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The KSP Planetary Analog

Cyberdragon1

By Cyberdragon1
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Cyberdragon1

Cyberdragon1

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Are you a passionate astrophysicist, or a nerd who's passion is astronomy? Don't understand which planet is which, but you perfectly understand our solar system? Then you have come to the right place!

In our Solar System, celestial objects are organized in this order (from left to right):

Sun - Mercury - Venus - Earth - Mars - Jupiter - Ceres etc,

This order translates into the KSP world as:

Kerbol - Moho - Eve - Kerbin - Duna - Jool - Eoloo

General info

Kerbol is a dwarf sun, having a petite diameter for a proper sun.

Moho is the closest planet to the Sun in the Kerbol system.

Eve is admired by the Kerbals, due to its purple hue. Its moon is Gilly.

Kerbin is the homeworld of Kerbalkind, and their base of operations. It has two moons: Mun and Minmus.

Duna is the analog of Mars, covered by red sands and polar icecaps at its Poles. Ike is Duna's moon.

Jool is a gargantuan gas giant, having a green tint and 5 moons currently orbiting it,

Eoloo is the farthest planet in the Kerbol system, and it has the aspect of a dirty snowball.

Credits to the KSP wiki and the wonderful people that edited it.

Hope this miniguide is helpful, for more details visit the wiki.

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moogoob

moogoob

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Isn't Eeloo closer to Pluto, as a Trans-Joolian (ie Trans-Neptunian) Object?

Ceres = Dres.

First three moons of Jool = First three Galilean Moons:

Io = Laythe

Europa = Vall

Ganymede = Tylo

--They even have the same orbital resonance.

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Rolanvorxariat

Rolanvorxariat

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Isn't Eeloo closer to Pluto, as a Trans-Joolian (ie Trans-Neptunian) Object?

Ceres = Dres.

First three moons of Jool = First three Galilean Moons:

Io = Laythe

Europa = Vall

Ganymede = Tylo

--They even have the same orbital resonance.

the he problem is, laythe has practically nothing similar to Io other than the orbital resonance.

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FonVegen

FonVegen

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the he problem is, laythe has practically nothing similar to Io other than the orbital resonance.

Well, actually, Laythe probably has got liquid water due to tidal forces kneading it's core. Io in our solar system is volcanically active for that reason, so that would be a similarity in my opinion.

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GigaG

GigaG

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OP, Ceres is actaully closer than Jupiter.

Here's my idea of the system-

Kerbol-Scaled-down (this will hereby be assumed) Sun. Everything in KSP is scaled down by a factor of about 10 (although I don't know about Kerbol's scaling.)

Moho-Brown Mercury

Eve-Less harsh Venus. Has oceans and somewhat resembles a "giant, hot Titan." Known as an extremely difficult target to return from.

Gilly-No real analog, just a captured asteroid which is the opposite of Eve in every way except being solid.

Kerbin - Earth

Mun - Closer than our Moon

Minmus - No analog, kinda like a very large, blue-green captured asteroid.

Duna - Mars

Ike - Large moon of Duna. No direct analog, but more like Phobos than Deimos (both Ike and Phobos are unusually close to their parent body.) Still, Phobos is closer to Mars IRL if I remember correctly.

Side note - Duna and Ike are tidally locked to each other, making it much like Pluto-Charon in a different position. Because of KSP's on-rails/patched conics system, I am almost positive they don't orbit a common barycenter. I wonder if they would IRL - I'm too lazy to look up that calculation. IDK if this is covered in high school advanced placement physics-mechanics. I doubt it, but I don't know.

Dres - Rocky Ceres analogue. Well, we haven't seen Ceres up close quite yet, and I'm not sure how realistic the Hubble pictures are, so maybe Ceres is less icy than I think it is.

Jool - Green Jupiter

Laythe - A Kerbin-like moon with an oxygen atmosphere and a massive water ocaen. It orbits very near to Jool. Positionally (not a word?) similar to Io, physically not like any moon of Jupiter or any other planet (closest thing we have is Titan, a moon of Saturn with a thick atmosphere and oceans of cold hydrocarbons.) As has been pointed out in this thread, Laythe's water oceans may be heated by tidal forces like Io's volcanoes (although Laythe has none of the eccentricity that Io has, KSP is not a particularly realistic system, as I will point out below.)

Vall - Europa analogue. Much bluer. Also, the real Europa is a bit smaller than Earth's Moon, while Vall is bigger than Kerbin's Mun.

Tylo - Giant, light-grey (with a pinch of brown? I don't know) moon representing Ganymede. It is the size of Kerbin, but a bit less massive. Its gravity is the same as Laythe (a bit less than Kerbin) making it a challenge to land on (no atmosphere, so you must rely on a rocket engine to slow you down from your fast orbit.)

Laythe, Vall, and Tylo have a resonance like the inner Galilean moons of Jupiter.

Bop - A large captured asteroid, with a mostly brown color.

Pol - As has been pointed out, it is like Io in color. Besides that, it is a tiny captured asteroid.

To me, Bop and Pol are like the many tiny moons that orbit Jupiter.

Eeloo - Analog to Pluto. This was planned to become the moon of another gas giant, but those plans have been delayed, if not cancelled. The appearance of Eeloo somewhat resembles the striped appearance of Europe. Like Pluto, its orbit occasionally takes it closer to Kerbol than Jool. It has no moons, however, as opposed to the several moons of Pluto. As I said before, Duna and Ike are more like Pluto and Charon in terms of "relatively giant moon" but not in position.

The system is not very realistic. Without N-body mechanics, the resonant Joolian moons do not affect each other (IRL, Io's tidal heating is caused by its eccentricity, which is assured by other Joolian moons.) A more pressing issue is that the system (specifically the Jool system) falls apart with N-body mechanics. Vall is ejected from Jool quickly, and Pol apparently is later. Some guy made a simulation of this - It doesn't show Pol being ejected, but the video description says it.

Whole Kerbol system-

Jool system-

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moogoob

moogoob

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Well, actually, Laythe probably has got liquid water due to tidal forces kneading it's core. Io in our solar system is volcanically active for that reason, so that would be a similarity in my opinion.

Bingo! Lack of vuncanism is, of course a big difference. I like to think of Laythe as sort of a cross between Titan and Io - Io's position, orbit and tidal heating and Titan's oceans and thick atmosphere. The best of both worlds, as it is said.

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Tangle

Tangle

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Bingo! Lack of vuncanism is, of course a big difference. I like to think of Laythe as sort of a cross between Titan and Io - Io's position, orbit and tidal heating and Titan's oceans and thick atmosphere. The best of both worlds, as it is said.

Actually, I'm prettuy sure Laythe is supposed to have volcanism.

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