Edit persistent file to evenly space sats?

[theZcuber]

Basically, I deployed four relay sats around Duna in stable orbits with *around* the same period. The slight deviations in period added up (thanks to time warp and long term missions), so they weren't even close to where I put them.

I understand how to edit the persistent file, but the main part I'm having an issue with is the mean anomaly. If I place all the sats into "perfect" orbits (at 250km), how do I calculate the mean anomaly such that they are spaced 90 deg apart? I thought I had it, but clearly not.

[bewing]

Honestly, it's probably easier to just give all your sats a slight inclination, and then give them LANs that increase from 0 to 270 degrees and identical mean anomalies, rather than trying to figure out the mean anomalies themselves.

Edit: on second thought, actually that might not work to get them evenly spaced. Hmmmm. 

Edited November 5, 2016 by bewing

[pincushionman]

You know what's easier than editing the persistent.sfs to do this? Switch to the sats from the tracking center, then press Alt+F12 and use the debug orbit editor to set the parameters live. I just got done using that tool for some research, and it's fantastic.

Just set the parameters to be exactly the same except for the mean anomaly and you'll be pretty close, keeping in mind the satellites will be moving while you switch and edit, so you may need to account for that between your four sats.

Also, don't make them exactly perfect - add a tiny eccentricity and inclination or else the LAN and argument of periapsis (called LPE in the editor for "longitude of periapsis") will be non-unique and the orbit markers will start jumping around due to physics simulation.

And keep in mind that inclination, LAN and LPE are measured in degrees, but your anomalies are measured in radians. it's kind nd of annoying.

[FancyMouse]

On the other hand, for the original problem of satellite drifting, it can be solved without "cheating" like this - bring one Ant engine, set thrust limiter, use throttle, pointing to any 4 of the directions other than prograde/retrograde (maximizing cosine loss, essentially). Then it's just a matter of adjusting semi-major axis. I use KER, and with its way of displaying that number, I usually target 999,999.999m SMA for most of the bodies. You can try to calculate how's the drift around for example Minmus for such 1Mm+-0.0005m orbits. I'm surprised myself when I look at that number.