12-11-2017, 02:23 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Pennsylvania
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Re: [Spaceships] Breaking orbit with a low-thrust drive
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A spiral would work, since you would continuously raise the orbital point on the other side. Real life ion probes do this all the time in solar orbits, thrusting for months on end. Most probes leaving earth still have access to high thrust cyrogenic stages from their launch vehicles, and will make the escape burn as part of the launch from surface. Hence we haven't seen a "staged" departure from Earth IRL. I believe that staged captures have been done, but I may have been wrong. I've seen and done both in KSP. You can also try Orbiter. |
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12-11-2017, 02:32 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: [Spaceships] Breaking orbit with a low-thrust drive
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12-11-2017, 02:42 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Pennsylvania
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Re: [Spaceships] Breaking orbit with a low-thrust drive
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12-11-2017, 03:33 PM | #24 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Spaceships] Breaking orbit with a low-thrust drive
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__________________
The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. Last edited by johndallman; 12-11-2017 at 03:48 PM. Reason: Correct orbit |
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12-11-2017, 03:53 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Breaking orbit with a low-thrust drive
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If instead you go into an elliptical orbit with a perihelion of 0.01 AU (requires about 26 km/s at Earth), your velocity at perihelion will be around 422 km/s (and escape velocity will be 424 km/s). Spend your remaining 34 km/s (new velocity is 456 km/s) and final velocity is sqrt( 456^2 - 424^2 ) = 167 km/s. However, if all you care about is escaping, you can't beat the 12.4 km/s required to just escape straight. |
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12-13-2017, 10:28 AM | #26 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] Breaking orbit with a low-thrust drive
How do you figure—or even approximate—average orbital velocity in such a trajectory though?
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