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When entering Duna's (or any other planet) SOI, should I plan to do my capture burn on the bright side of the planet or the dark side? I think one of them is more efficient but I forgot which one.

v0.1.1.0 bug You can still adjust and control ships in the tracking station by pressing Z and X to set the throttle See video:

Video below shows engineless probe with crazy orbit changes. Timewarp seems to also have an effect

Small idea that would be nice for planning space stations and rendevous, especially in multiplayer, would be the ability to mark orbits in a similar ways to what satellite contracts do in KSP1

An idea to reconcile a perplexing fact-cluster from the Star Trek franchise in what I think is a new, hard-sci-fi-ish approach: Crews on board starships experience "gravity" (exactly equal to that of southern California), which is rarely explained, discussed, or explored in an interesting way Line of sight with away teams on the surface is never interrupted by the horizon, for comms, sensors, transporters, weapons, or anything else Starships' engines are extremely powerful and efficient, for both FTL and sub light speed travel, able to accelerate extremely quickly and rarely limited by fuel supply "Weightlessness" and "zero G" are not artifacts of being in space, but of being in free fall, i.e. experiencing no forces such as running the engines When other vessels are encountered, they never whiz past at 7–15 km/s, but instead gently cruise by at a leisurely pace What if the sheer power of Starfleet vessels' engines leads to the abandonment of true "orbits" as pertains to starships? When the captain says to enter "orbit" around a planet, the ensigns understand by established Starfleet convention that this means to enter the region of space where a low orbit would be, i.e., 100–2000km altitude They maneuver the starship into that rough altitudinal region, and instead of establishing a proper circular orbital velocity, they bring it to a faux-geocentric "stop" over designated a point of interest; with no further action, it would drop out of the sky, burn up, and crash, so... The ship is oriented so the "bottom" points towards the planet The engines are configured to thrust "upward" exactly equal to the force of the planet's gravity, effectively holding the ship in place over one spot The result for the crew would be just like standing on the top of a ~100–2000-km-tall tower; they'd feel the planet's gravity pulling them down, almost as strongly as at sea level, with no magic "artificial gravity" tech required. Benefits include having your Starfleet-branded iPad not float away and the ability to sip Romulan ale from a glass without spilling it. The energy budget to do this, even for several consecutive days, should be relatively trivial next to that expended in the typical space battle or race to rescue the ambassador or deliver the self-sealing stem bolts. And if all space navies adopt this practice, then enemy ships have a reason to have low relative velocities. Obvious caveats and objections: "Gravity" in deep space remains unexplained The ships are never shown accelerating "upwards", only "forwards" I realize this is not what the canon says, and it doesn't cover everything, but for hard sci fi fans, it may be a serviceable excuse for turning your brain off during some episodes.

I've just recently learned about the Aldrin cycler and I've been looking for resources on how the mechanics of one works and how to make one yourself, while I found plenty of explanations of what it does, but nothing goes in enough depth to teach me how to make one myself. I would really like to make a Minmus-Kerbin cycler but I don't know if the Mun's gravity will end up messing with the orbit. Is it possible to account for that? Thank you in advance! P.S. I have taken basic college level physics and calculus, so while orbital mechanics of this game have been extremely complicated for me, I've been able to handle the math side of things so far, but I might be overconfident in my abilities with this scenario. No need to explain the basics of kinematics or anything, I just want to know the steps I can take to create this kind of orbit. Thank you again!

Not all around, since that would get computationally confusing, but would it be possible to get this as a feature when we're within, say, the SOI of a planet? (So the moons would have a minor effect on our orbits and maneuver planning, and so we'd have Lagrange points.) I didn't see any other threads about this; I apologize if this is one of those things that was long-ago and emphatically dismissed, and anybody who asks is a dummy for asking.

I have returned to playing KSP after a couple year break and have had an issue when building a space station. The station has a low eccentricity and inclination 225km orbit. To add new parts, I launch from KSC at about 70 degree pitch with the station a few minutes from passing overhead. With an apoapsis just over 225km I have a pass at about 3km. Once up there, I burn prograde and work toward rendezvous. When the station loads at about 2250m, I have about 80m/s closing velocity. As the station loads, the game skips for a second and my closing velocity is dropped to about 1.2m/s. When checking the map, my orbit is now matched with the target, and we are both suborbital. I thought that maybe the game was thinking my exhaust was impacting the station from absurdly far away, so I tried again and made sure not to point my rear at the station with the same result. Has anyone heard of this happening? I know more info will be requested and will get mod list and pc specs up when I get home from work. I'm running this on a 6 year old laptop and know well that's a problem, but I'm not sure if it causing this particular issue.

