Scarecrow71

After spending countless hours trying to eyeball transfer windows and calculate dV required and determining correct ejection angle...I decided to use MechJeb to do this for me. In a nutshell, using the Maneuver Node creator in MJ does the following: Determines the appropriate time to do the burn to transfer to another planet; Determines the correct point on your current orbit to place the created node; Determines the correct amount of dV to burn; Determines the correct amount of time to do the burn. I can literally save my game, launch a vessel and use MJ to calculate the transfer, and then write down all of the information I need. Then I reload the saved game and not only fast-forward to the appropriate time, but then make sure the vessel I'm crafting has enough "oomph" to get to the target. Not necessarily there and back, but at least there; I don't care if I strand a Kerb or three on some remote rock for a while because hiring new astronauts is cheap enough AND you can always go pick them up. If you remember you stranded them in the first place. Which I seldom do until I run out of pilots and then go look in the AC and see that I've got 5 of them out there in space somewhere. I realize that, for some people, it's not in the spirit of the game to get the calculations and then load a save to get it right. But, this is what works for me, and it's how I like to play. Your mileage may vary. Greatly, in some cases.

That was exactly it. Thanks for the (gravity) assist!

So, I'm new to the forums, but not to KSP. I've been playing for about a year now, and I consider myself to be "meh" in the game. I have a tendency to just go for it, even if I know things will end badly. Que Sera, and all, right? Anyhow, I've been lurking and searching when something comes up, and for the most part I haven't needed help that I can't find. But today I saw something odd. I've got 1.8.3, and I have MechJeb 2 installed. I used MJ to create a transfer node to Duna, and it created and executed just fine. But when I zoomed out to see the new orbit, there was no closest approach marker. I warped to about 1/3 of the way to where the intercept was, and still nothing. So I started to create a node to see what a correction burn would give me, and all of a sudden the orbit showed an encounter. Without moving the node or doing any kind of burn at all. I left things alone, and warped to just inside the encounter, and Duna was right there. I was literally on top of the planet, with a Pe of 10000 km. I know the computer is smarter than I am, but I would kill most days for an encounter this close. Is this just an anomaly that I got lucky with? Or is there something in MechJeb that I need to look at to explain this? I've got no screen shots(which I should have taken), but I was so happy I just landed and saved. If this is just luck, I'll take it after all the bad endings I've put Val and Jeb through.