Flight Question Cant deorbit after successful orbit insertion.

[sinncier]

On the quickstart glider mission. ( 5.0 Quickstart in the manual) I can takeoff and make it into a stable orbit no problem. But when i try to do a reentry (deorbit) i always crash but it seems like i never even make it through the atmosphere.



edit: nevermind, i think i'm just reentering in a place on earth with no graphics. I just need to learn how to reenter over the kennedy space center i took off from which i'll learn later on.

 

[Lucy]

I think it's more likely what happens is your "camera" goes through the surface of the planet. There's no back face to the surface, so you look upwards through it.

At least, that's the only thing I can think of which would match your "place on earth with no graphics" statement. There are no such areas.

For learning to reenter and deorbit and land and all the rest, I'd recommend Go Play in Space, available on the tutorials page here. It's totally free and was written specifically for those new to Orbiter. It'll not only tell you what to do but why you do it, which helps you to grasp what to do in any scenario.

 

[garyw]

What do you mean by "no graphics"? Are you talking about a blank screen or a blue patch of water or a green patch of ground? There are not many places with surface objects and re-entry can be a bit touchy so it's easy to end up miles from anything

 

[fireballs619]

Are you re-entering correctly? If not, that would be why you are crashing without making it through the atmosphere. As Xyon said, Go Play in Space is a fantastic resource, but I am not positive they have a tutorial on re-entry into earth's atmosphere.
I would recommend this tutorial that use Aerobrake and Basesync MFD. It is probably the easiest way to de-orbit, in my opinion.

 

[Tommy]

You need to watch your altitude in SurfaceMFD. If you click the <HUD> button on the MFD, this will also be shown on the HUD, near the top. The value after A is altitude, the value after V is your speed.

Unless you are near KSC, the resolution of the ground tiles is a bit low compared to most flight sims. This is especially true if you haven't downloaded a higher resolution tileset and enabled the higher resolution in the launchpad. This makes the ground look blurry and gives the illusion that you are higher than you actually are.