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Clockwise Solar Satelite Contract Help


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I made the mistake (well honestly it was mainly stupidity to not read the fine print correctly) to accept a Satelite Contract for an Clockwise Orbit around the sun.

Since so far in my ksp carreer I only visited mun and minmus I havent I havent realised I had to focus my view on the sun to see the orbit for the contract on map view. And as of yet I still dont understand the inclination / Node /Argument descriptions of the satelite contracts.

Anyways I just sound I had to get out of Kerbals SoI and raise my Apoapsis and Periapsis to the rigth numbers and would be done for since there wasnt any visible orbit on the map for it (while not being focused on the sun sigh... )

After I escape with my little satelite out of Kerbins SoI and was in an orbit of the Sun I suddently got the "todo" orbit visible the first time and was completly shocked that it was clockwise :(

Now I have honestly not the slightest Idea how the hell should I be able to make a clockwise orbit around the sun.

Contract Specifics:

Apoapsis 66.9 Mil. Km

Oeriapsis: 4.9 Mil. Km

Inclination 170.8 Degrees (is this the thing that should have warned me thats clockwise instead of counterclockwise?)

Longitute of Ascending: 3.8 Degrees

Argument of Periapsis 217.7 degrees (or is it this... honestly no idea what this even means right now)

Contract Deadlne: 14y 200 days.

Current Date of my KSP Program: Year 1 Day 32

I am not even shure if this contract is worth it. It gave an advance of 70k Credits and will give a completion reward of 417k credits together with 180 science and 270 reputation.

I am thinking about abandoning the contract atm but I cant afford the 82k Credit penalty (my space program is short on funds) and the 126 Rep Penalty and well... admiting defeat sucks...

So any Help would be great.

(Oh and if it is any important I only use Alarm Clock and K.E.R. as mods)

My normal Satelites so far have a DeltaV of 6-7k after being in Kerbal Orbits. I sticked a Satelite Monster together atm but I cant even afford to launch it with has 25k DeltaV and a TWR of 0.15 (27 large Xenon Tanks and 3 Xenon Engines). (1 engine only makes it 30k DeltaV but only 0.06 TWR)

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How far have you progressed on the tech tree? I personally haven't played career in ages, however with a small probe core and some static panels you should be able to lift it and even put it in the required orbit with minimal costs. An SSTO should cut it with a small satellite on top. just get into LKO by going retrograde and you are mostly there.

Maybe lift the satellite with the long black and white tank with an lv909 engine on bottom and some reaction wheels and ou should be able to get a Kerbin escape trajectory with delta V to spare to fine tune the orbit for the contract. When im at home tonight i will see if i can throw something low tech together to achieve what you need (at work right now).

Tweety

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I am fairly done with the Tech tree. Have all the Techs below the 500 science cost limit. So that shouldnt be the problem.

AS I said I already have managed to get an satelite into the solar orbit.... sadly i just managed counter clockwise but need a clockwise one and there I have no idea how to manage that.

Or what amounts of DeltaV are needed minimalistic for it. I just now having 5.8k DeltaV after leaving Kerbins Sphere of Influence is not enough by ALOT cause that was what my satelite had when he was in a solar orbit.

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Yeah, it probably isn't going to be worth it.

To reverse your orbit, you're going to have to increase the apoapsis as far as you can, then burn retrograde at the apoapsis.

That's going to take some serious DV; I'm sure more than you bargained for.

My advice is to just leave the contract active but don't attempt to complete it. By the time it expires, the penalty will be chump change.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited by GoSlash27
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I think it's very unlikely you're going to profit from this contract... :(

A retrograde solar orbit is extraordinarily costly in delta-v, since you have to undo the orbital speed of Kerbin, then put it back again in the other direction. Manoeuvres are always cheaper the further away you get from a body, so the best way you can probably do this is to kick your apoapsis out somewhere beyond Eeloo, then flip it over. The 170 degree inclination, is brutal, and will cost upwards of 6k delta-v in itself, if performed at Kerbin's orbit. If you can get your solar AP in alignment so that you can do the plane change out there, that's again your cheapest option. It'll take years of time in-game though, and I'm not sure you'll get there before the deadline is up.

Frankly, my advice would be cancel the contract. They'll take back the money they paid you up-front, and you make take a small hit in reputation, but unless you're in a high difficulty mode, that's all that'll happen.

