Space Busters | Can You Orbit in Space Engineers | Space Engineers

Welcome to Space Busters - the series where we will bust every myth in Space Engineers! Today, we're interested in orbits. Is it possible to orbit the Earth planet in Space Engineers? If so, how easy is it? Can we do it with a few simple calculations?
All of this shall be revealed in this episode of Space Busters!
If you like the video, be sure to leave comments and hit that like button! That's how I know to make more of these!
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Music:
The Star of Bethlehem - by TRG Banks
freemusicarchiv...

[@shadowhenge7118]

All this does is make me wish the devs of space engineers and kerbal space program get together for a code swap party.

[@sSpaze_yt]

that would be awesome

[@eckee]

I really want to squish those guys together.

[@johnbastion747]

Kraken: Oh? You're aproaching me? Clang: I can't beat the shit out of you without getting any closer.

[@ordelian7795]

Not sure it would work if the games use different engines.

[@replay_pete]

@@johnbastion747 that comment is so underrated...

[@d0oz3yduck48]

I like this, in terms of physics, the fact that you were increasing in speed and get closer to the planet at the same time could indicate that you are oproaching your peragee, this would be the lowest point on your orbit flight path, it is also the fastest, after passing this point you would find your self deceleration at a similar rate to that of which you where accelerating toward your peragee. As a result of the increased speed and current deceleration you end up moving further away from the planet toward your apogee, this is the highest point on your orbital flight path. At this point you begin to go closer to the planet and increase in your speed, the process repeats. If this is the case thEn you have made an eliptical orbit. At least I think that’s right.

[@yvesisnotaname2813]

GamersOnline that’s right but he could have used his engines at apoapsis to increase his periapsis for a more circular trajectory. Or he could have made a plane that does a gravity turn at the apoapsis of his trajectory.

[@The1wsx10]

if SE had realistic gravity he would have made an orbit. in real life gravity follows the inverse square law - orbits can follow oval trajectories. not so in SE - gravity decreases linearly with distance, this means anything but a perfectly circular trajectory is unstable. and even then you cant have it perfect because the game uses floating point numbers which are not perfectly precise

[@d0oz3yduck48]

Yves Isnotaname yeah, I did mean periapsis. Thanks for pointing it out lol

[@iCore7Gaming]

No orbits are not stable in space engineers. After about 1 or 3 orbits you either smash into the planet or fly off.

[@Calliopa_22]

@@d0oz3yduck48 Yeah, the whole Periapsis vs Perigee thing can be quite confusing depending on where you learnt about orbits. Perigee = Lowest point in a Geocentric orbit Periapsis = Lowest point in any orbit

[@Gottaculat]

Real satellites also have the ability to adjust their trajectory. Orbiting is kinda like riding a bike in a straight line; lots of tiny adjustments need to be made to stay on course and balanced. If you were to use a script that fired thrusters if gravity starts getting too strong or too weak, and kept the craft level with the horizon, you could likely get a proper orbit going. Then again, you can cheat by setting up GPS waypoints around the orbital path, and set the remote to circle flight mode with the GPS coordinates entered in sequence. The remote will fly the craft to each waypoint, emulating orbit.

[@redmafiapanda]

Clever title my friend very clever

[@theaceofspades485]

If you had the building of SE and the orbiting mechanics of KSP I would my wallet would reach earths escape velocity.

[@therosijedha]

actually, theres a mod on the steam workshop called the "real orbits mod". u do need a max speed of 1 km/s in order to orbit properly, and you may need to create your own star system, but it works, and i have used it a lot.

[@stefanoiaconissi2727]

100km of height in space and you will still experience a huge 9.5g of acceleration. That's a big problem: g is not correctly represented in this game. It's hard to balance stuff when g drastically drops from 1 to 0 in less then 25km. Another thing I'd like to say is, that if angular momentum is correctly represented in this game, your pitch "corrections" would be meaningless. In real life an object following an inertia path in space is not changing trajectory by just facing the right direction.

[@4451-john]

I have a satellite and it's realistic in size though I spawned it in space and it was also fairly easy to make though it was hard in design I can actually use the GPS because it will track the GPS and hover over it like my missile/orbital laser/planet destroyer soo yup almost IMPOSSIBLE is correct..

[@GalaxyBrain88]

GPS Satellites are not in jeopardy of crashing into each other because they are in geosynchronous orbits. Sorry to be that guy...

[@kahvozeinsfang6953]

you can orbit with remote controller ang GPS co-ord's

[@KarmaQ3]

The strength of real world gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. In Space Engineers it just decrease linearly so the result is a non conservative field of force. It is almost impossible to orbit a planet becase the system is not stable. You could theorically equilibrate all the forces perfectly an orbit in a perfect circle but a minimal error will throw you to space or to the ground. It is like trying to equilibrate a cone over its tip.

