Asteroid Bowling ?

[Lohan2008]

(Not counting Scott Manley) Has anyone tried bowling an Asteroid into another one ??

Edited April 3, 2014 by Lohan2008

[KerbMav]

No, but I predict they will behave just like billard balls, as even an impact at several hundred m/s cannot destroy them.

[Kasuha]

Real asteroids don't behave like billiard balls on collisions so if they do in KSP it will be a shame.

[KerbMav]

I am fairly certain you know what I was getting at?

They most likely behave like every other part (which is what they are) in KSP that gets bumped by another one and survives the impact.

[Kasuha]

Of course I understand. And to be honest I don't know how exactly do parts behave incollisions. I know how ships behave but the elasticity in that case is mostly driven by elasticity in joints (which might be slightly decreased now given they got strength boost). So I'll have to see what individual parts do when they collide. I expect that to be largely elastic, too. But that could be fixed. Even most human-created objects don't bounce off each other in collisions. Cars, planes, even rockets. Not mentioning things like buildings.

[KerbMav]

A good portion of the energy in a car crash is going into deforming the vehilces, but they do "bounce" depending on speed, rigidity, angle etc and are not perfectly-inelastic collisions.

Parts in KSP are not deformed from collisions, they either survive or explode, but if kinetic energy is lost I cannot say. Maybe we could ram a target and see if the relative speed at which the two parts seperate is the same as they approached before the collision?

Boy, this game really gets you back into learing science!

[Kasuha]

Okay, surprise.

I grabbed an asteroid, targeted another unexplored asteroid, performed a perfect rendezvous, adjusted for collision at about 40 m/s and.... my asteroid passed through it as if that other asteroid was some kind of ghost. Not my ship, I was not that accurate. I guess I gotta experiment more.

Edit: If I touch the other asteroid with my ship (and not just the attached asteroid) it explodes. But asteroids don't seem to be able to collide with each other at all.

So it's not exactly like billiard balls but no energy is lost

In the album I detached my ship from the asteroid but it does not really matter, it does the same if I leave it attached.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited April 2, 2014 by Kasuha

[KerbMav]

Those screenshots alone made it worth the effort.

Somethings fishy I think. When I doubleclick a tracked asteroid in the observatory it says "Cannot control an object that we do not own" or something along the line - could it be that the asteroids incorporate some new code from the upcoming multiplayer mode already, which makes sure that one player cannot destroy stuff from another?

[lajoswinkler]

Just don't forget to turn off the time warp when you're close to the asteroid. I've managed to enter one with a probe like that, and when I jumped out of time warp, ka-boom... Luckily, only a part of the probe was damaged.

Real asteroids of such small size as in KSP are pretty hard objects, at least partially. It's the large ones which are basically fluff and boulders holding on together because of the gravitational force.

Two 500 metre sized asteroids in a 10 m/s collision will behave similar to a thick fluid. Two tiny boulders impacting each other will pretty much bounce like billiard balls.

Kasuha, your screenshots reminded me of one popular dirty sketch from my textbook.

Edited April 3, 2014 by lajoswinkler

[DrLex]

I haven't tried bumping two asteroids against each other (which would be more aptly named “Asteroid Billiardsâ€Â).

I have, however, tried the following.

[Starstrider42]

You, sir, have the heart and soul of a kerbal.

(Though IMO using a self-guided bowling ball is cheating )

[DrLex]

(Though IMO using a self-guided bowling ball is cheating )

Well, that can be solved!

[Voculus]

Awesome! Just awesome!