what the love is polar orbit and how the love do i get into polar orbit?

[drew4452862]

loveing no idea... i am orbiting to the north and south on the equator but i still can not scan

[Gaarst]

1. Language.
2. What is your orbit height? The scanners need specific orbits to be able to scan.
3. What is your orbital inclination?

[NachoAyala]

1 hour ago, drew4452862 said:

loveing no idea... i am orbiting to the north and south on the equator but i still can not scan

An orbital which pases the poles, methinks...

[drew4452862]

I tried these orbits but i ended up needing to be higher.   I guess you just make your orbit point to the N on the nav ball?

I had this going https://postimg.org/image/gyfoyrojx/

and loveing nerds keep telling you about the loveing poles... no loveing excrements but how do you know where the loveing poles are

Edited January 17, 2017 by drew4452862

[sal_vager]

@drew4452862, we'll be glad to help you with this but it's quite obvious you're using harsh language, I suggest you reign it in.

To answer your question though, you want to go north, or south so that you're orbiting over the poles of the planet.

[Reactordrone]

Orbit looks fine. Do you have enough power? Do you have an antenna for data transmission?

[Kerbart]

6 hours ago, drew4452862 said:

loveing no idea... i am orbiting to the north and south on the equator but i still can not scan

Your inclination is wrong.

[bewing]

It is actually rather difficult to know exactly where the poles of the CB are when you are setting up your orbit. To get the scanner to work, you only have to be within 10 degrees or so of an actual polar orbit -- which is quite easy to do by eye, before you even enter an orbit. Your orbital inclination looks good enough ... and I think you already said you found out you just needed more altitude? The scanner will tell you how high and low your Ap and Pe can be, before the scanner will function (when you try to take a scan and you are not at the proper altitude).

In any case, the easiest way I find to achieve a nearly perfect polar orbit is to put a ship in an equatorial orbit first, and then target it, and then burn at the nodes until the nodes are at 90 degrees. But in some sense that just changes the question to "how do you create a perfect equatorial orbit"? One way is to wait for a rescue or satellite contract -- those are often purely equatorial. Another way is to use the SetOrbit cheat to put a tailfin in a pure equatorial orbit, and use that.

The hard way is to look carefully at your navball. In a pure equatorial orbit, your prograde and retrograde markers will stay exactly on the 90 and 180 degree lines (respectively) as you orbit. So if your orbit is not perfect, you wait until the marker touches the line, and then you burn north or south just enough to keep it there.

Similarly, to create a polar orbit, what you want is that your prograde/retrograde markers will track exactly up the "north" line, and exactly down the "south" line. So you wait until your marker is on the line and then you burn east or west just enough to keep it there.

 

Edited January 18, 2017 by bewing

[Sharpy]

6 hours ago, bewing said:

 

In any case, the easiest way I find to achieve a nearly perfect polar orbit is to put a ship in an equatorial orbit first, and then target it, and then burn at the nodes until the nodes are at 90 degrees.

 

If you're doing it at Kerbin, just target Mun.