Sippitous

Thanks, I know what you mean. There is a lot of planning and execution that goes into it. But of course that's the fun bits.

Project: Rhea, Mission One Launch Vehicle: Merlin XX Mission Objectives: Primary Mission: Set up a 3 satellite Geo Stationary Constellation around Kerbin with the range to reach Duna. Secondary Mission: Land and recover both the booster stage and the upper stage of the Merlin XX Rocket in the vicinity of the KSC without incident. With version 1.2 in the works and so close to it's release, I decided that a communications network around Kerbin would be prudent. So I set about designing a satellite that would have a very srong signal when communicating with Duna, and any other planet for that matter. Since the satellite dishes are combinable (is this a word), having multiple dishes on a craft would boost the signal strength. So I put 14 of the largest relay dishes that stock KSP has to offer in a nice GEO stationary orbit around Kerbin. Here is a video of mission one for Project: Rhea Primary Mission Status: Complete Secondary Mission Status: Complete Craft File ► https://kerbalx.com/Sippitous/GEO-Coms-w_-Merlin-XX

Well, It didn't help that I spelled Kerbol wrong. Swing and a miss.

@GoSlash27's recent comment about getting to name something. I was renaming something. Perhaps not that funny.

Kerbal should now be named McJebble! lol

That is a pity.

The Duna colonization mission isn't a new one for the most part, but for me it is. I've sent rovers, landers, mining vehicles, and the sort to Duna a bunch of times (each with their own special types of disasters), but never an organized, systematic, and long running mission like I hope this to be. After hearing about this mysterious BFR rocket in one of EJ_SA's twitch streams (mysterious to me at the time), I looked up what that was and it sparked a great deal of interest to me. So I went ahead and designed a "Big Falcon Rocket" capable of carrying a very heavy payload to LKO and landing back at the KSC for reuse. This BFR is a concept vehicle thought up by SpaceX. Here is a link to the site I used to gather my information: http://spaceflight101.com/spacex-launch-vehicle-concepts-designs/. After reading about this and learning from an interview that Elon Musk hopes/plans to be able to send 100 people at a time to Mars, this mission idea came into play. So, now I have a mission plan and am currently developing all the crafts I plan on using to accomplish this mission. For example, Stations, Landers, Transporters, Miners, Rovers (both unmanned and manned), comm sats, a base (maybe multiple bases). The first thing I did, and what I will show you today, was remake the Falcon XX concept. It had to be big enough to send 100 tones to Duna because that was one of the planned capabilities of the Falcon XX. Below are some preliminary pics of my adaptation of the Falcon XX. [imgur]Me4JO[/imgur] Edit* since albums can't be embedded here is a link to the imgur album http://imgur.com/a/Me4JO which is pretty much the same as the pics below only with some captions I will continue to update this post throughout this mission and include videos and KerbalX links to the craft files https://kerbalx.com/Sippitous I hope this interest some people and I look forward to sharing more with everyone as it develops. hmm. I can't seem to post imgur albums so here are single pics:

Just by looking at the parameters box that is available when you are focused on a planet such as Kerbin, Duna, Ike, or Eve (and others I assume), the info there is different. For Kerbin, I can only tell that the escape velocity is different. The mass may be different, but there may be a different rule for rounding cause 1.1.3 rounds to 3 decimals and 1.2 rounds to 2. For Duna, the mass is different, the GM is different, and the escape velocity is different. And Eve and Ike are different in similar ways.

GoSlash27, I figured it out. My experiment was done using pre-release version 1.2.0.1520. After running a similar experiment on an earlier version, that altitude was was off. I think Squad changed something somewhere. Like I said above, an altitude of 1,518,516 has a velocity of 1,272.1 m/s, But in the current version (1.1.3.1289) that altitude shows a velocity of 1,272.3 m/s. So something is definitely different.

