Flight Question Landing on a Venus balloon from orbit?

[Artlav]

Given: A balloon platform 50 Km above the Venus surface, XR2 in orbit and whatever navigation tools available around.

Needed: Land the XR2 on the platform, that is get it to subsonic speed within glide range from the balloon.

The problem is a high-precision re-entry with a target high above the surface and un-selectable by tools like Aerobrake MFD (balloon=vessel, not a base).
Eye-balling the location on ABMFD's graph yields significant aiming error.
Just aiming intuitively, re-entering, noting the offset, reloading, aiming intuitively with offset in mind, re-entering, noting offset, etc considered cheating.

Any ideas?

 

[T.Neo]

The balloon station you describe is in free float, right?

I'd make the station a landed vessel, with the touchdownpoints kilometers below.

Then I'd create a base, and put the station on top of that base. Then I'd target it in Aerobrake MFD.
(Wait that wouldn't work, because the station is 50km up. Stupid me )

Maybe a custom MFD to target the station?

 

[Artlav]

The balloon station you describe is in free float, right?

I'd make the station a landed vessel, with the touchdownpoints kilometers below.

Then I'd create a base, and put the station on top of that base. Then I'd target it in Aerobrake MFD.

The station moves with the atmosphere (ideally), so it will round the Venus every 4 days.
That is, a surface base approach is cheating too.

 

[T.Neo]

That is, a surface base approach is cheating too.

Yeah, I know.
All I can think of is an MFD. Would this be possible?

 

[RisingFury]

Can you modify the location of a surface base at runtime? If you can, you can modify your base to include an updated location every few seconds or so.

 

[Artlav]

Can you modify the location of a surface base at runtime?

No way i know of.

 

[RisingFury]

Not even creation and deletion of surface base locations?
I mean... they gotta be created and deleted at one point

 

[sputnik]

Isn't the source for AerobrakeMFD available? Would it not be possible to add vessel-targeting to it? Just using the lat/long and assuming it stays fixed should be good enough for our purposes.

 

[cjp]

Maybe re-entry to a point in the atmosphere that's guaranteed to be before the balloon, and then fly towards the balloon in a powered, aircraft-like flight?

How realistic is the scenario simulated in Orbiter? Do you actually have wind somehow? Does the balloon move?

 

[Linguofreak]

Well, at the moment, Aerobrake just gives you the speed and position at which you will cross the zero altitude mark. What we need is a utility that will give the speed and position that you will cross an arbitrarily defined altitude mark. This would actually help for normal landings on Earth, too, because generally you're not aiming to come down right on top of the base marker for Cape Canaveral, but rather to cross the base at the proper speed and altitude to begin your HAC. So you're not aiming for the base so much as you're aiming for a point a fair distance above the base. It might also help to have tools for determining the altitude and position at which you will fall below a certain speed, and the speed and altitude at which you will come closest to a given poin.

So I think modifying Aerobrake to work with baloon landings on Venus would also really help with normal landings on Earth, so an MFD programmed for the task wouldn't just be a one-off project only applicable to a few tasks, but rather a really great tool with lots of potential uses.

 

[T.Neo]

This is going off topic, but whenever I reach a certain distance from Shukra, I CTD.
Was there any patch/update release that I don't know about?