Help! Stuck in a horrible orbit pattern and don't know how to get back!

[Kerso1991]

Hiya, a while ago I went out and sent a manned orbiter to eve as my first interplanetary career mode mission(no landing, just into orbit and back) but as my first burn wasn't quite on target for an encounter with eve, I did another burn about halfway there, but after I did the awkward manouver, I managed to get in a horrible 45 degree slanted CLOCKWISE orbit which totally screws things up and I have no idea how to get back to kerbin

Can I please get some help:confused:

[eddiew]

Clockwise or anti-clockwise around Eve shouldn't really matter - what you need to do is put your escape burn on the side where your orbital velocity (prograde) will whisk you outwards further away from the sun. Which in this case means burning on the sunward-side, and aiming for an apoapsis somewhere in the realm of Kerbin's orbital radius.

The inclination is annoying, but probably not critical. Play with the normal/anti-normal options on the manoeuvre node and you should find something that brings you out fairly flat relative to the planetary plane

Unless you're short of fuel, in which case you either need to flatten your orbit around Eve as best you can to make it easy for a rescue mission to come get you, or alt-F12 and cheat.

[PlonioFludrasco]

Set a maneuvre node somewhere on your orbit, then drag the prograde marker until you have an escape. At that point, drag the node along your current orbit to have the maximum height of Sun apoapsis possible with the delta v you set. To know you are at maximum, move a little bit the node once to one side then to the other. If both of resultant apoapsides are lower then the original, the maneuver node is placed optimally.

Now, if the resultant orbit doesn't cross Kerbin's one, just add prograde delta v to the node until it does, and you are ready to go.

EDIT ninja'd

[Taki117]

Well, option one is to change orbit inclination and direction, push your AP out as far as you can and burn normal/anti-normal until you are equitorial and prograde.

Option 2 is to leave as normal (during the appropriate window) and make a mid course correction to kerbin.

[Mahnarch]

You can change your inclination using the purple triangles on your man. node planner.

You'll also have to tweek your prograde and/or retrograde speeds as well.

Try to change your inclination at or around the equator, if you can figure out where it is (assuming you don't have another body floating at the equator, already).

Edited March 7, 2015 by Mahnarch
Ninja'd due to excessive tabs.

[xrayfishx]

I don't understand. Did you make it to Eve and get an awkward orbit there or did you actually somehow accidentally reverse a Kerbol orbit. The latter seems unlikely so I'll assume the former.

Clockwise orbit isn't a problem. Just burn on the day side to get to outer planets (including Kerbin in this case), instead of the usual night side. As for the 45 degree inclination you have two options:

1. Burn on the day side a couple of weeks before your planned departure day. Get your apoapsis quite high, but don't escape yet. Then, at apoapsis, plot a maneuver to correct your inclination. You'll need to use the pink markers for that. Get it as close to 0 as you can. It's unlikely you can get it completely flat, but it will not matter. When you reach periapsis again, just burn back to Kerbin.

2. Just ignore it. Just plot a course for Kerbin, inclination be damned. Inner planets' orbital velocity around Kerbol is so high that your inclination should not change much.

It depends on the exact details which method is more efficient. Just save, try one and if it doesn't work, try the other one.

If you indeed got a reversed, 45 degree inclination Kerbol orbit, then I'd like to see what craft you managed to achieve that with and how did you do it by accident.

[Oddible]

It is most efficient to change your inclination at the mid point between the high and low points, not at the high or low point directly. So if your apoapsis is very low and your periapsis is very high inclination, half way between them place a maneuver node and adjust the pink lines.