Hello, I'm Noah the Smol and this is my system rearrangement I have begun development on. These are bound to change! This is literally my '0.2' of the mod. Edit Log

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I'm trying to recreate a KSP-like game in Java, and I have no idea how KSP calculates Apoapsis, Periapsis, etc. when your ship is moving in space.

There's a line in the original "Star Wars" where a Death Star flunky reports, "Orbiting the planet at maximum velocity." For a long time, I decided this meant that they were orbiting Yavin at faster-than-orbital velocity, using constant expenditure of energy to avoid moving into a higher orbit. This sounds sensible (in a technobabble sort of way). But is this even possible, even with continuous input of energy? Wouldn't they simply be boosting their apoYavin of the other side of the planet or otherwise changing their trajectory, without increasing their orbital velocity, no matter what? Yeah, I know, trying to apply real physics to "Star Wars" is a pretty useless exercise. But is there in fact *any* possible way to increase orbital velocity while keeping orbital altitude constant?

So far all the moons in the Kerbal system orbit the same direction around a planet. We need some variety. I think it would be great if some moons orbited in a different direction than others. That is, some moons orbit retrograde while others orbit prograde. This would work especially well with Jool's moons, since Jool has the most moons of any planet in the Kerbal system and Jool's real-life counter part, Jupiter, has moons that orbit in opposite directions. This might complicate achieving encounters with some moons, but i think we all enjoy a challenging mission. The orbits of Jupiter's satellites (above)

Hey folks, I could use some help/input from anyone who likes a healthy dose of math and physics! I'm building a base on the Mun with a lab and mining/ISRU capabilities. The idea is to use a shuttle to hop around and collect science, then bring it back to the lab and fill up the tanks on the shuttle. So a common problem I have is figuring an efficient path from base to destination (and back). Right now I basically just point in whatever feels like the right direction, give myself some altitude, and burn prograde until my trajectory I comes down in the right area. I got curious about the optimal ways to do this, so I posted on Reddit to see if anyone knew of an existing tool/calculator that would be of use. Not learning of one, I thought it might be a fun exercise to give the math a shot myself. We've begun with a simplified problem: (1) no drag/atmosphere, (2) perfectly spherical planet, (3) non-rotating planet. I'd like to try tackling 2 and 3 as well (1 is more than I want to bite off), but we'll see where it goes. Anyways, the optimal case seems to be an elliptical orbit with initial and final locations located on the latus rectum of the second focus. This geometry minimizes the semi-major axis and thus orbital energy. I've put everything so far in a spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JIUHIAujZuQdvPRIo-FTho82QcEqVLeuRe-lLiM_b-I/edit#gid=0. The next step I'm trying to solve is how to determine alpha, the pitch angle for the initial burn. We've got an equation that solves it for the optimal case, but I'm struggling to work out a general equation for any sma/eccentricity. With that problem solved you'll be able to input a minimum apoapsis in order to clear terrain/obstacles. If I can get that done, I'll look next differing elevations and then a rotating body. Just a note on terms... I've been using θ to represent the angle between initial/final location (measured from center of planet), and α to represent the pitch (flight path) angle for the burn. If anone wants to catch up on the discussion we've had so far, here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalAcademy/61tm0f. I wanted to move the discussion here, partly because a forum format is more useful in this case and partly because I'm hoping to get some new voices involved. If you can contribute I'd love the help! Bonus points if you take the end results and turn them into a program or mod.

Hi all, I am having trouble grasping a concept here. In the picture I have a sat at 90^ 300km. The highlighted blue orbit is 45^ at the same height. What do I need to do to have the line sit at the red circle? Thanks in advance, Kerbal007

I have been trying to find the formula that gives me the time ( or MeanAnomaly, same thing) to periapsis in a hyerbolic orbit. I spend some time searching google, wiki etc ( Totally didn't spend 6h searching...) and I found some info, but I can't figure out how to use it in code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbola http://conicsectionjpg.blogspot.si/2012/10/true-anomaly-of-hyperbola_2603.html This is my code right now: something to note is that I already have all other parameters calculated ( eccentricty, semiMajorAxis etc) If someone who knows the formulas could help me, I would Really apreciate it.

