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How high can you go?

T

tigisfat

Guest
Today I slewed my aircraft to over 300,000 feet. Is there a limit to how high you can go? Does it ever stop you? At 300,000 feet, the curvature was pretty pronounced. I know that sim limitations mean that the physics are goofy up there. I was actually unable to let the aircraft freefall because it tumbled up and down and wouldn't descend.

How high does the space shuttle orbit? (in feet)
 
I believe the limit in FSX is set to 1.000.000 feet.
However, the physic engine does not handle the "out of the atmosphere" flight so well.
First of all, the rocket engines, necessary for propulsion of the aircraft at this altitude, are not supported by FSX.
Second, the small gaz launchers (kind of mini-rocket engines) on the aircraft hull for 3D orientation are not supported by FSX.

The only way to have a plane travelling safely to those altitudes would be to implement a module similar to the RBCO gauges by Roger, that would externally handle the space-flight physics. This does not exist yet. Also, I'm not sure if the FSX engine would tolerate a speed high enough to the orbit flight (8.000 meters per second at 120 km altitude, if I remember correctly from MS Space Simulator :) ). It seems to me that FSX has a maximum speed limit, which could be problematic.
 
Maximum speed in FSX is somewhere around Mach 4 I believe. What I do find quite interesting is that there comes a point somewhere descending through 300,000 ft where the aircrafts control surfaces start to affect direction as if the thin air up there is realistic. Trouble is you can't go fast enough for orbital flight which is around 17,000 mph
 
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
"....between 278 km (173 mi) and 460 km (286 mi) altitude, and travels at an average speed of 27,724 kilometres (17,227 mi) per hour, completing 15.7 orbits per day."
The shuttle often docks withe ISS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_X
quote----
The maximum altitude in the game has been increased to 100,000,000 ft. Therefore, FSX maximum altitude is approximately 2.39 times the diameter of the Earth at the equator.

30,480 kilometers and 18,939.39 miles if I'm correct with a calculator.
 
What's the point of going up to 100 million feet? We just found out that in orbit you're only about 1.5 million feet up.
 
well, if you slew to the limit, you could go to sleep at night and see if you've fallen to the ground by morning :icon_lol:

you could do it in a glider trimmed to slowly descend. when you fall to enough atmosphere for it to fly, see where you end up by the time you hit the ground.

you could slew bob into space and simulate what it's like to be superman.:icon_lol:
 
cheezyflier said:
well, if you slew to the limit, you could go to sleep at night and see if you've fallen to the ground by morning :icon_lol:

you could do it in a glider trimmed to slowly descend. when you fall to enough atmosphere for it to fly, see where you end up by the time you hit the ground.

you could slew bob into space and simulate what it's like to be superman.:icon_lol:
Click to expand...

Above 150,000 feet, objects don't really fall in FSX. They do for a few seconds, but when they begin to tumble, they tumble down as well as up. I tried to let it freefall so I could land at an airport when there was sufficient atmosphere, and ended up having to slew back down below 150,000.
 
Over at Avsim there is a scenery that puts the International Space Station directly over Tyndall AFB at 900,000'.

iss_kpam.zip

It takes quite a while to slew up there, but it looks pretty cool.

I had it as one of my standard Fla sceneries until I realized I probably wasn't going to go there very often. :)

FAC
 
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