A preliminary study into the Migratory Habits of the common Octo-2

[MarvinKitFox]

A preliminary study into the Migratory Habits of the common Octo-2.

Warning, this report is quite image-intensive

The common or garden variety OCTO-2 is known to all, yet often overlooked as insignificant and uninspiring. Yet recent research has show that this diminutive creature will sometimes travel great distances over time.

Usually this travel is due to the use of a captive OCTO-2 as the (minimal) guidance mechanism of a Kerbal space vessel, where its very small form factor and mass make it desirable for use in lightweight probes.

But... Does the wild OCTO also migrate as far, when left to its own nature?

To study this phenomenon, we captured 721 wild OCTO-2's, tagged them with unique tracers, and released them into their native habitat. Previous studies have shown their native habitat to be low-mid Kerbin orbit, at altitudes between 500 and 15000 km.

Over the next three years we tracked their movement... (who said science was fast??)

Here is the captive OCTO-2 roost, just before releasing them into the wild.

[full album at bottom of report]

[editors note: The presence of so many octo's, with their cages, release latches, and the complexity of the launcher, has caused a strange temporal-gravitometric distortion that prevents photography during launch. I simply cannot get a screenshot when the framerate of KSP goes below 4 sec/frame. This whole launch took some 3.5 hours from ground to orbit!]

The Octo Roost, on Orbit and approaching the release point.

[Editors note: Despite appearances, this vessel is NOT related to the Great Space Kraken. I have the strongest assurances from Herr Kessler that any repercussions from the release will be local, contained and minor. ]

Fly free, little birdies! Fly!

And now for the serious study:

Image 1: year 0: At release.

Initially, the Octo swarm nervously together. Their flight path is regular and consistent.

Also, sadly, only 559 of the 721 survived their captive release. Sadly, it seems the Octo is even more delicate than we knew.

Almost immediately, a Mun encounter scatters the flock!

With their first taste of freedom, the flock is no more, it is every OCTO for itself!

A mere month has elapsed, and less than, ummm.. Well, only about 60 are still within Minmus' orbit, although perhaps three times that number are still gravitationally bound to Kerbin.

Now the flock is only discernible on the solar map, and even there it is spreading rapidly.

(Also, population size is down to 447. Some two dozen decided to nest on mun, some returned to Kerbin. Several perished when they crossed the releasing point at high velocity, only to encounter traffic congestion! Herr Kessler, this is very interesting, maybe you want to write a paper on the matter?)

Six months in, things are becoming more settled.

We have OCTOs orbiting Kerbin, Mun and the Sun.

Almost three years from release:

One has explored as far as Ike, and the plot seems to indicate an aero-encounter with Duna. Maybe I should supervise it, else if will vanish in a puff of logic like so many of it brethren did in Kerbin's air?

Ok, so maybe duna re-entry is not survivable.

The flock's pattern after 2 years, 283 days:

Released: 721 (559 live)

Surviving: 452

Still around Kerbin: 25

Solar orbit: 427

Know to have reached other planets:17 (14 Mun, 1 Eve, 2 Duna)

Lowest Periapsis:

3.9 million km , well inside Moho's orbit.

Highest Apoapsis: same OCTO!!!

83.5 million km , well outside Jool orbit, and usually outside Eloo too.

Most of the OCTO's left the Kerbin orbit very quickly, and tended to drift inwards to sometimes a bit lower than Eve orbit.

However, due to the orbital inclination, Eve encounters were FAR fewer than Duna encounters.

The one known EVE encounter is also the same one that aerobraked a bit in Eve, then several months later got one enormous gravity-sling from Moho, flinging it out to past Jool.

It's amazing just HOW FAR one can travel, from a boring Kerbin-to-Mun type orbit, using *zero* fuel.

Thanx for reading this "scientific study" report.

Marvin KitFox

MAd Genius Scientist.

addendum, 18 feb: Ran sim to year 41, added image to album.

After the first two frantic years, the flock had very much settled down. All of the "artificial" accelerants have dissipated.

* The perfect Kerbin-Mun zero-inclination orbit is no more.

* The very tight clustering at the Kerbin-orbit altitude has been swept

This has reduced the frequency of a Kerbin sphere-of-influance encounter to about one per 10 Kerbin orbits, and virtually all of those are remote glancing touched that impart less than 40m/s of sling.