First thing first. I need to state my point. I BELIEVE THAT THE ALTITUDE OF A CIRCULAR SEMI-SYNCHRONOUS ORBIT AROUND KERBIN SHOULD BE: 1,581,516 M @DrLicor I understand all that. The difficulty of perfect precision is what I was sort of demonstrating. If you use the facts and numbers that all of us have accepted as true (such as the mass of kerbin, gravity at kerbin,rotational periods, etc) then the math points to an altitude height of what @GoSlash27 was saying: 1,581,745 m. But, I am saying it should be 1,581,516 m. Not because of any math, but because when I physically (digitally) put a satellite in a circular orbit at the altitude of 1,581,516 m, it produces a semi-synchronous orbit that only shifts out of alignment 4 meters over the course of 10 years. That's very accurate. To demonstrate this accuracy I am going to digress for a bit. Time for some math. A satellite in orbit around Kerbin at an altitude of 1,581,516 m (taking into account Kerbins 600,000 equatorial radius) travels 13,706,869.27857718 meters every rotation (C=2πr). C=2πr 13,706,869.27857718 = 2π(1,581,516 + 600,000) A semi-synchronous orbit is 2 orbits per sidereal day. 2 * 13,706,869.27857718 = 27,416,738.55715437 meters every day Kerbin orbits it's star every 426.08 days 27,416,738.55715437 * 426.08 = 11,680,445,724.43233 meters every year For 10 years 11,680,445,724.43233 * 10 = 116,804,457,244.3233 meters every 10 years That a lot of traveling. And to be off by only 4 meters over that much time and distance is wonderfully accurate. if I wanted to adjust my orbit so that it was 100% accurate I would have to reduce my velocity by .000074707015747 m/s, which isn't possible in this game. (also, that's assuming I was at exactly 1,581,516.000000000 meters which isn't possible to determine. ooooh. maybe it is. I can pull the orbital info from the data files): VESSEL { pid = e5bb18b8375041ed97456799c720ded5 name = Semi Sync type = Station sit = ORBITING landed = False landedAt = splashed = False met = 15542565.594103955 lct = 1266696.2960705161 lastUT = 16809261.91017447 root = 0 lat = 5.042437216409775 lon = 14.704801337842444 alt = 1581515.6353108771 hgt = -1 nrm = -0.59995234,0.0479642227,0.798596621 rot = -0.306740254,-0.287918717,-0.899826109,-0.115439601 CoM = 0.00144628342,-0.0832113847,-0.00246789306 stg = 1 prst = False ref = 0 ctrl = True cPch = -0.08799998 cHdg = 3.43 cMod = 0 ORBIT { SMA = 2181515.978894108 <-----------------------------------------that's pretty close 2,181,516 ECC = 1.6117364556775186E-07 INC = 54.999569826795124 LPE = 178.55552523516766 LAN = 299.9999740444099 MNA = -0.082294934085444207 EPH = 16809261.890174471 REF = 1 }VESSEL So, back to my point. If I understand things correctly, then the altitude at which to put an object around Kerbin with a circular semi-synchronous orbit is 1,581,516 m which will have a velocity of 1,272.1 m/s. Ideas?......Thoughts?.....Agreements?.....Disagreements? ~KSP for life!

I can't argue with correct math. I love it, I respect it, but maybe I am missing something. When you are setting up a synchronous or a semi-synchronous orbit, isn't the intent to have the satellite or whatever your using, pass by the same point every orbit or 2 orbits respectively? When I put a satellite into a circular orbit with an altitude 2,181,745 m., the satellite will slowly fall out of alignment. Is this the difference between sidereal orbital period and a solar day? I think I got myself confused talking about this, but I made a video showing the results of a circular orbit with an altitude of 1,581,516 m. It shows that after 10 years of time warping, the satellite remains very very very nearly in the same spot above the KSC as when it first started. Isn't this what a we want satellites to do? Isn't this what the semi-synchronous orbit altitude should be? Like I said before; I might be missing something. I would love to hear some thoughts. Here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYkJZfTGyec