Help (re)build Lagrange Science Station alpha

[Shmi]

Some stoned asteroid miners smashed their vehicle into our station and I'm afraid it is beyond repair (Damn your
cookies Dan).

So we need your help.  We would like to have a seriously good looking space station with lots of labs and room for
everybody to visit in their personal DGIII's  Have you any suggestions?

and we want to build it here at one of the stable  Lagrange points L4.


Does anyone know anything about this area? how best to get to it? does the beta station at L5 have a better
position?

Were we stupid to want to want to use a Lagrange point?

Should we go somewhere with better views (like near Mars for instance?)



Post Edited ( 06-21-04 15:52 )

[AphelionHellion]

Cool!!
Personally I like L2 - it's close enough to Earth to get to quickly and would make an excellent "jumping off point"
for starting transfers to Mars and the outer solar system.
Perhaps after you've put together your station design we can come up with different scenarios that have that station
at different Lagrange points so folks can see which one they like best

[DocHoliday]

Well, personally I would suggest the HAmmerstation. It is huge and beatutiful and has rotating pods to simulate
gravity.. All you will ever need

As for best position. All the points along the axis Earth-Moon are more or less unstable, the most stable are L5 and
L4 I believe. There was a lot of discussion about those on the main forum. I never tried to get there, but I bet you
could just calculate the postion and stick the station there directly

[McBrain]

Shmi: You could draw a basic design for your station and post it here.
Then we could try to build it in Anim 8 or.

Aphelion: Wouldn't it be very difficult to set up a trajectory from anywhere in the sol system to get to one of the Lagrange points? And how do you place the station at the points?
Maybe Doc could give it a try-and-see.

[DocHoliday]

It's not hard, it just takes aaaages. All you really need to do is circle around the Sun in a tighter/wider orbit than the
Earth and make sure you get the timing right, so you come back to your apohelion and circularize at the exact right
distance... Takes a few short calculations, but I'm lazy right now Now the points around the moon are more tricky,
but as I said, also not stable.

[Brouette]

L4-5 actually are unstable but Coriolis effect would cause your station to actually orbit these points, should it deviate
a bit (and it will if you use the 1000-10000x you need to get there...). So you'd have to dock to a station that's
orbiting a point that's orbiting the sun...8o

I was wondering as well: if you plan to use the Sun-Earth system's L4-L5, they should be stable but for other planets
gravitational influence. Since these points are 1 AU from Earth, it will eventually happen that your station feels a
stronger influence from, say, Mars or Jupiter than from the Earth... Wouldn't that pull them out of your Lagrange
points?



Someone should try that anyway...

;)Cheers!

Brouette

[Shmi]

Wow so much great help, in such a short time, thanx guys!

I think I would like the Hammerhead design, a picture was posted a while ago then disappeared.  I expect it's easy
to find to download?

Kind of you to offer McBrain ,but I'm sure I couldn't come up with anything half as good and it seems pointless to
duplicate the effort.

BTW I didn't get the idea for the Lagrange Station from the main site (humble confession I haven't got round to
visiting there yet !) but I vaguely remembered about the Lagrange points from my years of reading science fact and
fiction and then :google:d to check I'd remembered right.

I think calculating the position then sticking it there directly sounds my kind of method - the same for the visiting
spaceships!

Isn't L2 already occupied?

Shmi is deeply greatful

xx Alison

[schumanna]

Brouette wrote:
L4-5 actually are unstable but Coriolis effect would cause your station to actually orbit these points, should it deviate
a bit (and it will if you use the 1000-10000x you need to get there...). So you'd have to dock to a station that's
orbiting a point that's orbiting the sun...8o

I don't fully understand "L4-5 actually are unstable becouse at

http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/lagrange.html it stats that:

"The L4 and L5 points are home to stable orbits so long as the mass ratio between the two large masses exceeds
24.96. This condition is satisfied for both the Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon systems, and for many other pairs of bodies
in the solar system. Objects found orbiting at the L4 and L5 points are often called Trojans after the three large
asteroids Agamemnon, Achilles and Hector that orbit in the L4 and L5 points of the Jupiter-Sun system."