[@Iwondera]

2 words.YOU SMART

[@Apollo_1641]

I wonder if someone could make a mod to make the gravity field more realistic? You know, to make it more forgiving for orbits

[@wahwahpeeps8014]

Why not using gyroscope overide ingame OwO?

[@Apollo_1641]

@@wahwahpeeps8014 True, I imagine it'd be possible to have a script that calculates and makes compensation burns

[@starsilverinfinity]

@@Apollo_1641 There is already such a script or more

[@truejoshi8569]

I think if someone made a script to update the satelite with gyroscope and thrusters i dont think mods would be needed

[@AndrewmanGaming]

True, a script could work if it could automatically determine the height and velocity of the ship.

[@ross4334]

This exists I thought

[@ross4334]

Yeh here - steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1401338706

[@tabith1012]

with a script that tracks or . cause tracking height is deceptive with space engineers, as its relative to the terrain and not atmosphere/core of the planet.

[@theshaggycreeper220]

truejoshi you have a 10/10 profile picture

[@mattdombrowski8435]

You should invite Scott Manley to try

[@mambe4349]

XD the ksp guy

[@thegamingboss3347]

I accidentally did this on a modded planet. When I realized that i had made a wrecked ship orbit the planet i was shocked.

[@pink1200]

I did this too on the moon, I was trying to do a high speed drop off with a cargo ship and ended up moving fast enough too orbit near the surface

[@kripto999]

I once build a ship in creative started to fly i turned of dampeners and Just let it fly away thinking thats it cause i didnt want the ship anymore .....lucky me got Hit 5 hours later by that Same ship cause it was orbiting and my building got Destroyed by it...

[@UriMegaConnor]

@@kripto999 Yeah right, if you have proof I will believe you, but the issue is you would need to go 400m/s+ to do that, not to mention the fact you were making a building at the surface, and it took 5 hours for your ship to orbit it, even though it would take only 10 minutes at max.

[@Dumbrarere]

@@UriMegaConnor There are scaled up modded planets on the workshop, so it's not entirely unlikely that he would have been hit by the ship 5 hours after. Though, the building would have to be out in space for it to make sense.

[@scandalingshadows]

@@Dumbrarere no aerodynamics in SE and if he was going fast enough theoretically it's possible?

[@megapro125]

The gravity in SE for the earthlike planet is 9.81 m/s^2 in previous versions of the game the HUD was actually showing gravity in m/s^2 but they changed it to Gs when they slimmed down the HUD. Your method to measure it doesn't work in the game as opposed to real life because time doesn't pass at a constant speed in SE. The game slows down time when your PC can't quite keep up with the physics calculations and even when the game is running smooth simulation speed is usually jumping between 0.9 and 1.1. You could press F11 and check the simulation speed during your measurement and use it as a correction factor.

[@iCore7Gaming]

Uh no it was always in G

[@TacoNissan]

@@iCore7Gaming uhhhh nope. I played back before planets, and gravity was in m/s²

[@xanthuumnihyr5319]

There's no point to talk about time here. Speed displayed on HUD isn't linked to the speed of the game simulation

[@skywardsoul1178]

Space Engineers follows all the rules of physics... Lmao XD Don't let Clang hear you say that. Wouldn't want to anger the gods :) Good video. Would be nice if SE could render stuff at a far enough distance to be able to make use of a satellite array with telescopes to monitor the planet. That or just make an array of orbital bombardment weapons platforms.

[@PrinceNewRomeo]

I used to make orbital satellites on modded gravity with a piston and camera (before I found out the cameras had zoom) and the render was ok. You could see that there was activity, but not exactly what that activity was.

[@ulrichmeintjes8838]

*melts gpu*

[@nicholasharvey4393]

chickenfleas Clang's been a thing since the game's inception, Soviet didn't create it if that's what you're saying

[@jackal_loaf7232]

I orbited in the game once, but i crashed into an asteroid.

[@Nova2point1]

Feelsbadman

[@snark894]

your orbit was bad, asteroids dont appear until you leave gravity, if you hadnt hit it you would have kept going

[@waggsbannin99]

@@snark894 there are occasional low grav roids

[@dELTA13579111315]

Mfw I've played enough KSP to know what's going on in your orbit and how to save it lol

[@eddietheeagle7376]

dELTA13579111315 same here!

[@Urinimohr]

Yeah, by braking while he thought he was going to fast, he has lowered his orbit on the opposite site of the planet :)

[@Epin-Ephrine]

He made the mistake at 16:08 to decrease the speed. When you're trying to orbit a planet, and you see that your speed is increasing, you actually have to increase the speed horizontally because the only thing that could increase your speed is gravity. Basically, he assumed the increase in velocity was horizontal, when it was vertical caused by the gravity of the planet. Increase horizontal acceleration to slow down vertical acceleration.

