Push space Station to higher orbit.

[zeedesertfox]

I'm not quite sure, but I'm afraid that my space station is in danger of losing its orbit (at least with the way I dock). Any way I can get a large craft up there to move this roughly 200+ ton piece of SCIENCE!, into a safer orbit? I need a good parking orbit that's over 200 km, yet low enough that its still relatively easy to dock with. Its current ALT is a circular ( ish... APo and PEo are off by about a klick or so) orbit at 198 km. I had it set at first at 200 km, but I tend to Ram/dock, or dock at highish speeds.

Yours- ZeeDesertFox

[HoY]

You can't knock it out of orbit from that altitude. It would need to have its PE down below 67km before drag would start to bleed some speed off. Even 67 km would stay stable for a long long time. You really start to bleed off speed down below 55km.

[zeedesertfox]

Im paranoid. Ive seen how easy it is to deorbit things, and I want this thing idiot proof.

[AndreyATGB]

If you really insist on putting it higher, just dock some engines and push it. Though you're probably never going to de-orbit it from high speed docking, you need at least 50-70dV to lower Pe under 67km, which you won't do by just docking.

[Mr Shifty]

You can probably use RCS to push it back up above 200km.

[Cheaterman]

Trust me - human silliness may be infinite, you'll probably never be enough of an idiot to de-orbit a 200km high space station simply by docking into it a bit hard. At least you wouldn't de-orbit it before destroying both crafts or causing severe structural damage to your station.

In case you really need it, it's quite easy to build smallish unmanned tugs consisting of only a NERVA and a medium 1m tank, with an antenna, some panels and two smallish RCS tanks.

[Sirrobert]

At that hight, you can simply use RCS to push your orbit up. Though it won't matter

[zeedesertfox]

Allright. Just want to confirm. Ive worked hard on Cadia 2, and I dont want to see it go into a 200 fireball

[Tiron]

Allright. Just want to confirm. Ive worked hard on Cadia 2, and I dont want to see it go into a 200 fireball

Unlike Earth's, Kerbin's atmosphere flat ENDS at 69,078m or so. In order to accidentally de-orbit the station you'd have to drop below that altitude, so that drag started pulling it down. Even then, at that height the drag is extremely minimal (consider that most real-world orbits are constantly in such conditions). In order for it to be a major problem you'd have to drop below...say 50,000 or so. It Won't single-pass deorbit until down to about 30,000 if I recall correctly.

[M5000]

It Won't single-pass deorbit until down to about 30,000 if I recall correctly.

That's likely fairly accurate, but remember, it's all dependent upon where you're dropping into the atmosphere from. If you're dropping into a 30Km PE from right on the edge of Kerbin's SOI, you might very well go back into orbit again hahaha.

[Viper_607]

A de-orbit from that altitude would require approximately 90 m/s of delta-v and depending on the size of your station, and any attached engines, that might be very difficult to achieve. if you're worried, just check your altitude after each docking and adjust with a small tug or built in engine.

Unless you decide to "Dock" at 90 m/s, at which point there won't be much of a station to dock with afterwards, then you should be safe.