How Do You imagine the Planets and Moons of the Kerbol system?

[mike9606]

This is a thread where you post what some of what you imagine the planets are like weather wise and such. I'll start off with how I imagine Minmus. In my mind, Minmus is a much harsher place than it is ingame currently. It has a thin atmosphere, but down on the ice lakes strong winds blow fog-like clouds of Greenish-blue Minmus Dust around. This makes landing on the ice lakes harder, and it means that over time any spacecraft landed there will be covered in, and eventually buried by dust. I thought of this when I first saw the fog on Minmus in Astronomer's Visual Pack Edge of Oblivion.

[SmartS=true]

Laythe's atmosphere has large amounts of ammonia in it, which keeps it warm enough for liquid water, but also makes the atmosphere poisonous.

[Bill Phil]

Jool has a mostly hydrogen atmosphere, with large percentage of it comprised by a green substance. ( Chlorine compounds?)

[Stubby]

I picture Laythe to be similar to Kerbin as far as weather goes. The only clouds on laythe are thin, icy cirrus clouds. There is almost a constant breeze, that shapes dunes on the sandy islands. There are lots of geysers, sheet ice, and laythequakes on Laythe. Geysers dot the landscape, occasionally releasing steam that quickly condenses into water, and runs offshore into the salty ocean. Large sheets of slushy ice glide by in the oceans, and build up at the shores. They mostly come from the poles, where ice is abundant. Laythequakes are common, happening at least once every day (on Earth). You can hear the soft rumble, and see the dunes slowly flatten. More rarely, about twice a year (on Earth) a stronger quake occurs, and the geysers go crazy, exploding all at once, throwing sand and steam high up into the air.

I picture Eve's atmosphere to be visibly thick, thick enough to obscure the surface, but there are rare breaks in the clouds that reveal the surface. As you descend into the atmosphere, you are surrounded by thick purple clouds, and cannot see anything more than a kilometer away. Constant thunder and lightning surround you, the wind is blowing hard, and you can hear your spaceship creaking in the high pressure. Once you pass through the clouds, everything calms down. You can see the surface slowly become visible, with clouds of purple dust gently swirling around. The oceans are boiling, and are covered with foamy bubbles of toxic chemicals. At the surface, you can't see very far away, and small flashes of lightning constantly flicker in the sky. The sun is blocked, all you can see is a bright blur in the sky. Your ship is barely withstanding the pressure, and is covered with purple dust. Near the beaches, the occasional geysers spew out thick puffs of steam and purple dust, rising up into the clouds. The hole left behind is quickly covered up by the thick wind, making it impossible to tell it existed just seconds later. Just hope you didn't land on one...

Edited January 3, 2015 by Stubby
Typo

[a2soup]

I picture Eve's atmosphere to be visibly thick, thick enough to obscure the surface, but there are rare breaks in the clouds that reveal the surface. As you descend into the atmosphere, you are surrounded by thick purple clouds, and cannot see anything more than a kilometer away. Constant thunder and lightning surround you, the wind is blowing hard, and you can hear your spaceship creaking in the high pressure. Once you pass through the clouds, everything calms down. You can see the surface slowly become visible, with clouds of purple dust gently swirling around. The oceans are boiling, and are covered with foamy bubbles of toxic chemicals. At the surface, you can't see very far away, and small flashes of lightning constantly flicker in the sky. The sun is blocked, all you can see is a bright blur in the sky. Your ship is barely withstanding the pressure, and is covered with purple dust. Near the beaches, the occasional geysers spew out thick puffs steam and purple dust, rising up into the clouds. The hole left behind is quickly covered up by the thick wind, making it impossible to tell it existed just seconds later. Just hope you didn't land on one...

Wow, I love this one!

[Captain Vlad]

This is a thread where you post what some of what you imagine the planets are like weather wise and such. I'll start off with how I imagine Minmus. In my mind, Minmus is a much harsher place than it is ingame currently. It has a thin atmosphere, but down on the ice lakes strong winds blow fog-like clouds of Greenish-blue Minmus Dust around. This makes landing on the ice lakes harder, and it means that over time any spacecraft landed there will be covered in, and eventually buried by dust. I thought of this when I first saw the fog on Minmus in Astronomer's Visual Pack Edge of Oblivion.

To me, even walking on Minmus is tenuous. The gravity is so low that each step is basically a short spaceflight, and since there's no atmosphere, there no feeling of resistance to help dispel the illusion that if you just jumped real hard you'd fly off into space. So I think it's sort of an agoraphobic's worst nightmare, especially when out on the ice lakes with kilometers of flat, featureless chemical solid around. Total silence too, of course, since you're in near-total vacuum, but after reading the description the seismic sensor gave me, I always imagine that if you're standing still on one of the lakes you can feel constant, distant vibrations underneath your feet as really deep portions of the chemical stew cracks and heaves under its own pressure.

On the real 'land', I think that there's a bit of an icy glaze over everything, like on a cold morning where your front yard is covered in a layer of frost. It's greenish, of course, but so thin that you can still detect the base color of rocks, etc. Any misstep and little rocks are sent flying and flying before the minimal gravity brings them back to the surface.

