Hello Venus

[Cpt CryBaby]

My first venture inward from Earth got me a spectacular sunrise at Venus. Ok...I embelished a bit in photoshop.

TransX works quite well in reverse (inward towards sun). For some crazy reason I thought the burn would need to be retrograde so that the planet sort of dropped me off.

I'm still confused about how Earth didn't slam into me (or vice versa). Didn't my orbit around the sun need to be slower than earth's for me to fall inwards toward venus? Sort of like making a left hand turn from the right hand lane in front of a bus?

What ain't I gettin'?

 

[Moach]

velocity in orbit is a very much relative thing...

while you increase your velocity in relation to the earth, to the sun, you're slowing down :hmm:

 

[flytandem]

Sort of like making a left hand turn from the right hand lane in front of a bus?

What ain't I gettin'?

More like, (if you would like a driving illustration) driving around a traffic circle, and instead of branching off out of the circle to the west, you go another half circle and branch off heading east. You still branch off away from the circle cleanly without cutting off any traffic (hopefully), but the city a couple miles to your south sees you leaving the circle going the opposite direction away from the circle.

if needed, traffic circle is at [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_circle"]Traffic circle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[PhantomCruiser]

As in all things, what matters most, is when you burn (prograde)...:thumbup:

 

[Izack]

When you burned prograde from LEO, were you in daylight? Because that would mean you were burning roughly retrograde from the Sun [assuming you were in a prograde orbit around Earth (west-east.)]

 

[johan]

Not long ago, I made this mistake when returning to earth from the moon - I was in prograde orbit around the moon, so naturally I had to reverse my orbit direction in order to slow down my earth orbit... :facepalm:, now I see the fallacy. Cost a lot of fuel too!

Thanks guys...

 

[Enjo]

Some time ago I made this pic.
On the left you see how you would eject into an outward transfer orbit and on the right into an inward transfer orbit, as seen from Earth. Note the orientation of the ejection leg w.r.t. the Sun. You need to escape the Earth in the right direction.

The full small balls are planets' current positions and the empty balls are future positions upon ship reaching its target.

(For Polish readers - the pic comes from my presentation about spaceflight)


[EDIT]
Oh and one pic for Johan. The grey text is "Our orbit as seen from the Moon", and the green one is "Our orbit as seen from the Earth".

 

[jedidia]

oh the frames!

what is the prograte orientation around earth, might be the retrograde orientation around the sun. Or it might not. Solely depends on the timing. I think Enjos picture describes it quite nicely.

to pick up the initial traffic analogy: you're not doing the turn in front of the bus, you slow down, let the bus drive off, and then do the turn behind it, just as you should. At least when you look at it from the suns reference frame. If we look at it even more closely, you're not even behind the bus, you're comming from the opposite direction, and speed up so it doesn't capture you with its awsome bus-gravity and drag you with it. well, I guess at this point the analogy breaks down somewhat :lol:

 

[mc_]

My last flight to Venus was a long time ago (even before UCGO released, so i have to use some derivative of its atmospheric probes). Other hardware was: DGIV, Energy project and DeltaTug.

Here is it, if you like (russian language, but lots of screenshots).

 

[Richy]

Short time ago, I also visited Venus. And Artlav's [ame="http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3488"]Shukra Balloon Station[/ame] is always worth a visit!

It's interesting, decending to Venus' surface is like diving to the sea floor with a submarine.

 

[cinder1992]

My last flight to Venus was a long time ago (even before UCGO released, so i have to use some derivative of its atmospheric probes). Other hardware was: DGIV, Energy project and DeltaTug.

Here is it, if you like (russian language, but lots of screenshots).

Oh dear, you seem to have gotten the "garbled surface glitch" present in O2006.

 

[mc_]

Short time ago, I also visited Venus. And Artlav's Shukra Balloon Station is always worth a visit!

Does it work in 2010?

Oh dear, you seem to have gotten the "garbled surface glitch" present in O2006.

I thought it was an Orulex bug :facepalm:

 

[Richy]

Does it work in 2010?

Yup!