/2117223/

Of course, as well know, going unprotected into an area of high radiation things can go pear shaped for you rather fast. I think a really interestign thing to implement on this side of it would be RadBadges...like what the navy uses on Nuc subs. This is actually a prevention method, so if there is exposure to radiation at unsafe levels the crew member can be removed from that area and treated, if needed. The badges are passed out and then checked on boats every day or two from my understanding. Having same radiation check process for Kerbals would be awesome...that way if there is a problem the crew can be transported back to KSC (hopefuly) before any serious injury or death.

I think the biggest threat to unmanned craft from radiation and magnetic fields is guidance and relay systems. This could also be emulated gameplay wise with a type of badge system...once exposure passes a certain point the probe starts to have navigation issues. The pinpoint on the Navball could be offset by X degrees to simulate this (getting more severe as the ships electronics get more unprotected exposure), could also make the input sluggish, or randomly flicker the 'capslock' percision control.

Radiation poisoning....do we really need another way to kill Kerbals???

The answer is yes...yes we do=)

edit: It dawns on me the above could yeild further gameplay aspects and even parts....

A 2.5m mobile sickbay that will reduce a kerbals rad/mag count....when turned on and fed an insane amount of power.....great for far away stations and bases (maybe for balance the sickbay never gets count to zero like returning to kerbin would).

A repair part for fixing probe cores that have sustained damage due to rad/mag exposure, these could also fix/replace/install shielding as well.

Edited November 15, 2013 by KhaosCorp

[Tommygun]

One of the things I have wanted for a long time is for solar flares to temporarily block RemoteTech.

Maybe even add a time delay when controlling Kerbals to simulate the delayed reactions due to radiation sickness.

The delay gets worse as they become sicker.

The makers of the City Lights and Clouds mod is considering adding Auroras.

If they do, having them cross compatible would be great.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Tommygun

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Radiation brings with it more than just invisible poison and interference.

What about the solar wind and CMEs?

To a enthusiastic science mind, the solar wind is a constant stream of delicious fuel in the form of protons and hydrogen ions. Magnetospheres present an interesting twist between a shield against death, and a buffer between you and a constant stream of free fuel.

In example, the future planned fusion reactors need a fuel source, and the sun is just spraying it into space in thin amounts. Instead of constantly hauling fuel up to vessels, a station can be constructed with magnetic collector arrays similar to the Antimatter collectors. Only... less lethal if something goes wrong. But for these collectors to work, a player has to get them OUTSIDE a planetary magnetosphere that's blocking the particle stream.

Thus, while magnetospheres provide a good antimatter trap, they make collection of a more common fuel source a resource intensive endeavor. (Because setting up a solar fuel station requires setting up in interplanetary space... which means access to it requires a little hoop-jumping and time-wasting.)

As for radiation, if this is going with Interstellar, I can see one issue. Irregular fission reactor output. In space, well away from magnetic or other protections, how well does the reactor shielding work against cosmic radiation sources? Fast moving solar protons, gamma/cosmic rays, and whatever neutrons that happen to be flying through can throw additional nuclear energy into a reactor, increasing its flux, and speeding up the reaction. Of course, no SANE kerbal would stick one in orbit without a means to restore balance, but I could imagine that a sudden influx of radiation into a reactor could cause it to have irregular and unpredictable spikes in output of both waste heat and usable energy with corresponding rapid drops in functional fuel before inbuilt controls bring it back under control. (Though 'drops' in reactor fuel materials wouldn't be noticeable for a player unless they parked in a radiation 'hot spot' and compared reactor operational times.)

[NathanKell]

Loving this!

Ideas for how to have radiation affect Kerbals and/or probes/parts:

Screen darkening or noise appearing (vision loss / signal issues)

Part failues (perhaps using HoneyFox's RandomFailures mod?) i.e. a decoupler decouples early, or will not decouple on command.

Part destruction (antennae, batteries...)

Random flybywire controller added, so craft does random attitude changes

Conversely, control locks: throttle is locked, or pitch control is "stuck" down or up, etc.

Or, one axis is unavailable: to yaw, you have to roll and then pitch.

If using KOS, corruption in the active program, or the volume.

