"Position Satellite in a polar orbit around Kerbin" -absurd ?

[marcoboy123]

 This Contract....it now took me 1 hour to almost perfectly align my satellite orbit to this contract..but:

+-10.000m on a 15 Million Kilometer Orbit... is this game serious? This isnt enough???

Any help? Is this really that absurd, that orbits have to perfectly align, at this orbital speed, where 0.1 m/s makes 10.000m Orbital difference? Holy. Im in career mode and need that money from that contract :/

[mk1980]

bit hard to tell from the images, but when a seemingly perfect orbit isn't accepted it's usually because your satellite moves in the opposite direction of what is expected.

[the_Demongod]

First of all, the most common issue people have with these contracts are that they end up going the wrong direction (i.e. against the required orbit's direction). First off, make absolutely sure that the direction you're moving is the same direction that the little points of light are traveling around the contract's orbit path.

If you're indeed going the right direction, try using the weakest engine you can such as an ion engine or "Ant" engine and put the thrust limiter to 1% and have a heavy-ish payload. You should be able to get it to match up properly.

 

[Snark]

Almost certainly it's because you're going in the wrong direction.

The game is actually remarkably tolerant of minor errors, as long as you're going the right way.    I'm very finicky/nitpicky about wanting to get the orbit just right, and it's always a bit of a letdown for me when the darn contract completes before I finish my adjustment burn.  "Wait!  I wasn't done yet!"

Basically, as long as you are going the right way, you don't even need to look at the numbers-- as long as the two orbits appear to visually line up when you look at them in the map view, it's good enough.

[marcoboy123]

2 hours ago, mk1980 said:

bit hard to tell from the images, but when a seemingly perfect orbit isn't accepted it's usually because your satellite moves in the opposite direction of what is expected.

 

2 hours ago, the_Demongod said:

First of all, the most common issue people have with these contracts are that they end up going the wrong direction (i.e. against the required orbit's direction). First off, make absolutely sure that the direction you're moving is the same direction that the little points of light are traveling around the contract's orbit path.

If you're indeed going the right direction, try using the weakest engine you can such as an ion engine or "Ant" engine and put the thrust limiter to 1% and have a heavy-ish payload. You should be able to get it to match up properly.

 

 

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Almost certainly it's because you're going in the wrong direction.

The game is actually remarkably tolerant of minor errors, as long as you're going the right way.    I'm very finicky/nitpicky about wanting to get the orbit just right, and it's always a bit of a letdown for me when the darn contract completes before I finish my adjustment burn.  "Wait!  I wasn't done yet!"

Basically, as long as you are going the right way, you don't even need to look at the numbers-- as long as the two orbits appear to visually line up when you look at them in the map view, it's good enough.

Thanks to you all  . Apparently... I really was going the wrong direction :DDD And I was really upset about nothing. Thanks to you all, I know now  a little bit more about the game. I never knew there were a contract for an North->South Orbit around a planet >_>

[Jarin]

Yeah, it's a common mistake. It's led me to over-engineer my light satellites to the point where they have the delta-v to fully reverse their orbit, assuming they're high enough.

[vosechu]

If your goal for he game is to learn new things, perhaps you've learned this lesson and it's time to move on to other contracts. I'd say you earned the money. 

If you hit alt+f12, you'll find a dialog that has lots of debug info. Somewhere in there is a contracts tab, go ahead and mark the contract completed. You deserve it for nailing that orbit so dead on (even if it was going the wrong way). 

Enjoy the game! Welcome!

[Tatonf]

Good news is, if you still have fuel, you can correct your mistake. For 1000 m/s, just point your spacecraft retrograde, and burn. And for only 500 m/s, you can do the same thing but with a bi-elliptical transfer (but it takes longer).

[ElWanderer]

On 06/21/2016 at 0:53 AM, marcoboy123 said:

I never knew there were a contract for an North->South Orbit around a planet >_>

But if you're on the other side of the planet at that time, it'll be a "South->North" orbit...

