The value of the Fund.

[Whirligig Girl]

Here's a question. What is the value of the Kerbal Fund in US Dollars, Pounds, or Euros or something? People have calculated fictional currencies before, including the value of a

. And I'm pretty sure there's more stuff to look at to figure out the worth of a single fund in Kerbal dollars.

Here's the things we know the cost of specifically.

-The value of one unit of Solid Fuel: 0.6 funds.

-The value of one unit of Liquid Fuel: 0.8 funds

-The value of one unit of Oxidizer: 0.18 funds

-The value of one unit of Monopropellant: 1.2 funds

-The value of one unit of XenonGas: 4 funds.

-The value of each building

-The value of each part

-The value of a Kerbal Life. (Kerbal Rescue Contracts)

We can compare to what the fuels probably are in real life based upon the stats of the engines. We have to average LiquidFuel and Oxidizer because all the engines have different stats that could be any number of fuels.

Solid Fuel = Ammonium Perchlorate composite

LiquidFuel = LiquidHydrogen, Kerosene (Presumably RP-1 if it's in a high-thrust engine like the Mainsail.) It's probably not Hydrazine, because LF is much less costly than Monoprop.

Oxidizer = Almost certainly Liquid Oxygen, because of how inefficient other oxidizers are.

Monopropellant = Hydrazine, judging from the engine stats.

XenonGas = Xenon Gas. And it turns out that a unit of Xenon is much more expensive than any other fuel, so it all depends on what the ratio of other fuels are to see if Xenon is much more common.

A unit of a resource, according to the wiki, is 1 liter. People have said this makes no sense. This person says one unit equals five liters, so we'll go with that.

Xenon costs about 1.2 dollars per gram, weighing around 5 grams per liter in a fuel tank. So that's 6 dollars per unit of XenonGas in the real world. We need to find the cost of another fuel as well to compare to see if it's around the same scale. A nuclear rocket motor can only possibly function with an Isp as high as the one in game if it's fuel is Hydrogen, so we'll assume LiquidFuel is Hydrogen. Liquid Hydrogen is about 2 dollars per unit. (5 liters)

6/2=ratio of Xenon to Hydrogen cost in dollars in real life.

4/0.8=ratio of XenonGas to LiquidFuel cost in funds in KSP.

These do not match up. 6/2=3. 4/0.8=5

I'll try Liquid Fuel being Kerosene. I found it's about 3.9 dollars per unit. This makes the ratio even worse.

How about trying Xenon to Liquid Oxygen? Liquid Oxygen is about 1 dollar per unit, so 6/1=6; 4/0.18=22.2? AAAAAAAAA! Either I'm really bad at math or Xenon is not the same value in real life.

And I just wasted an hour on this when I have a science fair project to wrap up.

Edited January 7, 2015 by GregroxMun

[Bill Phil]

First we need to know what the kerbals are using to build things.

[How2FoldSoup]

Couldn't we make a simple assumption that kerbal xenon is like our xenon, and compare the price of 1 kg of kxenon with the price of 1kg of real xenon?

A quick google search of xenon shows 1200$ per kg. I don't have ksp open to find the funds cost of 1 kg of kxenon. Could someone check?

[Bill Phil]

There's about 70 kg of Xenon in the inline tank. It costs about 210 funds per kg. That would be 5.714* the value of a US dollar.

[ZooNamedGames]

Well I have KSP open so let me do some thinking...

Assuming the Kerbals used similar parts for something as advanced as the Aerospike engine (since some parts- like the .5m parachute- are noted to be rags stitched together which would make for an unrealistic price)...

But the KSP (.90) price of the .23.5 NASA (Space Shuttle) SRB is 1,800K$- a real SRB would cost 23.200 million dollars- which would look like 1,800K$ vs $23,200,000... So make it 1,800/23,200,000 which = $12,888,889 dollars between American and Kerbal...

The second I find a second suitable example I will inform you...

[Whirligig Girl]

Well I have KSP open so let me do some thinking...

Assuming the Kerbals used similar parts for something as advanced as the Aerospike engine (since some parts- like the .5m parachute- are noted to be rags stitched together which would make for an unrealistic price)...

But the KSP (.90) price of the .23.5 NASA (Space Shuttle) SRB is 1,800K$- a real SRB would cost 23.200 million dollars- which would look like 1,800K$ vs $23,200,000... So make it 1,800/23,200,000 which = $12,888,889 dollars between American and Kerbal...

The second I find a second suitable example I will inform you...

The scale of the Space Shuttle SRB and the Kerbodyne SRB are completely different. I think the Xenon explanation could make the most sense, strictly speaking. But what if Xenon is just more common on Kerbin? It's really expensive IRL because of how rare it is, but the question is whether or not that scales. I think we need something else to compare it to. An empty fuel tank of the same size, perhaps? Maybe the values of the various contracts should be considered, including how they scale with the reduced Delta-V requirements of the Kerbal universe.

Remember for rocket parts that Kerbals build their rockets more like trains than aircraft. (Just like the Russians!) The mass ratio on their (Kerbal) tanks and the weight of their engines are rather poor compared to real life counterparts.

Edited January 7, 2015 by GregroxMun

[lajoswinkler]

Good idea with xenon, but isn't Kerbal xenon denser, just like anything else in their universe? (except styrofoam asteroids)

[dharak1]

Should we do xenon by volume then? Also the calculation with the SRB means the kerbal dollar is pretty much reverse Zimbabwe dollar.

[ZooNamedGames]

Well the issue is there is no part then that would be of equal SIZE, MASS, DENSITY, or BUILD which are the 4 key things that you need to know- so as mentioned Xenon may be overly abundant on Kerbin and therefore much cheaper... Parts may be smaller than their equalivants. They may be made of rags sewn together... or parts lying around.

[Whirligig Girl]

Here's an idea. Take the Administration Building, then find the cost it would take to build a building made of the stuff which the building is probably made of, wood concrete and steel supposedly. Then find out the cost of a building like that from real life.

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm not sure a single conversion factor is going to work out well. KSP economics have made some things proportionally more or less expensive than others compared to real life, which means a calculated conversion rate for one resource or part will likely not apply to another.

There was a bit of a discussion about this very topic in the General Discussion forum when 0.24 first came out, Tetryds arrived at a value of about $250US per fund for rockets as a whole.