In the Minman night, I feel like there's just enough reflected light from Kerbin to make things slightly visible as that glaze shimmers and the lakes turn more 'blue'. Except on the side facing away from the planet, where I think the term 'dark' is redefined. In the day, I think the place literally sparkles, as the sun ever so slightly melts some of the frost and maybe the very, very top layer of the lakes. Things get slippery them, and while there's no real 'fog' in my imagining, landers and bases are gradually covered with a fine coat of Minmus-ice that gives the Kerbonauts fits climbing up ladders and such.

[Pulstar]

Toxic rain on Eve forming puddles in the ground, heat distorting the shape of the landscape, ocean currents that glow in the dark, thick fog periodically reducing solar panel efficiency and limiting visual range. In the upper atmosphere, lightning.

Cyclones and thunderstorms on Laythe, geothermal vents and geysers, volcano eruptions and lava flow (doth under water and on land). Rain, snow, hurricane winds. Giant sea waves and storm surges clashing against the cold rocky and sandy shores.

Duna, dust and ice kicked up dozens of meters high, dust devils, dust storms, snow. Sandtraps where rovers get stuck and kerbals sink in.

[Rolanvorxariat]

Laythe has a ammonia-oxygen atmosphere, along with other gases stolen from Jool's thin rings, and has many underwater volcanoes that belch gas into the atmosohere, keeping the atmosphere there. Vall to me is slightly similar to Mann's planetin Interstellar (Look it up), and has a ridiculously thin atmosphere. Tylo is smaller than kerbin (In game it's the same size. and vall is way less interesting than Mann in the game, though i made stuff up yto make it interesting, like chasms, and Near-constant earthquakes). and is bombarded by asteroids a toon due toit's large sphere of influence. It also has a 2 small asteroid moons (Hypereditied 2 E classes into ellipticalorbit around tylo). Tylo also has a Duna-thick atmosphere. Bop and pol are way bogger than they actually are in my vision, and have huge dust clouds. Jool has a hydrogen-chlorine atmosphere and is a brown dwarf star (To make things more interesting). Eve is, well, high-pressure hellhole Eve, and gilly is tiny docking-instead-of-landing Gilly. Moho is Moho. Kerbin is 85% the size of earth,same with most the others to their analogs (Kerbol-Sun, Moho-Mercury, mun-Moon, Minmus- Well, no analog, same size as in game, Duna-mars, Ike-70% size of moon, dres-lonely deep space potato, jool-jupiter, laythe-80% size of imaginary kerbin, vall-110% imaginary mun, tylo-90% kerbin size, pol and bop 40-60% size of mun, Eeloo-pluto). Duna does not have potential for permanent habitability but can into long term bases. Ike is a place to be exploited for resources, so i have bases there. dres is lonly deep space potato. Eeloo-enceladus (Future orbit around GP2, GP2-saturn, enceladus-staurn moon similar to europa).

[PTNLemay]

Laythe's atmosphere has large amounts of ammonia in it, which keeps it warm enough for liquid water, but also makes the atmosphere poisonous.

I tell myself that Laythe is geologically active (due to tidal forces) but that the devs just haven't put the volcanoes in yet. Like it's a combination between real-life Io and Europa, with just enough volcanic action to keep the place warm, but not so much that the air is toxic. That way colonies are far more probable (which is super fun to think about).

[Norpo]

I play on low graphics settings because I don't want my CPU/GPU to melt.

I picture every planet as a few, interestingly coloured; but still bland blobs. Kerbin is green, blue, and brown, and Eve is purple/lighter purple.

Yeah, I don't have much of an imagination about these things.

[CalMacDa]

Golly Gilly is tiny. Every bounce you must be careful not to be launched to a suborbital trajectory, you rove in the rover only to find your going so fast you could launch yourself into orbit by drving forward and burning upward with an ion engine. It's desolate, mountainous, and rocky. You get into orbit using your jetpack and rendevous with your ship lingering in orbit so you can refuel, you glide back down, landing softly, seeing your crew mate 1 kilometer high. There is a beautiful vie of eve, purple and thick, and you say to yourself, "my what a beautiful place"

[Illumia-Star]

Eve.

A planet I have always imagined to be rather like a Cactus. Whilst cute and cool looking on the outside, contact with it will leave you stinging and hating the things.

What I mean is we’ve all been there. Inexperience, Naïve maybe? We sent out a ship to Eve and upon being embraced with those candy-pink and purple clouds, we realized that maybe this would be a fun place to play chess or something whilst waiting in orbit. The sunrise is beautiful, a mix of yellows and greens contrasting against the rich purple really strikes awe into any Kerbonauts tiny, little (possibly kethane-fueled) hearts. But upon entering the embrace of those clouds you realize that it wasn’t as nice as it seems.

Harsh winds and lightning storms flicker around, the craft is buffeted as it hurtles through the thick clouds. Visibility is at minimum. You panic, deploy the ‘chutes, which end up ripping your lander in half. You sink through the cloud layer and the silence of the planet startles you. The seas of poison purple could well be rocketfuel, which you could possible filter to get home..

