Divinux

Oh god this looks amazing

Hi guys, and thanks for the welcoming words! Unfortunately, there is currently no indicator for plane alignment. As long as we\'re in the stoneage, instrumentwise, we(at least me, let me know if there\'s a better way) do it by eye. I open the map, scroll out until i see the front- and the backline of the Mun\'s orbit, rotate up or down until both lines are lined up into one, and then rotate right/left until the intersection is about in the middle. I must admit i fly this maneuver in map view completely to see where my rocket is relative to the intersection. Check out the picture Corax linked. As you can see, there are two yellow dots (they look limegreen to me ) The one labeled prograde is 'forward' the one labeled retrograde is 'brake'. So assuming you are on the green orbit, you need to burn 'forward' to make your orbit bigger(like the blue one), or 'brake' if you want your orbit to shrink (like the red one). It\'s all colorcoded Thank you Sir! There are several videos on youtube about that, and i learned a lot from Lets plays actually. So i dont think i could contribute very much because of the existing content. Maybe when the instruments get updated I did say literally one word about the atmosphere, and to modify the orbit at the apoapsis or periapsis i mentioned as well, i might have to make it more clear then I wanted to edit the post anyways, and add your information as well as what PD sent me via PM. About the craft, i don\'t want to add the one i used, because there are as you can clearly see mods involved, and i can\'t imagine that going too well I might throw a vanilla rocket capable of reaching Mun\'s orbit together though... About the same time as the youtube video ;D

Hi guys, for my first post i wanted to show what i learned so far about orbiting, and maybe help those out who come across this wondeful game after me. I noticed this section was lacking an easy visual guide to what i struggled with for quite a bit, so here goes my attempt at it. I will try to describe operations which will help you controlling your orbit, and as an example synchronize my orbit with the Mun\'s. Of course, mastering these operations will help you land on whatever planet you want in the future. So, let\'s start with some theory: Every orbit has two critical points, an Apoapsis (the point farthest away from the center of gravity) and a Periapsis (the point closest to the center of gravity). You should watch out for them because they make modifying your orbit easier and also tell you something about your speed and height. On your way to the Apoapsis you will be trading height for speed, and on your way to the Periapsis you will be gaining speed, but losing height. Ok, enough theory for now, we will figure the rest out as we go Off to the launchpad! Step 1: Achieving lower orbit Well, let\'s hope this ends well : Last preflight checks, enable the S.A.S.(Hotkey T) and liftoff in 10... Start rising vertically until you leave the atmospere. If you open the map(Hotkey M), you should already see your trajectory and an Apoapsis. It should look something like this: Remember, the Apoapsis being the highest point, is the point where you start falling if you proceed without any more thrust, so you can either raise it more, or if it\'s high enough for your taste, cut your engines (Hotkey X) and take your time to reposition the rocket. You will want to translate your vertical velocity into horizontal, so you should line up your ship with the horizon. The Mun\'s orbit has an inclination of 90°, so it being our ultimate goal, i suggest you turn there. 91°.. Mhh almost but good enough for now. Start accelerating and watch your orbit grow bigger until the Periapsis appears. Welcome to lower orbit! Now, is your orbit not perfectly circular? We can fix that! For the orbit to be a perfect circle, you will need the Periapsis to be the same height as the Apoapsis. To modify a point, you need to be on the opposite side, so to modify the Periapsis, wait until you reach the Apoapsis and vice versa. As you might know from the tutorial, the green marks on your instruments indicate where you go and where you come from. Point your rocket at them to accelerate (burn prograde) or 'brake' (burn retrograde). Tinker with it as much as you like and you will get something similar to this: Step 2: Aligning orbital planes Now that we have a nice stable little orbit going on, we can start worrying about our orbital plane. Basically, you can imagine your and the Mun\'s orbits as CDs and we have to make sure we align them parallel to each other, so we don\'t miss the Mun later. You might have done a better job, but since i was heading at a course of 91° from the beginning, my plane is a little off. To fix this, i will have to rotate my plane, and the best point to do this is on the axis between the two orbits. Basically, you will need to accelerate at 90° in the direction you want the plane to rotate. Note that you don\'t see the green orbit indicators on the instruments. This is because you need to position your rocket at a 90° angle up or down and the indicators are exactly on top and bottom of the ball now. The green arrows indicate my course. In the special case of our 90° inclination, you just need to position your rocket north at HDG 000 to rotate your orbit counterclockwise, or at HDG 180 to rotate it clockwise. In any other case it helps to point your rocket in your orbit\'s direction, rotate your rocket so the ground/air indicator is vertical (i did a better job on the bottom right), and then rotate the rocket 90° on the horizon line in the direction you want your orbit to rotate. It takes a bit to wrap your head around, to process where 'up' is and where you should go, but once you did this, the reward will be a perfectly aligned orbit. Step 3: Transferring into higher orbit Great, now that we have a stable and aligned orbit, we will be transferring to the Mun\'s orbit. This step should be easy now, all we have to do is to burn prograde at the Periapsis, so the Apoapsis moves to a height of about 11.000.000m. Once we have that, we wait until we reach the Apoapsis and burn prograde again until the Periapsis hits 11.000.000m as well. Step 4: Synchronizing both orbits Now that we are almost in the same orbit as the Mun, it should become painfully obvious how far away from it we are. All we have to do to 'hunt it down' is to alter our orbit just a tiny bit- a smaller orbit takes less time for a full rotation than a bigger one. We can make our orbit just a tiny bit smaller in radius to catch up with the Mun, or make a bigger radius to let the Mun catch up with us. As you can see, the Mun was slightly in front of me, so i decided to catch up from behind. All it takes now is a few orbital periods in fast forward... Until eventually... You get captured by the Mun! Congratulations! Now you can safely make it back using the very same methods, or, if you have a landing pod prepared, land on the Mun!