Sorry ppl.

schumanna

[Strogoff]

I don't understand the interest of a station at L4 or L5 . Of course, these point are almost stable . But
First aval your are on the earth orbit, so for travels throught the solar system, it's useless . In a second hand,
you need a lot of Delta V to go to these points from earth, because you need to accelerate a lot to escape from earth
gravity and then decelerate a lot to make your orbit earth's one again....
I'd prefer a station on a large elliptic orbit around the sun, the periapsis near earth's orbit, apoapsis near Jupiter's
one ?,  in resonance with the earth to encounter her at each periapsis..
All you have to do is flying from earth to this base, landing and waiting .... unless you reach the apoapsis..

What are you thinking of my idea ? or ?

[DocHoliday]

Well, I don't care much for Lagrange points either. I guess their fascination is that they offer an "unaturally stable"
point in a dynamic environment, so to speak. That and the L4 and L5 have that special Earth-like feeling, being
actually on the same orbit, just offset.

Now what I do find interesting about Lagrange points is that they are (almost) stationary with regard to the other
two bodies. This opens nice opportunities. Now, if you stick something behind the moon on L2, you'd never see it
from Earth. Same goes for L3. I was drumming about this before, but it always reminds me of a movie I once saw,
where there was a twin Earth on the other side of the Sun and noone ever knew it was there, until they decided to
just fly around the sun and have a look-see

I actually tried putting a station on L2 once, but didn't properly calculate the whole thing and didn't achieve anything..
heh.

[Brouette]

The same Website ( @ lagrange points & "I'm feeling lucky" ) states:

"When a satellite parked at L4 or L5 starts to roll off the hill it picks up speed. At this point the Coriolis force comes
into play - the same force that causes hurricanes to spin up on the earth - and sends the satellite into a stable orbit
around the Lagrange point."

That's what I meant, better said...

Now whether such a station could be useful for "deep space" science, I don't know... But surely not as a fuel station,
too hard to get there!!! Maybe you could put some mining facilities in the trojans at Jupiter-Sun's L4-L5...

____________________________________________

BTW I'm new around here, though I've been playing with Orbiter for some months now, and I just wanted to say a
huge THANKS!!!!!!!!! to Martin Schweiger for giving us this amazing simulator (and for free!!!), to all the add-on
developpers (My personal favourites: Dan's DGIII, NASSP, TransX, Kulch's TX, Radu's DragonFly...) and to all the
community members who make it live.



 That's it.  

____________________________________________

Brouette

[DocHoliday]

You're quite welcome and we're all alike in being helpful around here. So tell me, what do you find most difficult after
these months of flying?

Cheers,

[Brouette]

Thnx for the welcome!

Well....hmmm.... I guess the hardest for me right now is finding time to fly great interplanetary trips... I'd like
to try gravity assists in the Voyager-style... or maybe Cassini's double Venus assist. Has anybody here done that yet?

[Shmi]

I agree with Strogoff

I'd prefer a station on a large elliptic orbit around the sun, the periapsis near earth's orbit, apoapsis near
Jupiter's
one ?, in resonance with the earth to encounter her at each periapsis..

Can anyone come up with a nifty name for a science station (re)built in with such an orbit?

and all the hard work calculating how to put it there

BTW did any of you notice that the gif showing the Lagrange points was in my sigi??

Warm welcome Brouette
I do feel a cheat in that I've hardly flown Orbiter on my own at all and yet I am a Pilot

However, my excuse is that I've been a back seat passenger on quite a few of Krytom's flights.  And it is difficult to
get quality time on Orbiter when a two year old needs your constant attention!

[AphelionHellion]

Shmi: How about "FreeRide"?  

Strogoff: That's a really cool idea, a "traveling" station.
My only questions would be how one would figure out (1) How much to precess the orbit so that it comes near Jupiter
at apoapsis more than once (2) How Jupiter's gravity will affect all this and (3) How to get back to Earth after being
affected by Jupiter's gravity?

