Compositions of the various planets in KSP.

[Whirligig Girl]

Here's a bit about the composition of the planets.

Eve's oceans: Molten Gallium-Lead alloy.

Minmus mountains: Fake snow (You know, that expanding stuff you got for your 7th birthday)

Minmus Flats: A gel of some kind.

Black regolith on Ike: Kinetic Sand.

Grey regolith on Ike: Carbon-rich ices.

Jool's atmosphere: Hydrogen, Helium, and Chlorine.

Laythe's oceans: Salt-rich water.

Pol: Actually a giant space-flower's reproductive material.

We can try to explain away the densities, or we can remember NovaSilisko's statement that planets are actually normal density, but use higher gravity, or we can just pretend we're using 10x scale solar system.

Edited November 24, 2014 by GregroxMun

[kerbiloid]

Density: lead = 11.35, gallium = 5.9, granite = 2.5.

Any molten alloy would just sink down to the planet core once it has been melten out.

Eve ocean would be smth close to Eve atmosphere.

[Oscilllator]

I can guarantee that Jools atmosphere does not have hydrogen and chlorine, since they explode when mixed. This reaction is initiated by heat or by UV light.

Also, the planets in the kerbal solar system have impossibly high densities. Kerbin has a density 58 times that of water. The densest element, osmium, has a density 23 times that of water and so the conclusion we must draw is that there is an exiting super-dense fuel inside kerbins mantle just waiting to be harvested.

[kerbiloid]

A fiction writer Stephen Baxter has a brilliant idea about such compact planet worlds, in his novel "Raft".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28novel%29

In KSP, Spore and other such settings not planets would be dense as hell, but a gravitation constant would be proportionally increased.

That would have no effect in our/Kerbal daily affairs, but would allow such planet system to consist of usual materials.

[Oscilllator]

That's an interesting idea kerbiloid and it would neatly solve the dilemma, however the problem is that the game itself has specified the mass and radius of the planets, and so the density problem is unavoidable.

Having said that I think I'm going to have to read that book you linked, sound good.

[technicalfool]

This ain't no Science Labs discussion.

To General with you!

*PUNT*

[Whirligig Girl]

A fiction writer Stephen Baxter has a brilliant idea about such compact planet worlds, in his novel "Raft".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28novel%29

In KSP, Spore and other such settings not planets would be dense as hell, but a gravitation constant would be proportionally increased.

That would have no effect in our/Kerbal daily affairs, but would allow such planet system to consist of usual materials.

Yes, and NovaSilisko said that in fact, the planets are not incredibly dense, it's just the gravitational constant was increased.

Kerbals probably calculate planetary mass in a different measurement unit than the mass of rocket parts. IIRC,they use "Kilograms" in the display tab? We don't know if a Metric Tonne is equal to 1000 Kilograms or not in Kerbal language.

Edited November 24, 2014 by GregroxMun

[Whirligig Girl]

A fiction writer Stephen Baxter has a brilliant idea about such compact planet worlds, in his novel "Raft".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_%28novel%29

In KSP, Spore and other such settings not planets would be dense as hell, but a gravitation constant would be proportionally increased.

That would have no effect in our/Kerbal daily affairs, but would allow such planet system to consist of usual materials.

Act, I think Spore's sorta pretending to be normal sized,just in a cute representation... Earth and the sol sytem are in the game, for instance.

[vexx32]

I can confirm that, Gregrox. I spent many, many hours poking through Spore's .prop data files, and on multiple occasions people figured out how to increase planet sizes. Only trouble was, the game engine couldn't handle it without introducing weird glitches. Cities and tribal villages tended to spawn underground, for instance.

I guess you could assume it was a necessary limitation of their already shoddy coding :/

I can guarantee that Jools atmosphere does not have hydrogen and chlorine, since they explode when mixed. This reaction is initiated by heat or by UV light.

Also, the planets in the kerbal solar system have impossibly high densities. Kerbin has a density 58 times that of water. The densest element, osmium, has a density 23 times that of water and so the conclusion we must draw is that there is an existing super-dense fuel inside kerbins mantle just waiting to be harvested.

That would definitely explain where they're getting all the rocket fuel from...

[psyper]

Theres nothing fundamental to our universe that states Gravity has to be as strong as it is - it just is - and on top of that its a very very weak force (consider you can pick up a set of keys with a small magnet which counteracts the gravity from the whole earth). Theres also a theory that there are other universes out there and our gravity might have 'bleed' from another universe which has a higher amount of gravity so kerbals universe could technically be in another universe where the universal constants are slightly different giving gravity a higher strength than in ours.

