5 ms·
Don’t all gas stations require you to precisely match their position and velocity? Like how do you fill up your car without doing this??
by hughes 5y ago
Don’t all gas stations require you to precisely match their position and velocity? Like how do you fill up your car without doing this??
- bpye 5y agoI think it might be more reasonable to look at this like air to air refuelling, rather than a petrol station. Either the tanker or the satellite or both must spend a significant amount of fuel to align their orbits and velocities precisely and during that operation they are likely unable to perform anything else.
- jjk166 5y agoIn air to air refueling, both parties are spending incredible amounts of fuel simply holding themselves aloft at cruising speed. Matching alignment is a literal drop in the bucket by comparison. The amount of fuel required to align spacecraft in similar orbits is miniscule compared to the cost of getting fuel into orbit to begin with. You're talking 10s of m/s of delta-V.
- bob1029 5y agoProbably something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKF0KXMha2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKF0KXMha2E
- ashtonkem 5y agoThere’s a wee bit of difference between matching speed with a gas station and matching speed with a satellite, both in terms of cost and complexity.
- tehbeard 5y agoEhh, it's easy enough to eyeball it. Source: 1000+ hours in KSP :P
- perl4ever 5y agoWell, if everybody did that, they wouldn't have bollards. Or breakaway hoses.