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I can\'t get the waste container to attach to anything? Am I doing something wrong?

I think what you\'re not realizing is that as you push away from the earth (orthogonally to a radius to it) the horizon gets lower and lower, resulting in the appearance of the nose creeping up but what\'s actually happening is that the horizon is falling down. The normal SAS modules will do this to you (throw SAS on and sit back for an orbit and watch your attitude relative to the earth go through the entire 360, since it\'s holding your attitude fixed relative to an infinitely distant point).

Let\'s Experiment: roughly duplicate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer#Example. Experiment 1, in which Bi-Elliptic should barely be more efficient. Radius of Kerth: 600km. Starting altitude: 100km. Initial radius, then, is 700km. Desired final circular orbit: 10000km altitude. This is 10600 radius, or ~15x our starting radius. Turnover altitude: 28000km. This is a radius of 28600, or ~41x our starting radius. We\'ll Contrast this with a Hohmann transfer directly to 10000km. [table] [tr][td]Burn [/td][td]Hohmann dV [/td][td]Bi-elliptic dV[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1[/td][td]830[/td][td]632 or 892[/td][/tr] [tr][td]2[/td][td]374[/td][td]157[/td][/tr] [tr][td]3[/td][td]-[/td][td]114[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Total[/td][td]1204[/td][td]903 or 1163[/td][/tr] [/table] The struck out values above are given by the program. I believe the first should be 892 (the same as the first burn of a Hohmann transfer from 100km to 28000km). The total, then, also changes, obviously. Note that, as expected, the Bi-elliptic is slightly more efficient in fuel than the Hohmann. This mirrors the Wikipedia article. Experiment 2: In which Bi-elliptic should be less efficient Now, let\'s experiment again, with a destination orbit that\'s lower than the magical 11.8 ratio. Let\'s say 5000 km (for a radius of 5600=8x our initial radius), using the same turnover altitude. [table] [tr][td]Burn [/td][td]Hohmann dV [/td][td]Bi-elliptic dV[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1[/td][td]749[/td][td]632 or 892[/td][/tr] [tr][td]2[/td][td]420[/td][td]104[/td][/tr] [tr][td]3[/td][td]-[/td][td]215[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Total[/td][td]1168[/td][td]951 or 1211[/td][/tr] [/table] If the value for the transfer orbit injection in the bi-elliptic calculator is correct, this still takes less delta-v. This can\'t be true for a ratio of the major axes that\'s only 8x. However, if we use the value for the same burn obtained using the Hohmann calculator (the same 892 as before), we see that the bi-elliptic is less efficient. I think it\'s clear that the program is just giving the wrong values for delta v and final v for the 'transfer orbit injection' on the bi-elliptic page (and consequently also reporting the wrong total delta v needed). Really, the giveaway is the fact that the sum of the initial and the deltav doesn\'t produce the final. It\'s just clearly in error.

Yes, they should. Look at the diagram. He\'s only talking about the /first burn/ of either transfer method. These put the craft into the same location (an elliptical orbit with apokee of 1000km and velocity of ~2650 m/s), and should require the same amount of delta V (~400, I get 403 when I use version 0.9.5\'s value for Hohmann, the attached diagram shows values of 404 for Hohmann or 415 for Bi-Elliptic). For what it\'s worth I get utter nonsense for the bi-elliptic transfer injection in 0.9.5: Initial 2245, deltav 199, final 1847. This is for a low of 100km and turnover of 1000km - high doesn\'t matter. Sure seems like it should be the ~400 number (same as for Hohmann), or that at a bare minimum the initial+deltav=final, but neither of those is true.