Orbital Achievement Thread

[juicest]

My limited understanding of orbital mechanics says you should fire directly backwards against your direction of travel, rather than straight at the planet. You reduce your speed to lower your orbit's altitude so that it's inside the atmosphere, and that drags you down. I think pointing at the ground is 90-degrees off of that, which means you're mostly just speeding up in a different direction. Is that correct?

[One Winged Angel]

If you point down, you decrease altitude without decreasing velocity. Since orbital velocity decreases as altitude increases, your current speed is now less than the orbital speed at your altitude, and you fall out of orbit. Or, if you fire backwards, you decrease velocity without decreasing altitude, which means you're now going slower than the orbital velocity at that altitude, and you fall out of orbit.

[Sagan]

Currently under my first stable orbit with an apogee and perigee 450m appart, which for my 3rd orbit I consider to be a success. The next challenge of course will be to return home safely. I orbit directly over KSC so I'm hoping I can nail it without having to use thrusters below 25km. Just going to decrease speed as soon as I see landmarks which tell me KSC should be on the horizon.

[Stinger1988]

Got my first Circular Orbit!

[Andras]

I have a near circular orbit established now, 697.320km @ 1649.7m/s; T+38:00

It's ticking up 1m alt every 7 seconds. I've tried a couple times to zero out the vertical, but I can't get a fine enough thruster control.

I take it back, I just hit apogee @ 321 it's sitting on 320 for the last 2 minutes still at 320 @ T+40:00

[P.Funk]

I forget my first orbit. Was only like 5 days ago but I've come so far since then it was unremarkable most likely. I have done some tasty circular orbits. Just today I had an orbit of 17867 Apogee and 17135 Perigee.

My first orbit though had to have been on Tuesday. So the 19th I guess. July 19th 2011!

[Professor Duck]

Hit my 1st orbit today. It was terribly wonky, going between 250km and 80km

Circles may be fun, but ellipses are totally where it's at!

[mekilljoydammit]

Well, did an orbital plane change from equatorial to polar. Involved kicking into an elliptical orbit with an apokee at around 5000km, but totally worked fine.

[SmallChange]

First orbit was just the other day. I'm pretty sure had I shown patience and just left our intrepid trio alone on multiple previous flights it would have been a good orbit, but for some reason I was of the mindset that either gaining altitude or losing it meant that I wasn't orbiting. It hadn't clicked that even though the altitude and velocity numbers were right, there was going to be eccentricity in the orbit that would be trading altitude for velocity and vice versa. I guess that's what I get for majoring in social science.

[Luckless]

Someone just pointed this game out to me a few hours ago.

Just achieved 'Orbit' for my first time,... We're not yet sure what Bill, Jebediah, and Bob are orbiting, but given that they're out around 11 400 000km and holding rock steady at 4714.3m/s the math suggests that it whatever it is, it isn't their home planet.

[Redneck]

Someone just pointed this game out to me a few hours ago.

Just achieved 'Orbit' for my first time,... We're not yet sure what Bill, Jebediah, and Bob are orbiting, but given that they're out around 11 400 000km and holding rock steady at 4714.3m/s the math suggests that it whatever it is, it isn't their home planet.

Congratz...there is also this little calculator tool from a user on the forums named Warringer if you want a circular orbit. Enjoy :cheers:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=562.0

[ChampionHyena]

Hey, all.

Tried to just do a transnational flight, go from one continent to another. First stage of rockets took me up, second took me sideways, and then I started coasting on momentum.

Over ten hours later, here's where I am:

The Kerman clan's been orbiting longer than John Glenn. I had expected my trajectory to be parabolic, but when I made my first descent... well, I missed the planet and kept going. Over and over and over. I'm on a steep, awkward elliptical orbit, and I have no way of knowing when it's going to stop.

Can't wait to see the 'total distance traveled' stat once we land.

...if we land. This command module may end up being a makeshift Kerbalnational Space Station.

[Eat Uranium]

I had my first orbit yesterday around tea time. Despite all the nice new stuff I had downloaded, the rocket that achieved it was entirely stock. I'm not entirely sure how stable it was, but I guessed from patchy observation that apogee was 114km and perigee at 111km. Deorbited with intent to land back at the pad, but not knowing geography yet (or what the purple mark on the ball points to) I landed one continent too early and Jeb, Bill and Bob succumbed to the dark side.

I currently have my second orbit in progress, with apogee 78850m and perigee 78212m, which is very much more circular. I even have more fuel to play with than before. Hopefully I can aim my landing better this time.

[Xerillum]

I had my first orbit last night (only took 20 attempts over a week ). Perikerb at 55km, Apokerb at 775km. All stock parts, but I let the final stage burn longer than intended, so I can't deorbit. But on the plus side, I beat all my friends into orbit.

Some weird northern lights looking stuff

Lens Flarey Goodness