godefroi

Aha, found exactly what I was looking for: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ The Duna window, assuming you're willing to spend, say, an extra 100m/s of dV, is something like 3 weeks wide, according to that. The other windows are significantly smaller given that kind of dV constraint.

Ah, there's me. Protractor says I've got a few days yet to my transfer window, have MJ plot it, and it's 237 days out, and not even close to an intercept anyway. Grr! (15:25 in the video)

Protractor tells me angles, yes, I've been using the "adjust X" option where you just wait until it's zero. I didn't realize that MechJeb would tell me angles, I'll have to look into that. Mostly MechJeb seems good at turning my nice rockets into fireballs, I've noticed. When you say "much wider", just how wide, for example, is the Duna window? Is there some way to graph the dV costs over time before, during, and after the transfer window? Scott Manley makes it all look so easy, but I guess that's what you get for spending years studying this stuff before you start playing the game... Also, I tend to use LN-V for transfer stages, which means I don't have a very high TWR, leading to long burns. When I'm making my transfer burn, I start at prograde, but do I keep pointing at prograde through the burn, or do I keep pointing where prograde was when I started the burn? How much difference would that make?

I've actually got that tool open in another window here. It says it's based on KSP 0.22 data, I assume that remains accurate for 0.23? How does one measure the angles accurately other than cutting out triangles and taping them on the monitor?

I've successfully made interplanetary transfers (manually to Duna, MechJeb has gotten me to Eve and Duna as well), and I think I'm doing it the hard way. My normal SOP lately is to put a protractor (mod) on my ship, then wait until protractor says my launch window is up. I park in a 75km orbit, then wait for the angles, and make my burn (which is usually around 1050 m/s). This pretty much never gets me an intercept, though. It doesn't even really get me very close. I play around with maneuver nodes, can't nail down an intercept, and then tell MechJeb to tune my approach. MechJeb then wants to make a 400-500m/s burn to fix my approach. From everything I've read, this combined total of ~1500m/s dV is much more than I should be spending to get into a Duna intercept. Also, I've tried using Kerbal Alarm Clock to wait for transfer windows (both modes, which don't agree), and it doesn't agree with Protractor on when transfer windows are, and none of them agree with MechJeb on when transfer windows are. What is it I'm doing wrong, here, and, for my own curiosity, how "wide" are the transfer windows? If I attempt a transfer a few days to either side, how much does that hurt me in terms of required dV? I'm sure these questions come up all the time, but I wasn't able to find any succinct answers, so I appreciate any help the collective wisdom could provide.

I found the section for VAB/SPH controls, but there's nothing in there about camera controls. In fact, nowhere at all, that I could find, are shift+keypad mapped to the camera controls. Must be some sort of built-in thing?

So, when I watch videos, people are always fine-tuning angles and rotations with the shift+WASD keys. Since I'm left-handed, I remapped WASD onto the keypad. When I attempt to shift-arrow, however, all I get is camera movement. How do I turn off the shift+keypad=camera controls and use it instead for fine-tuning part placements?

Yeah, I stopped putting goo containers on my capsule, and it seems to have solved the problem. I've successfully carried out several EVAs now. Thanks for all the help.

I think it must be the goo containers I've got around the ship. I was even tossed off once doing an EVA on the ground (managed a polar suborbital flight to the north pole). I'll try again without the goo. Thanks for the excellent explanation of EVA mechanics. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it, I've only been at this an hour or two.

New player, I've built several rockets now, achieved orbit a few times, and gotten some science, and now I'd like to do some EVAs (for science!). I simply cannot manage it, though. The tutorial in the wiki suggested an EVA in space above Kerbin, and as soon as I clicked the button, the spacecraft went shooting off, and my Kerbal was hopelessly lost. OK, I thought, I'll try it in orbit. As soon as I clicked EVA there, I shot about 700 meters from my spacecraft. I, not having a firm grasp on orbital mechanics, was not able to return to the ship. Why is this so difficult for me? The videos I watch make it look so easy, click the EVA button, and you appear on the ladder. For me, this never seems to happen...