quantumpion

Is there any way to use this tool for non-parking orbits at departure for the purpose of planning multi-stage gravity assists (possibly powered)?

They should still have radiators sticking out of them otherwise they will melt themselves!

Looks like something out of Tron lol.

My question is how do you set up your orbit intercept in order for your ejection angle to be in the right direction in order to both benefit from the maximum gravity assist possible and send you in the correct direction to intercept your desired target. I've been trying to do a Juno-style mission where you launch from Kerbin into elliptical orbit towards Jool, do a orbital correction at apoapsis to target Kerbin, then get a gravity boost from Kerbin to get the rest of the way to Jool. But I haven't had much success getting the timing right.

Is it possible to get some hollow baseplates so that we can make hollow fuselages with stuff inside (such as putting a fuselage around a first stage cluster of fuel tanks/engines or a hollow fuselage containing a rover or lander that can be extracted ala Saturn V third stage)?

I love listening to John Adams' "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" for my major launches, it fits perfectly and has a kerbal quality to it lol.

In addition to the lack of Lagrange points, another unrealistic aspect to the patched conics approximation is the stability of orbits. In reality, if you were not at a Lagrange point then your orbit would not be stable. For example you couldn't be in a stable kerbolcentric orbit just outside the SOI of kerbin, kerbin would pull you back in eventually. For example, the Apollo 12 third stage recently returned to Earth orbit (and was mistaken for an asteroid initially): http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news134.html