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Kerbal Size?


Comrade Jenkens

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The Kerbal metre is defined by taking the average length of rocket debris after an unplanned energetic disassembly.

For years Kerbal engineers needed to standardize their rocket parts, as trying to launch pods, tanks and engines of slightly different sizes was putting a huge strain not only on the engineers sanity and Kerbal lives, but also on the Kerbal duct tape industry which struggled to keep up with demand.

Eventually a consensus was reached, the decision was made to take many common metal objects and find an average size, the most common objects available being the smouldering remains of the aforementioned mismatched rocket parts.

This became the new standard, and since that time rocket parts at least fit properly, even if they still don't always fly true :)

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There is no way to tell if a kerbal meter is the same as a human meter that I know of. If the units in the game with real names (meters, seconds, tons) are equivalent to their real life counterparts, then the value of G (gravitational constant) is way too high in KSP, or else all the planets are made of ridiculously dense material. It may be possible to work out the true scale if you assume all the constants (G, mostly) are the same, but that would be luck. My guess is there would be too many or too few constraints to figure it out without arbitrarily making up some of the scales or ignoring some information.

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I like how your story tells that they got rocketry before having the "meter". That's why the R&D in KSP makes no sense. :D

Your avatar is perfect for that comment! I thought they were one meter tall though.

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The Kerbal metre is defined by taking the average length of rocket debris after an unplanned energetic disassembly.

For years Kerbal engineers needed to standardize their rocket parts, as trying to launch pods, tanks and engines of slightly different sizes was putting a huge strain not only on the engineers sanity and Kerbal lives, but also on the Kerbal duct tape industry which struggled to keep up with demand.

Eventually a consensus was reached, the decision was made to take many common metal objects and find an average size, the most common objects available being the smouldering remains of the aforementioned mismatched rocket parts.

This became the new standard, and since that time rocket parts at least fit properly, even if they still don't always fly true :)

This is a deliciously Kerbal history lesson. I love it.

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  • 4 months later...

A while back, HarvesteR was discussing the ragdoll animation of Kerbals, and mentioned that at the scale being used at the time (they a=were about 0.5m so far as PhysX was aware) they moved too much like insects, but that at about 1m they moved more like humans. Hence the need to scale them up and scale up all the other parts to match.

I can't remember where he posted this, the post was probably lost in last year's Great Forum Crash.

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Sooo just to check, the Command Pod Mk1 (and by extension all Size 1 parts) is 1.25m in DIAMETER, not in RADIUS? I keep getting mixed up on this issue.

That's right. The small parts are .625m in diametre, 1.25m in diametre, etc.

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There is no way to tell if a kerbal meter is the same as a human meter that I know of. If the units in the game with real names (meters, seconds, tons) are equivalent to their real life counterparts, then the value of G (gravitational constant) is way too high in KSP, or else all the planets are made of ridiculously dense material. It may be possible to work out the true scale if you assume all the constants (G, mostly) are the same, but that would be luck. My guess is there would be too many or too few constraints to figure it out without arbitrarily making up some of the scales or ignoring some information.

All constants are the same IIRC, they've just made the planet REALLY dense, along with everything else.

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  • 2 years later...
On 4-1-2014 at 4:20 PM, sal_vager said:

0.5 metre (Meter for you Americans)

Just a little thing but, not only Americans say meter. The Dutch too, and deffinitly some other people from different nationalites. Just saying.

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