[@pederslothzuricho7685]

Classic speed vs velocity issue. Speeding up vertically isn't an issue, it's normal. But this is why you make circularisation burns. The initial decay is your perigree, and you want to raise the orbit on the opposite side of your launch so you don't slam back down on your launch site, or just short of it. The velocity vector should be accelerating inwards, but your forward velocity should counter the acceleration, no orbit is forever, the trick is to make it last as long as you can before giving the satellite a little push, even the ISS does this from time to time, in fact when satellites cannot get a boat they will eventually but up. But turn off dampeners it's making things harder and expensive. Kepler's laws work as long as the basic principles are intact. Gravity distance relationship and speed is all that is required. Space engineers is only hard to make orbit because there is a very descrete escape velocity given per it's finite gravity range. But all you really need is to be fast closer to the surface, you don't need to consider air drag too much, gravity is countering your orbit more, the main issue is you speed is the combined vector length, not the forward vector length. Så it will be hard to know which adjustments to do.

[@KawaiiSoulB42]

Human error+ Lazy calculations = Big bada boom

[@LukasJosai]

Every single time...

[@radarlovedr]

Always

[@The1wsx10]

his problem is not human error. if SE had realistic gravity he would have made an orbit. in real life gravity follows the inverse square law - orbits can follow oval trajectories. not so in SE - gravity decreases linearly with distance, this means anything but a perfectly circular trajectory is unstable. and even then you cant have it perfect because the game uses floating point numbers which are not perfectly precise

[@darkphoenix7225]

@@The1wsx10 No it's still human error. He didn't account for sim speed decreases and increases. Causing incorrect calculations on his part due to lag.

[@The1wsx10]

@@darkphoenix7225 thats the least of his worries. you literally can't make a stable orbit in space engineers without constantly correcting

[@watchedsmile]

You can have an elliptical orbit. The closer you are to the ground, the faster you will travel. Your orbit doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be enough.

[@thatsstoguy]

The physics are weird in this game

[@Reyeoux]

You obviously have never played KSP

[@truejoshi8569]

I have :)

[@andrasfogarasi5014]

@@truejoshi8569 nobody cares

[@truejoshi8569]

@@andrasfogarasi5014 orr ur just cold hearted and have no remorse..

[@keihze25]

@@truejoshi8569 huh?

[@mrxwiggles103]

i agree that thing wouldnt even make the stratosphere.

[@JaySilva88]

First attempt you tried way too close to the planet, higher the speed the harder it gets to control it and generates bugs. Second attempt was better, but it is still too low. What would be ideal was a script to check the sea height and burn up if too low, or burn down if too high. Also, I'd say 0.15g would make the job easier.

[@StevenViets2006]

"666 is the way to go" -AndrewmanGaming 2019

[@justinmaddox795]

Try playing Kerbal Space Program! If you're willing to do this kind of math and are interested in orbits and space, it's the perfect game.

[@bluesombre2107]

I actually find KSP easier than SE personally. KSP isn't also vanilla locked at 110m/s

[@xponen]

the gravity in SE isn't of natural gradient. You can ask SE Dev themselves how they set it up. I don't think you can orbit the planet with such setup.

[@SirAroace]

you can but the speed limit is too low and worlds are to small.

[@MrNookj]

I'm totally sure you can do I mean he literally did it. The only thing that stops players from doing it is the speed limit

[@Techischannel]

There are Supersized Planets on the workshop where with enugth size and low enugth gravity one could archive atleast a stable orbit (Though it would constantly degrade due to the changes in pull with Distance from the Core of the Planet). And there are already scripts on the Workshop wich allow for Pseudo Orbits, in wich case it just flys at a constant speed at a constant height from the Core disregarding gravity.

[@iCore7Gaming]

@@SirAroace ignoring the speed limit with a mod...

[@iCore7Gaming]

@@MrNookj you can't man. Gravity in this game doesn't follow the inverse square law... KSP does and that's why orbits work in that.

[@poisonnettle9521]

Now the biggest question! Can you orbit the planet in medieval engineers... well you'd have to figure out how to make thrusters first or make a mod but! still...

[@AndrewmanGaming]

There's a planet in Medieval Engineers? Lol I've never played it. Maybe get enough speed with a catapult though :)

[@junoguten]

Well, can you mount windmills on windmill blades and then a chair on the last one?

[@Galyxr]

They just need to add orbital mechanics already

[@sciencecompliance235]

It's not that hard to add orbital mechanics. It's just a natural result of how gravity works. All you have to do is accelerate the object proportional to the inverse of the square of its distance from the center of the object it's supposed to be orbiting, and it will follow an orbital trajectory if it's going fast enough to not dip into the atmosphere and slow enough to not fling out at faster than escape velocity. I'm pretty surprised this game does not have that capability but all the other bells and whistles.

