Whoa - I looked at it once, and there's a big green blob in the middle. I look at it a second time, and now the blob is smaller and toward the bottom.

I'm sure if I had a clue this would make perfect sense to me, but in the meantime I'm just going to be amazed that it changed all by itself.

Ha! No, I changed it and you caught me. I put up the first one, then realized the second one was prettier (and closer to the actual correct solution)!

THIS IS A NEW PICTURE. This post has been retroactively changed without mention! I AM OFFENDED.

Well, not really. But are the two pics different scenarios, or is this one what it should have looked like originally?

Guilty as charged, Stevie. In the first simulation, I wasn't actually doing anything with the satellite thrusters; I was just excited that I had made the visualization go. (You don't want to know how long it took me to convince R to draw a green circle.) So, the satellite was just passively orbiting Earth. In this one, we're actually doing the first half of the Hohmann transfer orbit!

:D

Actually, having done a touch of R in the past, I can imagine.

As for being your cheering section: Whoo, keep it up! *cheers*

...aaaand Team K&R is on the scoreboard, in 214th place! (Out of, um, 216. But we have a score! And it'll be higher forthwith!)