Geostationary Refueling Station Questions

[ScottyDoesKnow]

So I put a refueling station into orbit, then quickly changed the design and sent a new one up. I figured I'd throw the first one up into geostationary orbit, preferably so ships can launch directly to intercept. A couple questions:

1. Where's the best place to put it? Should I just do a launch and see where I end up?

2. Are there any tricks for getting to geostationary orbit at a certain point? My thought is to get the apoapsis at the point I want, then my circularization burn will leave me there. Then I just have to worry about getting my apoapsis in the right place.

Edited October 26, 2013 by ScottyDoesKnow

[Sirine]

A synchronous orbit is achieved at an altitude of 2 868.75 km and a speed of 1 009.02 m/s.

May I know your understanding or definition of "Geostationary orbit"?

1) Best place to put a refueling station: 70km~150km.

2) ???

[Specialist290]

1. Where's the best place to put it? Should I just do a launch and see where I end up?

Not entirely sure how to address this one; an orbit is an orbit, more or less, and the energy it takes to reach one orbit from another with the same craft is more or less always going to be the same if you always do it the same way.

2. Are there any tricks for getting to geostationary orbit at a certain point? My thought is to get the apoapsis at the point I want, then my circularization burn will leave me there. Then I just have to worry about getting my apoapsis in the right place.

The trick to this bit is that while your station is transferring from its parking orbit to a geostationary orbit, Kerbin itself is rotating at a rate of 360 degrees every six hours. Meanwhile, your transfer orbit is going to take you from periapsis (approximately the location of your burn if you do a Hohmann transfer) to apoapsis (geostationary altitude, again assuming an ideal Hohmann transfer) -- that is, 180 degrees -- in half your orbit's period. This thread should give you some advice on how to work out the specifics of that.

[Lheim]

Geostationary is way too high to be efficient, and it really doesn't help you get intercepts easier. If you just fly up to the right height from the surface you won't be moving near fast enough to be in orbit, and you'll have exactly the same issues you would at an 80 or 100k orbit while needing more fuel to get up there.

[Dun Kirk]

with mining it makes more sense for a fuel depo above minmus than floating at geosync.

[Sirrobert]

It takes less energy to get a craft into Low orbit than it would take to get geosync.

It also takes less energy to randevous with a station in low orbit. So why would you want anything you need to randevous with in geosync?

[ScottyDoesKnow]

I'll start by saying I know it's not efficient, but I currently have 3 refueling stations in orbit (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55317-LZY-275t-Refueling-Station) and one of them is an older version with half the capacity, so I wanted to do something else with it. I figure if I put it into geostationary orbit in the right location, rockets taking off should be able to get an encounter direct from liftoff.

A synchronous orbit is achieved at an altitude of 2 868.75 km and a speed of 1 009.02 m/s.

May I know your understanding or definition of "Geostationary orbit"?

Geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit at the equator.

Not entirely sure how to address this one; an orbit is an orbit, more or less, and the energy it takes to reach one orbit from another with the same craft is more or less always going to be the same if you always do it the same way.

Best place so that newly launched vehicles will naturally get an encounter if launched to that height.

The trick to this bit is that while your station is transferring from its parking orbit to a geostationary orbit, Kerbin itself is rotating at a rate of 360 degrees every six hours. Meanwhile, your transfer orbit is going to take you from periapsis (approximately the location of your burn if you do a Hohmann transfer) to apoapsis (geostationary altitude, again assuming an ideal Hohmann transfer) -- that is, 180 degrees -- in half your orbit's period. This thread should give you some advice on how to work out the specifics of that.

That's useful, thanks. Guess it was pretty obvious that I could just do a test going up to that height, check how far my location changed and revert.