flytandem
Tutorial Publisher
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Just finished another marathon run at Orbiter. It started with a discussion with agentgonzo about triton and phoebe doing retrograde orbits. I couldn't find phoebe but it did get me looking at MPC-database viewer. After a while I actually managed to import asteroids into Orbiter RC1. yay. I might be slow but I sometimes do figure things out. :lol:
Then I looked around for something with high eccentricity and saw Icarus. This rock is nearly a mile wide and goes from an Ap out far beyond Mars in the asteroid belt and has a Pe nearly half of Mercury. Probably why they named it Icarus,... flying too close to the sun. And to make it more interesting as a target, it is fairly inclined relative to the ecliptic at nearly 23 degrees.
My gut feel said this would be a tough one to rendezvous with under limited fuel but here are three ways that worked.
1. Going direct even by doing things "right", meaning plane changes at high Ap etc had me make it on fumes. From LEO it used up 19,400 m/s deltav.
2. I found an interesting way to drop the Pe to match Icarus with an Ap also close to Icarus and align the axis of the orbit to match icarus as well, by doing a reverse sling off Jupiter. It still left the plane of the orbit a good 23 degrees or so off of Icarus and to make matters worse, the node wasn't anywhere near the Ap where it would have been an easy plane change. But this did better than direct only using up 17,600 m/s deltav from LEO.
3. The third method was the most fun. It began similar to method 2, going to Jupiter and reverse sling. It also got the Pe and Ap and axis not too far from Icarus, but this time it targeted Earth. Doing this it did 2 consecutive slings or Earth. Both of them were a few hundred Km agl above the north pole which did a plane change and didn't change the Pe, Ap or axis very much. You see the node of Icarus and Earth is not terribly far from where Icarus crosses Earth orbit. (but far enough to not worry about ever getting hit by it)
Anyway, the double sling at Earth managed to reduce the needed plane change from 23 degrees to about 11 degrees plus best of all and my real goal was that it pushed the node out to sit on the Ap where it would be very efficient to change planes. And this 3rd method even with all the course corrections, used up only 9,930 m/s deltav from LEO. This is probably within the reach of current technology. But total flight time was 18 years, a heck of a long time for batteries for example, not to mention that any wax in them would surely melt.
Then I looked around for something with high eccentricity and saw Icarus. This rock is nearly a mile wide and goes from an Ap out far beyond Mars in the asteroid belt and has a Pe nearly half of Mercury. Probably why they named it Icarus,... flying too close to the sun. And to make it more interesting as a target, it is fairly inclined relative to the ecliptic at nearly 23 degrees.
My gut feel said this would be a tough one to rendezvous with under limited fuel but here are three ways that worked.
1. Going direct even by doing things "right", meaning plane changes at high Ap etc had me make it on fumes. From LEO it used up 19,400 m/s deltav.
2. I found an interesting way to drop the Pe to match Icarus with an Ap also close to Icarus and align the axis of the orbit to match icarus as well, by doing a reverse sling off Jupiter. It still left the plane of the orbit a good 23 degrees or so off of Icarus and to make matters worse, the node wasn't anywhere near the Ap where it would have been an easy plane change. But this did better than direct only using up 17,600 m/s deltav from LEO.
3. The third method was the most fun. It began similar to method 2, going to Jupiter and reverse sling. It also got the Pe and Ap and axis not too far from Icarus, but this time it targeted Earth. Doing this it did 2 consecutive slings or Earth. Both of them were a few hundred Km agl above the north pole which did a plane change and didn't change the Pe, Ap or axis very much. You see the node of Icarus and Earth is not terribly far from where Icarus crosses Earth orbit. (but far enough to not worry about ever getting hit by it)
Anyway, the double sling at Earth managed to reduce the needed plane change from 23 degrees to about 11 degrees plus best of all and my real goal was that it pushed the node out to sit on the Ap where it would be very efficient to change planes. And this 3rd method even with all the course corrections, used up only 9,930 m/s deltav from LEO. This is probably within the reach of current technology. But total flight time was 18 years, a heck of a long time for batteries for example, not to mention that any wax in them would surely melt.
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