Keramane

Yeah, eyeballing seems to be the best way. I do like that the ascending/descending adjust as you do so, very helpful. Also glad that the deviation range is nice. I lined it up perfectly and the mission completed when I still had a 12 second burn left. ^^

Heyo! So, I've got a contract that asks me to set an unmanned probe into a predetermined orbit. I can see the orbit, however I can't set target, which makes matching inclination rather.. tricky. Is there a special trick to marking that orbit as a target? Or is there a way to see what my inclination will be when setting a maneuver more efficiently than "eyeballing it"? I have a fair amount of fuel on my ship, but I've a pilot being used for SAS until I detach the probe, so I don't want to Leave them lost in space.

Hm, spiral remains my biggest concern... However! I have an adventure of daring do to brag about! So, I design my ship, 3-man pod, buncha rockets, RCS etc, with a separator on the pod for re-entry. Fly up, nab the asteroid (on try 12) and set it into an oval orbit around kerbin (low side, 129km, high side 500km) when oh no! They run out of fuel! Stranding our heroic trio on the rock. Don't fear though! I made a 3-landing-pod-ed science explorer to come up! Sceinced like mad, lab, everything. However, like a fool, I didn't check for stowaways and there is Bath Kerbal flying the thing (didn't uncrew it :V). Okay, well, whatever. Up it soars, rendezvous with the rock, latches on! Science!!.... yields squat. Seems you can only get samples from the thing. Sadness. Well, I transfer the rescued three over to the three lander pods and sentence Bath to sit in the original pod.. That is when Jeb has the genius idea of using the claw to latch onto the pod and carry Bath home to freedom! Reoriented, attached the claw to the pod, released the pod's claw from the rock, adjust orbit to skim atmo, bingo bango, everyone gets home safe! Deployed the pod's chutes in atmo, releasing the pod a bit before they fully deployed so that everyone lands ideally and close together. Well done all!

True true, mixed my terms up. Still, I've huge thrust and enough fuel to set the thing into the approximate orbit of Minmus, if I don't keep spiralling around when I give'er sum gas! Aside for reattaching at the literal center as best I can, is there any other way to ensure a lack of spiral? Interesting Factoid If your asteroid hits another orbit en route, you get another source of sample. I just slingshotted the Mun en route to Kerbin and got a new sample =D

Mm, well, I've unlocked the pivot, adjusted to that point and such. However, once I'm there, I lose my prograde/retrograde markers. How do I get those back? I fluked into getting them once but I can't get them again >_> Also, when I burn retrograde with any real force, even though I'm locked dead center on the center of mass, the ship started to spin the asteroid, making my retrograde a wonky roller-coaster (my ship is pretty huge, since Class C and all). Is there a cleaner way to burn so that I don't spiral?

So, hi, I've successfully snagged my first asteroid (named it Hostage One)! However, I want to try and set it into a kerbal orbit. I have a huge engine that gives large Delta-V, half a medium Kerbodine tank for gas and the asteroid is a Class C (so big, but not that big). However, I want to pivot to ideally hit the center of mass. I right clicked the asteroid and hit "Target Center of Mass" but I didn't notice a change. Is that the pink mark now? Do I just orient to that and poof, golden? Next, I assume the asteroid becomes part of my ship at that point. By reorienting the thing to Retrograde, that takes into account the new asteroid weight, right? just wanna check before I fire (I've three kerbals aboard, I don't wanna quicksave with their lives on the line XD)

I've watched videos on youtube of people soaring after asteroids or doing the docking with auto-plots and such likely from MechJeb. I would LOVE to see someone give a comprehensive tutorial on how to set orbit, match the approaching asteroid and peg it. I can get CLOSE to the right trajectory (my best being 14km) but after that, I can't close the last gap. Docking has you set into a similar orbit, but asteroids are on a 1 shot pass-by, so I can't inch in over continuous orbits. How does one come by and snatch an asteroid properly? (Pictures/Videos help when alongside text; the latter does more of course)

A very easy landing technique for Minmus is to utterly stop your orbit and just drop straight down like a rock. Well, a super light rock made of like, air and feathers, but a rock all the same. There are large flat planes on Minmus so ideally aim for those. You can let your velocity build while you descend, but when you get close-ish, burn it off to about... 100-50m/s. Note that when I say close I mean, really close, almost-seeing-your-shadow kind of close. Minmus' gravity is so light that if you overdo your deceleration, it takes aeons to get moving again. Aaanywho, the reason why I like this method is that you don't need to worry about doing any lateral RCS maneuvers to negate your lateral velocity. You start more-or-less at a vertical plane, so any adjustments are pretty basic. You want to get your retrograde marker centered on the dot at the top of your little blue globe, so make adjustments in excess of your tretrograde to 'chase it' into place. Then, make tiny thrusts to adjust your speed as you see fit. Short bursts to avoid gaining lateral. Keep your SAS on at all times too. When you land, you'll need it to actually counter any slopes you might have glued yourself too (my lab on Minmus, tilting at a good 20-30 degree angle, held up by SAS mostly).

Wait till you try Minmus. Thats where my first little rover went. I hit a slope; I went out for dinner while it slid down the hill brakes locked since I couldn't return to KSC without it stopping first. I've been questioning whether Rovers are really worth using when trying to nab all those biomes... the ONLY upside I see in it is that you don't need to spam lab-toting landers to Minmus and the Mun, but considering the speed of travel involved, it's actually way faster to launch 50 ships than drive one Rover. I will confess, rovers are fun though.

I've heard some people say 2 seconds, some say 1, but I'm genuinely curious as to when the best time to start accelerating for a maneuver would be. I always seem to miss my window by a little either side.

I need help building one >_> Not that I can't just glue wheels on and say go, but I find that I can't make a design that I like. I'm not sure how everyone can get the structural pannels to clip on edges rather than the center point, but I can't seem to, so whatever I make looks like a steel-frame abortion of logic. If anyone has pretty rover designs - and doesn't mind someone trying to mimic aspects of it - please let me see them :3