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A comment on James Webb Space Telescope. Parent comment

Re:James Webb Space Telescope by loudmax on Friday January 23, 2015 @11:35AM (#8935697)
If you're curious about orbital space mechanics, try Kerbal Space Program. You'll get a much better idea how NASA puts things into orbit after you've done it a few times yourself.

Basically, the rocket doesn't just fire in a straight line away from the Earth all the way into orbit. It starts arcing very soon into the ascent, and the thrust is nearly parallel to the Earth's surface for much of the journey.

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Re:James Webb Space Telescope by arrrg on Friday January 23, 2015 @11:56AM (#8935851)
That’s all well and good for most of the stuff humans do in space (and it really, really helps to get a sort of general, very basic and intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics), but KSP does not do Lagrange points at all. You cannot use it to get a basic understanding of how those work with KSP.
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Re:James Webb Space Telescope by xenophonf on Friday January 23, 2015 @01:54PM (#8936523)
That's why our correspondent needs to install the Principia mod!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68502-WIP-Princi...

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