Team Frontier Entry

Altaïr

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#76
A well documented entry!

I checked it and recreated it with success, that's fair and honest. Congratulations on your Voyager entry, very few people managed to get it until now. :cool:
 

Mooncrasher

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#78

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Junipurr

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#79
Congrats, you have your badge!:D


The problem there is something about how you flew with your interstellar burn... You can see that Altaïr made it to LEO with less fuel, but still went interstellar.
I am not good with the piloting bit.
 

Junipurr

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#82
Congrats, you have your badge!:D


The problem there is something about how you flew with your interstellar burn... You can see that Altaïr made it to LEO with less fuel, but still went interstellar.
This might sound like a stupid question for a Retired engineer to ask. Can anyone pinpoint what is inefficient with my interstellar burn, or how I can pilot it more efficiently. Especially since this is a simulation, which doesn't perfectly adhere to real world physics? I am not sure in this case, keeping the ship pointing in the same direction, the duration of the burn is best, or keeping the ship pointing in the same direction, not matter which direction I am travelling?
 

Altaïr

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#83
I am not sure in this case, keeping the ship pointing in the same direction, the duration of the burn is best, or keeping the ship pointing in the same direction, not matter which direction I am travelling?
That's far from being a stupid question.
Energetically-wise, burning prograde (retrograde if you intend to brake) is the most efficient way to gain speed. Burning prograde increases your speed, burning perpendicularly changes the orientation of your velocity vector without increasing its magnitude. Burning sideways but not perpendicularly is a mix of both. Since burning prograde is the option that most increases your speed, thus your kinetic energy, this is the best option.

However, I guess the question is rather if you have to modify your trajectory angle because you didn't aim perfectly. And now that's a very different question. I would still say that burning prograde is more efficient. The problem is that burning sideways is very expensive. For example, if you have to modify your trajectory angle by 5°, you'll have to provide a delta-V of 8.7% of your current total speed (2×sin(angle/2)). If your speed is 3000 m/s, those are 262 m/s. That's doable, but that's a lot for such a small angle. Spending those 262 m/s to increase your total velocity would be more profitable in the end. So even in this case I would burn prograde, but I can't fully justify it mathematically.
 

Junipurr

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#84
Energetically-wise, burning prograde (retrograde if you intend to brake) is the most efficient way to gain speed. Spending those 262 m/s to increase your total velocity would be more profitable in the end. So even in this case I would burn prograde, but I can't fully justify it mathematically.
That is really useful information, unfortunately that means turning on thrusters before hitting the Nav computer's Transfer Point. The less specific thrust, the earlier you have to hit it, and there isn’t a way in game to accurately measure angles in a user friendly way. Burn too early, or too late, and you feel tempted to make course corrections on the fly, rather than reloading a quicksave. This reminds me of the discussion last year, or was it 2020, we had about a generalised Gravity Assist Calculator.
 

Altaïr

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#85
That is really useful information, unfortunately that means turning on thrusters before hitting the Nav computer's Transfer Point. The less specific thrust, the earlier you have to hit it, and there isn’t a way in game to accurately measure angles in a user friendly way. Burn too early, or too late, and you feel tempted to make course corrections on the fly, rather than reloading a quicksave. This reminds me of the discussion last year, or was it 2020, we had about a generalised Gravity Assist Calculator.
Yep, it's not easy. In such a situation I've already calculated the transfer point by hand, but it's not simple. I had to take screenshots of the planetary configuration, measure the angles with a protractor application and apply the needed formulas to calculate the angular position from which I should start burning. Apart from that the best solution is save and reload I guess :p