3 Stage Example Rocket: How far can you go?

Axiom

He who asks ten thousand questions
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#51
I still don't get how some people did some of the crazier missions here though lol
 

Astro826

Biker Mice from Mars
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Voyager Quest
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#52
Nice. I should probably look into resonant orbit calculations myself when I do more insane missions(though I don't think it would have helped much with the one I did here because of there sheer number of assists). I'm not sure if the Mercury assist helps here. There is a method of saving fuel similar to this, called V-leveraging, but it works by raising your periapsis after getting an assist that lowers your orbit. This is more efficient than a standard injection(at least for Mercury, it probably depends on the planets mass and your orbital eccentricity). The messenger spacecraft did this to get to Mercury orbit. However you set up a resonant orbit from the assist without doing a burn at apoapsis. I don't think this changes your flyby velocity of Mercury, as pure assists only change your relative direction, not relative velocity.
 

Axiom

He who asks ten thousand questions
Team Judge
TEAM HAWK
Swingin' on a Star
Atlas
Under Pressure
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#53
Nice. I should probably look into resonant orbit calculations myself when I do more insane missions(though I don't think it would have helped much with the one I did here because of there sheer number of assists). I'm not sure if the Mercury assist helps here. There is a method of saving fuel similar to this, called V-leveraging, but it works by raising your periapsis after getting an assist that lowers your orbit. This is more efficient than a standard injection(at least for Mercury, it probably depends on the planets mass and your orbital eccentricity). The messenger spacecraft did this to get to Mercury orbit. However you set up a resonant orbit from the assist without doing a burn at apoapsis. I don't think this changes your flyby velocity of Mercury, as pure assists only change your relative direction, not relative velocity.
Yes, but I'm pretty sure that the second flyby od mercury was slower than the first. It would have been better if the assist was directly on Mercury's periapsis but we take what we can get
Also if I changed my periapsis after my gravity assist with mercury that would have changed my orbit SMA, which would have changed my orbital period, which would have made the orbit non resonant. This may be possible to do with ANAIS where I could use it to regain an encounter quickly, but I'm on mobile :(