I've learnt a lot about Orbiter in the last few months and maybe that will be helpful for some undefined project in the future
First rule of Add-on Development:
A developer never runs out of projects to work on, even if they try to stop creating more new ones. Its a compulsion, or a disease or something :lol:
The brave adventurers of Upsilon Andromedae I passed the final stage of their journey, returning to the surface of UPSDI after a long & trying reentry
The whole reentry must have taken a half an hour & almost half of the planet. The atmosphere is thicker than Earths, and the orbital velocity is about 8400 m/s, so reentry was very difficult, compounded by using the realistic XR2 config available on Orbithangar here
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4219"]http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4219[/ame]
which allowed very little margin for things like wing loading.
But anyways, the tricky part is mostly finding a way to get into the atmosphere & drop that first 1000 m/s off without burning up. Once I did that, all I did was cruise along at 60 km or so, keeping my vertical speed at around -20 to -60 m/s & let the speed bleed off. Aerobrake MFD was very useful in monitoring this, so I was able to keep the hull temperature under 1200 C for most of the ride
Once I passed into daylight, I discovered that I was literally on the other side of the planet from my target, so I added an emergency base with a runway to the peninsula I was flying over (yeah I know, sorta cheating, but look how many runways you can find on Earth in an emergency)
Closing in
And a rough landing! I dont know what happened, as my touchdown speed was only 1 or 2 m/s, but I was going 150 m/s, so I blew out my landing gear.
The vessel was otherwise fine, and my crew arrived unharmed. Mission control goes wild!!!
:woohoo: