Lucky Orbiter Moments

[DarkEnergy]

Hey guys,

I thought of this idea for you to post your lucky Orbiter moments after I just had a very lucky and unplanned one.

My lucky moment was when I was planning a TransX sling of Jupiter to Saturn. I opened Celestia and found a relatively good sling alignment that I thought was gonna need some "forcing" to get just right. I opened Orbiter, put in the date and began my plan in TransX. Sure enough, when I pressed the sling setup stage my sling unintentionally, and with no changing of variables, was almost perfectly aligned. The cl. app. was well within a G of meters.

I had no idea it would turn out so perfect with little interference. Has anyone else had lucky or unlucky (but technically still lucky) moments in Orbiter? If you do, please post! :speakcool:

 

[SpaceNut]

When I was learning something as straightforward as flying from the Earth to the Moon, I was in the process of warping time to skip the 'dull part' when I smacked into the Moon, and of course 'bounce bugged' back into space. I considered myself lucky, because that meant that I was beginning to "get it" when it comes to going from point A to point B in space.

 

[Star Voyager]

I was planning reentry with Mercury. The retros fired 10 minutes late, but all 3 of them simultaneously fired (I know I butchered that word), when all of a sudden, the retros jettisonned prematurely! But with my knowledge of orbital mechanics and the Mercury systems, I knew I was coming down, slowly, but I was coming in. When the time came for entry interface, I switched to the ASCS and the spacecraft started to tumble out of control! Then I switched to full manual control and hit the .5 G button just in time. I landed well out of range, but I didn't land too far from the coast of Brazil.

 

[cinder1992]

I was comeing back from the moon in my DGIV with only enough fuel to re-enter the atmosphere. so I brought up the entry interface and just as some plasma flared off my hull, BSOD on the DGIV computer. I had No fuel left for an abort. so I took controll and JUST Managed to land at cape canaveral.

 

[Arthur Dent]

My first attempt to do a full reentry with the space shuttle. I lost to omuch speed and got the angle a bit wrong, so I couldn't land at KSC, comming from south, on Runway 33 (as practiced with the Final Approach scenarios multiple times).

But I was lucky. So I was still able to land coming from the north on Runway 15. I almost overshot but I touched down safely.

 

[Ghostrider]

I landed well out of range, but I didn't land too far from the coast of Brazil.

O capsulao maravigliao...

 

[Dig Gil]

O capsulao maravigliao...

What's that?

 

[Ghostrider]

What's that?

"O wonderful capsule" in pidgin Portuguese. ^_^

 

[Dig Gil]

Thought that:
1-you misspelled standard portuguese.
2-that variant was dead (how did you get that?)
3-That was an African variant.
4-I guess there're some accents missing (not sure never read that variant).

 

[Ghostrider]

Thought that:
1-you misspelled standard portuguese.
2-that variant was dead (how did you get that?)
3-That was an African variant.
4-I guess there're some accents missing (not sure never read that variant).

That variant doesn't actually exist, it was invented for a cabaret show.

It stands to standard Portuguese as LOLCatz English stands to the real thing.

 

[ripley1]

I launched the Shuttle manually to intercept the ISS without launch MFD.
Just plain map and orbit MFD's. Eyeballed the heading and got into orbit.
The real surprise was the plane alignment required only 15 second burn.
Very happy moment.

 

[MJR]

I went from Earth to Mars with just Orbit MFD.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Back when I was new to Orbiter, I once achieved orbit without any MFD's!!

 

[MJR]

I made it to Pluto.

 

[Arthur Dent]

I went from Earth to Mars with just Orbit MFD.

Impressive! Tutorial!

(Every time somebody did something awesome, they should teach others how to achieve it )

 

[MJR]

I should make one.

 

[Messierhunter]

One of my first mars trips was back in the DGIII days. My hull temperature started hitting the redline during martian atmosphere entry (I didn't realize you could do inverted aerobraking at the time), so I burned with the hover engines to reduce my velocity and lower the hull temperature. The temperature immediately dropped back to safe levels, but I didn't realize how many G's I was pulling until my crew started hitting G-LOC one by one. I quickly killed the hover engines, probably just a second or two before I overstressed the hull.

 

[MJR]

What I do is pitch real high something like 60-70 and burn my engines to lower vertical speed or else you'll drop like a rock.

 

[Messierhunter]

What I do is pitch real high something like 60-70 and burn my engines to lower vertical speed or else you'll drop like a rock.

Yeah, that was another benefit of using the hovers; it reduced my vertical descent rate and allowed me to lower AOA to prevent it from happening again. Now when I approach mars in an XR-2 I'll be doing a direct aerobrake inverted (about 10 degrees AOA, just enough to hold 0 vertical velocity) to keep from wasting any fuel.

 

[KOS]

Once upon a time, when I was fighting with my brain to understand orbital physics, PROgrade, RETROgrade, Orbit +, Orbit - etc... I was reading the manual trying to get in touch with ISS.

Fighting with the stick I started making a burn and then got back to my PDF knowing I didn't synchronize well with the station. While moaning understanding the problem, I got back to the sim realizing I left the WARP on. When I looked around, I saw a panel getting beside my window.

That was the ISS and I was amazed.

Then I failed docking. :rofl: