MET?

I get into orbit, with near 0 inclination. I then wait until precisely the phase angle, ejection angle, and burn within 1m/s ejection velocity. Still no encounter. With Jool, It ended up being under ejection velocity and I came kind of back around and encountered after apoapsis. With Duna, I remember seeing an encounter after apoapsis, but I waited till ejection velocity and then had to correct back toward me so I wouldn't beat Duna there. The way I correct is I burn at the center of the brown or blue so that my intersection moves forward or backward...is that the best way to do it? Problem is I never know which way to burn until I figure out that I've missed the target planet by a couple million miles! I'm looking for a bit of insight as to: 1. How correction burns ought to be done... 2. When to perform the north or south plane changes (I just missed Eve by a bit) 3. When encounters are normally reached, before or after apoapsis. Duna hit both. I stopped when I saw the one after apoapsis with Jool and got there fine. Thanks, MET?

You have to make sure that the retrograde marker on your navball is straight up. That is to say, directly on top of the blue half. When you are landing on the moon, before you slow down on descent, you will be moving down at several hundred meters per second. Your retrograde marker should be very near the top of the blue. However, you also, inevitably have some horizontal speed. Lets say your moving west at 2m/s and down 250m/s. Your trajectory is going to be pretty straight down. Right? Now when you slow, and you kill that 250, you are still moving 2m/s west, and since your not moving as quickly down, your trajectory changes. To the point where if you aren't moving down at all, all your velocity is west! So your marker is going to be on the 270 line, and your other on the 90 line. That's why as you slow down, your retrograde goes let or right or whatever, even though your not burning that way. SO: On your descent, cancel out downward velocity periodically, and correct your trajectory. Depending on your lander size, linear rcs helps with this. Also, the wider your lander, the more fudge factor there is. If you have a skinny lander, you will have to be much more precise. Hope this helps.

Check out this thread: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21255-Screen-Scales-Freeware-–-Orbit-Transfer-Angles-made-(a-little)-easier That's what I use...and it works pretty well for getting angles.

I do quite a bit of testing actually... For my landers and interplanetary transfer stages I calculate delta-v and Thrust to weight ratio. That helps eliminate a lot of the guesswork. The launcher stage has 1 purpose: get the former into orbit. If it can do it, great. If it can't. Well, then...its out. My current lander has 4.2km/s delta-v. Which may be enough to return from some places. If it were just for landing it would be a complete overkill. As for getting back, well Jeb, thats above your paygrade. (which is 0 anyway) Anyway Ill still have to test that.

Do parachutes help at all? Moho is likely my next target...my lander is equipped with parachutes...

Seems Moho could be a real pain to intercept. How big is the SOI? Duna's was definitely hard to catch right. And Moho it moderately elliptical and seriously inclined. Incline can be handled with a simple plane change maneuver, but So far I have not come across a thread explaining how to account for eccentricity of planetary orbits. I hear the mathematics can get pretty tough...Advice/methods anyone?

Hey it looks like we're in the same "boat" ahaha Laythe humor...same thing happened to me and i posted like a thread up

I could have sworn there was land here! Right. Laythe spash down, not exactly what I had planned...I love how one of the Kerbals names is "Row in". AHAHAHA. The 1st guy tried to swim for an island like 100km away...I think he drank the Laythe water...

Right now I think Im out of luck, but my keys wont work. Do I have to quickload from another flight, the tracking station, or the home screen or something???

Do I have to have the flight still going on? On my transfer to Jool I accidently had a little bump in with the moon...I had quicksaved in kerbin orbit and I would like to go back and wait until the moon has passed...maybe I cant do this now. Thanks..

The tutorials, I would guess, are not fully implemented yet, KSP is a work in progress, as you probably know. Those two just came out 6 days ago with the newest version, 0.17. You can find all sorts of KSP videos on youtube. They should help you...also it might be a good idea to ask a question on the how-to forum, the people here are generally very helpful. Welcome to the community!

My f4 to quicksave works great but when I hit f9 to load nothing happens...I changed it to f5 and still doesnt do anything? Is there a certain screen I must do this from?

YES! I searched for this and couldn't find it! Awesome. Thanks!

After completing my transfer burns to Duna, I want to correct my planetary transfer so that I intercept the SOI of Duna. I know the most efficient way to do this is as soon as possible. But its hard to tell whether I have over or undershot the planets SOI. I haven't achieved an encounter before the correction burn previously, I always need to correct. How do I figure out which way to burn without waiting a while to eyeball it, and thus hurting my delta-v budget. Alternatively, is there a formula that can tell me where Duna will be at the end of my transfer? Also: Is it more efficient to burn towards/away from the sun, or just burn prograde/retrograde to curve my trajectory outward or inward?(during correction burns) Thanks

I am running mac and have had trouble with the patcher. The first time I tried a full download it wouldn't unzip, and now there is no full download in the store. WHY? Has anyone gotten the OSX patcher to work? If so, how?