[@smokecrash2147]

if gravity was realistic in SE and not increasing linearly, you could in orbit

[@GrahamFox]

you should test out a 1km wide spinning space station for artificial gravity

[@Techischannel]

This doesnt work. As the Physics Simulation in SE is too simple to accurately call it "Artificial" gravity. While you could roate your space station at incredible speeds constantly, the only thing you get out of it is a very buggy way to move across the inside surface of the station. Besides that there is a speed limit in SE and negating said limit is a very easy way to just die instantly or get catapulted into space at a speed i am not willing i to think of.

[@GrahamFox]

@@Techischannel you wouldn't need to spin very fast at 1km in length. Idk what you mean by the physics being too simple for artificial gravity? There's enough there that you're accelerated by moving objects ergo you can get artificial gravity, whether or not the game engine can handle it is a different story.

[@Techischannel]

@@GrahamFox Its not the spin, Space engineers has a Speed limit meaning if ANY part goes faster than ~ 110m/s it wont go any faster than that. I tried that. It only works with Mods wich increase the speed limit. What i mean with the Physics being to simple is that real life ways to get "Artificial Gravity" wont be easy to apply in space engineers and will cause a freakton of issues. Dont get me started on how a Solid Ring Structure ingame is like the most Unstable thing there is (Due to rotors). And you can try. And the wanted simulated effect is being modified by magboots as thats the only way you can walk on surfaces outside the reach of Artificial Gravity Generators, and Magboots tend to be buggy on moving objects.

[@megapro125]

@@GrahamFox I think the spinning works in real life because the room is filled with an atmosphere that is also spinning and pushing you down with it's centrifugal force. The effect would end as soon as you jump if the room isn't filled with some gas. In SE "atmosphere" is a simple value between 0 and 100% pressure but there are no fluid dynamics. So you can't physically interact with the atmosphere in SE other than suffocating if there is none or gathering O2 through vents. @Techy Keen might have changed it but at least at one point you could circumvent the speedlimit by placing a couple hundred meter long spinning beam on a rotor (or stacking rotors to add their turn speed). at the tip of the rotor you would move faster than the speedlimit but the collision detection started freaking out as you mentioned and it doesn't achieve what OP was asking for.

[@iCore7Gaming]

@@megapro125 that's not how centripedal force works... just think of it as constant acceleration because you are changing direction...

[@malvrius]

0:00 **When you try to do a epic intro**

[@wagyourtai1]

Bet you could use a programming block to make a ship orbit (also grab the actual value for g from the code)

[@morphman86]

After 14 minutes of using actual rocket science, he goes "I don't know, it's not rocket science" :D

[@SavedRanger5473]

Hey look (12:20) you passed by the location of my base.

[@AndrewmanGaming]

Are you in that gigantic lake?

[@SavedRanger5473]

@@AndrewmanGaming Yeah lol

[@bklyn531]

I thought your base was that massive swastika.

[@FirstnameLastname-is2tu]

You don’t have to worry too much about the speed changing, it just means your orbit isn’t perfectly a circle.

[@shablam0]

Andrew, Mythbusters was cancelled a while ago. (I think it was last year, but I'm not for sure) Rip Mythbusters. Let Space Busters live on in your name.

[@Calliopa_22]

I think it was cancelled in February of last year?

[@iCore7Gaming]

No you can only orbit maybe once or twice. Space engineers doesn't follow the inverse square law that gravity does in real life. If it did orbits would be easy. Devs really need to update the gravity formula. Or maybe some make a mod

[@thelegend8570]

There's a script that automatically puts your ship into orbit

[@joshdoesstuff1]

What’s the name of it?

[@thelegend8570]

@@joshdoesstuff1 made this comment 8 months ago, i can't remember, but you should be able to find it just by googling.

[@joshdoesstuff1]

@@thelegend8570 okay thanks

[@vriskaserket8058]

The odds of one satalite striking another is impossible. There is a lot of space up there and not to mention people reserve very specific altitudes, rotational axis, point of rotation, and timing. It's like saying people on two parallel highways with 10 miles between them might hit eachother. But x1 million highways that never intersect.

[@Neuralatrophy]

With the upcoming AI update I think there's going to be an "align to gravity" option in one of the blocks which will make this infinitely easier. It will even keep the stations orientation so laser antenna are always pointing down.

[@arunasbandziukas1077]

Actually there is a satellite in Space Engineers, it is the moon! :D

[@Tennouseijin]

Also... the sun. In SE the sun is actually orbiting around the planetary system xD

[@cpypcy]

Speed increasing = falling down, speed decreasing = going up. Play some KSP first.

[@john5311]

Do we need anything else? Maybe fuel tanks

[@gabrielplatter6033]

12:20 look a bit to the right and you see a face.

[@AlonzoTG]

The radar altimeter is JUNK, always create a "NEW" gps and use that as your altitude reading.

