Stupid, Crazy, or Just wierd things you've done with Orbiter

[dougkeenan]

Used the Scenario Editor to plunge the ISS into Earth (made one hell of a fireball too)

That can also be done by docking a ship with enough thrust firing retro - then undock, killrot, at about 75km to watch ISS go spiraling into the atmosphere.

 

[RisingFury]

Used 2 turbopacks to get a UMmu in orbit around the Moon.

Used the Mars rover to get into orbit around the Moon

Docked to ISS and did a de-orbit burn with it...

Once in orbit, I used up nearly all of the DGIV's fuel to gain massive rotation, then used the remained to do a de-orbit burn and let the atmosphere slow my rotation. Didn't work out too well

This is what I do quiet often:
I hover 0.5 meters over the runway with the gear up in DGIV and then deploy them to get shot up like 400 meters with some weird rotation and then I try to save myself

 

[Kaito]

That can also be done by docking a ship with enough thrust firing retro - then undock, killrot, at about 75km to watch ISS go spiraling into the atmosphere.

I tried. I tried VERY hard. The DGIV just doesn't have enough thrust, RCS wise, to align it Retrograde AND keep it there. I'm thinking of docking Two DGIV's, one on either side of it, then aligning one Retrograde, and the Other Prograde. My hopes are that it will then have enough trust on either side to keep it Retrograde.

 

[dougkeenan]

I tried. I tried VERY hard. The DGIV just doesn't have enough thrust, RCS wise, to align it Retrograde AND keep it there. I'm thinking of docking Two DGIV's, one on either side of it, then aligning one Retrograde, and the Other Prograde. My hopes are that it will then have enough trust on either side to keep it Retrograde.

Try it with the orbit HUD up - any time you get at all close to the retrograde indicator, fire up for as long as you can until the complex rotates out of position. Slow and steady, down she comes.

 

[Kaito]

Yeah, I could have...But it brings a smile to my face when I can play "god", and just change a couple values, and she goes down. ^_^
On a less sadistic note...

I tried going STRAIGHT from ISS to the Moon...3% fuel left after i did my Lunar Orbit Insertion Burn....yeah, not a good idea

 

[agentgonzo]

I tried. I tried VERY hard. The DGIV just doesn't have enough thrust, RCS wise, to align it Retrograde AND keep it there. I'm thinking of docking Two DGIV's, one on either side of it, then aligning one Retrograde, and the Other Prograde. My hopes are that it will then have enough trust on either side to keep it Retrograde.

Gimbal your main engines to rotate the ISS retrograde and then regimbal to stop the rotation - also, as you are way off the CoM of the station, use LIN thrusters rather than ROT thrusters to rotate the station. Once you've aligned it properly, use a combination of main thrusters (possibly gimballed) and hover thrusters to burn retrograde without inducing rotation. You won't be able to do this from all docking ports as you need the rotation induced by the main and hover engines to be in the opposite direction.

 

[Goth]

I went to the Sun.

I put on the DGIV a tank with 4000 Kg of fuel to attach to a space station. Then I reached orbit, but without fuel. So I released the payload, I docked to the tank using RCS engines, and I transfered the fuel with the "Fuel MFD".

I took off the Shuttle-A from the Earth.

I reached the speed of light.

I went very very very very far from the solar system.

I put 3 Jato on the default DG.

 

[Artlav]

Made a self-replicating vessel. Orbiter lasted 100 seconds before grinding to a halt.

Crashed the Moon into the Earth.

Made a gravity-killing vessel.

Attached a nuclear bomb propulsion system to a DG.

Made a time-stop module. The planets stopped, the vessels flew off.

Made a small black hole in orbit around the Earth and successfully killed a DGIV-full of people trying to recreate Neutron star short by Larry Niven.

Circled the Moon in DG at 4.3Km/s, upside down with hover engines at full. 10 meters away.

Landed UMMU on the Moon from orbit using 2 turbo packs.

Got into circular orbit within 3M from the center of the Sun.

 

[agentgonzo]

Circled the Moon in DG at 4.3Km/s, upside down with hover engines at full. 10 meters away.

Surely the next logical step would have been to orient yourself nose-down with the hover engines thrusting prograde. You could have then used hover engines to accelerate your orbit and use the more powerful main engines to thrust towards the centre of the moon so that you can increase your orbital speed whilst still staying at 10m?

 

[dougkeenan]

Crashed the Moon into the Earth.

This I gotta see. How? With a ship, or by hacking the lunar orbit?

 

[agentgonzo]

This I gotta see. How? With a ship, or by hacking the lunar orbit?

I don't think that you can alter the motion of planets/moons with vessels in orbiter (could be proved wrong). If I'm wrong, then it'd be fun to fly out to Mars with a DG and bring Phobos/Deimos back into Earth orbit and have 2 moons!

