OK I found a much better solution for the Starship flight. I was starting it off with SECO at much too high an altitude.
Better solution: about 50 x 250 km
Better solution: about 50 x 250 km
The GoogleEarth path doesn't look dramatically different, the ground track is pretty much identical
This solution satisfies the 250 km max altitude, low perigee, and Hawaii range. I'm much happier now!
The reason I took the wrong approach at first is that I'm used to orbital launches which hit 150 km altitude really fast, instead of doing insertion at a low altitude. Also, I thought that insertion at perigee over Texas wouldn't let it have final perigee over Hawaii -
- because I stupidly forgot to account for the rotation of the Earth during the 1.5 hour flight.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
