From Gateway Station Operations to all within, greeting.
As you may be aware, Gateway Station is a low-orbit station, which consequently suffers from a minuscule degree of drag from Eliéra’s outer atmosphere, necessitating periodic corrections in our orbit. The day after tomorrow (Yrnaes 21st) is the scheduled date for this annual orbital maintenance.
To minimize undesirable gravity effects, we have elected to make a six-minute prograde burn symmetrical around the moment of apoapsis, Courtly falling 17:22. While this should limit the resultant peak acceleration to well below one one-hundredth of a standard gravity, we nonetheless recommend that all loose and/or fragile objects be secured for the duration of the burn, and plumbing services also will be secured for burn as per standard procedures (please consult your station infrastructure guide if additional details are required).
We anticipate no requirement to undock any vessels berthed here during the burn, although for convenience, docking and undocking during the burn is restricted to emergencies only.
Thank you for your cooperation, and our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Galár Valarian Indoricios
for and on behalf of
Gateway Station Operations
If it’s a hundredth of a gee, why don’t they just apply vector control to the whole station though? No one has to secure anything during the acceleration and you can perform it whenever you want, or even constantly
In this particular case? Because they don’t exist yet.
(More generally, because you’d need a vector-control core scaled to match the mass of the station, which in most cases is pouring a ridiculous amount of money into something that’ll only see use for annual orbital corrections.)