The plane of any inclined orbit around Kerbin will pass over the Kerbal Space Center twice a day, once ascending ("South to North") and once descending ("North to South"). To launch into that plane at any given alignment window, you need to check first whether to turn Northwards or Southwards.

An orbit's inclination is always a positive number. The Longitude of the Ascending Node tells you how the orbit is aligned with respect to a universal prime direction (two otherwise identical polar orbits would have their LANs 180° apart if they're going in opposite directions), but this isn't visible in-game without using mods. It's easier to align visually than to worry about the numbers.

[marcoboy123]

9 hours ago, ElWanderer said:

But if you're on the other side of the planet at that time, it'll be a "South->North" orbit...

I-I never said that (Goddamn was I dump?) 

Yeah. Visually alligning makes my day. I cant do anything with the numbers, without mods. And its also more fun to manually do manuever nodes and burn them perfectly!

16 hours ago, vosechu said:

If you hit alt+f12, you'll find a dialog that has lots of debug info. Somewhere in there is a contracts tab, go ahead and mark the contract completed. You deserve it for nailing that orbit so dead on (even if it was going the wrong way). 

 

Holy god. Really? That's goddamn helpful. I had another contract today, says, climbing the highest Peak in Kerbin (K1) I perfectly completed it , but it never accepted it :/ Thanks to that tip I can now complete contracts I had completely but my game said "Nope" about. Thank you!

[ibanix]

By the way - RCS is your friend for getting the exact orbital parameters.

[Van Disaster]

On 06/22/2016 at 11:09 PM, marcoboy123 said:

Yeah. Visually alligning makes my day. I cant do anything with the numbers, without mods. And its also more fun to manually do manuever nodes and burn them perfectly!

I use mods & still also ďo my own nodes, they're not mutually exclusive using KER taught me what all the different numbers describing an orbit actually mean.

[kiwi1960]

15 million K orbit? Where did you get that from?

Its 15 million METRES.... to get Kilometres, divide by 1000

so, its 15,000 kilometres....

 

 

[JohnWittle]

On 6/25/2016 at 3:47 PM, kiwi1960 said:

15 million K orbit? Where did you get that from?

Its 15 million METRES.... to get Kilometres, divide by 1000

so, its 15,000 kilometres....

 

 

Yeah lol this is another thing, your orbit is 1000x too big, i'm surprised nobody else noticed this since its obvious from the pictures

Edited June 27, 2016 by JohnWittle

[Jarin]

On 6/27/2016 at 2:00 PM, JohnWittle said:

Yeah lol this is another thing, your orbit is 1000x too big, i'm surprised nobody else noticed this since its obvious from the pictures

Because it's not? He mistyped when commenting, but the pictures show the orbit with the correct altitude. 

[Corona688]

On 6/21/2016 at 11:34 PM, Jarin said:

Yeah, it's a common mistake. It's led me to over-engineer my light satellites to the point where they have the delta-v to fully reverse their orbit, assuming they're high enough.

The upside to that is it'll make your 'change orbit of X satellite' contracts a piece of cake.

[vger]

Apoapsis and Periapsis specific to a single meter?

Can a real spacecraft even do that?

[Corona688]

On 7/11/2016 at 10:43 PM, vger said:

Apoapsis and Periapsis specific to a single meter?

Can a real spacecraft even do that?

GPS satellites are designed for "around" 20,000km orbit but don't seem quite exactly that.  Early satellites did their final orbital boost on an uncontrollable solid rocket, and could be 2% away from 20,000.  Newer ones include their own correction rockets and seem to manage within 20km of 20,000.  0.1% accuracy isn't bad.

I'm sure they could do better, too.   All you need is a tiny motor and time.  (Russian satellites are often equipped with ion drives to maintain the low, slanted orbit which crosses their sky at regular intervals.)  They probably would rather keep a 19858-20270 orbit identically perfect for 10 years than burn 5 years of fuel getting a perfect 20,000-20,000.  They know the orbits to within a centimeter and account for it anyway.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Corona688