 

[Artlav]

This I gotta see. How? With a ship, or by hacking the lunar orbit?

Just screwed the orbit.

 

[ar81]

I was orbiting Mars in LEO. A DGIV was supposed to have problems and crew had to eject. Ejection should have been done in prograde direction, but they did in the opposite direction. They were supposed to be rescued by a vessel parked at Olympus. But they started to descent and either they burned in the atmosphere or crashed at high speed on the ground.

The next time I did it worng. Two astronauts grabbing each other and turbopacks attached to each pair. They were supposed to fire the pack in prograde direction, but it was hard to find where prograde was, specially as you entered the night side, since I used daylight to attach astronauts to each other.
Astronauts were swearing about the day Dan Steph removed Orbit HUD display from spacesuits... hehehe.
Captain of the ship did not make it. Probably there was slight atmosphere and he entered atmosphere.

------------------
Once I approached Saturn. I did not set polar orbit so I passed across the rings at 25 km/s.

 

[Wraith]

This one's made especially for you, Artlav:

Uhh... Houston?.. I think we have a problem here!


Yeah, Houston, (hic!) I think *they* have a problem *there*. (Hic!)

 

[Quick_Nick]

Did a slingshot flight past Jupiter, and around Saturn, flying back to Earth at 70km/s. Reentry was instant!
(I actually only did a slingshot around Jupiter. I didn't decide to return to Earth until sometime AFTER I left Saturn. If I had planned it earlier I probably could have saved fuel and increased velocity by slinging around Saturn.)

 

[cjp]

I once launched a Venture star without cargo, and used the remaining fuel to go to the moon. Once my translunar trajectory was perfect, I didn't have any main engine fuel left. I used RCS fuel to get a lunar PeA of zero meters. I approached the surface while still in a hyperbolic orbit, and used the landing gear to try a smooth landing. The smooth touchdown was a succes, but it bumped me up, and the RCS was not strong enough to push me down again. I managed to do a retrograde burn to get into an elliptical orbit, and do another touchdown in an attempt to slow me down for a final landing, but the RCS fuel was empty before I could land.

I also tried to use a Delta Glider with unlimited fuel to push the ISS towards Mars. I didn't really have a flight plan, but I managed to spiral outwards to increasingly larger orbits. Problem was that the thrust force wasn't really pointed towards the CG, so each engine burn made the ISS rotate. All of it was so annoying and time-consuming that I never escaped earth.

I also landed (I mean crashed) on the sun, using a 'realistic' trajectory. I got rid of most of my orbital velocity by doing a 'backward slingshot' around Jupiter, with an extra engine burn at the 'Perijove'.

 

[RisingFury]

I tried. I tried VERY hard. The DGIV just doesn't have enough thrust, RCS wise, to align it Retrograde AND keep it there. I'm thinking of docking Two DGIV's, one on either side of it, then aligning one Retrograde, and the Other Prograde. My hopes are that it will then have enough trust on either side to keep it Retrograde.

Use the gyroscopic forces!

Rotate the ISS using RSC engines. That will stop it from spinning in other axis. Then just wait for the DG and ISS to be rotated so that DG is facing retrograde and hit the gas.

 

[n122vu]

That can also be done by docking a ship with enough thrust firing retro - then undock, killrot, at about 75km to watch ISS go spiraling into the atmosphere.

I once edited the ISS's config file to give it main engines & RCS, then turned on unlimited fuel. (You have to give them A LOT of power to get the mass of the ISS moving). After saving the scenario (I may still have it somewhere) I deorbited the ISS, which ironically, when all was said and done ended up somewhere in the Pacific between Australia and Los Angeles.....

I then reloaded the saved scenario and used IMFD to take the ISS to the moon.

 

[agentgonzo]

On the weekend, I decided to see if I could slingshot my way around the solar in the DG in the lifetime of a human using only one tank of fuel.

I started landed on Mercury in about 1960 I think. The plan was to sling to the planets to eventually join up on the Voyager 2 trajectory that did JSUN in one go. I think that I slung past Venus 4 times, then Earth twice, then Mars, then performed a course correction of about 300m/s to get back to Earth, whereby I Slung by it twice more before getting to Jupiter and then Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. There was a period of about 6 years where I was waiting for Jupiter to get into alignment which was a bit annoying, so launching later from Mercury would be a better plan. I got out to Neptune with about 53% of my main fuel remaining and about 10% of the RCS fuel in the early '90s.

That was a long Saturday. I was going to land on Nereid too, but forgot to turn time accelration off when I attempted the Neptunian orbital injection burn and flashed through all the fuel and zipped off somewhere else. :-(

I wish I'd have taken notes and screenshots as I went though.

 

[penlu]

Sticking myself with UMMU into orbit around Phobos at 17 meters.