[@Techischannel]

There is proberbly a point at the very edge of the Gravitational Pull in SE of oversized planets where you can actualy do a orbit, but normaly its impossible simply due to the nature that is the gravitational field in SE. To effectively orbit a planet in SE you'd need alot more speed and constant thrust maintaining the orbital velocity and height. Especialy since Gravity on planets in SE is measured liniarily and not some other scientific shenanigains the comementar KarmaQ3 already answerd. So no its not possible to orbit planets and objects in SE normaly. With one exeption: Circular Gravity Generators. In that case the Gravity of things are constant so with the right speed you can indeed orbit around it (I tested it with a mod wich also pulls ships, and increase the general pull area by quite alot)

[@Actual420Ninja]

i would say no its not really possible, the extra speed you had on the first attempt should not have been enough to achieve escape velocity, a lil extra speed would just result in n elliptical orbit, and IRL sats only need to correct because in LEO theres trace amounts of atmosphere slowing down the craft constantly and they need to speed back up to maintain altitude

[@xsangyhix]

With thrusters off, the only way you can gain kinetic energy is by loosing potential energy and vice versa. This means that if you are accelerating, you are falling back into earth. If you are decelerating it means you are escaping earth.

[@danielkerr4100]

Losing* not loosing lol

[@knategougar]

"I'ma go make me a bagel cause I'm hungry"

[@john5311]

Fuel tank

[@Swagaito_Gai]

I'd goddamn hope you could orbit in a bloody game called space engineers!

[@krumuvecis]

too bad you can't

[@JasonEllingsworth]

A game that tries so hard to duplicate real world physics fails miserably in almost every respect. Sometimes just adding a stack of pistons causes an increase in phantom movement that gets worse and worse until it destroys itself. This is of course not possible in real life since that would be a source of free energy.

[@mmyesrice2522]

next, dock in orbit

[@AndrewmanGaming]

This would be soooo difficult! I would have to get to a perfect orbit, then do actual rocket science to figure out when to launch the second ship to be aligned with the first! Maybe I'll give it a try but expect many explosions!

[@mmyesrice2522]

@@AndrewmanGaming 60s style!

[@jamesaust3272]

Math class finally paying off where it really counts.

[@Zhab80]

Using the programmable block you can use the cockpit to tell you the current gravity in meters per seconds that the ship is feeling. You can also use a gravity generator to find out the in game equivalency between G and m/s without any programming. I'm fairly certain the the G notification is only used for human eyes as far as the game code is concerned.. Either way there is no need to rely on stop watch to figure out gravity.

[@megapro125]

especially since simspeed will fuck up every time you take with the stopwatch and make it very inacurate.

[@RadekZielinski.]

The only way to do it is having programmed rotating slowly thrusters that have an adjusted thrust on them, which will make you fly forwards at the same speed at all times, and make you at the same height above the ground. A small offset will mean you will either be thrown out after a while, or you will fall right down back on earth, adding more control will increase your chances of staying high. The reason to this failure is the small size of the planet... to be able to create a perfectly balanced out orbit it's very hard with such little precision. Real life satellites also have constantly every now and then small thrust bursts to correct their alignment... an orbit is a very long freefall after all :D

[@iCore7Gaming]

The major reason orbits don't work in space engineers is because the gravity doesn't follow the inverse square law... you can orbit probably a few times but then you orbit will change either making you fly out or crash into the surface. Sattlies in low earth orbit do have to speed up every now and then but that's because of slight atmospheric drag. ISS does the same, infact there's a video on KZbin of it.

[@RadekZielinski.]

@@iCore7Gaming what i was saying, is that gravity in space engineers is pointless... You might as well fly in 0g in circules with rotating thrusters for better control. Small size of the planet makes it harder to adjust your height and speed... And the whole concept obviously makes no sense, it's a game that won't let you warp around a planet to sling shot you through gravity...

[@cypheir]

Space Engineers follows the laws of physics, as long as you don't break the laws of the engine.

[@KyleBown200]

You could make a script to do this

[@danielw5225]

You won’t escape earth when your dampeners are off and your speed is increasing, you will crash into earth not escape it because the up thrusters will not keep you floating and safe from gravity since no thrusters are on to stop a force or speed from pushing you...

[@peterhamilton7723]

as I once told w4stedspace use your gravity indicator to approximate height from planet center, the vector system appears to lose potential following an arc (same for spinning craft)

[@suicidalbanananana]

In essence a great test, but just a few notes: @7:10 you meant to say 6.31 meters per second, not 6.31 G's ^^ @11:32 GPS does not "beam down your location", GPS satellite's are basically just clocks in orbit, GPS hard&software just connect to several of those satellite's and based on how long it takes to get an answer (which is just a timestamp of the time on that satellite) the software can do some basic trigonometry to get your location. Most importantly, @12:30 your getting "ejected from the planet" because your pointing/flying away from it, you should point the ship in the direction of the orbit (read: ship should always point to the fake horizon) and maintain the speed. I've successfully made orbiting satellite's in the past using one of those scriptable blocks, and just maintaining speed and horizon.

