Vector

Practice practice practice gravity assists. Eventually they will feel intuitive. Much less costly to change your apoapsis/periapsis to cross the Mun's orbit, then wait for an intercept and use a sling-shot to change your inclination. I got a class D from highly inclined into nearly equatorial orbit using only 50 m/s or so delta-V.

This works great for getting high efficiency and (unless outlawed) appears in challenge entries frequently where people are optimizing for weight. With intake spam you can get very, very high before using rockets. I sometimes use launch clamps and it mostly depends on whether the bottom side of the craft is suitable for resting on the pad. If it can sit on the pad and not break the engines off, then I go without launch clamps. There is no need to hold it down to spool up the engines. Especially with SAS, the craft will just slowly lift off the pad when TWR exceeds 1, probably gentler than using clamps in fact.

Wonderful! This actually works. Props to Kashua for understanding the problem. I tested it with this craft and I can see now how having the torque applied through the asteroid to the control point (didn't realize it had to also be the root part) will produce extremely low strain on the linkage between the control point and the asteroid. In that sense both your workarounds are similar. I see now, regardless of the shape of the part tree, a single vessel (meaning single claw) can never apply torque without straining the links between the root part and the asteroid. For my test I also disabled the reaction wheel in the probe itself so the root part / center of control is 100% passive. In VAB the root part is on the right, just below the claw. I still need some work on aligning the engines and control point to the center of mass, but at least now it is possible, whereas with the maneuver indicator and velocity wildly there's no way. Maybe with some docking ports, a good understanding of the quirks, and some cleverness I can get everything aligned. Thanks again!

Thanks! I didn't realize this was an option.

Try waiting until you are closer before matching speed. When you reduce speed the time to intercept gets proportionally longer, and if the intercept with Kerbin's SOI is sooner than your rendezvous with the asteroid then you are going to have problems.

If you click on the green text above the nav ball, you can switch between Orbit, Surface, and Target, and you can see your velocity relative to the asteroid regardless of how far away you are. This can be helpful to start your docking maneuvers very early, i.e. lining up the velocity vector with the direction to target even when you are far away. The orange and purple indicators can sometimes get you in the right ballpark but they are somewhat glitchy when going for rendezvous in solar orbit with an asteroid.

Were you inside Kerbin's SOI or outside? When within Kerbin's SOI you have to be very careful with time warp because the SOI intercept calculation (in this case the asteroid intercepting Kerbin's SOI) is very sensitive to time warp. Asteroids seem to be even more sensitive than when your own ship crosses a SOI. This is part of the reason I now do all my rendezvous in solar orbit.

I usually go for them outside Kerbin's SOI. Within Kerbin's SOI, look at where the asteroid is relative to Kerbin. Go in that general direction, costs about 1000 m/s delta-V to get out of kerbin's SOI. Don't spend too much delta-V, just enough to get out of Kerbin's SOI. Once in solar orbit, you have plenty of time to optimize your approach. Just outside Kerbin's SOI, I aim for an approach of about 10,000 km. Then a couple days away from approach, make finer adjustments to get within 100km. Then just watch your retrograde marker and the pink target indicator to follow it the rest of the way in.

When I grab an asteroid, I notice significant swings in velocity while I attempt to (slowly) rotate. The variation in velocity is about 0.5 m/s, and is presumably because the physics is computed relative to the command pod and not the center of mass. This makes it exceedingly difficult to pilot a captured asteroid through gravity assists to other planets because 0.5 m/s is huge relative to the accuracy I need. Making fine adjustments should be easier, not harder with a huge mass. Any known workarounds? I think I am going to try hacking the grabber to see if that helps..

This has been done several times. Not the same version, but previously I flew by all bodies in the solar system except Mun and Minmus and returned safely to Kerbin. I.e. I visited Moho, Eve, Gilly, Duna, Ike, Dres, Jool, Pol, Bop, Tylo, Vall, Laythe, and Eeloo (not in that order). Also landed on Pol, Bop, and Gilly.

I have run across this bug too. Sometimes it manifests for some time warp values and if i reload and use a higher time warp then it does not occur. I believe it comes down to the PatchedConicSolver not doing a very good job.

Maneuver nodes are the most erratic on a highly hyperbolic orbit, or on very eccentric orbits near periapsis, which might be similar to your situation. In these cases I find it helpful if you move the camera near the body you're orbiting, in this case the Mun, such that your perspective view is nearly parallel with your approach. For some reason, by doing this the GUI will allow you more freedom in placing the maneuver nodes. After it is placed you can adjust it but you can't slide it along your trajectory. If you want it at a different time you have to delete the maneuver node and try again, adjusting your perspective and placing a new one.

If they measure sidereal days instead of solar days, do they have many leap-seconds every day to keep their clocks coinciding with daylight, or do they adjust their alarm clocks and wake/sleep cycles to different times for different times of the year?

Definitely possible. Also definitely not fun.

Love it! I might have to try this myself..

Still not fixed: bad glitches at SOI crossings!

There is an advantage: if you're not using MechJeb then it's easier to target a particular spot on the ground. I have managed to reliably land on the island within the large circular lake, just to see if I could. At a shallow angle it would be difficult without some assistance.

I agree that apart from the technical definition of an ITN, the gravity slingshots provide something effectively equivalent. The only thing that is missing (and doesn't come for free for real-life ITN either) is a program to calculate all the available paths. It is straightforward to plan gravity assists a few intercepts out, but mapping out potential options is tedious and not especially fun. For example, deciding between Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Duna-Jool, or Kerbin-Duna-Kerbin-Eve-Jool, or Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Jool? Among Jool's moons the possibilities explode and there is not a tool to easily map out the options.

Given that engines are disallowed, this would be quite hard indeed. If engines were not disallowed, and if lithobraking is even marginally successful at protecting the craft, then it shouldn't be much harder to return to Kerbin.

Practice gravity assists. Get good at gravity assists. Kerbin to Moho and Moho back to Kerbin are both much cheaper using an Eve assist.

Over-engineer your craft to have plenty of surplus delta-V. Allmhuran's suggestion is a good one for getting an efficient intercept (more efficient than matching planes) but once you arrive you will have to aerobrake and spend a bunch of fuel to match inclination with Gilly. Once you get the hang of things you can work on more efficient ways of getting to Gilly using judicious fly-by maneuvers, but not for your first flight.

No love for Eve? I go there all the time, but never to land.

I've been playing for 13000 days

Ah, if your periapsis is already near the atmosphere then you can't narrow the minor axis without re-entering. If you burn prograde at periapsis then your major axis will increase more than the minor axis and you will have higher eccentricity, but your minor axis will be increasing too, not decreasing. Inclination is an important factor to insertion, but 16 degrees is very expensive -- probably why he just walked away.

Not possible? Bah! If you are only wanting to shrink the minor axis while keeping the same apoapsis, then it is much simpler, just burn retrograde at apoapsis. If you truly want to keep the same major axis (meaning keep the same orbital period) then that means you want to increase the apoapsis while decreasing the periapsis by an equal amount. So suppose you want to go from the brown curve to the blue curve: This is possible like this: Assuming you are traveling east (counter-clockwise) you can perform a single burn in the direction of the black arrow. This is a combination of radial and retrograde, and if you experiment with a maneuver node you can raise your apoapsis and lower your periapsis by the same amount at the same time. It is not a simple maneuver because it is at an odd angle, but it is possible if you take your time with a maneuver node.