If you...

[flowen8]

If you have a 5km high craft landed on the mun, have the same orbital velocity as something in a 5km orbit? This would be for a 5km orbital fuel line for the kethane mod, so i don't have to land on the mun everytime.

Edited July 10, 2013 by flowen8
to clarify

[Kimberly]

No, it won't be moving at all (relative to the Mun). What horizontal force would there be to set it in motion? Ordinarily, you provide that by burning prograde. And even though the Mun doesn't have drag, you'd still experience friction. Does the Great Wall of China move at the same speed as something in a 6000 kilometer-high orbit?

I'm not sure I fully understand your question.

[RocketPilot573]

Err, it would move at the speed of the ground. But that's IF you could make such a craft. I believe that anything longer than 2.5 Km wont fully render, and that's excluding the part count...

[pebble_garden]

If orbital speed were at all related to rotational speed, then the rocks and suchlike on planetary bodies would be at or near freefall. Now that would be exciting!

[PixelStache]

It would, but only if synchronous orbit around the mun was 5km. Unfortunately it's much higher (it's so high it isn't even possible) and an object orbiting around the moon at 5km would scream past your tower. That being said, I'm not even sure it's possible to build such a large tower in KSP.

If you're ever curious about your speed, test it for yourself! You can click on your orbital velocity panel (just above the nav ball) to cycle to surface speed. If you're in a stationary orbit, the speed will be zero, and at low altitude orbits it will be much higher.

[firerider521]

No, it won't be moving at all (relative to the Mun). What horizontal force would there be to set it in motion? Ordinarily, you provide that by burning prograde. And even though the Mun doesn't have drag, you'd still experience friction. Does the Great Wall of China move at the same speed as something in a 6000 kilometer-high orbit?

I'm not sure I fully understand your question.

Is the Great Wall of China 6000 kilometers high?

[Kimberly]

Is the Great Wall of China 6000 kilometers high?

Before the edit, the original post used the word long, which gave me an incorrect mental image...hence my confusion.

[K^2]

If the gravitational force is applied to individual modules, tidal forces will rip a 5km long ship apart. Though, that should happen long before you manage to land.

[Vanamonde]

Besides, ship parts are only fully simulated within a range of 2.25kms of your current POV, so that's as tall as any tower can get. Not to mention that it would be quite a trick simply keeping the thing from collapsing under its own weight. flowen8, what you're suggesting is like a space elevator, which only works if you build it up to the geostationary altitude of the world in question, which for Mun, is more than its ~2200km SOI radius.

[Nibb31]

What you are describing is similar to the Space Elevator concept. You basically want a tower that reaches up to geostationary orbit.

This is not possible on the Mun, because the altitude of a geostationary orbit is beyond the Mun's SOI. On Kerbin, it would need to be 2868km tall, which poses quite a challenge, as anything larger than 2.5km cannot be rendered by the graphics engine. On Earth, it would need to be 36000km tall, which poses all sorts of structural problems.

I suggest reading up on the Space Elevator idea.

[John FX]

If orbital speed were at all related to rotational speed, then the rocks and suchlike on planetary bodies would be at or near freefall. Now that would be exciting!

Completely possible on a resonably quickly spinning munlet/large asteroid. walk in the wrong direction and you attain escape velocity...