Also, with every satellite contract, just ignore the numbers for longitudes and arguments - just look in the map view and match it visually. There's nothing in the game that lets you put those numbers in, so they're massive red herrings :) Inclination is relevant, since it has a big impact on the delta-v requirements; the nearer zero it is, the easier a job you're going to have. And yeah, a 180 degree inclination is retrograde.

...An SSTO should cut it with a small satellite on top...

I don't believe there's an SSTO been invented that could get into a clockwise solar orbit... solar-polar orbits are hard enough, but the orbit listed is going to be something like 4-5x the delta-v cost of a Moho run.

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Is it not worth the retrograde launch then Slashy? If my basic understandings are correct then wouldn't that only take a little extra Delta V? That way you don't actually have to reverse your orbit as such? You are far more knowledgeable than I am. I could also be thinking about it in completely the wrong way too :)

Tweety

Edit: Ahhhh eddie got in there while I was typing....NOW I understand why my idea is terrible :) Although I now have a great personal goal of having a clockwise orbit around as many planets as I can endure :)

Edited by Tweety
Stupidness on my part.
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That sounds like a challenge :cool:

But honestly, I would just follow Slashy's advice - even if you do attempt to complete the contract, just wait until you have the funds and tech. The deadline is well over 14 years - you can easily max the tech tree in just a weeks of in-game time and the travel time shouldn't be more than 2 years. The target orbit is also very eccentric, so you can send your probe to target Ap, reverse the orbit and from there it's just a few m/s of deltaV to complete the contract.

Good luck! :)

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The real problem is that you can only have a limited number of contracts open. The obvious course to follow would be to get a contract to get something in orbit of Eeloo. Once you're out there in far, far away country, changing inclination shouldn't be that costly.

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My back of the envelope calculation (from outside Kerbin's SoI):

Transfer burn to Eeloo's aphelion 113M km: 3,080 m/sec

Burn at aphelion to arrest eastward orbit: 3,200m/sec

Burn at aphelion to set perihelion to 4.9 million km: 2,260M/sec

Burn at perihelion to set aphelion to 66.9 million km: 309M/sec

Total approx. 8,800 m/sec. And remember you have to add in the launch DV as well, so this is pretty much as big a project as launching from Eve's surface into orbit.

This isn't counting the inclination change, which is pretty negligible. You could shave some from this by using the Oberth effect at launch and slingshotting around the system, but don't expect to save much.

I also didn't compare different aphelion altitudes to see which gives you the best result, so this estimate is probably a bit high.

I still definitely don't recommend attempting this contract. I don't think you can afford the mission cost anyway.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited by GoSlash27
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Ok i guess its kicking that contract or letting it dust and wasting one of my 7 slots... Doing any fly by manouvers on different planets is something that is at this time still out of my league. Since so far as I said I havent seen anything else except Mun und Minmus (and my first Minmus visit with sending Jeb there and back is still on the way)

Even have the "Explore Minmus" Contract still open cause my engineers sadly forgot to attach an antenna to Jebs capsule. So I have to wait another 6days until he gets home from his trip.

Just love Kerbal Alarm Clock.... being able to do multiple missions at once without having to "waste" time skipping multiple days for a single mission :D

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By my reckoning, this mission/contract isn't that bad. I did some quick and dirty math I'll walk you through below.

A solar/kerbolar Ap of ~66 Gm (Million km) is very close to Jool's orbit. A transfer from LKO to Jool takes about 2000 m/s of dV

This transfer will give you an apoapsis velocity of about 2430 m/s, that needs to be canceled.

You need to further accelerate about 1550 m/s to achieve a retrograde orbit with a 4.9 Gm.

So, from LKO, getting the orbit's shape takes about 6 km/s of dV.

The inclination is a bit trickier, since the parameters seem to indicate that the axis of inclination is not aligned with the semimajor axis, so add an extra 1 km/s of dV and that should be more than sufficient.

Again, this is quick and dirty math, but 7 km/s from LKO an engineering challenge that is far from insurmountable, especially if you have ion drives.

Edited by LethalDose
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...Edit: Ahhhh eddie got in there while I was typing....NOW I understand why my idea is terrible :) Although I now have a great personal goal of having a clockwise orbit around as many planets as I can endure :)

You're still underestimating the effort required. A retrograde orbit around any other planet is fairly easy just by tweaking your intercept with it. ALL those planets, and you, are still going the same way around the sun though so it's all 'just a bit' faster or slower. It is reversing the orbit around the sun that makes this contract so hard.

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