General Question Flew through Titans Atmosphere: No aerobraking?

[Kaito]

Long time since my last post...woops.

Recently, I've started learning how to do slings with TransX. I slung around Jupiter to Saturn, and accidentally entered a retrograde orbit. I thought that I could use Titan's atmosphere to slow down, possibly for aerocapture. I don't know, I just decided to fly through Titans atmosphere. Keep in mind, I was orbiting in the opposite direction that Titan was orbiting.

I was expecting a gigantic fireball, since Titans atmosphere is super thick. Turns out, I didn't slow down. Not one bit. My PeA was 630 meters. And I flew through it in less than 2 minutes. But I would imagine I would slow down some...can anyone confirm this for me?

One thing that came to mind was that the Sim time was negative. I started off in 2001, then used the scenario editor to change the date to the Voyager 2 launch date (so I could get to saturn).

Any thoughts on this?

 

[asbjos]

I have experienced that using the ScenarioEditor makes the Orbiter session run something unstable, so I think that is the reason.

What you could do, is to save the scenario before the atmospheric reentry and then re-open it again. Then, the problem should be gone.

 

[dgatsoulis]

I agree with asbjos. It's probably a glitch from the scenario editor.
A retrograde rendezvous with Titan would mean an encounter velocity of about 18 km/s, assuming that your slings were Voyager-lke. Titan's atmosphere should have slowed you down a lot, especially with that Periapsis altitude.

I setup a scenario with such an encounter. It worked fine for me, I slowed down to an aerocapture in a DG. See if you can reproduce the problem.

BEGIN_DESC
Contains the latest simulation state.
END_DESC

BEGIN_ENVIRONMENT
  System Sol
  Date MJD 44805.6160906469
END_ENVIRONMENT

BEGIN_FOCUS
  Ship GL-01
END_FOCUS

BEGIN_CAMERA
  TARGET GL-01
  MODE Cockpit
  FOV 60.13
END_CAMERA

BEGIN_HUD
  TYPE Orbit
  REF Titan
END_HUD

BEGIN_MFD Left
  TYPE Orbit
  PROJ Frame
  FRAME Ecliptic
  ALT
  REF Titan
END_MFD

BEGIN_MFD Right
  TYPE User
  MODE Interplanetary
  Scenario Old2
  MapMFD V5
  Reference saturn
  Target titan
  Center saturn
  Data 0 1 8.968102350071643e-008 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0
  MassLimit 1e+020
  CMode 0
  Config 1 1 1 1 0 0
  ExtMode 0
  Periapis Titan
  END 
  CorMFD V4
  Reference Auto
  Target none
  Source none
  ActiveProg 0 1
  DataA 0 3 0 0 0 0
  DataB 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
  DVProg 0 0 0 1
  AdvConf 0 0 0 0 0
  Guidance 0
  END 
  EjectMFD V5
  Reference Auto
  Data 0 1 3 0 1 44728.76489681128 10
  Guidance 0
  END 
  BaseAprMFD V2
  Reference Auto
  Target none
  Source none
  DataA 0 0 120000 0.10821 0.366519 1 1 44728.76489681128 44728.76489681128 0
  DataB 0 3 0 1 0 1
  END 
  SlingMFD V4
  Reference Auto
  Source none
  Data 0 1 1 3 0 1 44728.76489681128 0
  END 
  LaunchMFD V4
  Target None
  Data 0 1 1 3 0 1 0
  END 
  CF1_DataA 0 0
  CF1_DataB 0 10 120000 2 20 150000
  CF1_SecTgt 
  mfdShare -1
  mfdProgram 4
END_MFD

BEGIN_SHIPS
GL-01:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Orbiting Titan
  RPOS 4095217.89 1082102.72 -2281680.05
  RVEL -17554.064 -298.657 -435.948
  AROT -147.23 88.09 -42.83
  RCSMODE 2
  AFCMODE 7
  PRPLEVEL 0:0.313559 1:0.948894
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 0
  TRIM 1.000000
  AAP 0:0 0:0 0:0
END
END_SHIPS

BEGIN_ExtMFD
END

 

[Kaito]

Well then, I guess that solves it...Thank you very much