[@YuriderHaribon]

*meters per second^2

[@archaeologistify]

You can easily achieve true orbit in vanilla speeds - around spherical grav generators :D Nice decoy drones can be setup that way

[@bobthebox2993]

AndrewmanGaming: "Space engineers seems to follow all laws of physics" Also AndrewmanGaming: *builds pillar reaching into space*

[@hollodollo4771]

0:10 Yeah lets change it by blowing up the earth so they lose their stable orbit and smash into debris!

[@AlonzoTG]

You can edit the save to give you realistic gravity, set the falloff to 2, it's like 6 stock..

[@TONOCLAY]

As you get closer to the planet in the orbit the speed increases. And then decreases as you get further away.

[@Modgii]

I think it's your method of accelerating to the correct orbital speed that is causing this to fail. The chances of you perfectly pointing at the horizon are extremely small, as well as being able to precisely hit a specific speed. Using the altitude of 18000m: The best way (that I can think of) to reach the correct velocity of 478m/s at exactly 18,000m is to set a waypoint at 18,000m then go backwards a calculated amount of meters so that when you accelerate forward, you will reach 18,000m as well as be aligned with the horizon at the perfect velocity. To calculate the distance to go backwards, you could use the formula: v^2 = u^2 + 2as, where v=velocity, u=initial velocity, a=acceleration and s=distance covered. Re-arrange this to give us the distance: s = (v^2 - u^2) / 2a v = 478 (The speed you want to be going when you reach 18,000m) u = 0 (You will be starting stationary) a is the rate your ship accelerates forward which you can calculate in the same way that you tested the gravity. I did a very rough calculation from the video above and it looks like your craft accelerates forward at around 20.95m/s^2, so: a = 20.95 s = 478^2 / (2*20.95) which is simplified to: s = 228,484 / 41.9 s = 5,453.08m So, if you go backwards 5,453.08m from your starting point at the altitude of 18,000m, all you would need to do is accelerate forward and shut off your thrusters once you hit 478m/s. You will always be pointing at the horizon so you will not need to fly in a spherical path, and only worry about shutting your thrusters off at the right moment, which still is a bit tricky, but its better than trying to fly perfectly around the planet!

[@brian_channel2]

Are you sure accelerating along a straight line would produce the correct velocity vector? I'm not 100% sure on the math for this, but I would think that accelerating along a curve would produce a different vector than accelerating on a line?

[@Modgii]

@@brian_channel2 When your thrusters shut down at 478m/s, providing the distance is calculated correctly and space engineers' physics worked properly, then at the shutdown point your velocity vector is perpendicular to the gravity pulling you towards the planet. I think you have more chance of getting the correct velocity vector in my scenario than trying to accelerate along a curve as space engineers just isn't accurate enough for the player to precisely stay on the curve.

[@kalinadog7176]

The first time I played this game, I'd say a hour in I came across the npc ships that basically look like a mini iss. I remember slowing it down with my spacepod, breaking in and just feeling so cozy. Ever since then I have wanted to make satellites as my ultimate goal. Well .... I tend to get distracted by building large structures and never get to it. I'm making one of my many returns to SE and of course thinking about it all over again. Would like to experiment in earth orbit with prototypes recon satellites then eventually make killer satellites. btw I love you SE vids!! whenever I come back to SE, I start off with your mythbusters then go to your playthroughs as I'm heading to bed after these gaming sessions. Wish this playlist could be updated but I understand ... Only so many myths to be busted 😹

[@ibawkbawki]

Do you think maybe your math was wrong? You calculated how quickly you’d be falling at 1.00g but not how fast you’d fall at the height you wanted to orbit at.. what if you went up to 10,000m then tried the free fall to see how quickly gravity pulls you down then added everything up. I’ve been stuck on trying to make a satellite without the satellite mod (only speed mod) for months. This is the closest I’ve seen What’s the calculations? Free fall speed(m/s) x Orbit Height(m) x current planet gravity? = the speed you need to complete an orbit?

[@erumaaro6060]

1g in se is actually 9.81m/s^2. The corrections you talked about can be achieved via programmable bocks. The outermost and slowest circular orbit possible(42.97km@0.05g) would require 282.73m/s and is impossible without mods. The lowest/fastest circular orbit needs to be above the atmosphere, so if the O2 indicator is any indication of air density then the lowest altitude should be 11.7km@0.57g -> 858.15 m/s. But if you include non circular orbits, you can go even faster.

[@raffaelechinotti5244]

Bro u just used mods to set max speed to a higher value... I tought this was on vanilla space engineers 😑

[@DERlpschauer]

not possible. you need a certain speed to work against gravity. not possible with the 110 m/s in vanilla.

