Recent content by mbartley

There were several copies of that photo in people's offices at one of my previous jobs. (defense contractor) That and the Trident test launch that flew in spirals for several seconds before range safety stopped it.

That reminds me of a previous apartment I lived in many years ago. Get rid of the spiders, and the ants showed up. It was one or the other. I remember someone told me that the entire area used to be a giant anthill, and that the unusual mascot of the nearby University of California, Irvine -...

On the subject of (USN) Iowa class battleships, I recently dug out and scanned in these old photos. I took them from a small plane I flew over Long Beach, California, back before they got rid of most of our military bases here. These are New Jersey and Missouri. New Jersey is the one with its...

While flying from the ISS to land at Edwards, as I approached the coastline, I turned on markers in planetarium view. Looking around, I noticed the Mount Wilson marker, and comparing it to the Los Angeles and Edwards markers and to the coastline, I thought something looked strange. From the...

There has always been hype about the Star Wars movies, probably going back to the re-release of the original movie in 1979. Action figures, models, McDonalds happy meals, Star Wars themed drink cups (collect the whole set!), video game tie-ins, etc. As for spoilers, I don't remember much, even...

Wow, you're making me look bad.:thumbup: I just managed to reach orbit with ~2200 m/s left, but only after two flybys. In IMFD Orbit Eject, I typically change it from Realtime to Off-Axis. It's a pain though because it often doesn't work. I've found I have to set Off-Axis, quit Orbiter...

I made another attempt, got to an altitude of about 4 thousand km and got an apoapsis of 5 million km, and nearly nailed the node alignment. Indeed the fuel requirements were less. This however illustrates two serious sources of inaccuracy I've noticed in this project. Aiming for such a low...

I'll have to try the original scenario again and note that. I tried a different launch opportunity, arriving at Jupiter in Nov. 2019. This time, I was able to do a proper node alignment. However, it wasn't perfect, plus the original Jupiter orbit insertion left me with a much lower apopapsis...

My approach (two attempts now) didn't look anything like that. I was never able to get a decent node alignment. Perhaps I'm trying to do it too early? You mention waiting until much closer (100 million km) to Jupiter than me. My second attempt ended up about the same as before, reaching...

That's the part I couldn't get. I've been able to do this well when arriving in other years, but not this one (2013). My projected arrival in this scenario had me about 90 degrees off. I don't know how I could get periapsis on a node without aiming for a nearly polar orbit at Jupiter. Is...

Run the Shuttle-A -> "Shuttle-A Launch" scenario. Using the scenario editor, change the date to July 11, 2011 - a good Jupiter launch window. Get to Ganymede orbit, using the magic of scenario editor to refuel after reaching low earth orbit. I managed to get to a 100 km equatorial orbit around...

Oh its a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the window and wheels. It looks like a big Tylenol.