I'm doing this contract to put a probe in to orbit, the orbit looks pretty much perfect to me ( i know the periapsis and apoapsis are a bit off , thats becasue i was trying to find the problem before my fuel ran out). It says the inclination should be 154.7 degrees in the contract but mechjeb says it is 25 degrees or so, and honestly i don't know what that really means. Do i need the probe to be going in the opposite direction or something?

I'm currently trying to pass that next great milestone in every KSP player's career: my first landing and return from another planet. In this case the planet is Duna, but here's my problem. Whenever I do my interplanetary transfer and encounter Duna I end up with a periapsis well below or above Duna. This means that I would have to expend a ton of fuel to achieve an equatorial orbit. Is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to angle my ejection burn so that I match Duna's orbital inclination or do I have to do a mid-course correction (not looking forward to the dV required for a plane change with an orbit that size I can tell you)?

Are there any advantages of Orbit direction at Kerbin's Mun? If yes please explain why ********************* Thank you all for the help and all answers are good ones, I think we have enough here to satisfy the question given.

So I've finally parked my first station around Minmus. It's got everything I'll want from it later: two orange tanks, lots of docking ports, plenty of monoprop and EC. Even got a nice contract to put it there (I would've done so anyway, it's my interplanetary refueling station now.) Thing is, I can't seem to get it's orbit fully equatorial. 5.3 degrees is the closest I can get, and I can't seem to find any combination of burns that get it closer. The maneuver nodes are useless because they don't show me the AoI. KER doesn't help much, it only tells me where I'm at, not how to get where I want to go; nor does it show the stats of the node's orbit... Any advice on finding equatorial orbits on my own?

So I've launched my first-for-this-career (second-ever) space station. I have a contract to park it over Minmus and I would like it to live there anyway because I want to use it as a refueling stop for interplanetary journeys. (I figure I'll rectify the orbit's angle prior to departure.) The station has very low TWR because it's not intended to move around much. Even with an inter-orbital tug attached it'll still need perikicking to make it to minmus. My usual method won't work here. Usually I click on the orbit, add some prograde burn, wait for the conics to go all screwy, make minor tweaks until I like my arrival characteristics, time warp to maneuver node, make the burn. The problem is, by the time I'm done orbiting a couple of times, Minmus will have gone along on its merry way. Is there a guide to knowing where in a circular parking orbit you need to begin kicking for a Kerbin->Minmus transfer? I can time it for an AN/DN intercept if that helps, or I can match alignments in my parking orbit first.

So I asked a similar question a few days back, but now I have a new one. I know gravity is pulling spacecraft back to the thing it's orbiting, but what's keeping it from actually crashing into the surface? So far i have narrowed it down to 2 possible reasons: Inertia or Momentum. I know inertia is just a property of matter that makes it want to go in a straight line with the same speed. And momentum (I think) wants the object to keep going as well, because it's harder to stop something with more momentum. Inertia would work to keep the spacecraft from falling because they want to go out and away in a straight line, but gravity pulls it in, so there's a tug-of-war. At the same time, I would think momentum does the same thing, it wants to go out and away. So which is it, inertia or momentum? Or both?

Also, why does the altitude decrease by decreasing velocity?

Yes I know, I probably spent Sateillite wrong in this post but we shall move on. I just wonder how you guys do it? How do you get a space station to fit together, what's its purpose, how do you dock ships and get them on the same orbit and all that? Seriously getting frustrated. is it even possible without mods?

So, im trying to land on eve, but im having trouble, because i cant get my orbit to line up, because my periapsis is beneath eves orbit (see pic) pic [ATTACH=CONFIG]34887[/ATTACH] so i tried burning up, but that didnt bring up the periapsis, it only brought the orbit up half way between my apoapsis and my periapsis (see pic2) pic2 [ATTACH=CONFIG]34888[/ATTACH] which way do i burn to bring up the periapsis if im at the apoapsis (or near it)?