Bug #6496
Having Future Path of Ship Touch Planetary Surface During Burn Triggers "Suborbital Flight" Milestone
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Description
Situation:
Put a ship in a BIG orbit with an inclination less than 90^ around a planet you've never been to before. Create a manuever node to increase the inclination to greater than 90^ and do this burn.
As you do the burn, the Pe of the ship's future path will pull down through the surface to the center of the planet and then go back out into space as the arc of the path flips over to the new inclination.
When the ship's future path first touches the planet's surface, it will trigger the milestone "entered suborbital flight" for that planet, even though the ship itself was nowhere near the planet and the future path only was in contact with the planet's surface for an instant.
History
#1
Updated by Kasuha about 8 years ago
Updated by On Kerbin, suborbital flight is triggered when the ship is on suborbital trajectory above the atmosphere. On other bodies the altitude condition should probably be reversed, i.e. suborbital flight triggers when the ship is on suborbital trajectory below certain altitude limit.
#2
Updated by TriggerAu almost 8 years ago
Updated by - Status changed from New to Needs Clarification
#3
Updated by bewing over 7 years ago
Updated by I disagree with Kashua. When a projected orbit touches the surface, it's suborbital. Even if it's just for an instant, and even if you are just inside the SOI. This is not a bug -- it is working just the way it should.
#4
Updated by Geschosskopf over 7 years ago
Updated by The issue IMHO is that you can get the "suborbital flight" milestone despite never going near the planet, just by changing your inclination from one side of 90^ to the other.
I myself tend to define "suborbital" as a ballistic trajectory starting and ending on the ground. This in fact seems to be the generally accepted definition. Therefore, IMHO a ship should not trigger the "suborbital flight" milestone unless it has already landed on that planet. And there needs to be some minimum Ap altitude (expressed as a fraction of the planet's radius if there's no atmosphere) when doing this to avoid it triggering on bouncing during a hard landing. But the bottom line is, you should not get a "suborbital" milestone for an impacting trajectory before you actually land on the planet.