Dealing with Really long burns?

[Rylant]

So had a contract for a satellite with a ridiculously low Solar Orbit and decided to put a Xenon Electric Propulsion engine on it to get it to the final destination.  It has lots of room for the maneuver and lots of delta v, but the burn is like 4 hours... Do you guys just start the burn and go to bed? LOL.  It will be resolved in the morning.  Or is there a fast way to execute the maneuver?  I am assuming I can't start the maneuver and then leave the craft and time warp?

Thanks,

Rylant

[Souptime]

4 hours ago, Rylant said:

So had a contract for a satellite with a ridiculously low Solar Orbit and decided to put a Xenon Electric Propulsion engine on it to get it to the final destination.  It has lots of room for the maneuver and lots of delta v, but the burn is like 4 hours... Do you guys just start the burn and go to bed? LOL.  It will be resolved in the morning.  Or is there a fast way to execute the maneuver?  I am assuming I can't start the maneuver and then leave the craft and time warp?

Thanks,

Rylant

you can use phys warp by pressing ALT . which speeds up time warp to 4X without it having to stop everything

Or if you play modded there's a mod called persistent thrust which lets you time warp while you burn, but it does have a few game breaking glitches, mainly one where you cant time-warp and have to go back to the space center, or some SRB's in early career mode don't light but those should be fixed

if you wanna just leave it be for the 4 hours then i've found that watching movies helps time flow by fast but at the same time keep an eye on your craft in case something happens you don't waste an hour

[AHHans]

5 hours ago, Rylant said:

Do you guys just start the burn and go to bed?

Well, 4 hours is too short for a good night's sleep. But have lunch, get groceries, read a book, watch a movie, or so are all compatible activities.

And, as @Souptime said: physics warp is your friend. But if it is a good movie then I'd recommend to not to overdo it with the warp.

Edited June 11, 2021 by AHHans

[jimmymcgoochie]

Four hours, from Kerbin orbit? You’ll never get close- orbiting Kerbin takes barely half an hour so you’ll complete eight whole orbits during that burn time and most likely end up back where you started or crashing into the atmosphere, depending on when the burn starts.

Use a liquid fuelled stage to throw the probe out of Kerbin’s SOI, then the ion thrusters can do their job in solar orbit where the long burn time is a very small part of the orbital period. Alt+> turns on physics warp in space so it’ll take less time, but that can also cause wobbliness in some crafts so just be careful that it doesn’t fall apart; you should stop the burn at regular intervals to save the game as it won’t do so while under acceleration and if something goes wrong three and a half hours in… Not fun.

[FleshJeb]

There are a number of good answers to this, depending on the exact numbers involved, your skill level, and your patience:

• High delta-V maneuvers are practically begging for a gravity assist (or multiple), so you may wish to plan a flyby of Eve on the way down.
• If the solar orbit is sufficiently low, a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer may be cheaper. This would indicate transferring out to Jool and doing a powered flyby to lower your solar periapsis. This is probably your cheapest, single-grav-assist transfer.
• Periapsis-kicking will let you split the burn into multiple sections: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/174895-periapsis-kicking/, mod to split burns: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/194881-18x-19x-110x-maneuver-node-splitter/
• A rule of thumb developed by Red Iron Crown (IIRC) was to not do burns of more than 60 deg of your orbit. So, for 4 hours, you'd want to be in a 24-hour orbit. Hopefully I did the math right, but that would be a circular orbit of  8140km (altimeter-indicated--8740 km semi-major axis). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_period, mu found here: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin

[Krazy1]

Use Kerbal Alarm Clock to set a manual alarm that pauses the game near the end of the burn. 

[imcute]

do not use zenon  thrusters then(the nerv engine is better and is isruable)