This is how the pros maneuver their space stations!!

[michaelphoenix22]

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/how-nasa-steers-the-international-space-station-around-space-junk/

really neat article on the ISS

[XenonSpark]

"ADCO: the Attitude Determination and Control officer. Notice the baseball bat, for attitude adjustment."

I lol'd so hard.

[regex]

Great read, thanks for reposting!

[TwoHedWlf]

"ADCO: the Attitude Determination and Control officer. Notice the baseball bat, for attitude adjustment."

I lol'd so hard.

Hahaha, That's the best thing I've seen all day.

[Scotius]

Very good article - thank you. I'm surprised at ISS's ability to move around 1 m/s of thrust is quite good for a obiect this size. I wonder what installation of VASIMR prototype will change in the future. This thruster is a power hog, so probably all burns will be pre-planned weeks ahead. But in a pinch it might be useful to have extra plasma drive onboard

[joppiesaus]

I didn't know the earth has atmosphere at 355 km.(is it real? I don't think so. The article says that.)

[Scotius]

It's very thin, but apparently still able to influence orbital speed. Actually ISS rotates its solar panels at night to reduce drag.

[Subcidal]

I didn't know the earth has atmosphere at 355 km.(is it real? I don't think so. The article says that.)

The atmosphere on earth isn't like it's shown in KSP. It's a very gradual gradient. In KSP it's a hard line at 70 KM

[Flixxbeatz]

And I can't even rotate mine in every orientation I want to...

[el_coyoto]

The atmosphere on earth isn't like it's shown in KSP. It's a very gradual gradient. In KSP it's a hard line at 70 KM

Exactly, every atmosphere slowly "bleeds" into space, meaning there's no hard boundary between space and the atmosphere.

In summary, the mass of Earth's atmosphere is distributed approximately as follows:

* 50% is below 5.6 km (18,000 ft).

* 90% is below 16 km (52,000 ft).

* 99.99997% is below 100 km (62 mi; 330,000 ft), the Kármán line. By international convention, this marks the beginning of space where human travelers are considered astronauts.

Which means that 0.00003% of the total Earth atmosphere can be still found above the 100km mark.

Even though it's very thin, the atmosphere still produces a small drag on the ISS and everything in LEO that accumulates over time.