Why doesn't Tylo have an atmosphere?

[quantumpion]

Titan has a thick atmosphere while Ganymede does not although they are about the same mass :/

[SkyRex94]

NO lets not give Tylo any atmosphere! if you'd read the post before you know thats totally plausbile that there are moons without an atmosphere that are heavy and light ones that have one. Look at Titan and than look at Ganymede or Mercury , Titan is much lighter than these non-atmo-bodies but has a very very thick atmosphere.

Tylo is the aquivalent of Ganymede and i think its great to have a heavy moon without an atmosphere. Make the surface more interesting yes, but not add an atmosphere to Tylo.

[RuBisCO]

The space kraken lives on Tylo, it did not like the atmosphere so it striped it off, never mess with the kraken.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Was that the one that was so hot it'd overheat your engines when they weren't even running? They should rework Eve to be like that >:-D

Yes it was, and it's the only atmosphere ever to exist where you had to be below 0m to get the parachutes to deploy, and it was tidally locked. And it had a massive volcano (A interesting terrain feature, on a planet! No, it would make it too interesting, we must remove it at once!)

[LaydeeDem]

Because making thin atmospheres that look convincing is hard. See: Duna.

Yes it was, and it's the only atmosphere ever to exist where you had to be below 0m to get the parachutes to deploy, and it was tidally locked. And it had a massive volcano (A interesting terrain feature, on a planet! No, it would make it too interesting, we must remove it at once!)

Well, said feature looked less like a volcano and more like my cat's butt.

That being said the super-heated atmosphere made it a fun target instead of the Mun with a different coat of paint.

Edited August 8, 2014 by Nutt007

[Vanamonde]

There was already a thread about this, and so, merged.

[Space Viking]

As a game still under development, I think the Kerbol System as a whole should be seen as a WiP that yet haven't been entirely thought out. I think ex-developer NovaSilisko made a good example on much of the current work is based on early ideas that could, depending on how the current team is thinking, be a subject of further elaboration and thereby change in the future. Since you are also supposedly collecting scientific data for a space agency, I think it would be really nice if it could develop to reasonable theories about each (major) celestial body's history instead of just having some generic egghead saying "We got a lot of research done here!". Could probably be interesting for the educational version, since it would give some bonus insight about alternate star systems.

About Tylo's origin, there's at this point no official explanations regarding it aside from it's a rock that's been long dead. It beats me, but perhaps it's a coreless body that was either an independent planet, or formed from a rather massive circumplanetary disk of Jool that was mostly rocky debris. The atmosphere Tylo originally had might have already been thin and was perhaps lost to hydrodynamic escape during its early history.

The concept behind Laythe is basically a global cryosphere that melted due to tidal heating. I'd imagine there's some artistic licence behind it, including its atmosphere. Either is the oxygen according to conventional belief a sign of life, or maybe it's replenished by UV-radiation that separates water vapors in the upper atmosphere. Current ingame science implies Laythe's ocean is gradually being depleting as a presumable consequence by this.

But yet again, as the realism behind Tylo and Laythe is understandably questionable, so is the game still undergoing development. I think most things should be seen as arbitrary and a subject that can change in the future whether it's to suit scientific accuracy or not.