Interesting Interplanetary Flights You've Made

[francisdrake]

These pictures are from a test flight with the 'Bekuko' (Vasimr-engine driven) with the MEM attached to it, and landing the MEM on Mars surface. Made it back to the Bekuko, although with the last drop of fuel in the MEMs ascend stage

 

[Sam]

I've been doing Orbiter on and off for a few years, but haven't done any interplanetary stuff lately. Maybe I'll try landing on Titan again; low gravity + thick atmosphere = an interesting descent.

Lately I've been doing some stuff with orbital rendezvous, without the God-in-the-box showing where the satellite is; no F9, Docking HUD/MFD, etc. Basically using Orbit MFD's numbers to get a rough idea of where in the visual field the satellite is, finding it, and eyeballing your way in. Which means planning with the Sun angle in mind much more than I'm used to. Kinda intricate, and although I'm grappling and deploying satellites reliably now, I've still got a few kinks to work out of the methods. That just makes it that much more interesting.

SAM

 

[Andy44]

Lately I've been doing some stuff with orbital rendezvous, without the God-in-the-box showing where the satellite is; no F9, Docking HUD/MFD, etc. Basically using Orbit MFD's numbers to get a rough idea of where in the visual field the satellite is, finding it, and eyeballing your way in. Which means planning with the Sun angle in mind much more than I'm used to. Kinda intricate, and although I'm grappling and deploying satellites reliably now, I've still got a few kinks to work out of the methods. That just makes it that much more interesting.

That's how the Gemini crews did it. I'd like to have some of their notes.

 

[insanity]

I've just made it to Europa where I 'found' a nice fresh supply of life support and fuel. Now I have to figure out where to go next, either Mars or Saturn (for a titan landing). While I'm in the Jupiter orbit I think I will fly-by Io and try to set up a jupiter sling on the return.

 

[Nemoricus]

I did the Deep Star 2.0 Earth to Jupiter scenario once. I came in badly with a retrograde orbit.

Since I was pretty sure that there was not enough delta-v on the Deep Star to fix it, I decided do a consolation fly-by of Io and then head home. I opened up TransX and planned and executed a burn to take me within a few hundred kilometers of Io.

As I was approaching, I thought that the path looked a little strange. Then I realised that I was going to smack right into Io. I don't know if there was anything I could have done about it, but I did end up smacking into Io in excess of 15 km/s. Now, in reality this would have reduced Deep Star into a crater and debris field on Io's surface. Since it's not, I bounced off and went into a dizzying spin.

I then recalled that planning maneuvers for a transfer orbit measures distance from the center of the planet, not the surface. Oops.