Anyone put asteroids in orbit around moonless planets?

[Yukon0009]

Exceot coding gravity for asteriods would be hard, cause asteriods are technically parts (manufacturer: The Solar System, tech, unresearchable).

[boxman]

The biggest reason is orbital decay and the effect it would have on your missions. Do a timewarp for a mission to Jool and five spacestations would deorbit in that time due to gravitational forces. That's not fun at all.

Should not matter since physics is on rails during timewarp anyways. Adding n-body physics wont change that, so the decay will only happen when you are playing in real time/physics warp.

[cantab]

There is still potential for orbits to be unstable just due to multiple gravity sources.

But ultimately the main reason the game uses conic patches is that they're good enough. There are a few neato things you miss out on but nothing very important IMHO.

[Hannu]

Should not matter since physics is on rails during timewarp anyways. Adding n-body physics wont change that, so the decay will only happen when you are playing in real time/physics warp.

N-body calculations without time acceleration would be completely insane, because in practical gaming the vast majority of time is accelerated. If you go to Laythe and back probably some tens of minutes goes in normal speed and several years is accelerated.

I think that the most important reason why there is no N-body gravity in KSP is that when Squad decided physics model no-one of them was not educated and interested in this type of algorithms. It is relatively difficult task to code N-body simulator even good enough to gaming use. It have consequences to everything in game, because you lose rail property. You must program some kind of automatic controls to keep satellites on their orbits and they must work even during time acceleration. I tried once to make such a game. I succeeded in orbital calculations (at least my own opinion), but gave up because it was too hard to get other than physical interest in game. Spaceship was a simple cone and cylinder, planets was spheres without possibility to ascend or land, and display was mostly trajectory curves and numeric information displays. I got about 10000 x time acceleration (it was Pentium 4 -computer from 2002) when I had 2 ships.

[ThirdHorseman]

FASA has an asteroid mod, where the asteroids have gravity. True, the gravity doesn't work during time warp but it's something...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/33713-Asteroids-2-4-Now-Open-Source

[samstarman5]

Do you have to leave something attached to an asteroid to prevent the game from deleting it?

Once you have actually discovered the asteroid, it stays. Leave it as a question mark and it will eventually despawn.

[Renegrade]

Around 3000 tons is the usual limit for E-classes. There are rumours of bigger ones but they're super-rare.

Ugh and I thought the 1500-ton ones were heavy.

Okay, here's the revised data:

Mass=3e+06 kg, GM=0.000200215, Rad=18.0, Altitude=0.0

Density = 122.805 kg/m^3 (volume=24429 m^3)

Orbital Velocity at 0m is 3.335mm/sec

Orbital time is 565:10 minutes. Time in darkness is 16955.5 seconds (50.00% of 33911.0)

G-Force: 617.948nm/s^2.

Weight of Kerbal=5.795mg

Escape: 4.717mm/s.

It's still floating on water, but at least it's more dense than cigar smoke...I think.

[lajoswinkler]

I've gave it a serious thought when they were released, but even the smallest class is pretty hard to tug to Moho, Dres and Eeloo.

You might use Hyper Edit, but it's more Kerbal to tug them.

They shouldn't have any measurable gravity field because they're too small. Look at Gilly, and Gilly is enormous compared to the largest class.

[cantab]

Gravity assists are your friend. The one I posted entering Ike orbit got to Duna via a Kerbin assist, and I've got another that I put on course for Eve with a powered Kerbin assist.

Of course at an airless planet you'll still have to do a powered orbital insertion. But even that if you're patient can be made easier by a gravity assist pass that loops you round for another slower approach.

[lajoswinkler]

They often significantly magnify the change of inclination. Fiddling with decimal values on one end results in significant changes. That's why I rarely use them.

[ratchet freak]

They often significantly magnify the change of inclination. Fiddling with decimal values on one end results in significant changes. That's why I rarely use them.

do a normal burn on the kerbol ass/desc node to make sure you enter the grav assist body on a ecliptical, an assis burn on the peri during the grav assist can fine tune it further

[Aragosnat]

Yeah. Small B Class or A Class might be someting to try first though. Less mass to push. Might want to do a B Class as I have found some A class ones to have mass way off centered, like pointing to empty space.

Also had a chance to put a roid around Mün. But, it was an A class one that sadly was very very off centered with its mass.