fallingphoenix

That's exactly what I was hoping to find out once I'd thought about it and some of the answers people offered. Would the two arcs near periapsis give you a shorter worst case than a circular equatorial orbit? The question started out because I've started using Remote Tech and needed to set up a solid base comm network near Kerbin. The tutorial I was looking at tried to design for worst case for a flat equatorial orbit and needed something like 8 or 9 1k batteries, if I remember right. Then I started to realize that the likelihood of having things actually drain power in my network after I set them up (due to not actually flying them after that) meant that I probably didn't need to be too concerned about it and the question became more one of curiosity. So...thanks for the math links and suggestions. I'm really interested to find out if a highly inclined orbit with Pe and Ap always in sunlight would have a shorter worst case than a flat, circular orbit with the same period!

Specifically a highly elliptical orbit with a period of one Kerbin day (6 hours). It seems like worst-case would be when the 'sides' (ascending and descending nodes) of the orbit are on the dark side. Would this be less dark time than a kerbosynchronous orbit with 0 inclination and eccentricity? Related question: Is there an orbit or dark time calculator that takes into account inclination, or can someone help me out with the math to sort it out? Thanks in advance!

As of now, near as I can tell, the Orion drive doesn't show up anywhere on the tech tree, so I tried adding a MM config in the mod's folder, but it doesn't seem to be working. Here is a sample of the format I'm using for each part in the .cfg. @PART[USAFOrion3Engine]:FOR[USAFOrion]:NEEDS[CommunityTechTree] { @TechRequired = improvedNuclearPropulsion } The name in brackets for the PART should be the 'name = x' from the part's config, right? And the FOR piece should be the...name of the mod's .dll? Does it matter where in the mod folder in gamedata that you put the .cfg with this bit in it? Am I doing anything obviously wrong?