Mun station orbit

[DJRWolf]

I am planning on putting a space station in Mun orbit and use that as a base of operation to send lander's down to the surface. I was wondering what would be a good altitude to place the station at? I was thinking somewhere between 75km to 100km. I'm also planning on doing the same with Minnimus and am thinking they are about the same size so it would be the same orbit.

Edited January 9, 2014 by DJRWolf

[capi3101]

I've got one at 25 kilometers over the Mün; haven't established one over Minmus yet but I imagine it'll be about the same altitude. Same notion.

[Traches]

It's personal preference really-- a high orbit will require more dV to reach from the surface, but it might be easier to intercept and you will be able to time warp faster.

Have you considered using a polar orbit? It'll let you hit all the biomes with the least dV, but timing becomes important.

[Bobnova]

I've found that for me, it's easier to dock with something in a lower, faster (shorter orbital period) orbit than something higher up.

I'd put it maybe 5-10km above the level of the highest mountain, whatever that might be.

That's enough room to put your orbit inside it to catch up, but not so high that it'll take forever.

Plus you need less DV to land and return, so you can use a smaller lander.

[stevism]

First, time warping isn't personally an issue because after I plant my first flag on the surface. I switch to that when I need to do faster time warps.

For the Mun I put it around 35-45k, equatorial. Load it up with a lot of fuel so polar trips, etc, aren't a big deal.

Minmus has much lower gravity and is smaller than the Mun, so you can kind of do whatever you want with that. For Minmus I like to orbit it really low (25k or so) just because it's a nice view and easier to aim landings with rotation taken into account...but far away orbits aren't that much harder to manage either, since it's easy to get to high orbits.

[Smidge204]

The absolute minimum guaranteed-to-be-safe altitude for Mun is 8km... which is only a few hundred meters above the highest peaks. For Minmus it's like 6km - low enough for the ground scatter to render!

Not only does it require less dV to get back up to that orbit, but you get a small but useful efficiency bonus from the Oberth effect.

Do it, you know you want to.

=Smidge=

[ArmchairGravy]

The closer you are the more the station will spin as you orbit, which can complicate docking. If you're using an equatorial orbit and align the docking ports on the north/south axis you can orbit anywhere you want without worrying about chasing the port as the station rotates.

[Panzerbeard]

I've got mine in a 10km equatorial orbit; cheap easy landings and returns, maximum advantage for insertions/ejections due to Oberth Effect, and zooming around just a few kilometres above the surface never gets old. It will cause some issues for exploring the polar regions, though, I may have to get creative with those.

[DJRWolf]

Thanks everyone for all of the info

[Pecan]

I am new(ish) to KSP and lazy, so I let MechJeb do my rendezvous for me. That dictates what separation phasing orbits will be established at and, therefore, whether they will be needed at all. At Kerbin, for instance, it wants to create a phasing orbit 100km above/below my space-station. Placing the station at 250km means there is sufficient room below it that MechJab can go directly from 100km launch-orbit to rendezvous, including a margin for deformed orbits and to keep the numbers round ^^. By extension, any required outer phasing/rendevous orbit would be at 400km and my 'traffic control' rules make 550km for parking orbits.

At the Mun MechJeb wants a 30km separation and launch-orbit would be 10km so traffic control says: inner phasing/rendezvous 10km, station 45km, outer phasing/rendezvous 80km, parking 115km.

Incidentally; I tend to design landers to go only from low-orbit (10km for mun) to the surface and back. Changing and circularising orbit at that height, plane-changing and recovery (rendezvous, docking and returning) are all left to a general-purpose spacestation tender which gets all the fun jobs.