Orbiting below 70km

[Mat2ch]

Hi!

Have you ever tried orbiting below 70 km? I did and it's a fun experience. But since the physics warp only accelerates to 4 times the normal speed it takes a loooooong time to do an orbit. But I made at least 2 and only lost 500 m while at it. I guess it would've taken at least 3 or 4 more orbits until the atmosphere would have slowed my vessel enough down to reentry.

So, Challange?

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I once did an orbit at around 40km's inside the atmosphere with a tiny plane.

But that was waaay back before the Aero has changed

Oh I even found a picture of the plane.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=284463231

Edited May 1, 2015 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[xub313]

That's neat.

I wonder if you could build a station while still in the atmosphere. It wouldn't sink quite as fast because the game wouldn't load the station until you get close. I think it might be possible if you can rendezvous quickly enough.

[Kerbart]

On rails it would do just fine in a 40km orbit. The challenge is getting it on rails, as you can't leave focus when in the atmosphere. A 70×40km orbit is perfectly possible, on the other hand. As long as it doesn't get in physics range of your active craft of course.

[AngusJimiKeith]

It would also be pretty cool to pull off something like GOCE, where you have an ion *just barely* compensate for the altitude you lose from drag. Wouldn't be practical in KSP for any long amount of time though.

[xub313]

On rails it would do just fine in a 40km orbit. The challenge is getting it on rails, as you can't leave focus when in the atmosphere. A 70×40km orbit is perfectly possible, on the other hand. As long as it doesn't get in physics range of your active craft of course.

It'd be possible to get the station fully in the atmosphere by switching to a nearby probe and have it fly out of the atmosphere, then switch to the space center.

I am totally going to try this when I get some time to play this weekend.

[Mat2ch]

@xub313 aaaaand? Is it working?

[xub313]

Yep, It works.

Rendezvous and docking weren't too bad. But after I docked I had to keep using the engines to keep myself from falling back down. That might be due to the increased drag of Jeb's ship.

[xrayfishx]

On rails it would do just fine in a 40km orbit. The challenge is getting it on rails, as you can't leave focus when in the atmosphere. A 70×40km orbit is perfectly possible, on the other hand. As long as it doesn't get in physics range of your active craft of course.

I actually made a challenge once about getting the lowest completely atmospheric on-rails orbit. Basically you would have to get orbital velocity as low as possible and eject a probe that would then get more than 2.3k from the other spacecraft before its orbit decays too much. The probe will crash/land/do whatever you make it do while that other spacecraft will remain in a stable, on-rails atmospheric orbit. It only got one entry, by Kasuha. (Btw, has anyone seen Kasuha lately? I miss you, come back...)

[7499275]

Sure its possible and would be a fun challenge to see how long it would stay at like a 65kmx65km orbit before it falls down. However the limit to 4x physical warp would kill it for me.

[Tpyo]

Haha, so I am completely brand new to this game, as in I started playing last night.

I was looking up this topic because ~ I just managed my third orbit, and I was attempting my first re-entry...

Upon attempting to re-enter the atmosphere I managed to get to roughly 65km and it's been holding for 30+ rotations. I was under the impression orbiting under 70~ wasn't supposed to happen, but here I am.

Bummer that re-entry was unsuccessful, cool that I accidentally managed a sub 70k orbit xD

[EladDv]

28 minutes ago, Tpyo said:

Haha, so I am completely brand new to this game, as in I started playing last night.

I was looking up this topic because ~ I just managed my third orbit, and I was attempting my first re-entry...

Upon attempting to re-enter the atmosphere I managed to get to roughly 65km and it's been holding for 30+ rotations. I was under the impression orbiting under 70~ wasn't supposed to happen, but here I am.

Bummer that re-entry was unsuccessful, cool that I accidentally managed a sub 70k orbit xD

well the air pressure and drag above 55km is very low so it wont really slow you down much, also if you use time warp from other crafts it will put all the crafts on rails which means physics stops being calculated for them and possibly you would be able to orbit at any height given enough speed (but then you might burn up at the atmo)

[Wjolcz]

I wish the game simulated the behaviour  of vessels below 70km. The Ap/Pe could randomly decay between 50-100m per orbit, or something like that. There would be also a date in which the vessel would eventually "reenter and burn up" and be simply removed from the map view and persisten file.

It would be a fun challenge if contracts could spawn such vessels and say something like "Space cowboys! We need your assistance! Go and grab that sat before [insert date here] or else it might reenter and fall on an innocent inhabitant of our beautiful planet!"

Basically simplified on-rails simulation. Wouldn't have to take aerodynamic forces and shapes into account.

Edited January 21, 2016 by Veeltch

[LordKael]

2 hours ago, Veeltch said:

I wish the game simulated the behaviour  of vessels below 70km. The Ap/Pe could randomly decay between 50-100m per orbit, or something like that. There would be also a date in which the vessel would eventually "reenter and burn up" and be simply removed from the map view and persisten file.

It would be a fun challenge if contracts could spawn such vessels and say something like "Space cowboys! We need your assistance! Go and grab that sat before [insert date here] or else it might reenter and fall on an innocent inhabitant of our beautiful planet!"

Basically simplified on-rails simulation. Wouldn't have to take aerodynamic forces and shapes into account.

As fun as that would be, it would really only be a challenge the first couple times. Once you had an approach figured out, I feel like it would get monotonous. 

[fourfa]

32 minutes ago, LordKael said:

As fun as that would be, it would really only be a challenge the first couple times. Once you had an approach figured out, I feel like it would get monotonous. 

Sounds a lot like all the other types of contracts, TBH

[LordKael]

17 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Sounds a lot like all the other types of contracts, TBH

Yes. As has been discussed all across these forums, contracts suck for 101 reasons. However, the "space cowboys" idea seems like a fun contract theme.... Have a new company that requests extremely dangerous or highly precise feats of orbital mechanics or flying, and only players with a sufficiently high rep be offered contracts by them. 

 

[Andem]

I=Do you think it would be possible to do a "Cloud City" thing within Jools' atmo? I was thinking maybe a system of omni-directional engines to keep it stable...

[Deddly]

Hey, @Tpyo, welcome to the forum! I congratulate you on your use of the search function

I'm curious - was your orbit 65x65 km or was the highest point of your orbit outside of the atmosphere?