2 ms·
> you'd have no solar power half the time Polar orbit.
by WalterBright 9mo ago
> you'd have no solar power half the time
Polar orbit.
- woooooo 9mo agoSeasons mess that up unless you're burning fuel to make minor plane changes every day. Otherwise you have an equinox where your plane faces the sun (equivalent to an equatorial orbit) and a solstice where your plane is parallel to the sun (the ideal case).
- WalterBright 9mo agoTrue. It would a tradeoff with the fuel consumed vs doubling power output.
- oliv5900 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit A Sun Synchronous orbit at the Day-Night terminator solves this issue
- WalterBright 9mo agoI didn't think of that! I should have had a V8. Thanks for the info.
- elihu 9mo agoHuh, I didn't know that that was possible without burning fuel. Kind of wild that it only works because the Earth has an equatorial bulge and isn't an exact sphere.
- mr_toad 9mo agoSatellites can spin! You also need to deal with precession and other minor chances in the orbit, but they’re all solved problems.