Question Wideawake to Wideawake half orbit calculation

Tommy

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I'm not really sure, because I have not fully tested this yet, but before reading your post, I thought they canceled out. Launching Prograde gives you the advantage of the Earth's spin, but you are chasing a target that is moving away from you.
Doing the opposite means that you are moving towards a target that is moving towards you.
I prefer to use Groundspeed in the equation, because it reflects the rate at which you are approaching your target.

I guess it depends on whether you are trying for a ballistic trajectory, or plan for a multiple skip re-entry. If you plan to go ballistic, you would need a much higher groundspeed to attain the ballistic trajectory - around 8.4 km/s. If you'll use aerodynamics (ie, a Sanger Re-Entry), I suspect they more or less cancel out.

In my experience, the retrograde option has always cost me significantly more fuel.
 

Gr_Chris_pilot

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It applies, but what happens when the points overlap? Isn't the distance equal to going once around the Earth?

Still, I cannot find anything wrong with your reasoning for finding the distance.

EDIT:

I think I got it. You didn't take into account the "movement" of the opposite coordinates due to Earth's rotation.

I think you are right! :facepalm: but i reallized even with errors like this the actual change of launch heading is less than 0.5deg probably 100k to correct at reentry soooo the passengers will never know :rofl:

---------- Post added at 14:08 ---------- Previous post was at 02:13 ----------

After a few tests my distance calculation method put me only 5km north of my target (BasesyncMFD) I used LanchMFD for my flight set for 8.10deg inclination (91.55 southern heading) Thanks a lot for the help!

Happy orbiting!!!
 
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