Satellite mission - orbit invisible?

[christes]

I have taken and completed several contracts to put satellites into various orbits around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus.  

However, two of the contracts I've taken - one around Kerbin and the other around the Mun - do not show me the target orbit in the map view.  Plenty of others have done that, but these two don't for some reason.

Am I missing some way of forcing these to display, or is this a bug?

Thanks!

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, christes said:

I have taken and completed several contracts to put satellites into various orbits around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus.  

However, two of the contracts I've taken - one around Kerbin and the other around the Mun - do not show me the target orbit in the map view.  Plenty of others have done that, but these two don't for some reason.

Am I missing some way of forcing these to display, or is this a bug?

Thanks!

Sounds like you're having the same issue as the person in this thread. 

Basically, one of the orbital parameters is "N/A" for some reason, and because of that the game can't draw the orbit. 

It's certainly a bug, and you can either use the debug menu and force the contract to complete, or just use the numbers given to know where to put your satellite. I think as long as you get the inclination, PE and AP correct, it'll work. 

[christes]

Yeah, that's definitely the issue.  These are equatorial orbits with the argument of periapsis and longitude of ascending node undefined.  

1 hour ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

It's certainly a bug, and you can either use the debug menu and force the contract to complete, or just use the numbers given to know where to put your satellite. I think as long as you get the inclination, PE and AP correct, it'll work. 

I'd rather avoid using the debug menu.  Are those three things all the game cares about?  One of these orbits is very eccentric (e = 0.7), so I'd be concerned about which way it's "pointing" and it does not appear to give that info in the contract parameters.

 

[Reactordrone]

I had one of those contracts. i thought the lack of orbit information might have been because I hadn't upgraded my tracking station (I was doing a caveman start) so I just matched the periapsis and apoapsis listed in the contract parameters and it completed.

[FullMetalMachinist]

1 hour ago, christes said:

Are those three things all the game cares about?  One of these orbits is very eccentric (e = 0.7), so I'd be concerned about which way it's "pointing" and it does not appear to give that info in the contract parameters.

I haven't run into this problem myself, so I can't say for certain. But reading the thread I linked, it seems like that's all you need. 

The other numbers that are N/A (or undefined) for you are the numbers that say which way the eccentricity of the orbit "points". So my guess is that because those are undefined, any orbit that satisfies the numbers that are given will work. 

The only really tricky part is the orbit direction. It could be a retrograde orbit, and with the numerical definition messed up and no orbit lines, it'll be hard, if not impossible, to know which way the target orbit is going ahead of time. 

[bewing]

I've had 3 of those contracts already, and completed all of them, successfully. Yes, just match the numbers that you are given and all the rest are good to go. In my case, all of them were pure equatorial orbits. So I just needed to make any old orbit that had the correct Pe and Ap.

One thing to watch out for, however. These orbits that won't display can often create error message spam in your KSP.log and output_log.txt files -- hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of error message spam. So make sure to check! Nobody needs a .25 Gb error message file on their disk.

[Callmedave]

Ive had this issue a few times and managed to use KER to get the orbit figures to match and been ok so far.

Didnt know about the error output message so will check later!

[christes]

22 hours ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

The only really tricky part is the orbit direction. It could be a retrograde orbit, and with the numerical definition messed up and no orbit lines, it'll be hard, if not impossible, to know which way the target orbit is going ahead of time. 

That ought to be covered by angle of inclination, which seems to still work fine.   0° is prograde and 180° is retrograde if it works like they do it in real life.