Perfect Geostable Oribits

[Arran]

Now i know (to a degree) know how to get my sattelites in a Geostable Orbit, i have them finetuned on 2868.4 orbit, and made certain the surfacespeed is 0.

But after a few weeks/months ingame time, they start too drift again with variable speeds, some sats sooner as others, but eventually they all off again by a several hundres meters and gain groundspeed again. So i need to "finetune" the objects every so much weeks ingame time..

What becomes very maintance dependent, and boresome//

Now i compensated this by adding more Sattelites, but this doesnt solve the spacings between them, that at first are all neatly spaced but after a while the spacing become more or less between them, but at least the added sats, prevent a link loss with KSC..

Is this due some error i made in placing the Sattelites, or is this due gamemechanic imperfections (ie float roundoffs) or such that i just cant keep the orbits perfectly stable over an lenght of time..

Edited December 27, 2013 by Arran

[Murph]

It's essentially impossible to achieve a truly perfect geosynchronous orbit, both in real life and in KSP. In the real world, the satellites need ongoing small corrections throughout their service life.

What you can do in KSP, however, is cheat a little and edit the orbit parameters in the save file to achieve a true perfect orbit. They will then remain in that perfect orbit as long as you never make them active (either by switching to them directly, or by an active ship passing within 2.5km of them). As soon as they go active, the orbit will lose perfection.

[Sirine]

Try not to do the 1-4x physical warp. Anywhere near your Sat.

For true I have no ideal. High possibility the game is not precise enough.

[Arran]

Well, at least, essentially i never will archieve the "perfect" orbit, no matter how perfect i place them.

Guess i need to (what i in a way allready did) make the network so, that i allow "drifts" and add sattelites to compensate for the drifting, and if they drift too much out of place, i correct them, and maybe cheat a bit like Murph said, in fixing them into place, hoping i never get too close to them to "activate" them again, not that i really need to get near them again for a reason, in a worst case scenario i would get close on a launch flying past them.

At least thanks for the insights, i can work with this, guess redundency is the key here then.

[Peppe]

I thought it was better to use orbital period instead of m/s for geo sync orbits?

With a flight information mod to give you orbit information down to the second.

[Pineapple Frenzy]

When I'm doing a GSO, I plan to arrive at my apogee at precisely 2868.8 Km, and then burn until the orbital period is precisely 6h 00m 00.0s. The satellite will usually alter its position slightly over the course of its orbit, but always returns to the original position after each orbit is complete. The variations in position are cyclical and negligible WRT the function of a GSO satellite. This is as close to GSO as one can get, and is quite satisfactory for my needs, for several long missions. Over time, the satellites will drift in one direction or another. Since the only reason I need GSO is for Remote Tech comms satellites, and they can maintain line of sight with one another over quite a large variation in position, I usually don't tweak their orbits until they are several hundred kilometers out of position. To reposition them, I measure the amount of time ahead, or behind, their ideal position they are. Then I adjust the orbital period in the appropriate direction by that amount, wait one orbit, and then return the orbital period to 6h 00m 00.0s.

For example:

If my satellite has drifted retrograde and is now five minutes behind its nominal position, I will reduce its perigee until the orbital period is 5h 55m 00.0s. Then I'll wait one orbit and burn at apogee until the orbital period in 6h 00m 00.0s.

Easy peasy.

Tweaking GSO satellites is one of the most satisfying activities in KSP. Seeing your comms lines form that perfect equilateral triangle around Kerbin is really cool.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Pineapple Frenzy