lodestar

Oh boy, I hear that a lot. That was my reaction when someone made me think about this too, so no surprises here. Correction: consequence of general disagreement between modeled trajectories that interpret Hubble's red-shifts as velocity-shifts. Hubble himself acknowledge the problem, but accepted it and called it "inter-nebular material", since the only alternative would be placing Earth at the center, something he said was "an hypothesis that cannot be disproved but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena." Yes, but frame-invariance was introduced with Special Relativity precisely to salvage the heliocentric model after the Michelson-Morley experiment detected no relative movement of the Earth. Given strong evidence that Earth isn't moving and has to be in the center of the universe, you could either accept that and scrap the heliocentric model, or find a way to say that no matter where you are in the universe, if you look around, it looks like you are in the center. In that context, Make-Believe Dark Matter is not a problem, but a fudge factor needed if you assume Einstein's field equations to be valid. Where I come from, that's called reductio ad absurdum. Dark matter is the EAS-4 Strut Connector of the current model of the universe.

Frankly, I think unrestrained scientism corrodes our society much more than anything else. You don't have to go as far as electrons being sentient beings. By replacing the cartesian metaphysical premises of modern science with thomism you can simply say that subatomic particles exist as pure potency, and gain act during the interaction. The apparatus obviously has act gained from its constructor, who is the ultimate observer. Simple as that. Recommended reading: anything by Wolfgang Smith.

Correction. Scientific advances and astronomical observations have shifted our model of the Solar System to a heliocentric model, and after that more scientific observations shifted our model to a relative model, with no definite frame of reference. Well... to disregard the importance of the Earth to humanity is one of the premises of modern science, formalized in the Copernican Principle, that assumes we are not in a privileged position in the Universe. Many physicists think we should believe in this out of modesty. As much as enthusiasts of modern science enjoy likening the acceptance of the conclusions of modern astrophysics and cosmology to "logic" and "enlightenment", it's ultimately a matter of faith. If you decide to not assume the Copernican Principle as valid, most of modern astrophysics and cosmology crumbles. The exact mirror image of the heliocentric model of the Solar System into an up-to-date Geocentric model is a Tychonean model with the star movement centered on the Sun. There's no need for the scare quotes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying the Sun orbits the Earth and the other celestial bodies orbit the Sun and that's a perfectly valid model. No observation made from or near the Earth can give you any evidence for one model over the other. It's purely a matter of faith.

Either Earth is the center of the universe, or the universe has an indefinite center. It's as simple as that.

That's absolutely wrong. First of all, it's not inaccurate. As someone else already pointed out, you can describe the universe from a geocentric model with almost as much precision as from any other frame of reference, and as a matter of fact, the coordinate systems used most often for space travel and orbital maneuvers are Earth-centered. Ultimately, it all rests in faith. If you want to believe Earth has a privileged location in the universe, or if you want to believe the distribution of matter in the universe is uniform and Earth is in some random corner. The math works both ways. Complicated? Well... if you put the Earth in the center of the universe, you can explain most of the phenomena we observed so far with plain newtonian physics. If you are convinced beforehand that Earth can't be at the center of the universe and this is an unacceptable proposition, then things get really complicated. Ugly? Personally, I think the Tychonean geocentric model is much more elegant. When you realize how the heliocentric model ultimately lead 20th century physics to nonsense like Dark Matter theory, it's hard to argue for the elegance of that system.

I just noticed this in the newest dev build. Nice. I also realized that you can change antenna targets from the planetarium screen, so you never need to take control even if you need to do that.

Precisely. Remote Tech adds a new dimension to the game, but sometimes it becomes a burden. It would be fine if we could program a satellite to fire its RCS in the background to keep orbit, for instance, and you retire them when the RCS fuel is over. That would be realistic, fun, and interesting in the career mode, since you could have generations of satellites according to your tech tree evolution. Maybe I'll end up writing a plugin that does something like that in the background, reset the satellite back to the preset orbit and remove the equivalent delta-v needed from the monopropellant resource.

That's what I've been doing too, and while it works reasonably well for Kerbin, as long as you don't touch your satellites too often, my networks in other planets, mainly Duna and Eve, are always a mess. More than once I warped through the ~150d of waiting for transfer windows and cruising to these planets, got there and didn't have coverage as planned, which is essential since I have to retract the long range omni antennas for aerobraking.

