General Question Stable solar Orbit

[bimmer4011]

Greetings all, new guy here! I love the orbiter sim, and I wish I had the math skills to do cool things, but I don't. My dyslexia kicks my @$$ every time I try to get into orbital mechanics.

On to my question:

I'd like to set up several space stations at various distances away from the sun, but in orbit of the sun. I'm having zero luck getting anything to orbit any planet/moon, so I figured it has to be easier to put something in a stable orbit around the sun. Lagrange points would be nice, but I'm not picky.

My understanding is that the x,y,z and velocity vectors for a stable orbit depend on the position of the planets, and the position of the planets depend on the date plugged into the scenario.

I can live with decaying orbits, if they can last longer than a couple of months (sim time). Any ideas?

Thanks in advance! :tiphat:

- Ron

 

[Wishbone]

Are you using a) videnie by Artlav and b) Orbit MFD while tweaking the params with Scenario Editor? Basically, set Ecc (eccentricity) to zero or very close to it.

 

[bimmer4011]

I think it's videnie. Yes, I try to keep the ecc close to nil, but I'm not sure about my velocities.

What I've been doing is setting the stations ecc pretty close to zero, and adjusting other settings (to approximately be between the orbits of the major planets) then setting the vel. -- trying to get it going circular and stable around the sun. Running the sim fast farward to check it's movement.

The results I'm looking for are resupply stations at predictable positions around the solar system. :thumbup:

 

[Bonanza123d]

I would like this. Make large stations in orbit. It would be cool. Try L4 and L5.

 

[Urwumpe]

Please...forget math about orbital mechanics - it is actually only geometry and works best if you use this as simple rule of thumb and let the Force do the calculations for you.

Even for leaving Earth properly into solar orbit, your better off letting the MFD calculate for you, you just need to know the concepts. Like what is a hyperbolic orbit, and what does hyperbolic excess velocity mean. Math is only important for add-on developers.

 

[Izack]

Running the sim fast farward to check it's movement.

It's much much easier just to look at OrbitMFD.

For a start, pause the scenario, and in the scenario editor set your semi-major axis to 1.3AU, and every other value to zero. Eccecntricity, longitudes of ascending node and periapsis, location at epoch, all of it. Unpause. Voilà: stable circular orbit. After you have that, it is much easier to adjust the parameters to what you want, if you didn't have the numbers beforehand.