How to get to other planets?

[Leonov]

How does one get to another planet?, i have been to the moon many times and landed secessfully, every attempt to get to a different planet gets me stuck in the suns orbit, Ideas?

[Vanamonde]

It's the same problem, just scaled up. What sort of trouble are you having? Solar orbit is just a stage, and a necessary one, between planets. The trick is to make that orbit meet the objective, which is a matter of matching planes and timing.

The short and sloppy version is, match planes, set your ship's orbit slightly lower than the target planet (to have your ship catch up to it) or slightly higher than the target planet (to let it catch up with your ship), and fast-forward to an intercept. The scale can be deceptive, though. Planets have much larger SOIs than moons, of course, but on the map view you're zoomed out so far that it looks like you have to match exactly for a capture. It's actually very much like trying to get 2 ships to rendezvous in a planet's orbit. Have you tried that yet? It's very hard, but good practice.

[Peppe]

How does one get to another planet?, i have been to the moon many times and landed secessfully, every attempt to get to a different planet gets me stuck in the suns orbit, Ideas?

Things to keep in mind, On the launch pad you are in orbit of the sun. You only notice it once you break out of the kerbin SOI.

Given that, you can then time your burns in the kerbin sphere to benefit your target when you enter the sun's SOI. Take notice of the direction kerbin is moving around the sun, if you want to go to an inner planet burn on the prograde side of kerbin's orbital movement to exit on the retrograde side in a lower orbit than kerbin.

To go to an outer planet start your burn on the retrograde side of kerbin's orbit and you will exit kerbin's SOI in a higher orbit.

Time accelerate on the launch pad until the planets are in alignment for your launch. Orbit and time your kerbin escape burn, then adjust your solar orbit to get an encounter.

You can quicksave and luck into an encounter or to be more exact with the alignments before timing your kerbin exit.

Several mods can help with in game measurements and help you time the transfer burn:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21544-Plugin-Part-17-Protractor-Planetary-Lunar-Rendezvous-Mod

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/18230-0-17-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-4-3-2-%2827-Sep%29

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/12384-PLUGIN-PART-0-16-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v1-9

and you may need this transfer calculator:

http://ksp.olex.biz/

[Markus Reese]

First and foremost is getting enough fuel into space. Since once in space, thrust is force over time since there really are not any losses. Any thrust energy put into the system stays in the system. That being said, your engines take so much fuel to output x force. and it will take so much force to accelerate to the needed velocity. One engine will put out the same force as two engines, but over twice the time. Therefore it would consume the same fuel to get you to your orbit. So once you have your orbit and are looking to leave, you want the engine that has the highest specific impulse (nuclear) because the specific impulse is essentially how much thrust you get per unit fuel. Exact units I don't know.

That being said, it really comes down to patience. Use alt+</> for your physics timewarping. Remember that you still need to get up to your velocity timely. One nuc on a heavy rocket means you might need to start burning months early in game time so having a few is beneficial on heavier stages. Your fuel to delta-V will drop a bit for the weight of each engine for all stages, so minimizing the number of traverse engines is highly recommended. So to sum, provided you have the fuel to get to yout orbit is the key. Remember less engines and more efficent will take longer to get orbit speed, but actually require less fuel.

[draeath]

Mass matters. The less your mass, the more acceleration you get per unit of thrust.

[Leonov]

Usually when i would overshoot the moon ever so slightly and end up in the suns gravitational field, I thought that it was game over and i would have to fight the sun to get anywhere, but if i understand your right, you acctully use the sun to intersect with other planets?

[Vanamonde]

It's not so much that you use the sun, and more that you can't avoid being affected by it. What I was trying to say is that any time you are not within some world's sphere of influence, you are, by default, orbiting the sun, so it's not a bad thing. It's just a transitional state that you pass through between one world and another. Nothing is wrong when you're in solar orbit, so you just modify your trajectory to intersect a world and keep going.

[Leonov]

Awesome, Looks like il be taking the Soyuz Craft Further than ever imagined.