Orbital Altitudes, Lowest Safe Orbit and More in a Printable Spreadsheet and PDF

[Ed Jaws]

An up to date, single page printable .ods, .xlsx, or PDF. It's got altitudes for synchronous, semi-synchronous, lowest safe, limited by, SOI, and escape velocities.

Please point out any factual errors. It wouldn't be me not to have an error or three in there.

Enjoy.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8de_qTRouN8dERrdjRxMlBrTjg  --- .ods

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8de_qTRouN8M0VIeXRXZVM1TDA  --- .xlsx

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8de_qTRouN8SjhGcWlyRWxQbkk --- .pdf

 

Edited June 11, 2017 by Ed Jaws
new files

[Alshain]

I would love to have this as a One or Two page KSPedia entry, but great job Ed Jaws

[KerikBalm]

hoe do you figure that the lowest safe altitude for Eve is 92km if the atmosphere height is 90 km? (or 52km for duna, or 220 km for jool, or 51km for laythe? in fact you can put an object on rails for a "safe orbit" well inside the upper atmosphere)

For those limited by terrain height, I assume there is some engine quirk that makes collision calcs less accurate if on rails, and you want a clearance of at least 1km from any terrain?

[Starman4308]

14 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

hoe do you figure that the lowest safe altitude for Eve is 92km if the atmosphere height is 90 km? (or 52km for duna, or 220 km for jool, or 51km for laythe? in fact you can put an object on rails for a "safe orbit" well inside the upper atmosphere)

Because sane people like margins for error. For my own spreadsheet, I peg lowest possible orbit as 15 km above an atmosphere or 25 km above the surface.

In case anybody could use mine, it's uploaded here, though it's not as compact as Ed's. A lot of the fields are done as equations, so if you wanted to add fields for, say, OPM, or replace the values with a rescaled system, you don't need to re-enter or re-calculate everything, just enter in some of the fields. I don't mean to steal Ed's thunder here, I just assumed everybody who'd been playing KSP long enough had spreadsheets full of the information they most commonly need to plan missions.

[Ed Jaws]

16 hours ago, Starman4308 said:

I just assumed everybody who'd been playing KSP long enough had spreadsheets full of the information they most commonly need to plan missions.

Which is exactly why I created this post. I've only been playing for two months and I have searched around but no concise, keep it at hand, source for these parameters. Hence the single page printable document.

@Starman4308 thanks for your spreadsheet. You've done a lot of work there and no worries on the "steal thunder" thing. Glad you got it out there for others to check out.

@KerikBalm Thanks for the feedback. If anyone wants to they can certainly use the | limited by | column for their orbital altitude or just change the altitudes in the spreadsheet to their liking in the | lowest safe orbit | column and print that out.

Edited June 9, 2017 by Ed Jaws

[KerikBalm]

but 2km seems like an excessive margin, and its one that you didn't even maintain for Kerbin. Hitting the upper atmosphere isn't like hitting the side of a mountain.

You can have a stable on-rails orbit at 50km on kerbin, and much lower on Duna. There is already a huge margin. Even without time warp, Raise your PE to 90,050 on Eve, and you're good to go. I've seen and built plenty of eve landers that get to orbit with no fuel reserves, and run out of fuel before raising PE above 91km

[Ed Jaws]

I've revised the low safe orbit to coincide with the community Delta-V map of 10 km above atmosphere or terrain obstacles. If one wishes to alter that to their preferences you have that option. Anyone can publish their own spreadsheet based on these with my full permission. I'd like to check their preferred orbits out.

I get what you're saying @KerikBalm but I intended this to be a convenient guide to glance at for quick numbers and not what is, on the edge, possible. I've got space junk orbiting around Kerbin with it's PE in the 50 km range but that doesn't mean I want it there.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8de_qTRouN8dERrdjRxMlBrTjg  --- .ods

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8de_qTRouN8M0VIeXRXZVM1TDA  --- .xlsx

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8de_qTRouN8SjhGcWlyRWxQbkk --- .pdf

Edited June 10, 2017 by Ed Jaws

[kreutzkevic]

Nice work

 

Really 17.1 km for the Mun and 15.7 for Minmus for a safe orbit? I just go with 10 km each time. Gives for some clenching moments. And looking at your terrain altitudes, I could probably shave something off of that 10.

I think I'll try a 7.2 km polar orbit of the Mun this evening.

Edited June 12, 2017 by kreutzkevic

[NSEP]

Cool, nice work. Usefull. Is there something like this for the Real Solar System?