That's an interesting idea that hadn't occurred to me. I'll experiment with that.

Sure, you can calculate the orbital periods before the launch if you're carrying many satellites in one single mission, but I tried to keep things simple to follow in a step-by-step basis. I noticed there were many explanations on how to do it, and a very detailed explanation in your tutorial, but no step by step method that simply works every time.

Thanks. I think to get the satellites in sync on a Molnya orbit you'd just do the reverse, instead of parking on an eccentric orbit and circularize, you park on a circular and go to the Molnya orbit, although you'd probably won't be able to get the exact fraction you need on a single pass if your orbit is highly eccentric.

Well... since everyone seems to be missing the point, I added an update to the OP clarifying the problem.

By perfect orbits I actually mean perfectly matching orbital periods or SMA, not Ap/Pe. The problem is that even with perfectly matching orbital periods, if you take control of the satellite or get within physics range, you get it out of rails and you'll get deviations over time if you don't correct them. I'd like a configuration that's maintenance free, even if it needs more satellites or doesn't guarantee coverage all the time, but most of the time.

Everyone who tried to get a satellite network in orbit for RemoteTech communications knows that no matter how carefully you fine tune their orbital period, they will eventually get all messed up. Some players edit the save files for perfect orbits, or use hyperedit, but even doing that, the satellites will keep their perfect orbits only as long as you never control them or get within physics range. So, while it's very cool to have those perfect polygons around your planets and moons and 100% coverage all the time with the minimum number of satellites, I'd rather find some other configuration that works most of the time without maintenance or cheating. Is there any more pragmatic configuration that gives you coverage most of the time without cheating, without having to stay out of control and physics range, and without being affected by the orbital drift? Pairs of satellites in opposite orbits? Molnyia orbits? How do you do it? Update: By "perfect orbits" I mean perfect orbital period or SMA, not Ap/Pe. I know that Ap/Pe and inclination don't really matter. That's not the problem here. The problem is that even perfect orbital periods aren't maintenance free if you take control of the satellites or get within physics range, and I'd like a configuration that can be maintenance free, even if I have to sacrifice some SLA or put more satellites in orbit. All the suggestions being posted here on how to maintain circular orbits, correcting them with the LV-1 or RCS before leaving control are all things I already do.

I got to this topic and others while searching for a method. I found the manual methods outlined here quite time consuming and error prone, so eventually I figured a method for placing multiple satellites at different longitudes of the same orbit using Mechjeb, with no manual corrections or timing. 1. Launch your first satellite and get it to the desired orbit. For example, let's use the the geostationary orbit, 2868.75. km 2. After you get your orbit right, go to the Mechjeb maneuver planner and create a maneuver node to reduce your orbital period by 1/n, where n is the number of satellites you need. So, if you're launching 3 satellites, use 2/3; 4 satellites, 3/4; etc. Don't execute the maneuver! Just create it. Take note of the final periapsis of the planned maneuver. In our example, let's say we're launching 3 satellites, so it's 1225.5 km. 3. Get your second satellite on the launching pad, target your first satellite and launch to orbit you took note, with the matching planes option. Wait for the circularization burn to finish and activate Mechjeb rendezvous autopilot. Wait until it performs the Hohmman transfer and disengage. At this point, your apoapsis should be at the desired final orbit, your periapsis at the transfer orbit, making it a resonant orbit with the fraction of the period we need, and the first satellite should be very close, at a 0º phase angle. In our example, every orbit we complete will take us 120º away from the first satellite on the next apoapsis pass. 4. As soon as you're past the apoapsis, create a maneuver node to circularize the orbit at the next apoapsis. Once that's done, your phase angle to the first satellite should be exactly what you needed. Fine tune everything if you need to. I usually get all their semi-major axis to exactly the same by fine tuning the orbit with RCS, and this is enough to keep their relative positionstable for quite a long time. 5. Go back to 3 and repeat for the other satellites, either using the previously launched satellite as target, or using the first satellite and going through a full orbit as many times as needed. This method also works very well when you want to get many small satellites in the same orbit on a single launch. Get the launcher to the ressonant orbit and every time you pass the apoapsis, drop a satellite, switch to it and circularize. As a matter of fact, I figured this method first, and start using the other method outlined above when I had large satellites that could be launched only one at a time.