Orbital decay?

[Pawelk198604]

Every who played KSP know that Kerbin orbit start about roughly above 70 km but i wonder why not make atmospheric drag affect even at higher altitude like it is in real life.

 

So even satellites  on LKO are not safe like it was on real life, and make Kerbol affect the Kerbin atmosphere  

[Superfluous J]

Been asked for many times, probably won't ever happen.

I personally prefer to not have to boost my LKO stuff every few months while waiting for a transfer window.

[Tex_NL]

It has been asked for and requested to such extend it has been modded back in July '15. Too bad it seems to be outdated.

Really, actually searching for (and finding) such info is NOT hard.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Tex_NL

[sevenperforce]

While I certainly don't want to be re-boosting my satellites every few months, it would be neat to have an exosphere that would allow upper-atmosphere sampling for science-collection reasons. Might be something cool to add to Jool or even to a body like Tylo.

 

Edited September 3, 2017 by sevenperforce

[Jas0n]

It probably won't be ever added to the game, because no one wants to go through the trouble of boosting every orbit. 

I do agree with @sevenperforce that it would be cool as a science "biome" 

[RatchetinSpace]

While it adds an element of realism from a gameplay point of view it will just be annoying.

For instance, some of my Jool missions take upwards of 30 years, by the time I get back all my LKO stations and satellites will have decayed and burnt up, and it is NOT fun to constantly have to go back to them to boost them up while you are off on your Jool mission.

[Pawelk198604]

3 hours ago, RatchetinSpace said:

While it adds an element of realism from a gameplay point of view it will just be annoying.

For instance, some of my Jool missions take upwards of 30 years, by the time I get back all my LKO stations and satellites will have decayed and burnt up, and it is NOT fun to constantly have to go back to them to boost them up while you are off on your Jool mission.

But you would not need to reboost every few kerbal days, take for exemple HST it's on orbit for almost decade since last serving mission and it's still up there  but it would burn-up in early 20's of this century if NASA not do nothing about it   

Edited September 4, 2017 by Pawelk198604

[KSPFanatic102]

Topic already Discussed before

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/159922-decaying-orbits

 

 

Edited September 4, 2017 by Space_taco

[NSEP]

Sounds neat for something like RO actually.

[Greenfire32]

There was a bug a few versions ago that actually resulted in precisely this, and it wasn't NEARLY as fun as you think it would be.

It was a pain, it was a headache, and if you had multiple flights/stations, forget it. Pack up and go home, because Timewarp's gonna kill ALL your Kerbals.

Now if you want to mod it in, by all means go for it, but I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever support this in stock. EVER.

Sorry.

[RatchetinSpace]

On 9/4/2017 at 9:35 PM, Pawelk198604 said:

But you would not need to reboost every few kerbal days, take for exemple HST it's on orbit for almost decade since last serving mission and it's still up there  but it would burn-up in early 20's of this century if NASA not do nothing about it   

I'm not saying every few kerbal days! That really would be annoying! Even if every station could last 10 years, that would mean during my Jool mission I would need to boost a single LKE station 3 times, meaning with my current setup (2 Stations) I'd need to perform 6 maneuvers in the middle of my Jool mission. I think that's a bit out of my way.

Perhaps if there was a system that automatically counteracted orbital decay if you had fuel and an engine on-board the sat/space station, where the fuel would slowly drain overtime instead of your orbit. Once the fuel was depleted then the normal effects of orbital decay would carry out.

[Pawelk198604]

10 hours ago, RatchetinSpace said:

I'm not saying every few kerbal days! That really would be annoying! Even if every station could last 10 years, that would mean during my Jool mission I would need to boost a single LKE station 3 times, meaning with my current setup (2 Stations) I'd need to perform 6 maneuvers in the middle of my Jool mission. I think that's a bit out of my way.

Perhaps if there was a system that automatically counteracted orbital decay if you had fuel and an engine on-board the sat/space station, where the fuel would slowly drain overtime instead of your orbit. Once the fuel was depleted then the normal effects of orbital decay would carry out.

that's good idea   , and said spacecraft should have fully functional SAS  

[Spricigo]

Well, the orbital decay become less an issue higher you go. At some point the game would stop to keep track of it just to save computing respurces. 70km looks like a good arbitrary heigh like any other to me.

OTOH people would just put the stations at higher altitudes where they would stay for much longer periods,  effectively makings the feature meaningless.

[FungusForge]

Well, as far as I know, it won't decay things "on rails" that pass through atmosphere. That's about the only stock scenario I'd actually want orbital decay. Otherwise its something I'd rather my computer not compute.

[pandaman]

Not a bad idea in itself, but not in favour of it TBH.  Too much 'housekeeping' for my liking.

For things like this, that would require constant monitoring and tweaking if done 'realistically', I just 'assume' that it happens, just as IRL, but there is a team of staff that monitor and check all this stuff behind the scenes and make any necessary adjustments as they are needed, we just don't see it.

[tseitsei89]

Yeah this is just a NO for me... Having to boost my comsats every once in a while would soon get quite annoying. It wouldnt really add any challenge to the game but instead it would add a whole lot of irritating "routines" that I just have to do at times...