[Scotius]

Hmmm, so much fuel for imagination For visual effects you could take a look at "Micrometeorites" mod. Essentially just little sparks flying at random intervals from ship's surface. The higher radiation, the more sparks show - it would be a nice visual indicator you are in danger zone. I'm sure someone can also come with an audio mod, adding Geiger-like ticking sound, and even verbal alerts. Damage over time - well, i'm not really keen on having my ships go on the fritz suddenly. Maybe efficiency loss? Like batteries losing charge, dropping power output, engines with progressively worse Isp as damage cumulates? You could fix your ship by docking it to Science Lab, or do a quick-and-dirty fix to a single part using EVA'ing kerbal. Health effect...I guess space radiation derived superpowers are out of question? Though it would be insanely cool if Jeb would suddenly burst into flames and start flying on his own LOL. Jokes aside, since stats of kerbonauts do not affect gameplay in any way (aside from our mod of course) i don't see a way to model radiation sickness effects other than death Which i'm not so keen about too. Maybe some sort of a rad counter showing how badly a kerbal is affected, and how much more radiation he can take before death? It would force us to return our green pals to Kerbin, instead of keeping them in space for decades. Also landing on a planet with atmosphere and prolonged stay there should lower radiation count.

[pizzaoverhead]

With electronic hardware, you have the world of game glitches to draw ideas from.

• Data being inaccurate or just plain wrong. For example: floating point errors, "NaN", flickering incorrect values.
  
• GUI elements and indicators being stuck in the wrong state until cycled. For example: landing gear displaying as being lowered when it isn't.
  
• Physical elements having the wrong output or state, cycling between states, jumping between powers. For example: a slight trim offset in the controls, a single RCS thruster being stuck on (Gemini 8), engine controllers surging.
  
• The system being stuck in an invalid state, requiring a power cycle. For example: Countdown timer until reactivation, or a right-click restart option.
  
• Static on the external camera. A method for achieving this is shown in videos 57-60 here (a GUITexture attached to the camera with the opacity varied procedurally).
  

As far as kerbals are concerned, effects are more difficult to come up with.

• Losing abilities, for example running, jumping, using equipment, repairing and repacking.
  
• Ragdolling.
  
• Losing the use of that kerbal's position in IVA.
  
• Control delay/overshoot.
  
• Full-screen vision blur.
  

[czokletmuss]

So, the point of this thread is to discuss mechanics that you'd like to see. What kind of side effects would you like for leaving your Kerbals in deep space, unshielded from radiation, for years on end? What kind of side effects do you want to see for unmanned vessels operating in high radiation environments, particularly those near say Jool. Also, what don't you want to see?

This is splendid! There was a thread few days ago about radiation level on Laythe, you may be interested in it (a lot of data).

And what we would like to see? Acute radiation syndrome, of course!

How it could work in the game for flavour/RP purposes?

Just change the value of Brave and Stupid parameters for the crew in a way they stop smiling and are looking progressively worse (sad face, screams).

The healing process (medical bay or just no exposure for a long time) would restore the initial values.

You can also make them weaker in the progress (no jumping, no running etc.).

I have also other ideas but most of them is already posted here. However, this mod won't be complete without Geiger counter of some kind and this audio effect:

Edited November 15, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Fractal_UK]

Well, most obvious effect on manned craft would of course be radiation sickness/poisoning, but this really shouldn't effect kerbal till high rad count or over very long periods of time. Here is interesting little tidbit: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/15/2117223/

Of course, as well know, going unprotected into an area of high radiation things can go pear shaped for you rather fast. I think a really interestign thing to implement on this side of it would be RadBadges...like what the navy uses on Nuc subs. This is actually a prevention method, so if there is exposure to radiation at unsafe levels the crew member can be removed from that area and treated, if needed. The badges are passed out and then checked on boats every day or two from my understanding. Having same radiation check process for Kerbals would be awesome...that way if there is a problem the crew can be transported back to KSC (hopefuly) before any serious injury or death.

I think that's a fairly typical conclusion actually, there isn't much complelling evidence that even long term exposure to elevated background radiation actually does very much harm - above a certain point you start seeing percentages rise for lifetime risk of cancer. Short term exposure elevated doses are quite survivable as well, so long as you don't get into that critical regime where heavy cell damage starts to occur - when people start experiencing radiation sickness.

Sending some Kerbals off into Interplanetary space for two or three years is probably not ideal for their health but it probably won't do them major harm provided you do let them spend some time back in a low radiation environment for a while afterwards. This would just be an incentive to rotate your crew rather than having the same Kerbals do everything.

Leaving Kerbals in Van Allen belts for extended periods seems like the really dangerous one, as far as I can determine, it looks like even in the Earth's magnetic field, the maximal dose within the belts is around 70x higher than in interplanetary space and you could imagine Kerbals getting ill within a matter of days within that kind of environment.

The way I would implement this is to have a static dose limit that a Kerbal can receive over their career before they die, the amount of dose they accumulate would be based on adding up all the instantaneous dosages they receive. There would also be a fixed rate at which they recover from radiation, say 11µSv/hour (100mSV/year). So, any time spent at a lower doseage than that would improve their longterm condition while higher doses would degrade it.

There would then be special effects for really high doses (say 100mSv/hour+) causing accute symptoms immediately.

You could also indeed imagine medical equipment that might help you recover from doses or accute symptoms more quickly.

