Wondering: Are Planet orbits hard-coded, or alterable by force?

[Talavar]

Basically, if i crashed 1000 ships into the side of minmus, would it actually start to change the trajectory of the planet itself?

[UmbralRaptor]

All planets are on rails, so no.

[7499275]

No, Scott Manley tried this one. The planets are on rails. Besides it would take a tremendous amount of force to do this. More than is really reasonably possible to achieve.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Talavar]

This almost saddens me. I was really considering Grabbing Minmus, and going totally bonkers with it (over a long unknown amount of time). lol

Edited July 13, 2014 by sal_vager
No swearing please :)

[GreeningGalaxy]

*coughs* hyperedit.

Also, that's probably one of the reasons they put the entire asteroid redirect mission thing in the game to begin with- people wanted to move solar system bodies around, and the asteroids are good for that.

[vexx32]

Yeah, even something the size of Gilly requires a tremendous amount of thrust to be able to change the orbit significantly, so the planets being on rails makes a whole lot more sense than even attempting to move them does.

[Godot]

This almost saddens me. I was really considering Grabbing Minmus, and going totally ape$hit with it (over a long unknown amount of time). lol

Don´t underestimate it ... Scott Manley, in his video where he unsuccessfully tried to shift Muns orbit, also calculated the dV he would need to shift Muns orbit (if it weren´t on rails)

in terms of numbers of orange tanks ... and it was insane²

The dV needed for Minmus would surely be still insane

[Roastduck]

This almost saddens me. I was really considering Grabbing Minmus, and going totally bonkers with it (over a long unknown amount of time). lol

the way the physics engine works, if the planets weren't on rails the game would be VERY unstable

Edited July 13, 2014 by sal_vager

[R0cketC0der]

Gilly is about eleven orders of magnitude heavier than E-class asteroids. Imagine trying to push 100,000,000,000 E-Class asteroids.

[magnemoe]

Yeah, even something the size of Gilly requires a tremendous amount of thrust to be able to change the orbit significantly, so the planets being on rails makes a whole lot more sense than even attempting to move them does.

yes, a killometer sized astroid would take an huge orion pulse engine to move. Redirecting is easier as you only need to change the orbit less than 1 m/s but moving might be 1 km/s.

Gilly is 2 magnitudes heavier.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

And considering the planets have massively unrealistic densities, it's not going to make it much easier.

[zarakon]

If you combine the power of all rockets that all KSP players have ever built, it might be enough to move the smallest moon in the game (Gilly) by 1 or 2 m/s (if they weren't on rails)

[Felsmak]

The dV needed for Minmus would surely be still insane

The delta-V would actually be completely normal. It's to actually achieve it that's tricky!

[Ippo]

Well, the first thing I'm going to do when this is released is mod the mainsail to have 1 billion times the thrust and try to deorbit gilly with infinite fuel.

[SkyRender]

Even if you could deorbit the planets and moons, you'd find that it's a pointless gesture. They have no collision with one another, and the current SoI code gets really strange when you put two planets/moons too close to one another via HyperEdit. Even with that N-Body mod, I'm not sure it would accurately model just how strange a collision of gravitationally-significant bodies would be.

[dryer_lint]

I'm considering getting HyperEdit so I can mess with the planetary orbits. Heehee. Can it permanently break the game though?

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I'm considering getting HyperEdit so I can mess with the planetary orbits. Heehee. Can it permanently break the game though?

No it can't, at worst you will have to restart.