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Adjusting inclination of orbit


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On mission 1 my Kerbals managed to bring a station in orbit around Minmus, at about 7000m height (grey orbit) . It comes across a nice location where I want them to land in the future.

On mission 2 another station was brought to Minmus, again around 7000m height (blue orbit). Getting to Minmus is not a challenge anymore, but I ended up in a random plane because I\'m not able to plan in great detail yet. So now I\'m wondering how I could align the orbit of the blue station so that it matches the same orbit as the grey station ? I will probably need to do this maneuver again in the future when I bring in my landers and they get random orbits too at first. I tried burning in several directions already, but I don\'t see the inclination changing, I just make my orbit bigger or smaller. So when do I need to burn and in what direction ?

screenshot5b.png

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To know which 90 to burn towards, the direction you are facing is where the half you are orbiting towards will move. Give a light burst to see which direction you are going. Also use your gymbal and heading, keep yourself aligned to the horizon

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If you use MechJeb, use the Normal +/- buttons on the Smart A.S.S. and fire where the orbits cross. If you\'re familiar with the right-hand-rule of direction of rotation, that\'ll tell you which one to use. If not, well, there\'s only two options. Remember that the side of the orbit \'ahead of you\' will move toward the direction you\'re pointing, and that means that the direction you should be pointing will be the opposite on the opposite side of the orbit.

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And if you have no idea if you should be burning normal and anti-normal: AN for AN, or anti-normal for ascending node.

So, if you are burning at the ascending node (ascending as in going towards North) then burn Normal -, otherwise Normal +.

Unfortunately if you don\'t use MechJeb you will have a hard time doing this perfectly since there are no normal/anti-normal markers so you have to kind of wing it.

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Mechjeb really isn\'t needed to find your normal/antinormal. When you get to Apoapsis read your prograde gimbal symbol to see which angle you\'re pointing at, then minus 90 degrees from that to give you the direction of your normal. Add 180 to that to find antinormal.

If you find yourself at 100 degrees, your normal is 10 degrees, your antinormal is 190. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

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Yeah, the problem with not using MechJeb here is that it while it\'s perfectly possible and not that hard to do, being off by a degree or two will mess up your orbit, and then you\'ll have to correct that, too.

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