.

.

but not all! At least one very promising candidate for a monster gravity sling was observed, however it turned out to be a return-to-roost event.

On day 1606 one more Octo returns to Kerbin, and settles in the badlands.

The flock's pattern after 41 years:

Released: 721 (559 live)

Surviving: 450 (only 2 died since year 2 day 283! One event was witnessed on day 1606, a return-to-Kerbin event, caught on camera)

Still around Kerbin: 12

Solar orbit: 438

Greatest orbit Peri-Apogee still the same one as at year 2, but the number of duna-crossing orbits has tripled. (still just 12 or so)

The most significant changes are:

* inclination. Without tools I cannot actually measure, but visually the greatest inclination is almost 18 degrees. And average inclination is *well* over 2 degrees.

* distribution. There is almost no remnant of the clostering around Kerbin orbit. Initially, virtually all octo's had either Periapsis or Apoapsis that matched Kerbin. Now less than 10 have this (+- 1% orbit distance)

this means that 99% of the solar-orbiting Octo's that used to share Kerbin orbit, have experience two or more gravity events, thus displacing their Apses away from the mother planet.

This has caused significant encounter events to decrease in frequency by about two magnitudes! I think we can now conclude this experiment, as any further "interesting" results would likely be centuries or millenia apart, not days or weeks.

Stardate: Unknown.

We have returned to the former Kerbin System after a delay that should have equated to a bit over 400 years, but all is in ruins.

Even the very fabric of space and time has been rent.

The Octo have spread just a bit, but their malignant sentience has evolved, and they have eaten time itself!!!

The clock shows: mission time elapsed = minus 3 hours, minus 14 minutes, minus 8 seconds elapsed. The clock does not change from this value.

Any attempt to enter Mission Control, or to focus on a specific Octo, results in the universe imploding with the fading afterimage of "Heap Allocation Error"

THE OCTO HAVE EATEN THE VERY UNIVERSE!

Let the warning pass out to all systems, all peoples. DO NO try this experiment yourself, you doom us all!

In desperation, the captain tries the last-resort. He presses F9.

.

.

.

"Heap allocation Error"

.

.

.

He was never heard from again.

Full album.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited February 18, 2014 by MarvinKitFox
The END IS NIGH! Repent sinners, for the OCTO will RULE!

[GamerMitch]

Wow... I'm amazed at your dedication to studying these creatures in their natural habitat. From now on, I will never overlook an OKTO ever again.

[panzerknoef]

This is amazing! The wild OKTO 2 is such a mysterious creature, I'm happy we finally have some more knowledge about them. Thank you for all this.

[lajoswinkler]

Attenborough should make a documentary about them. In fact, I read all of this using his voice.

[Tangle]

...Why do I want the .craft file?

Okay, I'm gonna do this on my own. Except this time, the wild OKTO2s will have a power/food source: A tiny RTG!

[MarvinKitFox]

Attenborough should make a documentary about them. In fact, I read all of this using his voice.

You read my mind.

That was *exactly* what I had in mind. The slightly-dry, slightly-intriguing BBC documentary effect.

Tangle, one .craft file for your perusal..... umm..umm... HELP how do I post a .craft file? for now, here's a link to dropbox of it. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5do22zzo8cp8r9/OCTO%20roost.craft

Mods on my ksp, that are relevant.

KWrocketry

KerbalJointReinforcement

Mechjeb2

Also mod, but irrelevant:

Kethane

ENgineer redux

and some texture-reducer mod. Even with it, memory is scarce when I go nuts like this.

[Tangle]

For my OKTO2 program, I'm sending up 16 little probes with engines (just in case they want to settle on the Mun) and parachutes (just in case they want to return home or to Duna or whatever)

EDIT: One probe attempted to settle on the Mun. Unfortunately due to its poor judgement it couldn't land, even with the engine.

However, how do you get your probes into so many encounters? After a full year and 3 edits to 3 probes, none of them have encountered anything.

EDIT 2: two full years and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING AND HOW

EDIT 3: You must be freaking magical, because none of these OKTOs are doing ANYTHING.

EDIT 4: Use more than 40 oktos, I should.

