EinHaufenMuell

RE lindybeige: Do you also have a tendency to get triggered by backscabbards when you see them on concept art?

In KSP you transition between "Spheres of Influence", and you can only be in one sphere of influence at a time, so get too close to the Mun and now you're being pulled toward the Mun, instead of toward Kerbin.

In reality, everything in the universe is exerting its gravitation influence on everything else in the universe, there are no "Spheres of Influence" like this, you are always in the SOI of everything else, but your distance from the object determines how strongly gravity can pull you in. For example our orbit around our the sun is not the stable circle it's always thought of: instead we occassionally get pulled outward when the planets align and gravitation influence of Mars, Jupiter, et al. combine to outweigh the inward pull of the Sun, Venus and Mercury. That's only a tiny effect, but more often, we simply get a little closer to Venus and it manages to pull us around. Our orbit is constantly occillating because of this, and over 100,000s of years we'll probably have a completely different "average" or "standard" distance from the sun due to being pulled into a different orbit line.

Here's a video showing how orbits would really look in the Kerbol System (specifically around Jool), notice how the orbits get pulled out of place.

And again, it's not that everything in the solar system pulls on everything in the solar system, it's that everything in the universe pulls on everything else in the universe. Stars getting close to our Sun (such as Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star) slightly change how our Sun orbits the galatic core.