Ideas for how to have radiation affect Kerbals and/or probes/parts:

Screen darkening or noise appearing (vision loss / signal issues)

Part failues (perhaps using HoneyFox's RandomFailures mod?) i.e. a decoupler decouples early, or will not decouple on command.

Part destruction (antennae, batteries...)

Random flybywire controller added, so craft does random attitude changes

Conversely, control locks: throttle is locked, or pitch control is "stuck" down or up, etc.

Or, one axis is unavailable: to yaw, you have to roll and then pitch.

If using KOS, corruption in the active program, or the volume.

Yep, there's a lot of scope for probe parts in this as well. I do like the idea of differentiating probe cores based on radiation shielding, you then have to trade-off weight against resistance to radiation and can design probes around the kind of radiation environment they are operating in.

How it could work in the game for flavour/RP purposes?

Just change the value of Brave and Stupid parameters for the crew in a way they stop smiling and are looking progressively worse (sad face, screams).

The healing process (medical bay or just no exposure for a long time) would restore the initial values.

You can also make them weaker in the progress (no jumping, no running etc.).

I know the Brave/Stupid parameters are something I can control so that's definitely something I'm interested in making use of. I'm not sure yet to what level I can apply other effects to Kerbals, though their ability to run and jump might well be possible. This is one where I shall have to spend some time exploring what the APIs will let me do and then find ways to trick them into letting me do more

• Static on the external camera. A method for achieving this is shown in videos 57-60 here (a GUITexture attached to the camera with the opacity varied procedurally).
  
• Full-screen vision blur.
  

Cheers for those links, I'll look through those.

[drtedastro]

Well, most obvious effect on manned craft would of course be radiation sickness/poisoning, but this really shouldn't effect kerbal till high rad count or over very long periods of time. Here is interesting little tidbit: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/15/2117223/

Of course, as well know, going unprotected into an area of high radiation things can go pear shaped for you rather fast. I think a really interestign thing to implement on this side of it would be RadBadges...like what the navy uses on Nuc subs. This is actually a prevention method, so if there is exposure to radiation at unsafe levels the crew member can be removed from that area and treated, if needed. The badges are passed out and then checked on boats every day or two from my understanding. Having same radiation check process for Kerbals would be awesome...that way if there is a problem the crew can be transported back to KSC (hopefuly) before any serious injury or death.

I think the biggest threat to unmanned craft from radiation and magnetic fields is guidance and relay systems. This could also be emulated gameplay wise with a type of badge system...once exposure passes a certain point the probe starts to have navigation issues. The pinpoint on the Navball could be offset by X degrees to simulate this (getting more severe as the ships electronics get more unprotected exposure), could also make the input sluggish, or randomly flicker the 'capslock' percision control.

Radiation poisoning....do we really need another way to kill Kerbals???

The answer is yes...yes we do=)

edit: It dawns on me the above could yeild further gameplay aspects and even parts....

A 2.5m mobile sickbay that will reduce a kerbals rad/mag count....when turned on and fed an insane amount of power.....great for far away stations and bases (maybe for balance the sickbay never gets count to zero like returning to kerbin would).

A repair part for fixing probe cores that have sustained damage due to rad/mag exposure, these could also fix/replace/install shielding as well.

Excellent ideas and proposals. I hope that this continues... We need radiation belts and such trapped / moved by and manipulated by interaction of magnetosphere and external (Kerbol) flares and radiation. I really like the idea of medical pods and such as well. Might it not be possible for the display of such anomaly, to use the kethane and or other mapping modals for display? Good stuff, please keep pushing.

[drtedastro]

Loving this!

Ideas for how to have radiation affect Kerbals and/or probes/parts:

Screen darkening or noise appearing (vision loss / signal issues)

Part failues (perhaps using HoneyFox's RandomFailures mod?) i.e. a decoupler decouples early, or will not decouple on command.

Part destruction (antennae, batteries...)

Random flybywire controller added, so craft does random attitude changes

Conversely, control locks: throttle is locked, or pitch control is "stuck" down or up, etc.

Or, one axis is unavailable: to yaw, you have to roll and then pitch.

If using KOS, corruption in the active program, or the volume.

Again, all excellent stuff. If player wants simple, just turn off in config, however for the rest. hehhehhhehhhee.... let the realism begin.no continue..... part failure (need spare?) code failure (need fallback boostrap to receive new code after safemode), all really good stuff.....

[BFGfreak]

I was wondering could you also have parts emit radiation as well, so that a cluster of LVN's will require a bit of shielding to ensure that you don't turn your kerbals green, er, pink from too much radiation exposure. Also while I'm on the topic, what sort of shielding could be used, I mean I'm sure that you could create a really heavy hitchhiker lined with lead to shield your kerbals while in Jool orbit, but what about a part that can generate a large magnetic field that is relatively light weight (compared to lining all your crew compartments with lead) but requires almost megajoules of power to run.

