Minimum Altitude Required For Kerbin Orbit?

[Warspite]

I picked the game up in the recent daily deal and have achieved around 160km with my first ship. This doesn't seem to be sufficient to achieve an orbit. Could someone tell me what altitude I need to be reaching ?

Having checked on Wikipedia that appears to be the bare minimum required for a RL LEO (Low Earth Orbit). Is Kerbin's gravity the same as Earth's?


Thanks for your help.

PS This is a great game. My best purchase in months.

[Fel]

Kerbin is half as big but is a dense as earth I think.

You can go as low ass 60Km I think, but that wouln't let you time warp properly.
You shoul be able to have a stable orbit around 80Km.

But usually, the standard for orbit is 100Km.


Now, those numbers are altitude above see level, unless I missed something, so it's not the radius of your orbit.

[Warspite]

Thanks for your reply.

I must be doing something wrong as my capsule eventually falls back to the planet's surface.

[Rene]

Are you going only straight up? To achieve orbit you need two things: to be high enough to be out of the atmosphere (in this game 70 km is enough) and to have a high velocity 'sideways' so you keep 'falling around the planet'. If this is the case I suggest you search youtube for how to orbit with KSP videos. This is one I just found, that may do the trick for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgPr4q5tj-Q

[Bomoo]

~70km is where you stop encountering air resistance, from what I understand, so that's probably the minimum you'll want for a stable orbit.

[Magoobleheimer]

Ya, you need to be going about 2300m/s in a low orbit. The higher your orbit the slower you can go.

[Jackattack]

You have to be at least 70 km's up, but you must have a lot of forward/horizontal speed too.
A stable orbit means you are constantly falling towards the planet/moon you are orbitting, but your forward/horizontal speed has to be high enough to never hit the ground.

[JimTheNinja]

Go straight up for 10 Km then slowly point your nose to the 90 on navball. Be sure your velocity marker does not go under the AH. Look on your map till you Apoge hits 100 Km, be sure to bring up navball in map view so you can steer while in map. Set nav node to prograge till your Apoge and Paroge are the same and burn throught the node (Split the est time the comp gives you).

That should do it

[Fel]

Apoapsis and Periapsis are the correct terms for everywhere.
-ge is only for earth (geo)

[Acus]

Lowest orbit - 70 km @ approx 2200 m/s horizontal (orbital) speed

[sigma female]

Originally posted by Fel:

Kerbin is half as big but is a dense as earth I think.

You can go as low ass 60Km I think, but that wouln't let you time warp properly.
You shoul be able to have a stable orbit around 80Km.

But usually, the standard for orbit is 100Km.


Now, those numbers are altitude above see level, unless I missed something, so it's not the radius of your orbit.

6 times as dense, 6th of the size atleast 70km up and it is SEA, get your facts straight.

[[m00] insane_eon]

Originally posted by Mr. Wurmple:

Originally posted by Fel:

Kerbin is half as big but is a dense as earth I think.

You can go as low ass 60Km I think, but that wouln't let you time warp properly.
You shoul be able to have a stable orbit around 80Km.

But usually, the standard for orbit is 100Km.


Now, those numbers are altitude above see level, unless I missed something, so it's not the radius of your orbit.

6 times as dense, 6th of the size atleast 70km up and it is SEA, get your facts straight.

Density
Kerbin: 58500 kgm^-3
Earth: 5520kgm^-3
Mean Radius
Kerbin: 600km
Earch 6371km
Looks more like more than ten times as dense and less than a tenth of the size to me!

ref: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin

[snavis]

Another issues that people seem to miss is the mass of your ship also can effect how/when you can enter orbit, this game is one of the best out there IMO but they need more tutorials and in-game blips to explain things like this. I KNOW I KNOW ITS STILL EARLY ACCESS, dont need to say it try-hards.

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

Originally posted by snavis™:

I KNOW I KNOW ITS STILL EARLY ACCESS, dont need to say it try-hards.

You know, technically everyone who plays this game is a "try-hard", since you have to - try hard - to get things into orbit.

...

I've been watching too many Chuggaaconroy let's plays...

[Warspite]

Thanks for the replies,

Rather naively I assumed that if I got a craft high enough and with a lot of speed it would automatically enter orbit. However reading your posts I now realise that isn't sufficient and I need sideways motion as opposed to just going straight up.

I need to brush up on my rocket science and watch some tutorials on Youtube!

Thanks again.

[sigma female]

Remember, the game is all about !!SCIENCE!!