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Orbital mechanics calculations I’m trying to analyze transfer trajectories between a station in LEO and one in lunar orbit. For a given LEO station orbit, there are two launch opportunities per month (when the moon intersects the plan of the station’s orbit). At either of these points, an off...

I'm usually an excel ninja but this is kicking my butt. I'm trying to make an excel lunar transfer dV calculator using equations from this website: hthttp://www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm#maneuver I'm tring to turn equation 4.64 (eccentric anomaly) into an excel formula: using the numbers...

I had intended to work on a list of add-ons I use in my incarnation of the Earth’s “future history,” but after doing a lot of tinkering with Earth to moon & moon to Earth transfers I decided to talk about that first. A well established space infrastructure would feature significant resources...

I discovered Orbiter two years ago. Since that time my favorite group of add-ons has become, by far, Greg Burch’s “future history” series. The release dates of Greg’s add-ons span more than one version of Orbiter and (as he points out in his add-on documentation) a steadily advancing “state of...

I would like to see a “soft landing” module for use with Greg Burch’s Space Station Building Blocks and similar components. My vision is something like this: The “soft landing module” consists of attitude thrusters, a solid rocket de-orbit engine, an inflatable heat shield and parachutes. It...

I know Apollo used retrograde lunar orbits. I have heard that this was because a retrograde orbit leads to lower dV requirements for the LM. A retrograde orbit also seems to better lend itself to a free return trajectory (this is speculation on my part. You can probably set up a perfectly good...

Since my first addon didn't show up in the Orbithanger RSS Feed, I figured I start a discussion thread for it. If you haven't checked it out, I wrote a flightplan for use with the old Autopilot MFD for use with Greg Burch's Big Space Plane. It flies the ascent to the release point then, after...

After downloading Greg Burch's LSTS2.0, I set about figuring a quick and fuel efficient way to transfer from LEO to a station in lunar orbit. I put a small station in a 100km circular orbit around the moon and set out from Earth. My plan was to use IMFD's Planet approach function to adjust my...