Edited February 16, 2014 by Tangle

[Brotoro]

Hahahaha. Love it. Have some kerbal snacks.

[Tw1]

This is a brilliant idea. No need to worry about either planing or delta V, fling em all out, and see what happens!

Are you going to keep running the experiment?

Edited February 17, 2014 by Tw1

[MarvinKitFox]

F

EDIT 2: two full years and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING AND HOW

EDIT 3: You must be freaking magical, because none of these OKTOs are doing ANYTHING.

EDIT 4: Use more than 40 oktos, I should.

I launched 721 octo's.. about 160 of them died in the release (maybe a 9-stack deep of stage sererators imparts too much force?)

I made sure that they were ***exactly*** on an equatorial plane to start with. so if Mun or Kerbin affects them, they are not flung to the wild reaches of Nadir or Zenith in the system.

I made sure that their orbit intersects Mun's sphere of influence. (actually an average of 12500km Apoapsis)

The *vast* majority of them just exited Kerbin space, then loitered around the sun doing nothing.

and... this was attempt #3. I had originally planned to drop them in an orbit with higher Periapsis, but I neglected to remember the power-needs of your average probe body.

With 721 active probes, they were consuming 1226 energy per MINUTE! I needed that energy to control my engines! So I had to release WAY early.

[Geschosskopf]

A brilliant project! I had no idea there were vast swarms of OCTOs lurking in between Kerbin and Duna. I'll have to organize a hunt .

If you ever feel the urge to repeat this, make a video from the map view while you've got time warp cranked up .

[Sauron]

Have some rep dude. This is some cool stuff. Hopefully your computer isn't cooked

[jmiki8]

Amazing mission, it made my day! <still laughing>

[TimMartland]

Now go release more

[MockKnizzle]

A brilliant brute-force method to search the solution space for a low-cost Kerbin-Jool transfer window

[ramnrmeul]

A brilliant brute-force method to search the solution space for a low-cost Kerbin-Jool transfer window

Or a Kerbin-Eeloo or Kerbin-Moho transfer.

[Mr. Speed]

Very interesting experiment, it is amazing where you can end up with a little help of gravity.

[MockKnizzle]

Or a Kerbin-Eeloo or Kerbin-Moho transfer.

Well, I picked Jool since you can aerobrake. Kerbin-Moho or Kerbin-Eeloo would still have very large braking burns.

[Tw1]

What is quite interesting is that one managed to latch on to the Mun. Some people have said it's not possible for objects to become captured that way in KSP, yet here it is.

Also interesting is the demonstration of the way a planet clears its own orbit.

It's a pity about the save breaking.

[MarvinKitFox]

What is quite interesting is that one managed to latch on to the Mun. Some people have said it's not possible for objects to become captured that way in KSP, yet here it is.

Also interesting is the demonstration of the way a planet clears its own orbit.

It's a pity about the save breaking.

I was quite suprised to see the one around Mun. Did not see the capture, just saw that Mun looked... a bit big. Zoom in, and there it was.

FWIW, that probe promptly (about 5 kerbin years) later vacated its spot, which makes even less sense to me. I'm just assuming cumulative calculation errors while running at X100000 warp, and repeatedly zooming in/out while hopping from probe to probe.

The way that a planet clears its orbit was facinating to watch, yet totally expected. I had never has a sim that could accurately (or even KPS-accurately) model this. Wish i has a supercomputer capable of modeling the pimordial solar cloud, and planet formation.

Anyways, it was a fun little project while it lasted. Validated a lot of my theories, suprised me on a few others. I never anticipated an Eve-aerobrake-Moho superslingshot like that. I mean, the odds are something like 10^12 against it, per orbit!

But the gradual creep inward rather than out matches what i thought. Also the reduced variance of the inner orbits, but greater variance of the outer ones.

The timescale, quite frankly, ran much faster than I expected, at first. I had planned using real-world orbits, which are 3-d. My initial setup was essentially 2-d on Kerbin and Mun's very unrealisting matching orbital planes and perfectly circular orbits. This **enormously** amplified the scattering during the first few hundred orbits.

Ah, the fun of seeing mathematics dance like this!

[cantab]

Brilliant study, and a great reminder that there are always new interesting things to do in KSP.