One thing I've been wondering - since stations are usually defined as ships (so they can have fuel tanks and docking
and realistic angular motion and all that) would it be possible to have a station with thrusters that automatically
executes some sort of station-keeping routine to keep it in the sort of walking orbit (or whatever you're going for) that
you need?
A ship with a really advanced fine-tuning  autopilot, 'nother words?

[AphelionHellion]

DocHoliday: "Doppelganger" right?  



http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/Doppleganger/DopplegangerTop.htm
More pics in the links on that page ^  

[DocHoliday]

Right I keep going on about it everytime anyone asks I'd love to have someone make the ship on the right for
interplanetary trips And you could use the DG3 on instead of the bird on the left

McBrain, PLEASE get inspired

OH, Shmi, I think the models for this movie were made by Anderson, same guy who created Thunderbirds,
Space:1999, Terrahawks, probably even Galactica, hehe. Pretty damn realsitic for a 60s movie.

[DocHoliday]

Heh, Shmi, how about naming the station Doppelganger, meaning twin to Earth. And how about using the Bablyon 5
station see picture. It's niiiice.



and



Cheers,

[freespace2dotcom]

Eh, doppelgange.. of course I know the actual definition, but to me, it's always had a negative connotation attached
to it, as though it were the evil twin wanting to replace the orignal with itself. maybe I just read too many spider-man
comics...

http://www.geocities.com/skidzz_1/dopp.html

[AphelionHellion]

Doc: I know what you mean, I've been looking for a good interplanetary ship to dock the DGIII to for those long trips
(longer than Earth/Mars, anyway). The Vespucci is coming along, but killrot doesn't seem to work entirely and that
fusion propulsion system is tough to use efficiently (that's my big problem). I run out of fuel before I can escape earth
orbit, and that's without anything docked to the ship  The hydrogen mag-scoop is a nice idea, but you can only get
up enough speed to use it once you're on an interplanetary trajectory. I need to get out of low Earth orbit, first!

Something like the Phoenix would be great - some sort of long-range ship built specifically so that it can maneuver
even with a fully loaded DG docked to it (that's the thing, there are plenty of ships out there with docking ports and
big engines, but even if the port is aligned with the ship's CoG, oftentimes their RCS is too wimpy to wrestle your
orientation around while docked to the DG.
Plus I gotta admit I'm a sucker for control panels (which is the main reason I'm still using the Vespucci even though it
frustrates the heck out of me)  

Someone needs to come up with a big fuel tank with docking ports and engines, built to accompdate the DGIII
With a "hangar" right smack in the middle, like the Phoenix

Yeah yeah I know, I always ask for new add-ons even though I don't know the first thing about building them.
Perhaps I really am part of the "Ungrateful Few"  

[McBrain]

Hey, hey, wait, I would build a long range transport ship for the DG. I already have some ideas jumping around in my brain! Doc: You could say I'm inspired!

I will build one!

[AphelionHellion]

McBrain: Actually I was kinda hoping that that's sorta what your heavy cruiser project would turn out to be
Although personally I really want to fly that Mars glider
Heheh

[McBrain]

I'm almost finished with the mesh.
It's just two big tanks which are placed directly over the DG wings when you dock.
At the aft of the tanks there are two big engines.
I only hafta do the RCS engines and the docking port.

[Shmi]

AphelionHellion wrote:
Shmi: How about "FreeRide"?  

Strogoff: That's a really cool idea, a "traveling" station.
My only questions would be how one would figure out (1) How much to precess the orbit so that it comes near Jupiter
at apoapsis more than once (2) How Jupiter's gravity will affect all this and (3) How to get back to Earth after being
affected by Jupiter's gravity?

Free ride that's perfect It describes both Strogoff's clever orbit and my attitute to life.

I'd much rather throw out a few ideas off the top of my head and then get some other cough suckers cough
no I mean kind, clever, amusing guys do all the hard work to make it work.

I'll change my Sigi when I've some time!
Thanks guys - keep up the hard work!

xxx Alison

[DocHoliday]

Wow, we all got three X's now *blush*

McBrain, can you post a screenshot of the monster?? .)