Also their kg might be different to ours - just so happens by a strange coincidence that they use the same name as a portion of earth's - their 1 kg might not equal 1 earth kg the same as a US and Canadian Dollar are different values for example. Also what's to say their they have 1000 kg in their tonnes?

[kerbiloid]

Act, I think Spore's sorta pretending to be normal sized,just in a cute representation... Earth and the sol sytem are in the game, for instance.

In Spore you can measure planet sizes in Civilization or Space modes. Just measure some hill and compare it to a planet from aside.

A typical planet is about a kilometer in diameter, atmosphere is about a hundred or two thick and so on. You even can calculate a mass of those planets as in Spore you can easily scale all you can see.

[r_rolo1]

Oh well, putting the gravitational constant and absolute densities to the side, and assuming that comparative densities of materials are the same than in our universe, there are still major issues with the planets in KSP in terms of physical/chemical properties. The more clear examples are Eve, Minmus, Laythe and Tylo:

- Eve ... where to start? The devs mashed some stuff in Eve that is very hard to reconcile. We have a very high temperature and oceans ... while technically they could be of water, other stuff in game or to be in the game soon point otherwise ( in game: Eve doesn't have rivers. That means it doesn't rain in Eve, a thing that points to a very high ebullition point liquid in the oceans, a thing that in Eve clearly excludes water, even if very salty. To be in game: Eve oceans will be harvest able for fuel ( that was sort of confirmed by in the last friday KSP-TV dev stream ) and according with the buried plans Harv had for the resource harvesting, the liquid in Eve oceans will be harvest able for fuel, but not for oxidizer, unlike Kerbin and Laythe oceans ...so , no water ). Others , like Scott Manley, suggested that it might be some kind of liquid metallic alloy ( Manley specifically suggested mercury, that was discussed to be used as rocket engine in the pat in RL ), that , while beating with other stuff in Harv's plan ( like Eve's oceans being a source for ( still not existent in game ) nuclear fuel ), is hard to reconcile with it being on the surface of the planet, and not in the core ( even if they didn't sunk to the core, there would be surely a layer of silicates in the surface of the planet ( like in all rocky planets in our solar system ), and those are far less dense than liquid metals )

More , Eve is purple . The surface is purple as far as we can see, the atmosphere is purple and the oceans as far as we can see are purple ( OFC that they can be simply reflecting the sky and surface color ... ). There is a couple of substances that are purple, but all have issues: colored organic compounds in general would have issues being stable in 5 atm and 98ºC ( not that they can't be, though ) but uniform purple would very hard to achieve in natural conditions with them, Iodine would work, but it would most likely react with any fuel source ( and more, iodine in water solution is not purple, so you can't have both and still have purple things in Eve ) and permanganates ( Maxmaps suggestion in last friday KSPTV dev stream ) both decompose in high temps and are strong oxidizers, a thing that doesn't link well with oceans that are a source of fuel

Minmus: Let's put first what Minmus is NOT made of: Water ice While atleast the devs made Minmus not tidally locked to Kerbin in more recent incarnations ( to suggest that Minmus is not around Kerbin for so much time as the Mun ), the lack of vents and of signs of plumes ( added to the fact that Mimnus is not a comet ) basically excludes ice in Minmus. More, even if you want to say that it has ice under a coat of something not volatile, Minmus has rock boulders on the surface, a thing that makes absolutely no sense if Minmus was made primarily of ice ( the same reason to shun mercury oceans on Eve: relative densities ).

Now, on what minmus IS made of: the flat surfaces are most likely some kind of silicate glass, indicating that Minmus was possibly starting to diferentiate ( dense stuff going down , made more easy by melting of the interior layers due to gravity and radioactive decay. Due to that, that process only happens in stuff above a certain size and makes the objects spherical ( the molten materials tend to fill the gaps ) ) early in it's history when something basically froze the process in the middle. What could do that ? that is a nice question ... that I don't have the answer to

Laythe: Laythe is actually easy to explain for the most part. It is the most interior moon of Jool, thus the tidal forces tend to produce heat, heat that is enough to make the water in there liquid. More, it is not a water world because it suffered a major impact in it's early history that almost shredded the moon, leaving a almost hemispherical crater whose rims are above water level. It also has enough oxygen for jet engines to work, a almost sure sign that it has life ...