[drtedastro]

More good stuff.... Water has good qualities for heavy particle absorption and i believe it is being looked into for future flights.

[Fractal_UK]

I was wondering could you also have parts emit radiation as well, so that a cluster of LVN's will require a bit of shielding to ensure that you don't turn your kerbals green, er, pink from too much radiation exposure. Also while I'm on the topic, what sort of shielding could be used, I mean I'm sure that you could create a really heavy hitchhiker lined with lead to shield your kerbals while in Jool orbit, but what about a part that can generate a large magnetic field that is relatively light weight (compared to lining all your crew compartments with lead) but requires almost megajoules of power to run.

Late-game tech is very much on my mind as well, creating a part that shields you from radiation but with a huge power draw is not a problem at all. I would have to draw a slight distinction between types of radiation in order to do this though: you can deflect charged particles from cosmic rays and Van Allen belts very effectively by containing a diffuse plasma in a magnetic field around the vessel. You'd have to have a way of refreshing the plasma, particularly between re-entry and departure from celestial bodies with atmospheres and I'd guess the trapping wouldn't be perfect so some of the plasma would leak away over time.

One thing I haven't found out yet is how complete their protection would be and what kind of flux would be needed before they start to become ineffective.

Additionally, such a device would also not offer any help against your ship's own nuclear reactor because anything charged that the plasma could stop, the vessel walls have already stopped. Still, you're much better off with just some tiny neutron flux from a nearby reactor compared to that in addition to being totally unshielded from cosmic rays in space.

More good stuff.... Water has good qualities for heavy particle absorption and i believe it is being looked into for future flights.

Indeed, water and many other light molecules/nuclei are, by constrast, very good at stopping neutron radiation. Having some sort of command/crew module surrounded by water would probably also be very effective for a future space mission, it offers radiation shielding, drinking water and other water supplies and can additionally be electrolysed for fuel/propellant.

I wonder if something like that could also be simulated...

[mossman]

I recently read a science fiction story that involved the insanely powerful magnetosphere around an Eldridge-abomination of an alien spacecraft producing some rather acute effects on human explorers (Hysteria and insanity). Perhaps past a certain amount of symptoms your Kerbals could act autonomously in unexpected ways?

[KhaosCorp]

I was wondering could you also have parts emit radiation as well, so that a cluster of LVN's will require a bit of shielding to ensure that you don't turn your kerbals green, er, pink from too much radiation exposure. Also while I'm on the topic, what sort of shielding could be used, I mean I'm sure that you could create a really heavy hitchhiker lined with lead to shield your kerbals while in Jool orbit, but what about a part that can generate a large magnetic field that is relatively light weight (compared to lining all your crew compartments with lead) but requires almost megajoules of power to run.

Contrary to what most think, lead is not the best shield for radiation...its just the cheapest and most abundant, thats why its seen in this roll most.

Water is a good shield, but only against small exposure...you would need WAY to much of it to form a shield against areas with very high rad count. Water shielding is actually used on nuclear naval ships. But as far as space travel goes water is the same boat as lead so to speak...they are both kinda weighty.

Im guessing the future for this is either lightweight synthetics that act the same as lead (as far as radiation goes), or a replaceable system (something like ablative tiles, but for rad/mag shielding).

[Fractal_UK]

Contrary to what most think, lead is not the best shield for radiation...its just the cheapest and most abundant, thats why its seen in this roll most.

Water is a good shield, but only against small exposure...you would need WAY to much of it to form a shield against areas with very high rad count. Water shielding is actually used on nuclear naval ships. But as far as space travel goes water is the same boat as lead so to speak...they are both kinda weighty.

Im guessing the future for this is either lightweight synthetics that act the same as lead (as far as radiation goes), or a replaceable system (something like ablative tiles, but for rad/mag shielding).

Lead is a very effective shield against alpha/beta/gamma radiation but is much less effective against neutrons and protons - protons being the prime constituents of cosmic radiation. Lighter atoms are far more effective shields against these, thus making water particularly effective. Hydrocarbons are also quite good, so many types of spacecraft fuel can in principle be used.

Heavy atoms like lead tend to scatter protons and neutrons without greatly changing their momentum, allowing them to pass through with enough energy to still do damage.

The problem with any material shielding is that interactions between cosmic rays and the shielding tends to produce secondary radiation and you must also shield against this.

[KhaosCorp]

Crazy how things that are so simple to manage here on Earth turn into such complex technical issues in space. I think thats one of things that makes space so alluring to the imagination, why it fuels our natural need for exploration. Space...its RIGHT THERE, but its so different.

Gotta love space =)