[@bigbrain6452]

If you accellerate while in orbit without giving imput, it's always because you're falling. It's common to eventually accellerate enough that you begin to reach escape velocity and begin to rise again, but the planet's gravity wants you to keep going down, so you would start slowing down again until you are no longer going fast enough to continue rising and begin to fall again. All this means is that you have a bit of an egg shaped orbital pattern. What you need to do in order to maintain orbit is to check the lowest and highest speeds of each orbit to check if the ammount of time tou spend falling or rising is changing in each orbit. If, for example, you notice that your speed is increasing each orbit, don't slow down. Slowing down makes you have less velocity to escape the planets gravity on the rest of the orbit, causing you to lose altitude over time. Instead, you should try to go upwards slightly or, if absolutely necessary, speed up more. Speeding up would correct your orbit but you would keep any height you lost over the course of the previous orbits. The same logic can be applied to if you find yourself slowing down

[@bechirbenothman5453]

I know this is old, but for calculations, you get some wrong values since the altitude you get on your HUD is related to terrain just beneath you. Earthlike's diameter is 120km with a 3% margin, since some montains can get to 4 km. If someone wants to do this on his own, i'd recommand adding a 0.0.0 GPS coords to get a good radius of orbit

[@rommelfcc]

Nothing you to to that craft will look better 😉😆😂🤣 Already proven then, in vanilla can't get the speed 666... 😉 KSP like tools for orbital mechanics would be fun though. ASL indicator would also be helpful, there could be a mod for that...?

[@That0Homeless0Guy]

1. you maths were close but not close enough. 2. Space Engineers doesn't model gravity properly so the math isn't going to wok anyway. 3. The relative scale and accuracy of numbers provided to you means a small error is exaserbated massively. 4. You wouldn't need mods just a script. 5. This is still theorhetically possible without a mod or script but you would need to be either pretty spot on for speed and angle of attack, at a much higher altitude or both. And finally even with a real worls physics as well as in SE the difference in speed between staying captured and ejecting into space is MASIVE and being ejected isn't possible at that altitude without being massively over the fallback speed. I think an eliptical orbit is more likely possible.

[@humea2138]

I found out that just below the first layer of clouds, where the p-gravity goes down at 1 g you need to fly about 1200m/s to orbit thevplanet quite well, works best kn jetpack mode

[@ERIK-457]

You need to recorrect your trajectory once in a while like a real satelite, getting a perfect orbit where you never need to update your speed and trajectory artificially is near imposible. But it's still pretty cool, i am orbiting the earth by my self but i am terrible at building, i barely got the game so i am just a man orbiting earth and with 2 rpgs for accelerating faster when needed, yup, you can shoot yourself in the back with rockets of you go at 200m/s or above

[@eragonawesome]

Two problems: One, your velocity is not perfectly tangential to your orbit, you have a vertical component which will throw you out of orbit Two, Space Engineers does not have conservation of energy due to gravity decreasing linearly with distance rather than following the inverse square law. If you over or under shoot by even .001 m/s or if your orbit is not perfectly circular, you're fubbernucked and will be ejected from orbit.

[@tritanicwolf518]

11:08 this space craft is the “Sputnik” of Space Engineers.

[@AlonzoTG]

6,000 hour player here, on the GPS tab, create a "new" GPS point, don't change anything, just close the widget and then look down -> that is your radius give or take about a meter...

[@DWal32]

short answer, no you cannot orbit in the vanilla version of the game, due to two reasons. first, gravity in space engineers is linear, not reduced like gravity in real life, that follows the inverse square law. second, you have to move at around 500 m/s to orbit properly.

[@davidwilkerson1904]

You must base it on the limiting factor. Speed. If you are limited to 110Km/Sec then you should calculate the gravity and distance needed to achieve a stable orbit at that speed. Find your 0 gravity point center in the middle of the planet and then mark that to find the true distance from center and find out what distance and gravity point you need while still going 110Km/Sec. I don't know if the "digging to the center of the earth" video has come out yet but this video would contain some valuable research in order to achieve an actual orbit based on the speed constant.

[@G4nd4lf]

It is safe to be faster then first space speed because you will still get an orbit. Just it would be eclipse, which is still good. You only don't want to surpass a secound space speed, which is the speed you escape a planet. Also when are you getting closer to planeta and you are getting more and more velocity it still could be good, because it is normal for elliptical orbits.

[@klikkolee]

Sadly, SE' decision on how to make gravity vary with distance makes stable orbits impossible. Only circular orbits are possible, and a slight nudge off-course will lead to escape or collision. When a satellite gets lower, its speed towards the planet increases faster. Later in the orbit, it's even closer to the planet, but that speed it gained is now pointed away from the planet (since the planet is on the other side of the satellite), helping it gain height. Similarly, when a satellite gets higher, it experiences less gravity, making it easier to gain more height. In real life, the satellite that went lower has enough speed away from the planet to reach its original height exactly. Similarly, the satellite that went high still gets slowed down, and if below a certain speed, starts goung back towards the planet and eventually reaching its original height. But in SE, the change in gravity is much higher in both scenarios, so the lower sattelite's extra speed isn't enough to bring it back to its original height, and it spirals in. Similarly, the gravity on the higher satellite isn't enough to pull it down to its original height, so it spirals out.

