Difference between revisions of "Talk:Kerbol System"
(Inaccurate statement about escaping the Kerbol System.) |
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Second, I suppose it is a question of defining when you have LEFT the system... You can never escape the pull of Kerbol's gravity, but this has nothing to do with whether or not you can (or have) escaped it. The influence of gravity from ALL objects is infinite. The fact that you are under the gravitational influence of Kerbol is irrelevant. In the real world, we have a number of phenomena which give us means to define the boundary of the solar system. In KSP we don't... But after traveling to the edges of what the programming allows with an escape velocity I think qualifies as having left the system. | Second, I suppose it is a question of defining when you have LEFT the system... You can never escape the pull of Kerbol's gravity, but this has nothing to do with whether or not you can (or have) escaped it. The influence of gravity from ALL objects is infinite. The fact that you are under the gravitational influence of Kerbol is irrelevant. In the real world, we have a number of phenomena which give us means to define the boundary of the solar system. In KSP we don't... But after traveling to the edges of what the programming allows with an escape velocity I think qualifies as having left the system. | ||
| − | The "real" reason of course that you can't escape the Kerbol system is programming. You can only go so far before you reach program limits. But in any case, the sentence is misleading. Even if you disagree about how to define whether we can reach distance "outside" the Kerbol system and even if you can prove that an escape velocity is unreachable, it is not correct to state that one cannot escape it "because the sphere of influence of Kerbol is infinite." | + | The "real" reason of course that you can't escape the Kerbol system is programming. You can only go so far before you reach program limits. But in any case, the sentence is misleading. Even if you disagree about how to define whether we can reach distance "outside" the Kerbol system and even if you can prove that an escape velocity is unreachable, it is not correct to state that one cannot escape it "because the sphere of influence of Kerbol is infinite." |
Revision as of 23:56, 10 September 2013
I don't want to make any changes myself because I'm not very involved in this wiki. But I just wanted to point out that I believe the following statement in the first paragraph is somewhat inaccurate: "Because the sphere of influence of Kerbol is infinite it is impossible to escape the system."
First, I believe it is possible to reach an escape velocity from the Kerbol system: v = √[G M / r], where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of Kerbol and all planets/moons, and r is the starting distance from Kerbol system's center of mass (probably more or less equal to Kerbin's orbital distance). You can check me on this, but I think it's possible to reach this speed. That implies that it is possible to escape the system.
Second, I suppose it is a question of defining when you have LEFT the system... You can never escape the pull of Kerbol's gravity, but this has nothing to do with whether or not you can (or have) escaped it. The influence of gravity from ALL objects is infinite. The fact that you are under the gravitational influence of Kerbol is irrelevant. In the real world, we have a number of phenomena which give us means to define the boundary of the solar system. In KSP we don't... But after traveling to the edges of what the programming allows with an escape velocity I think qualifies as having left the system.
The "real" reason of course that you can't escape the Kerbol system is programming. You can only go so far before you reach program limits. But in any case, the sentence is misleading. Even if you disagree about how to define whether we can reach distance "outside" the Kerbol system and even if you can prove that an escape velocity is unreachable, it is not correct to state that one cannot escape it "because the sphere of influence of Kerbol is infinite."
