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Showing results for tags 'orbital drift'.
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I'm not sure if it used to do this, but I began noticing it after the update. I'm noticing that my orbit is changing very slightly over time. The orbit is outside of the atmosphere, and the option "Orbital Drift Compensation" is checked, but my orbit still changes gradually over time. The tendency is to lower both Apoapsis and Periapsis, but on occasion I have seen one or the other raised slightly. I have removed all mods and DLC, and I'm still getting this. So it's not being caused by mods. Over the course of 20 minutes, I saw my space station orbit go from 72.6998 km, 72.6686 km | time 1:01 72.6985 km, 72.6684 km | time 1:21 I'll also note that when I started noticing this effect, the space station had an Apoapsis of 72.706 km. Of course, when the vessel isn't being actively watched, it doesn't change, which is expected. When I have Kerbal Engineer, I can see this effect in much more detail. The Semi Major Axis is dropping in a herky, jerky manner. It drops a bunch when you switch in and out of map mode. Of course, I can't be sure if Kerbal Engineer is making the effect worse, but nevertheless, the effect is there without it. Admittedly, it's a very minor effect. But it makes me not want to switch to my relay satellites as they're flying in a very precise orbital formation. Does anyone else see this? Has this always been there? Has it been made worse by a recent update? EDIT: On closer observation, the periapsis dipped and went back up. The lowest point was: 72.6996 km, 72.6682 km | time 1:08 EDIT 2: Using scatterer causes the Semi Major Axis to drop much faster. But a complex vessel with lots of parts that makes it run at a lower frame rate, doesn't change the rate at which the SMA drops. Satellites that are far away from their parent body are unaffected. Strangely, my Gilly satellites are having their SMA raised. Maybe because they are orbiting slower than Gilly is rotating? Another curious observation: My Eve vessel that is in low, circular, polar orbit, has a Ap of 90530 and a Pe of 90520. So nearly circular. The really weird thing is that the Pe and Ap are advancing forward in orbit faster than my ship is orbiting. So the time to Periapsis is constantly increasing, and same for the Apoapsis. The SMA is changing very little, but the point of Apoapsis and Periapsis are moving rapidly. On closer observation, for my Eve vessel, when it's closer to Apoapsis, the Apoapsis rapidly lowers and the Periapsis raises. When it's closer to Periapsis, the Periapsis rapidly lowers and the Apoapsis raises. Physical time warp makes the orbit change extremely rapidly. Within a few seconds of maximum physics warp, my orbit changed to something like 90730 to 90320. OK, simply by quickly switching physics warp from 1x to 4x back to 1x, my orbit drastically changed. It went from 90500 90500 to something like 90700 90300 in one iteration. By doing multiple iterations of this, I managed to raise my Apoapsis to 92000 and lower my periapsis to 88000. I'm pretty sure it wasn't this bad before. A few more iterations and I changed my orbit to 98200 82900. Just by messing with physics warp. Without using any thrust. This is absurd. Can someone please try this and tell me if it's just me? EDIT 3: Started a new sandbox mode, put a simple spacecraft in a similar orbit of Eve, and tried it. No more orbital drifting. No problems whatsoever. I'm wondering if it's because I'm in year 20 of my career mode in my main save? Maybe some part is causing it? Ah, it has nothing to do with the time. I warped until it was 19 years in the sandbox mode. Still no orbit drifting problem. EDIT 4: OK, it does have something to do with more complex spacecraft. I loaded my career mode space vessel into a low Eve polar orbit. The orbital decay returned. Having more crew also seems to affect it. Using the "interior overlay" also makes it worse.
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