[@prozackph7418]

Try to swim

[@DaMoniable]

Satellites all go the same direction, so theres no way they could run into each other in that way. They also vary where theyre at as different speeds change which drastically changes their orbits. In order to actually smash into something else, you would have to synchronize the orbit, and then speed up when behind the target.. Or in shorter words, its really really hard to actually space crash. Even with so many satalites, which are roughly the same size (not mass) of a small building... so really tiny in comparison.

[@AlonzoTG]

orbital speed is about 243m/sec at 100km altitude, I've also orbited close to the ground at about 650m/sec, ie accelerate to a good clip and let it coast just above the ground and not actually crash...

[@STSWB5SG1FAN]

It seems like before anyone tries orbiting in _Space Engineers_ they should play a little _Kerbal Space Program_ just to familiarize themselves with the basics of orbital mechanics. I'm going to start doing that right now.

[@nathanpfirman625]

I feel like In a real life scenario you’d want a ton of inertia since in space as long as you have enough inertia you can go pretty far if not forever. And that’s what keeps planets in orbit.

[@kevinmoore4916]

Aye I recently built a space station trying to orbit a planet its just a wee bit tricky to get it just right. To far from the planet and you just sit in space. To close and the planets gravity starts to pull you in. My station is in a sweet spot just between far enough away the planets gravity can't pull me in but close enough I can see a relay station I built on the planet. Always make sure you use a antenna 📡 lol. But it dons't look like you can orbit from what I can tell lol

[@Garidoes1]

I don’t think this guy has a complete understanding of orbit... someone get Jebediah Kerman on the phone. Maybe he can tell you that your velocity will increase and decrease in an elliptic orbit.

[@knutzzl]

IRL GPS satellites emit the time and there name every 0.01sec in perfecte sync. knowing their positions and the time now and the speed of the signal your gps device can calculate your distance to at least 3 satellites and thus know your location (inc altitude)

[@Fastdragonstar]

interesting concept too bad i did not find the video until now but if i were to do a space station or satelite that is going to orbit now in 2022 i would use a hover script and a perhaps a cruise control script (mostly to make sure it has a constant speed) in order to keep it above a certain distance from sea level. this way the satelite will always stay at comfortable distance and can orbit at much lower distances and/or without speed mods if it has enough power.

[@LimyChitou]

To have circular orbit around Earth-like planet at 4 km you need to move at 743 m/s... But there are mountains in the way... And also the system where the gravitational acceleration is changing is highly unstable... And 4 km is the height where the gravitational acceleration is "constant"

[@johnrtrucker]

I think the crafts mass should also be calculated because itd take a lighter craft to orbit at "x" velocity but double the mass and the speed should also have to increase

[@Salluqu]

Need speed mod, I put up a stable Mars orbiter, height was around 5km at 220m/sec prograde, don't forget to turn off your dampeners ffs.

[@Conta_Minated]

Can you use only atmospheric thrusters to go to space? Just put a lot of them on your ship and accelerate to an insane speed along the surface, right? Once you’re going fast enough, you should find yourself escaping the planet.

[@Ming1975]

So with vanilla speed cap is to be at .10g at 100mps?

[@soulewh]

Give it a shot and report back here! Inquiring minds need to know

[@LyricalLull]

G, short for the acceleration of something relative to Earth's gravity, is typically measure in m/s² Velocity is typically measured in m/s They are not the same unit. 0.10G is 9.8m/s² multiplied by 0.10 If something has half the acceleration of Earth's gravity, it is 0.5 G or 9.8m/s² multiplied by 0.5 You're getting velocity and acceleration confused

[@SignalJones]

so could you do the math, set a gyro override to keep your ship nose to the horizon and write a script that burns forwards if gravity increases and backwards if it decreases and get something orbiting? and what gravity/altitude would you need to be to orbit at a speed achievable in game?

[@sciencecompliance235]

Very strange that a space game would not have a somewhat realistic simulation of gravity. I'm kind of shocked actually.

[@TwoPlusTwoEqualsFive32]

Just like the ISS in real life there is drag on the satellite in close planet orbit, space engineers does not do far distance orbits very well. However with a speed mod and a simple script it takes very little energy to maintain an orbit for a long time. Once you get up to speed you only need a tiny thruster at the back to make the little 0.1m/s adjustments required over time.

[@ultim4088]

i think it would be easier to just set up a ring of GPS points around a planet and have a drone circle around the planet using those points. idk, something i might try for myself soon.

[@knutzzl]

I would think either gps route or a thruster on an override pointed back and tilting slightly up to maintain altitude and velocity a gyroscope override to keep the crosshair steady just above horizon.