Request: Bi-elliptic plane change
TheLoneWolfling opened this issue ยท 1 comments
See here - roughly speaking, for large plane changes (>38.94 degrees) it is more efficient to burn to a higher apoapsis, do the plane change, then burn down to the original apoapsis again. Said link has all of the math required, including the amount of delta-v required and the optimal apoapsis (for <60 degrees there is a specific apoapsis that is optimal - for >=60 degrees it's optimum to go to infinity, which obviously isn't practical).
Roughly speaking:
- If you are trying to change your plane by less than cos^-1 (7/9) (again, ~38.94 degrees) , stop, it's not worth it.
- If you are trying to change your plane by >= 60 degrees, your target apoapsis is "as high as is practical"
- Otherwise, your target apoapsis is a_c * sqrt(1 - cos theta) / (sqrt(2) - 2 sqrt(1 - cos theta)), where a_c is the semi-major axis of your starting orbit.
- Burn to said apoapsis at the ascending or descending node between your current orbit and the target orbit
- Do the plane change at apoapsis
- Burn at pariapsis to move the apoapsis back down
If I had more time I'd code it myself - I like the modularity of the setup you've got here, it looks relatively easy to do so - but I have far too little time on my hands currently, so I figured I might as well drop this here and see if anything came of it.