Is this posible?

[Uqabos]

t

Edited March 30, 2022 by Uqabos

[ZedNova]

Not that i know of. And i don't think the Physics engine would support it.

[NotCoach]

What's the point? You want to watch the entire kerbol system be slowly sucked into a game breaking SOI?

[KvickFlygarn87]

No, not without serious modding.

[Uqabos]

t

Edited March 30, 2022 by Uqabos

[Xetalim]

You could make a planet with a huge gravity well, but that does not affect the other planets, it will probably suck you out of the kerbal system after you click "launch" in the VAB.

[Spartwo]

You can reduce all the planets horizontal velocity to 0.

[Sabreur]

Technically possible through modding, although it wouldn't be easy - especially if you're shooting for any degree of realism. The *smallest* black holes have three times the mass of the sun, so you'd have to mod things so that the entire Kerbin system orbits the black hole. The black hole itself wouldn't be directly visible (obviously), so you'd have to show its presence via an accretion disk or figure out how to make a decent gravitational lensing shader.

The event horizon of 'small' black holes is tiny on a cosmic scale - on the order of a few kilometers in radius. KSP scales everything down dramatically, but to give some idea of the scale:

The radius of Earth's Moon is 1737.4 kilometers.

The radius of the event horizon of a 'small' Black Hole (3 solar masses) is 15 kilometers.

If it wasn't for the fact that it would crush everything into oblivion, you could fit a black hole inside downtown Denver - with room to spare! Of course, the extreme radiation and gravitational tidal forces means that the minimum 'safe' distance from a black hole is much farther away, although I don't have any hard numbers for that.

[lajoswinkler]

There could be a very small black hole (doesn't have to be naturally made so that it has a limit) orbiting Kerbol and it would have its SOI just like any other planet, but its gravity well would be so steep that serious problems would arise upon getting too close.

It would be a great experiment.

Tidal forces are not important unless you get really close. Actually, with large black holes, you can pass the event horizon without noticing any weird pull.

Radiation is unimportant. Of there isn't any matter to be sucked in, the only radiation from such object would be Hawking radiation, and that shouldn't be an issue.

Edited January 8, 2014 by lajoswinkler

[Soda Popinski]

That would be interesting. You could also place muns orbiting the black hole. People often think black holes suck everything in. They act just like any other gravity well as far as orbits and such go, until you get to close. After all, we're all orbiting a super massive black hole in the center of the galaxy. All the black holes we've (likely) detected have only been found because they're in a binary system.

An interesting side effect of this is, you could only get past the event horizon if you had an FTL drive...like one from the Interstellar Mod.

[Javster]

You could use Hyperedit and move Kerbin close to the Sun?

[Kasuha]

Another of those ideas that sound cool but would be incredibly dull when implemented.

With the Planet Factory mod, we could have a black hole even now. A body with mass comparable to the Sun and diameter a few kilometers, totally black. For all practical purposes it would be a giant SOI with nothing visible inside, but strong gravitational field.

[lajoswinkler]

Another of those ideas that sound cool but would be incredibly dull when implemented.

With the Planet Factory mod, we could have a black hole even now. A body with mass comparable to the Sun and diameter a few kilometers, totally black. For all practical purposes it would be a giant SOI with nothing visible inside, but strong gravitational field.

Ok you convinced me, I'm downloading it.

I need to try this.

[Kasuha]

Ok you convinced me, I'm downloading it.

I need to try this.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I didn't say it's in it. I meant it could be technically added the same way this mod adds other bodies.

[Sabreur]

Another of those ideas that sound cool but would be incredibly dull when implemented.

With the Planet Factory mod, we could have a black hole even now. A body with mass comparable to the Sun and diameter a few kilometers, totally black. For all practical purposes it would be a giant SOI with nothing visible inside, but strong gravitational field.

To make things interesting, you'd have to add an accretion disk and maybe figure out a decent gravitational lensing shader, possibly some orbiting dwarf planets and such.

[Blue]

Objects could just as easily orbit a black hole as they would an ordinary star. The main differences would be A. the difficulty of making the black hole look as it should in real life, and B. the game would then have no light sources at all, and everything would be as if it were at night, at all times, everywhere.

[Kasuha]

Perceivable gravitational lensing effects are not significantly bigger than apparent size of the event horizon. For star sized black holes there's no way to see them from safe distance without very good telescope. In KSP you'd be either too far to see them, or move too fast to see them for more than single frame. So there's no reason to actually implement them because the only ones who'd be able to appreciate them would be cheaters.

[Technical Ben]

What's the point? You want to watch the entire kerbol system be slowly sucked into a game breaking SOI?

Black holes do not suck in matter. They are the same as any other gravitation body, except you cannot reach escape velocity if you get too close. But you could easily orbit one etc if you did not get too close.

[Kasuha]

Black holes do not suck in matter. They are the same as any other gravitation body, except you cannot reach escape velocity if you get too close. But you could easily orbit one etc if you did not get too close.

Actually, they do. Even two-body system not involving black holes is unstable in reality, orbits are not true ellipses, they spiral inwards due to relativistic effects. But the difference from newtonian trajectories is so infinitesimally smal that it can be ignored on most time scales.

Relativistic effect of Sun on Mercury's orbit is known and measurable, though.

It's believed that in some 10^100 years all matter in the universe will be in black holes.

[Technical Ben]

Yes. I agree. But spiraling inwards due to gravity with an orbit is different to "sucking" portrayed or described in fiction and generally. In that, we are talking billions of years for an orbit to decay in that way.

[Kasuha]

Yes. I agree. But spiraling inwards due to gravity with an orbit is different to "sucking" portrayed or described in fiction and generally. In that, we are talking billions of years for an orbit to decay in that way.

... and KSP does not implement relativistic effects anyway. Black hole in KSP would be just large SOI with nothing visible in the center.

[vexx32]

Yup. And unless you had something big enough to crash into in the middle, you'd go right through the center (or very nearly) and be flung at a superluminal velocity, akin to what used to happen back when the Sun was a point of light and a gravity well, if you attempted to crash into it.

[lajoswinkler]

Hey, don't get me wrong. I didn't say it's in it. I meant it could be technically added the same way this mod adds other bodies.

I understood that, but I thought it was a tool that would allow me to make it. I guess it is not. Nevertheless, it's an awesome expansion.

Yup. And unless you had something big enough to crash into in the middle, you'd go right through the center (or very nearly) and be flung at a superluminal velocity, akin to what used to happen back when the Sun was a point of light and a gravity well, if you attempted to crash into it.

That's fine with me. If people can play make believe "games" with their "space agencies", I can pretend I'm using probes to investigate an invisible monster in the system.

[SSSPutnik]

You can have a black hole with less mass than 3 SOL if you ascribe to quantum holes or old holes losing mass to evaporation. A small one, say Munar mass, with a damn small radius would be fun to play with and or re-enact scenes from Disneys Black Hole movie especially with a Kerbal Maximilian type robot.

[CaptainArchmage]

You can create a high-mass black body that conforms to proper physics (i.e. radius of event horizon) either replacing one of the planets or added to the game using the Planet Factory method. To simulate the destructive effects, just have objects explode on touching the event horizon. If tidal forces outside the event horizon are high, they may rip the spacecraft apart.