Should There Be A Mid Celestial Orbit?

[Nicodo123]

there's low and high, but no mid, so what do y'all think?

[magnemoe]

45 minutes ago, Nicodo123 said:

there's low and high, but no mid, so what do y'all think?

It kind of is mid level orbits, one problem with earth is that you prefer not to put your satellite in the van-allen belt. 
Also you either want low orbit to being close to earth like starlink or spy satellites or just to reduce cost like ISS. Or you want to be high to cover most of the earth like GEO or gps orbits. 

[MR L A]

It's not necessary. By that I mean the futher sub-division of what are frankly completely arbitrary terms isn't needed. The lines between "high" and "low" are a bit blurry, and it seems silly to group satellite A as "low orbit" and satellite B as "high orbit" when there could be just a single meter in altitude difference.

I'm somewhat critical of whichever part of human nature it is that insists we continually categorise things, especially when it offers no tangiable benefit, breaks down completely under any logical scrutiny because there's always an edgecase that blurs the boundary, or worse creates more confusion than if the category simply didn't exist to begin with.

If you're in orbit, specify the altitude. High/mid/low is so vague as to be completely useless to anyone that might be remotely interested.

I realise I sound rather grumpy with that post, it's not aimed at you personally or anything like that - it's just an issue that bothers me far more than it should. Like when I worry about the heat death of the universe at 3am  

Edited April 9, 2021 by MR L A

[king of nowhere]

On 4/8/2021 at 3:03 PM, MR L A said:

It's not necessary. By that I mean the futher sub-division of what are frankly completely abstract terms isn't needed. The lines between "high" and "low" are a bit blurry, and it seems silly to group satellite A as "low orbit" and satellite B as "high orbit" when there could be just a single meter in altitude difference.

I'm somewhat critical of whichever part of human nature it is that insists we continually categorise things, especially when it offers no tangiable benefit, breaks down completely under any logical scrutiny because there's always an edgecase that blurs the boundary, or worse creates more confusion than if the category simply didn't exist to begin with.

If you're in orbit, specify the altitude. High/mid/low is so vague as to be completely useless to anyone that might be remotely interested.

I realise I sound rather grumpy with that post, it's not aimed at you personally or anything like that - it's just an issue that bothers me far more than it should. Like when I worry about the heat death of the universe at 3am  

and yet, we routinely refer to deltaV as starting from low kerbin orbit, and it's much more practical than to specify "from a 78x81 km 1.5 degrees inclination orbit", so it seems there is an actualy point in using "high" and "low" when you're not looking for precision.

I would see no point in talking about mid-orbit, but perhaps someone, somewhere will find useful to use that. but yeah, i agree in not seeing the point. for our purposes, if it's not low orbit, it's high orbit. low orbit is the door to and from a planet. you get in low orbit before landing. once you start, you reach low orbit first. to leave, you start low for oberth effect. and that's a low orbit. and if you're not in low orbit, you're in high orbit. you don't go in high orbit unless you have specific business there. sometimes you park your interplanetary ship in high orbit because it's cheaper to leave, that's it. mid-orbit... what would that even be?

[jimmymcgoochie]

There’s a pretty big difference between orbiting Earth at 150km, just above the atmosphere’s edge, and orbiting Earth at 150Mm, half way out to the Moon. Space low and high are different because you’ll get considerably different readings on many scientific instruments- mass spectrometers, magnetometers, Geiger counters etc.- if you’re close to a planet/moon than if you’re much further away.  The exact delineation is going to be a bit arbitrary because in reality there are gradients instead of sharply defined lines, but it’s a reasonable compromise to make. Adding more altitude “biomes” would just mean the science gains would need turned down to balance it out; not that the science balance is particularly good as it is since you can complete the tech tree without going anywhere beyond low Kerbin orbit...

[MR L A]

53 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

it's much more practical than to specify "from a 78x81 km 1.5 degrees inclination orbit"

When? It is never "more practical", only ever more convenient. For practical purposes, as much precision as possible is required. Convenience is a pretty big factor though, which I hadn't actually considered, but even then its only useful in passing comment

You're right about it being more applicable to our purposes though, seeing as KSP has a definitive line when the atmosphere just stops and low orbit definitely starts

Taken from the KSP Wiki:

 

Quote

 

High Kerbin orbit (HKO)

In analogy to the real world high Earth orbit (HEO) a HKO describes a stable high orbit around Kerbin. The altitude of a HKO typically is higher than the KEO (2863.33 km).

 

 

This is actually less annoying than I thought the definition of HKO would be, considering that altitude actually has importance... Kerbin synchronus orbit

So I guess you could chuck a mid-orbit from semi-synchronus up?

Edited April 9, 2021 by MR L A

[Daedalus3000]

I think there should be a space mid for kerbol since the SOI is so huge and having space high science from eve through eeloo seems odd.  Not saying they need to change this, in fact they have much better things to do, just my thoughts. For planets I think space low and space high is just fine and more biomes than that (in space anyways) would just unnecessarily increase the already tons of possible science in the game.

[king of nowhere]

6 hours ago, MR L A said:

When? It is never "more practical", only ever more convenient.

 

I fail to see a significant difference between the two