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woooooo | 27 days ago

Seasons mess that up unless you're burning fuel to make minor plane changes every day. Otherwise you have an equinox where your plane faces the sun (equivalent to an equatorial orbit) and a solstice where your plane is parallel to the sun (the ideal case).

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oliv5900|27 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit A Sun Synchronous orbit at the Day-Night terminator solves this issue

elihu|26 days ago

Huh, I didn't know that that was possible without burning fuel. Kind of wild that it only works because the Earth has an equatorial bulge and isn't an exact sphere.

WalterBright|26 days ago

I didn't think of that! I should have had a V8. Thanks for the info.

mr_toad|26 days ago

Satellites can spin! You also need to deal with precession and other minor chances in the orbit, but they’re all solved problems.

WalterBright|27 days ago

True. It would a tradeoff with the fuel consumed vs doubling power output.