Orbital Decay

[rgrove0172]

A Geostationary orbit around earth is at an altitude of about 35,000km. The stutterwarp wall is quite a bit lower, right about 12,000km. This would seem to indicate that at the lower orbit, decay might be a concern if the ship isnt able to make station-keeping maneuvers.

Should we conclude that stutterwarp vessels use their attitude thrusters for this purpose and that they are powerful enough to counter the decay? Is the decay slow enough (months) that it isnt a factor?

If you believe that stutterwarp doesnt work at all within the wall, then whats your opinion? If you believe it does, but at a drastically reduced efficiency, then I suppose its easy enough to believe they can boost one a day or so to a higher orbit and avoid the decay.

The rules specifically state however that some tricky manuevering, including trading altitude for speed then slingshotting out of the gravity well, is standard practice leading one to believe that attitude thrusters or lame stutterwarp drive are neither very capable in this environment.

Throughts?

 

[Carlobrand]

We currently have satellites orbiting around 500 km altitude, and the International Space Station orbits at around 330 km altitude, so orbital decay's clearly not going to be an issue on a day-to-day basis. Month-to-month, maybe. One on-line source says the ISS loses about 2 km a month and makes periodic boosts to recover altitude.

Now, how you get up from that orbit to that 12,000 km level - that must get interesting.

 

[rgrove0172]

Ok, I can agree that a ship with any power whatsoever should be able to stay in orbit for months, even longer. Only in the case of a derelict would there be a problem and even then only if you want a plot element.. easy enough to say its pretty stable for years if you want.