On the stuff that doesn't make sense: First, Laythe has ice caps. If you think about that, if the oceans of Laythe are there because of Jool's tidal forces, it doesn't make sense than there are ice caps ( unlike in Kerbin, where the heat to melt the water comes primarily of the Sun radiation, thus making that the poles get in average less power from the Sun per area than the tropics ). Other thing to consider is how that Laythe has a atmosphere at all: if you look at the RL moon of Jupiter that is more closely in the situation of Laythe, Io, you will see a planet that loses atmosphere to Jupiter because of the same gravity that melts it's interiors to create sulfuric volcanoes. Laythe should had lost it's atmosphere long ago ( there is no sign of atmospherical replacement mechanism in Laythe ) ... unless both the atmosphere and the oceans are recent features of Laythe and that the planet once was covered in a ice layer and had no atmopshere ... like all the signs point that RL Europa and ingame Vall are. So maybe we had once a snowball Laythe

Tylo: Tylo in certain aspect is the opposite of Laythe. Tylo has the surface gravity of almost 1g and, regardless of what is made of ( lead, maybe? ), it should have a atmosphere due to that. More, as it is far from the Sun and not that close of Jool, it should even have more atmo than Kerbin ( maybe even comparable levels to Eve ). But there is none :/

The only explanation I heard that made any amount of sense for that is that Tylo, for some reason, did not outgassed much in it's creation, thus there was never a atmosphere to be taken away, but that flies against the existence of ( spoiler in front : read at your own peril ) the Tylo cave. Caves are very peculiar stuff and only happen where there is erosion ( and no atmo and no liquids in surface = no erosion ) or as the result of tectonic activity, a thing that normally results in outgassing ) ( end of spoiler ).

In other words, Tylo should have a decent atmosphere, most likely made of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, with most likely more that 1 atm at surface, but itisn't there. So where did it go ?

Well, there is more wierd stuff in game, but most of them are explainable ( say, like Pol spires, that are most likely extrusions of liquid from the inside that freezes when it passes the surface ). This ones IMHO are the ones that are most hard to make sense of ...

[Brotoro]

Yes, and NovaSilisko said that in fact, the planets are not incredibly dense, it's just the gravitational constant was increased.

Kerbals probably calculate planetary mass in a different measurement unit than the mass of rocket parts. IIRC,they use "Kilograms" in the display tab? We don't know if a Metric Tonne is equal to 1000 Kilograms or not in Kerbal language.

The explanation of a different gravitational constant could have been used when our only source of data on planetary mass was the unofficial wiki...but now that KSP displays the planet masses in kilograms, we no longer have that out.

The simplest solution is to accept the existence of some super-dense material in the cores of the planets and moons. Perhaps a heavy variant of protons and neutrons (made from the more massive quarks...or kwarks, as the case may be) are stable in the Kerbol system. Matter made from these massive nucleons would be super-dense and would naturally tend to sink to the centers of the bodies, which are otherwise composed of normal matter, so we don't have to deal with it at all in the game.

Edited November 24, 2014 by Brotoro

[Brotoro]

Rock boulders are OK on an icy surface if they are meteorites deposited onto the already solidified surface. The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the best places on Earth to go hunting for meteorites.

[r_rolo1]

Rock boulders are OK on an icy surface if they are meteorites deposited onto the already solidified surface. The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the best places on Earth to go hunting for meteorites.

It would so if the boulders were evenly distributed, but that is not the case in Minmus. The flats are basically devoid of boulders, except near the slopes that border them ( like if some of the boulders had fell of the slopes and rolled down ), a thing that suggests strongly that the boulders were in the surface before the flats were created. More, if the boulders were meteorites, they would have mini craters below them and the newer ones would have striations coming from the impact point

[Whirligig Girl]

Don't be so quick to dismiss NovaSilisko's view. Remember, he was a former Dev, and he actually, CREATED the planets in game.

[Brotoro]

It would so if the boulders were evenly distributed, but that is not the case in Minmus. The flats are basically devoid of boulders, except near the slopes that border them ( like if some of the boulders had fell of the slopes and rolled down ), a thing that suggests strongly that the boulders were in the surface before the flats were created. More, if the boulders were meteorites, they would have mini craters below them and the newer ones would have striations coming from the impact point

This just means that the flats were formed after the bombardment that left meteorite fragments scattered across the face of Minmus...and that's not a problem. The maria on our Moon were formed after the early bombardments of material that cleared out the small bodies left over from planet formation were cleared out of our solar system. The flats on Minmus were apparently formed (or at least refreshed) relatively recently.

