3 ms·
Funnily enough orbital mechanics don’t work that way. To accelerate towards an object ahead of you in your orbital plane you need to lose velocity, drop into a
by lumost 4y ago
Funnily enough orbital mechanics don’t work that way. To accelerate towards an object ahead of you in your orbital plane you need to lose velocity, drop into a slightly lower orbit, then gain velocity to slow down and intercept.
Velocity is tightly coupled to altitude when orbiting.
- amelius 4y agoIs that relevant at relative speeds of say 1 m/s and distances of a few tens of meters?
- namibj 4y agoNo, only when you get close to being on the other side of the planet by the time you reach the other spacecraft. Or take even longer, of course.
- NobodyNada 4y agoNo. Thrusting the "intuitive" way will indeed bring you closer to your target in the short term. Over time (specifically, enough time to be an appreciable fraction of the orbital period) the difference in speed will cause you to drift into a higher or lower orbit, but at low speeds and low distances this effect is tiny, and you can easily compensate for it by thrusting radially. See this Space.SE post: https://space.stackexchange.com/q/44622 https://space.stackexchange.com/q/44622 Or just play KSP :)
- lumost 4y agoThis effect is pretty pronounced in KSP at distances of a hundred meters or more. Trying to dock the intuitive way is pretty much impossible.
- NobodyNada 4y agoIt's easier if you put SAS in target-tracking mode and use it to keep your velocity vector pointed towards the target (by aligning the target and prograde crosshairs). But yeah, once the distance gets into the triple digits it's definitely time to think about giving up on the docking attempt and just fixing your orbit. Note also that this effect is a lot stronger in KSP than in real life, since Kerbin has a much smaller radius than Earth and therefore orbital periods are shorter (assuming the same altitude).