Is this a stupid idea?

[stephensmat]

I've never put anything in 'Stationary' orbit before. I've checked the wiki, and I think I can put a Station in orbit over a specific spot above Minmus.

Minmus is my refueling spot now. Low gravity means I get my best return on my Digger/Converter. Large tank fills up on Minmus, and I launch it up to fuel my interplanetary vehicles.

Any reason why I can't send a dozen oversized diggers and attach them all to a Station in Geosynch over my best drilling site, and then just launch straight up/down; cycling the empty tankers out and the full ones in?

As I said, I've never tried synchronous orbits before. If I go straight up, will I be able to match velocities enough to dock into a station, without having to go full into orbit first?

 

[Gargamel]

21 hours ago, stephensmat said:

I've never put anything in 'Stationary' orbit before. I've checked the wiki, and I think I can put a Station in orbit over a specific spot above Minmus.

Iirc, and it’s been a long time since I looked this up, minmus stationary orbit is outside it’s SOI?     Therefore it doesn’t exist.  
 

(Cue math wizards to correct me:)

Even if it did exist, you’d have to burn against gravity all the way up, and then burn to match orbital speed.   You’d drift on the way up requiring the match.          But if you could fly some bachristochrome style approach, it might be “easily” done.       But I still think some mid level orbit would be more efficient.  

And that’s not even considering that synchronous orbits are _very_ tedious maintain without a mod.    

[mikegarrison]

23 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Iirc, and it’s been a long time since I looked this up, minmus stationary orbit is outside it’s SOI?     Therefore it doesn’t exist.

They changed that. It used to be that way, early in KSP history, but they tweaked the numbers a bit so that the Minmus stationary orbit is within the Minmus SOI.

21 hours ago, stephensmat said:

Any reason why I can't send a dozen oversized diggers and attach them all to a Station in Geosynch over my best drilling site, and then just launch straight up/down; cycling the empty tankers out and the full ones in?

Yes, there is a reason. Burning "straight up" incurs what are known as "gravity losses". Burning sideways minimizes those.

If you want to do the Minmus refueling tank farm thing, I suggest just sticking the orbital tanks at somewhere around 200-400 km.

Edited July 3, 2023 by mikegarrison

[Royalswissarmyknife]

Its only a Stupid idea if it doesn't work/makes logical sense. So go see if it works.

I think the lower the Delta-V the better so try to get an orbit that minimizes that.

[Aerodynamic Kerbal]

Yes... Indeed, a stupid idea. 
You need to know orbital mechanics at least a bit for this.

See, if you want the space station directly above the mining spot, then this happens...

You have to either burn A LOOOOOOT to land at the mining spot (very unnefficient) or land at the wrong place (everyone will look at you weird and may spray at your lander like this:

 )

And for ascending, this happens too...

You burn straight up  for the station, but gravity exists and you explode.

You could try this

You have to do a sort of Hohmann transfer. Get to a lower elliptical orbit and then burn again to land. Not very efficient, but it works.

This is a method too

The station is behind the surface base. So when you slow down you can land roughly where you need to be (Landing with precision is hard). BUT for the ascent you will be quite ahead of the space station and you have to accelerate to orbital velocity, again. Then you just need to rendevu (rendedcsvous dsadcwkdsfcrwd)

Hope these quick drawings I made in MS Paint can help you.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Aerodynamic Kerbal
Shift + Enter can send the post apparently?

[dr.phees]

It is in fact possible. It would be an interesting launch profile to write in kOS. Since Minmus is rotating very slowly, you would probably loose a lot to gravity, but since it has no strong gravity, that would not be too much in total.

I do not know if Minmus stationary orbits are within its SOI. If not, then it would not work at all. But, hey, a nice idea.

The biggest issue (provided there is an accessible stationary orbit) is, that each time you dock/undock/get within physics range of your stationary station, you will knock it out of its orbit by a tiny bit. That adds up over time to it not staying at its location, which might ruin the fun for you.

 

But even then: Writing a direct-launch profile in kOS might still be fun enough to work on this. (Would also work on other orbits, but this is more interesting.)