Stable Orbits

Nice and Simple.

Well after the last video you should now be able to build a rocket, use the basic mathematical equations to ensure the rocket is efficient and launch the rocket properly with the use of the gravity turn. Congratulations you have successfully launched your craft on to a sub-orbital flight path.

Fine Tuning.

Now that your vessel is on a sub orbital flight path, we want to get it into a stable orbit. We are going to burn pro-grade at our flight path apoapsis. The icon looks like this;

Pointing at this marker at the flight path apoapsis will increase and circularise the orbit. This basically makes the orbit bigger. Pointing the ship at the retrograde vector will decrease the orbit (because you are thrusting backwards, which will slow you down)The retrograde marker looks like the picture below.

The icons are similar to each other but mean very different things.

A Perfect Circle.

From the get-go i want to teach the viewers how to get a a very accurate orbit. I personally do this because i am picky and i like my orbits fine tuned. It also makes life easier for orbital rendezvous.

This is difficult to explain and the video will explain it better, but i will do my best to put words on the page.

Let's say that you have an orbit of 120,000km by 150,000km. There are two things you can do to make these equal. The first is by burning pro-grade at the point of the orbit that sits at 150km this will increase the 120km because you are thrusting forward. This will increase dependent on how much thrust you use but will eventually reach 150,000km and exceed that height if the engines are not stopped.

The second way is to burn retrograde at the 120km point of the orbit to slow down. This will decrease the 150,000km.

I hope that makes sense, below is a video of me circularising  an orbit around Kerbin to help viewers who just want to see it done. Enjoy!