And the meteorite fragments would not have craters under them if they are ejecta that came bouncing and rolling to a stop.

[Brotoro]

Don't be so quick to dismiss NovaSilisko's view. Remember, he was a former Dev, and he actually, CREATED the planets in game.

Former Dev, yes. But after he was no longer a Dev is when the Devs added the feature in-game that specifically lists the masses and radii of the bodies. The numbers are there in black and white...so I am forced to use the reported values.

[kerbiloid]

Eve... Eve doesn't have rivers. That means it doesn't rain in Eve.

Or it could mean that Eve's dry land is more hot than its ocean, so any significant condensation runs over the water surface.

This for example could be if Eve ocean is basically a very hot salted water which has a great heat capacity.

Eve oceans will be harvest able for fuel

Which could mean smth like a methanol + formaldehyde ocean and a carbon dioxide atmosphere.

Btw would methanol flood cut a deep canyon through the hard rocks like a water or it would be more "soft" liquid?

Others... suggested ... kind of liquid metallic alloy plan... like Eve's oceans being a source for ... nuclear fuel

Earth oceans are definitely not metal alloy. But they exactly have u, th and others.

More , Eve is purple...

Eve is close to the star, so a life evolution on it would be photo-synthetic, not chemo-.

Purple color of a photosynthetic life form means that it absorb yellow/green photons and reflects red and blue ones.

Green color (as earthlings have) means vice versa: yellow is reflected, red and blue are absorbed.

Kerbol (as our Sun) is a more or less yellow star, so its light energy is mostly in yellow/green photons.

This means that Earth plants would be purple, not green: this is the rich and easy way.

But they are green, as we can see.

A theory which I have met tells that the primary Earth one-celled photosynthetics were indeed purple, and some paleonthology data prove this.

But at some evolution state the green outsiders which would consume the red and blue light scraps, by some reason got an advantage in some another way (maybe smth with a new, oxygene, atmosphere) and replaced their purple predesessor.

So, if Eve is rich with organics: has a carbon dioxide atmo, "carbon-hydroxyde" ocean, is hot as an early Earth, that would not impossible if it is rich with some primitive one-celled life and has a purple color.

[HafCoJoe]

XD sorry I just have to quote that again.

This ain't no Science Labs discussion.

To General with you!

*PUNT*

Thread moved post. Ever. EVER.

[kerbiloid]

Eve... colored organic compounds in general would have issues being stable in 5 atm and 98ºC

Everything tells that Eve is a carbon-rich planet.

CO2 atmo + high insolations mean a greenhouse effect.

So, we could see a carbon-rich planet covered with a primitive purple photosythetics life organics. It have reached a greenhouse effect point and now is getting overheat, which means an end of evolution (as Earth will do 500 mln year later).

In this case we have purple organics everywhere on a planet which is not appropriate for organic life. Oceans are water+CO2+methanol+formaldehyde, atmo is CO2+hydrocarbons. And of course, Kethane, Karbonite and Substrate. Voila.

Minmus not tidally locked to Kerbin in more recent incarnations... the lack of vents and of signs of plumes basically excludes ice in Minmus... the flat surfaces are most likely some kind of silicate glass

As tiny Minmus is not tidally locked yet, the tidal forces are enough weak.

So, water vents and plumes would not necessary present.

Minmus looks like a typical rock+ice ball like Jupiter biggest satellites.

And I'm sure, its surface wasn't molten in nuclear fire to be made of silicate glass.

As it's a cold body with no significant volcanoes, its water ice component would be rich with carbon, kethane and karbonite. Probably also Ammonia  why not?

Laythe... On the stuff that doesn't make sense: First, Laythe has ice caps.

Jool is a gas giant and could produce a strong infrared radiation.

So, if Laythe is being heated by its inner processes and by Jool's infrared, ice caps are enough natural.

Other thing to consider is how that Laythe has a atmosphere at all.

Yeah. YET has. Mars also HAD.

As all Kerbol bodies are small, their geological history would be very short.

Maybe enough to allow some life to appear, but absolutely insufficient to wait some complicated life forms.

So, we can see: Eve which is currently being overheated and Laythe which currently looses its atmosphere. Catch this happy moment: a million years later Laythe will be like a Tylo, and Eve - like a Venus.

Tylo

Well, Tylo is a former Laythe. More heavy elements in Tylo and a mega-crater on Laythe could mean that some time ago there was a big lunar crash in a Jool system. And the jibs thrown became Laythe and Tylo.