538
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
538 points (99.4% liked)
Open Source
46221 readers
492 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
KSP is not mathematically accurate and it can't be or it would have trouble running on computers. They split up and use simplified 2 body dynamics in the game.
We use super computers to model the n-body problem bcz of how complex it is.
Of course, NASA ain’t modelling actual missions in KSP.
I imagine KSP is simple Newtonian physics which is accurate at macro-scales, whereas obviously NASA is going to use Einstein’s equivalent. Far more computationally intense but really important once you scale up the small errors in Newton’s equations.
Actually, we don't use relativity so much. For some stuff like light time delays, yes, but for orbit determination we use newtonian mechanics still. It's just that once you start adding more than two bodies, you have to shift to doing numerical integration to find solutions, which doesn't work for real-time stuff like video games.
For most applications, F = -GM1M2/r^2 is still a valid approximation.
Edit: And by most applications, i mean sending a satellite to a planet in our solar system. If you were trying to go to Alpha Centauri, you damn sure better use Relativity to model your trajectory.