What are the odds?

[bloodtoes]

A very unlikely thing has happened..

I decided to make a quick trip to Mars and back. I wait for the window, launch, get into orbit, set up a flight plan, burn for orbit eject and off I go. I set up an initial time acceleration of 10000x to watch Earth fade away to a pale blue dot when WHAM!

The XR2 is in pieces (well, spinning uncontrollably with flashing red text). Collision at some insane speed, maybe 15km/s (it wasn't the most efficient flight plan, more of a "get me there sooner than later" plan ). What happened? I managed to hit a bullseye.. right into the moon. Jim, I don't think we can recover from this one.

I'm curious, does IMFD take this sort of thing into consideration? Was it attempting to maybe give me a bit of a gravity boost from the moon (Does that make sense at all?) and maybe the slightest bit of error was enough to send me careening into it rather than around it?

Given that I was launching more or less along the ecliptic that can decrease the odds a bit, but boy.. what really are the odds of this happening?

Guess I should restart the trip, haha.

 

[Xyon]

I think what's more likely to have happened is that IMFD did not take the moon into account at all, and therefore happily sent you on a collision course, reasoning that anything in Orbiter you can crash into is big enough to be seen from several hundred kilometers away and avoided. >.>

 

[Bendarr]

Congratulations, I believe I've heard of one other Orbiter to have done that. I'm sorry to say that the name escapes me though. I'll see if I can dig it up.

===================================
Found it. It was in the "Worst Disaster you have ever caused in Orbiter" thread.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8225

Urwumpe's entry I believe. So you are not alone. I almost did the same thing trying to get into Orbit around Jupiter once. Something went wizzing past me as I was trying to slow down.

 

[Bj]

Congratulations, I believe I've heard of one other Orbiter to have done that. I'm sorry to say that the name escapes me though. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Actually that seems to happen quite a bit. I am thinking it might be because pilots are launching at the same launch window, and hitting the Moon every time.

 

[Bendarr]

Ah ok. Like I mentioned, I only knew of the one. I almost have a reverse problem. Not hitting what I'm aiming at. There's been a few times I've shot past the moon, but then again, I flip over and compensate.

 

[bloodtoes]

For what it's worth I started with the "Ready to launch to ISS" scenario which comes with XR2 and took off into orbit heading pretty much due east from there.

 

[Izack]

Bj, you made me think of a long succession of Orbinauts in Deltagliders taking off in a row and all hitting the Moon.

Good times...

 

[Urwumpe]

I managed to do the same on the way to Saturn, it is painful...

I wish IMFD would have a GPWS included.

 

[garyw]

Terrain, Terrain, Pull Up or down or left or right... It's space so just pick a direction! :lol:

Yeah IMFD doesn't take into account other bodies on a collision course, it leaves that for the pilot.

 

[Urwumpe]

Maybe the warning should be "periapsis altitude...periapsis altitude...periapsis altitude"... :lol:

 

[Evil_Onyx]

IMFD takes all bodies in to account in the map view, but not in the planing views, i only discovered this after making some more craters on the Moon

 

[n122vu]

For what it's worth I started with the "Ready to launch to ISS" scenario which comes with XR2 and took off into orbit heading pretty much due east from there.

Makes sense It's likely that you launched at just the right time to be in the same inclination as the moon. To verify, go back and re-plan the trip as closely as you can to the first time, then when you get ready to launch, pull up the Map MFD and target the moon to see if you just happen to be crossing its plane at that time.

Still, the timing is remarkable (to me, anyway).

 

[Urwumpe]

The moon has 0.5° angular diameter and is pretty close to the ecliptic plane... the chance is not that low to hit it.

If the moon would be in the ecliptic plane, the chance to randomly hit it would even be as high as 1:720.

 

[Hasso]

IMFD takes all bodies in to account in the map view, but not in the planing views, i only discovered this after making some more craters on the Moon

Exactly
It calculates the influence to your flightpath, but it doesn't care about the radius of the body.

We need a function monitoring the varible of Orbit HUD/MFD that tells the name of current orbited body. Lets make it a beep and switch time-acceleration to 1 everytime the value changes.

So we can check our flightpath when we are leaving earth-orbit, and we can check and decide what to do when (accidentally) changing from sun-orbit to moon-orbit.

Urwumpe's Idea of monitoring Ped isn't bad. But we have to check it against radius+border of atmosphere then.

 

[Bendarr]

Bj, you made me think of a long succession of Orbinauts in Deltagliders taking off in a row and all hitting the Moon.

Good times...

And a junk yard dealership springing up on the moon. "Hurry, hurry, hurry, Getchya DGIV's right here! Best prices this side of Mars! Massive scratch and dent sale going on!"

 

[EtherDragon]

Congratulations, I believe I've heard of one other Orbiter to have done that. I'm sorry to say that the name escapes me though. I'll see if I can dig it up.

===================================
Found it. It was in the "Worst Disaster you have ever caused in Orbiter" thread.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8225

Urwumpe's entry I believe. So you are not alone. I almost did the same thing trying to get into Orbit around Jupiter once. Something went wizzing past me as I was trying to slow down.

It was me,

-begin dramatic reading...
The launch day was sunny, with very little wind. The crew's hopes were high. We ascended to LEO and made for the MIR to refuel before the long TMI burn later the next day.

Refuelling went perfectly, and the DG4 was primed with a three-man, two-woman crew bound for Olympus base, Mars.

TMI went as expected, all needles were right on the money... then - three days into leaving Earth's SoI the moon crept up out of view. We had turned out heat shield toward the sun, in such a manner as to hide the moon from view all-together.

No-one new what happenned until it was too late.

Sudenly, back on earth - our signal was lost... static... It was only when Luna-OB1 reported a new debris field that the pieces started coming together.
-end dramatic reading.

Yep, I smashed my shiney DG4 right into the Moon with a hole shot to Mars. In the time between hitting the moon, and finding the pause key - I had somehow managed to travel 1.5 AU.

I reloaded an earlier save of the scenario and pulled up the IMFD map and watched in horror as my trajectory went right through the moon.

 

[N_Molson]

I always consider than the area included between 300,000km and 500,000km above Earth suface is dangerous, never had any problems

But that's another story in the Jovian system... Tracking the 4 satellites can be rather stressful at high time acceleration ! :shifty:

 

[Linguofreak]

I have two related stories:

The first involves a fictional system I had made, with a planet with a large moon in a close orbit. I had a ship with something like six or seven hours of burn-time at one G and was making an eject burn to another planet in the system. It being a long burn, I had started my burn a good portion of my orbit away from the angle I wanted to leave on. So I'm moving around the planet, putting on velocity, and suddenly the planet's moon heaves itself over the horizon. I don't recall exactly how things went, but I think I had to adjust my burn to avoid hitting it.

The second story is an Earth departure burn for Mars(?), where I undocked from a station and adjusted the plane of my orbit, then waited for the eject time for my burn. Half an orbit later, as I'm making final preparations, the station goes whizzing by me, giving me quite a scare. (I think it was a good couple KM off, but close enough to be clearly visible, and to only be onscreen for a second or so at 8 km/s).