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Ultimate Orbital Intercept

Cooly568
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Bellaby

Bellaby

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Posted

(yay first post)

I\'ll give this a shot and post results later today, but i was thinking this:

Wouldn\'t larger orbits be much easier? Since things are slower and easier to edit.

Then again maybe not since minor corrections would make massive distance changes on this small scale. Meh, hope large orbits are allowed and here i go.

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Bellaby

Bellaby

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alright this is my attempt.

I didn\'t do a large orbit simply because my rocket couldn\'t reach that far and i didn\'t feel like making a new one ::)

However i thought i\'d try a polar orbit, thinking it would be easier since it requires just as much fuel for both rockets despite them heading different directions.

How wrong is was.

You see, i forgot to take in kerbin\'s rotation when looking at the nav ball, so my polar orbits ended up being WAY out of line, with the orbits intersecting only at the poles. The second rocket (which was seriously out of line because i didn\'t factor in rotation) ran out of fuel before i could correct the orientation of the orbit, so i ditched it in the sea. The 3rd rocket i timed it\'s launch to be a day after the 1st rocket, and this one missed the alignment by about 10 degrees (which still made a huge distance at the equators) but luckily i had (just) enough fuel to correct it.

So here are the \'proof they are in opposite directions\' shots;

cooly%20challenge%201.png

cooly%20challenge%2002.png

And here are screen shots as the other rocket zipped past me. Christ they move quick. Its a series of shots when i spammed my F1 key so i could try and get the closest distance. The closes measured at 3.5km, but im sure it got just a little closer, like 3.4km. Not bad considering it was all done with stock parts and by eye, no mechjeb for me! Also manual orbital correction to boot!

cooly%20challenge%203.png

cooly%20challenge%204.png

cooly%20challenge%205.png

All in all, great challenge really enjoyed it. Never had to time launches before and i learn\'t a lot about orbital orientation correction (mouthful), and will try for a collision next time! =P

[edit] - Sorry about all the space junk! My first Mun rocket had 6 side rockets that jettisoned in a long oblong orbit and the shots i took were prefectly timed for them to be near Kerbin and all spread out :-[

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Bellaby

Bellaby

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haha i know, but if i aim to collide i might get closer, and odds are i wont ^^ would be epic if i did. explosions always relevent haha

[edit]

I modified my orbit with my current two polar orbiting rockets and pulled off 2.5km, but it looks like no closer for me with these guys;

screenshot6.png

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Excalibur

Excalibur

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Here\'s my entry...

Used MechJeb but no Rincomp. Mainly KW mods, nothing overpowered.

Actually found it quite easy to get an intercept under 500m. It\'s recording the distance that\'s caused me the most trouble. I actually think the closest approach was way closer than this, but unable to prove it so. :)

http://youtu.be/7yrDOZ01DZ8

EDIT:

7d23ac32c78c75ffec72fc971e1f75fd.gif

Getting closer; I\'d say that\'s gotta be around 50 metres clearance :)

And my new official figure...

8j9JX.jpg

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cardgame

cardgame

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Posted

First try, with two completely different satellites. 36.9km was the closest I could get a screenshot, I think it might have come down to about 36.5 though. It was gone less than ten seconds after I spotted it.

RPpES.png

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Excalibur

Excalibur

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Looks like my best screenshot puts it at about 432. Now if only I were smart enough to calculate its trajectory in order to pinpoint its distance at its closest point.

You know I didn\'t even think of trying that. It wouldn\'t be too difficult I don\'t think.

I bet you could approximate the trajectory as a straight line in this instance (just as the Earth appears flat from the surface). Then it\'d just be a case of setting up the camera so you can find the angle between ship and target. A little bit of trigonometry and you\'ll have your distance figure. Should be pretty accurate too if you measure the angle carefully!

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Excalibur

Excalibur

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I sent my target craft into a 1000km 90 degree circular orbit. I made it as perfect as possible (turned out to be about 1,000,550m x 1,000,470m or thereabouts). This took some patience with RCS set to fine, but didn\'t take too long.

I then launched West with the chase craft and let MechJeb put me in a \'rough\' 1000km 180 degree orbit. Once that was done I focused the camera on Kerbin and zoomed out just enough so that I could still see the orbital traces of both ships (i.e. the traces are close to the camera so you can see any differences easily).

There are two points 180 degrees apart where the orbits intersect. I made a burn normal to my orbital course at one of these points and managed to synchronise both the target, and the chase ships\' inclinations.

Then all I did was match either Ap or Pe with the target\'s orbital altitude and circularise. I did all tweaking burns with fine RCS. Managed to get a lot of precision that way.

At the end of the day though it took a fair bit of eye-balling and patience. I\'ve got quite a bit of spare time on my hands at the moment...

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