Question Autopilot for satellite orbit upkeep

[xx_mortekai_xx]

Is there an addon that will allow an autopilot to run constantly on a certain vessel?

I want to use it for automatic maintenance of orbits, as I would love to be able to put minor vessels like satellites into an orbit and being able to make sure that they stay there, but not have to be focused on them.

Does something like this exist?

 

[clive bradbury]

In short - the answer is no. AFAIK, most, if not all, of the add-on satellites in orbiter do not have an AP, so there is nothing to run anyway, whether focussed or not.

You have two options - as in real life, do occasional burns to maintain orbit, or just use the scenario editor to adjust the orbital parameters.

I don't really see why you need any of this anyway. If you launch to a decent orbit the satellite should stay there for a considerable period on its own - you are probably talking years (as in real life) before the orbit decays. So unless you propose to run scenarios lasting ten years or so adjustments should be unnecessary...

 

[N_Molson]

Well, it could be interesting for Geostationnary Satellites. They always tend to drift, slowly but surely, from their position, since their orbit is altered by Moon, nonspherical gravity distribution on Earth, etc...

It happened to me to build a "continuous reality" scenario and I was wishing I had something like that, too.

 

[Mandella]

It happened to me to build a "continuous reality" scenario and I was wishing I had something like that, too.

I agree, that's where this sort of thing would really be useful, along with the Lagrange points (Lagrange MFD is useful for "snapping" satellites back into place, but that's not quite what's being asked here).

Come to think of it, the more realistic atmosphere height of the latest Orbiter version drags down low orbit satellites too. Those of us who run long term missions or continuous reality scenarios often find the need to "reset" our universes with Scenario Editor.

 

[N_Molson]

The difficulty is that such an autopilot would have to be able to work up to a, lets say, x1000 time acceleration. Because in such "continuous scenarios" you spent a lot of real-time planning launch windows and such, like you need to wait 1 month between two launches, etc, and you can't necessarily let the computer run all the night (should the fire hazard be enough).

 

[Donamy]

Could you make it so a vessel saves it's state, then loads it when needed?

 

[xx_mortekai_xx]

perhaps, then, something to "lock" the orbital parameters so that the only thing that updates is the position along the orbit? maybe it resets the other orbital parameters every minute (real time) or so?

Im talking about something that will generally only be used for satellites and such