Making a more standardized orbit plan

[3_bit]

I've been doing some looking at real-world research, and space is actually quite organized (at least with the latest vessels...)

What I want to know is why nobody has come up with a committee to standardize this kind of stuff in the Kerbal universe.

After all, what good is Multiplayer without an order for orbits as collisions will become inevitable, so an orbital chart server operators could drag and drop onto their rules page?

Thus, in preparation for not only hardcore-realism series that will no doubt arise as well as multiplayer, which is still far off (from what we know),

a set of "standard" orbits everyone should follow should be proposed, and stickied in challenges or something along the lines of that.

I propose this:

70-75km: LKO, for GPS satellites and similar, as well as SSTOs and other vessels. This would be the typical orbit at which launch stages are detached.

80-90km: Non-Geosync orbit for satellites, must be capable of self-deorbiting.

100-125km: Standard orbit for Stations, Drydocks, and vessels

Geosync/stationary: (2 868.75) km: orbit for things such as Satellite TV broadcast equipment, as well as other research vessels.

30000-35000 km: Graveyard orbit

(why? very little dV needed for old satellites to get to it)

----------------

Something along the lines of this might be useful, I imagine. Any ideas?

[Ralathon]

80-90 km is a horrible orbit for sats. You generally want your GPS sats in semisynchronous orbits (I like to use 1.5hour) and many sats would be in polar orbits. You do not want polar and equitorial orbits to share the same height.

Anyway, considering that multiplayer is at the least years away and most likely wont ever happen this is quite a pointless classification anyway. If it ever came out game mechanics would've changed to the point these orbits make little to no sense.

[7499275]

If we had multiplayer then a system like this would be extremely useful and very handy to have. But because mp is not in the game and probably won't be this is kind of pointless but that fact that your implementing real life orbits into KSP is a great idea, although personally I do not use the graveyard orbit, I just make sure I can always deorbit.

[Supernovy]

Time warp boundaries seem like a natural place to put orbit definition boundaries, I generally use 70 - 120 km as LKO, but beyond that I haven't really thought about it. It's either Mid Kerbin Orbit from there to semisynch (approx. 1588km) and high orbit beyond that, or MKO to geosynch and HKO beyond that.

3Mm seems like a nice number for a GKO graveyard orbit.

[SkyRender]

Kerbin has 4 orbits of note for me: 70KM (local-system transfers, mapping satellites), 75KM (fuel stations, interplanetary transfers), semi-synchronous orbit (GPS), and geosynchronous orbit (pretty much anything communications-related).

[Tygroux]

I wrote a long post about what, why and how we could choose, before realizing we already had a very simple solution.

We already have hard limits to define orbits altitudes.

Warp Speed limits altitudes.

50x 70k

100× 120k

1 000× 240k

10 000× 480k

100 000× 600k

That would, imho, put 120k as the LKO top limit, as above 100x it become very hard/inefficient to map anything with ISA and kethane.

We then have a range of MKO from 120k to ~3000k(geosync orbit).

Above that we have nothing of interest that i know of.

[Geschosskopf]

What I want to know is why nobody has come up with a committee to standardize this kind of stuff in the Kerbal universe.

Committees are the natural defensive reaction of the incompetent and stoddish when they're confronted with anything smacking of innovation or, even worse, individual initiative. Thank whatever gods there be that nobody can play KSP without being an innovative self-starter .

Edited August 29, 2013 by Geschosskopf

[Guest]

What I want to know is why nobody has come up with a committee to standardize this kind of stuff in the Kerbal universe.

Because every game is different.

70-75km: LKO, for GPS satellites and similar, as well as SSTOs and other vessels. This would be the typical orbit at which launch stages are detached.

80-90km: Non-Geosync orbit for satellites, must be capable of self-deorbiting.

100-125km: Standard orbit for Stations, Drydocks, and vessels

Geosync/stationary: (2 868.75) km: orbit for things such as Satellite TV broadcast equipment, as well as other research vessels.

30000-35000 km: Graveyard orbit

I use 200km for interplanetary transfer parking orbits, 80km for Mun and Minmus transfer parking orbits, and 400km for stations. Nothing below 80km.