If half your rocket wasn’t missing. Now, pensive, you sit and wait for rescue by the KSC.

At least you have chess and a buddy to keep you company.

The story of Yoger and Bob Kerman, stranded on Eve since year 1 day 64, rescued year 2 day 13.

TL;DR, Eve is Marriage.

[FlyingPete]

I imagine Eve to be a planet of permanent storms. Ground-level fog blows around and makes navigation difficult, but also keeps the purple dust to a minimum. The seas are a chemical soup that could well contain the raw materials of rocket fuel. The thick atmosphere adds to the feeling of being underwater.

Unsurprisingly, Duna is similar to our Mars- the opposite of Eve. Dust would be the main problem Kerbals would have to deal with, making cleaning solar panels a regular chore.

On the flats of Minmus, if you put your helmet to the ground you could hear faint creaking sounds as the frozen surface slowly shifts. Up on the hills, the same sort of material forms a layer of 'snow', which you can scoop up into snowballs. They would of course keep going seemingly forever when thrown.

Laythe strikes me as a colder Kerbin. The atmosphere isn't breathable for long periods, but you could survive for a few minutes with your helmet off. It would be too cold for comfort though, hence why visitors always seem to be breathing the warmed air inside the suit. The seas must have something approaching antifreeze mixed in to be liquid. Something probably already inhabits the seas, given that there's liquid water and oxygen in the atmosphere. Visitors should be cautious!

[cantab]

Mostly like they are.

Eve, though, I think should be shrouded in clouds like Venus is.

Kerbin, on the other hand, I'm used to as a cloudless world. I'd be OK with maybe a few clouds around, but I rather think they should be rare.

[problemecium]

I'll let it be known here that I don't imagine Eve to be like Venus. It may well have a soupy atmosphere, possibly filled with fog and thick clouds here and there, but I like the fact that we can see the surface from space, so until and unless SQUAD adds in an opaque atmosphere my headcanon will be that it's semitransparent.

Kerbol in my headcanon is an old white dwarf that has turned yellow due to cooling after billions of years. Thus is has a Sol-like spectrum but is much smaller.

I imagine Laythe to have a lot of odd magnetic phenomena due to its proximity to Jool, most visibly large, brightly colored aurorae.

And on a whim whilst derping around with EVE I decided that Dres is for some reason heavily volcanic and has large lava lakes in its lowlands, which glow very faintly and can be seen from space at night, but appear dark and blend in to the surrounding crust during the day.

[carlpilot]

I imagine Laythe as being a place with a breathable atmosphere and salt-water oceans. It is covered in light cirrus clouds and experiences frequent light snowfall.

Duna is a cold, red planet with very fine, but slightly wet dust that sticks to your landing legs. There are some rare sandstorms, but the weather is mostly clear,

-Carlpilot

[Thomas988]

Eve has an atmosphere similar to Venus', the main difference being that Eve's clouds are thinner and are more streaked across the planet. Also, the greenhouse effect isn't as intense here, explaining why Kerbals seem to be able to walk around there without burning to death.

Kerbin experiences little seasonal weather due to its nonexistent axial tilt. Weather is mostly very clear and sunny, and in the northern regions it gets cold quickly and experiences frequent snow storms.

Laythe has a thin, yet heat-insulating atmosphere that keeps the surface at a temperature just below zero. The liquid water here is different molecular-wise and has its own sort of "anti-freeze." Gravational forces between Laythe and Jool cause much heat to be expelled deep in the oceans, thus further helping the water not to freeze. Cloud cover is thick, and there are quite occasional rainstorms, and in between these storms are sunny, clear skies of turquoise.

[temporalExile]

Alright, Minmus. Minmus was originally part of a separate solar system, but was ejected from it after several cataclismic planetary impacts. It was captured by Kerbol, then Kerbin, where it lies in its current orbit. From above it resembles a comet with large flat bits, and strange cliffs, but on the surface, it is quite different. Minmus has an atmosphere slightly thicker than moho's. While its still not enough to matter, its enough suspend teal dust particles midair, giving it an otherworldly feeling. The ice that makes up must of the surface is to full of imperfections to be transparent, but the "lakes" are smooth, and you can see down for a dozen or so kilometers. The moon is far to small too have an active seismic system, but for some reason, seismic sensors still detect strange vibrations from deep below the planet's surface. Even more ominous are the strange clicking noises that can sometimes be heard(Vibration travels through ground, which travels throught a kerbals suit). What is most unsettling are the repeated reports of dark shadows seen moving around deep below the "lakes". The kerbals may not be alone on this world

[SRV Ron]

Moho, a hot nasty place as it is so close to the Kerbal sun. (Images from Space Engine 0.972 Beta)

Eve, image modified in PSP

Laythe

[Rolanvorxariat]

Amazing. Oh, and scott Manley dound a world similar to eve.

[Felsmak]

Here's an old drawing of Laythe. It's pretty sloppy, but I basically imagine it as a chilly, Mars-ish world with rather thin clouds, and sometimes with frost on the ground.

[Vaporo]

How I imagine and Eve looked:

[SRV Ron]

From Space Engine; Eeloo and the surface.