Interplanetary Aerobraking

[Manfredatee]

Hello Everyone!

I am doing a Duna landing-and-return mission. I was wondering if someone could tell me good altitudes for aerobraking into orbit from an interplanetary trajectory for Duna and Kerbin. Aerobraking at both ends should get into orbit, so I can drop stuff down (Lander at Duna, other stuff at Kerbin.)

[Guest]

13 ~ 14km generally works, but you can go lower if your relative velocity is higher. If you're worried about it, come in at 13.5km or thereabouts and make another pass if needed. Quicksave beforehand so you can practice or see the results.

[AnalogAddict]

For Kerbin, you might want to stay above 34km(dependent on drag of your craft) to avoid dropping like a rock to the surface.

[Guest]

For Kerbin, you might want to stay above 34km(dependent on drag of your craft) to avoid dropping like a rock to the surface.

^this, I totally missed the Kerbin part of your post, OP, apologies.

[Skorpychan]

How do you set that up, anyway? Do you do radial burns to take you in towards the planet?

[Taki117]

Radial burns are the cheapest (dV) wise to do it, but it's not going to change your orbital velocity. If you burn retrograde it will have the same effect (Especially if you put in some radial) while additionally slowing you down. If you use Deadly Reentry you are going to want to come in as shallow as possible, and have lots of drag.

[Soda Popinski]

Curious how this turns out. I've done this before I installed FAM / Deadly Re-Entry, and am trying it again. This time with balute inflatable heat-shields, since I needed to put my engines outside the main core (to make space for the balute inflatable heat-shields). Sort of a chicken and egg thing.

[Tank Buddy]

The answers seem about right, but I always quick save, test, and repeat.

[Soda Popinski]

Is there any way to calculate this before hand? When NASA designs their aerobrake trajectories through Mars, I'm pretty sure they weren't quick saving.

So I guess I'm asking, is there a way to pre-simulate this before running it in this orbital simulator?

Edit: 5 seconds after posting this, I Googled "KSP aerobraking calculator" and found the KSP Aerobraking Calculator.

I run FAR, so I'll need to figure out my drag coefficient somehow. It may be in all those numbers somewhere.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Soda Popinski

[Superfluous J]

I use what I lovingly call The Needlessly Complicated Aerobraking Calculator to do it, and then ignore everything but the target periapsis.

[Manfredatee]

Thanks Regex and AnalogAddict! I'll let you know when I try it.