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My luck! ...And yours to!

Xannari Ferrows

By Xannari Ferrows
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Xannari Ferrows

Xannari Ferrows

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I want to tell you all about a lucky break I got after a failed mission to Dres.

Just... look:

Nc1G3b9.png

I guess the game took sympathy on me, and I got this as a recompense! Can you tell what happened based on this picture? In case you don't, I got a perfect Aerocapture into the Joolian system, and right after, an encounter with Tylo, which will kick me into orbit! No fuel required. Just physics.

Anyway, I thought this moment was so perfect that I had to make a thread questioning you about the following:

What's the luckiest thing that's ever happened to you in KSP? Mine is this (yes, this is going on right now)

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Xannari Ferrows

Xannari Ferrows

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This Gilly encounter after my second (or third try?) of aerobraking at Eve. As you can see, it was lined up almost perfectly.

http://i.imgur.com/fRPm8fR.jpg

What are the odds?

I would love a chance to run those odds on paper sometime. A rough calculation in my head says about 1 in 3096 billion, but I could be wrong on that.

I had another stroke of luck next to my Tylo encounter:

qfTSIQj.png

You see, this is a Vall lander, and turns out we were on an ideal trajectory to go to Vall after the Tylo encounter! Seriously, I don't think there's much more luck in the world than this.

On top of this, just as a log for the logbook, we've got so much Delt-V left! Nearly 14,000 m/s! We can probably go to Moho just for a laugh.

Edited by Xannari Ferrows
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James_Eh

James_Eh

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On top of this, just as a log for the logbook, we've got so much Delt-V left! Nearly 14,000 m/s! We can probably go to Moho just for a laugh.

No, no you can't. Nobody can go to Moho. Stupid planet... (One of these days I have to get off my duff and actually do a successful mission there.)

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James_Eh

James_Eh

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You know, I was thinking about the original premise of the post while I was stuck in snow-related traffic on the way home today (but not Buffalo thank goodness), and can't help but think that it's a pretty big messup to aim for Dres and hit Jool...

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sdj64

sdj64

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Luckiest thing happened to me is that my recent Jool-5 mission made it home with less than 100 fuel left out of 9900 on the mothership. But gravity assists... that's skill, not luck (if you know what you're doing). I used a few of them in that mission.

Here's a controlled Tylo assist going from Vall to Bop, you can see that Tylo's gravity both boosts my ship into a higher orbit and angles its orbit to match planes with Bop.

d2iBrnd.png

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Landge

Landge

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No, no you can't. Nobody can go to Moho. Stupid planet... (One of these days I have to get off my duff and actually do a successful mission there.)

Moho can be done and more effectively than I did (I had a poorly designed transfer stage). I sent a better prepared fleet for a rescue operation loaded down with a crapton of fuel.

Here's the link to my mission album.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72638-Mission-to-Moho-Journey-to-the-Innermost-Planet

Edited by Landge
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Xannari Ferrows

Xannari Ferrows

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Not my own experience, but I remember reading a post on these forums about someone who had crashed into Dres ... during a Jool transfer. Although I suppose that's not really lucky. :P

I think that would require you actively trying since the object wouldn't interact if the physics weren't loaded. I'd consider that a curse more than anything else, but hey. It's also lucky in a way... ...I think.

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Xannari Ferrows

Xannari Ferrows

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I don't know why you guys find it so difficult to get to Moho... anybody can go there. :wink:

https://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/Wrightstown-NJ/MOHO+Agency+Inc/434386

(sorry, couldn't resist)

WOW! Kudos to you! That was funnier than it should have been. Although I suppose it is still early in the morning... But hey! That's no excuse not to have fun!

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Xannari Ferrows

Xannari Ferrows

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Luckiest thing happened to me is that my recent Jool-5 mission made it home with less than 100 fuel left out of 9900 on the mothership. But gravity assists... that's skill, not luck (if you know what you're doing). I used a few of them in that mission.

Here's a controlled Tylo assist going from Vall to Bop, you can see that Tylo's gravity both boosts my ship into a higher orbit and angles its orbit to match planes with Bop.

http://i.imgur.com/d2iBrnd.png

I had no idea maneuver nodes showed more that 2 paths. Is there a mod that allows that?

Anyway, I'm aware that Gravity assists are actively used by skilled players, but I didn't voluntarily try for a Tylo gravity assist. That just happened. Being on an ideal trajectory to Vall was also luck, since it was in the precise place at the precise time.

Anyway, onto your picture. It seems you have a knack for gravity assists, although Tylo is so darn huge it's sometimes hard not to. Fun fact: Tylo and most other moons defy the laws of physics, since they only follow the laws of 2-point body orbits rather than 3-point. If they did follow the laws of physics though, I suppose the Joolian system would be a mess... sooo... I guess they just needed a game.

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sdj64

sdj64

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I had no idea maneuver nodes showed more that 2 paths. Is there a mod that allows that?

Anyway, I'm aware that Gravity assists are actively used by skilled players, but I didn't voluntarily try for a Tylo gravity assist. That just happened. Being on an ideal trajectory to Vall was also luck, since it was in the precise place at the precise time.

Anyway, onto your picture. It seems you have a knack for gravity assists, although Tylo is so darn huge it's sometimes hard not to. Fun fact: Tylo and most other moons defy the laws of physics, since they only follow the laws of 2-point body orbits rather than 3-point. If they did follow the laws of physics though, I suppose the Joolian system would be a mess... sooo... I guess they just needed a game.

Yep, I saw that somebody did an N-body physics simulation of the Joolian system, Vall gets ejected pretty early on and Bop and Pol get much higher elliptical orbits. Tylo and Laythe, by virtue of high mass, stay pretty much where they are. On to the paths in the picture, the game shows 2 paths after your last maneuver node. So that maneuver in Jool orbit before Tylo adds two more paths onto the map view. I think you can change it also by opening the settings.cfg and changing CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT to a number higher than 3.

Good for you for getting that Tylo encounter. If I get an accidental gravity assist it usually puts me where I don't want to be.

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Xannari Ferrows

Xannari Ferrows

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Yep, I saw that somebody did an N-body physics simulation of the Joolian system, Vall gets ejected pretty early on and Bop and Pol get much higher elliptical orbits. Tylo and Laythe, by virtue of high mass, stay pretty much where they are. On to the paths in the picture, the game shows 2 paths after your last maneuver node. So that maneuver in Jool orbit before Tylo adds two more paths onto the map view. I think you can change it also by opening the settings.cfg and changing CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT to a number higher than 3.

Good for you for getting that Tylo encounter. If I get an accidental gravity assist it usually puts me where I don't want to be.

I'll need to check out that simulation and run it on paper. I'll do that later though. I'll also have to look at the settings. I'll also have to look at apparently 50 other things today. I've got a lot of things from people on Crescendo, but I needn't bore everyone with the details.

In truth, this is the first unintentional gravity assist I've done that has actually helped me. I imagine someone's had more.

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KevinW42

KevinW42

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I guess there was a little bit of skill involved (but only a little, I don't really know what I'm doing), but I was setting up a Laythe encounter and realized that if I just kept cruising by, I could get a second encounter with only a little bit of tweaking and have a much smaller insertion burn.

zAgTTaF.png

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