how to learn the surgical side of KSP

[Pandemic]

So I'm able to orbit and get to mun and back easily enough. I'm sure there's a more efficient way but I'll learn that in time.

I don't know how to start learning about the finer skills. How do I get into an exact orbit, how do I navigate to and then dock with another ship, etc. Right now I have a contract that wants me to do a polar orbit. I take off going South but by the time I'm up the contract orbit is off enough where it's difficult for me to adjust to it.

I'll check out the in game tutorials later to see if something like that can help. Any other tips?

[Empiro]

A lot of it will just come from practice -- when you went into the polar orbit, how far off were you? If you were off by less than 10 degrees, then it's not too bad. Try to see which direction you're off by, and retry the launch.

One piece of general advice I can give is this: when you burn, you can change your orbit at every point except at your current location. This means that if you start your burn nowhere close to your target orbit, then you'll end up nowhere close to your target orbit.

[Laie]

For the polar ornit, I presume you wait until it's right on top of you, then launch? That's too late. For the first minute of your ascent you're barely moving at all, might as well still be on the ground. Try launching a little earlier.

How much earlier? That depends on many things. Look how far you're off on your failed attempt, then start as much sooner. Also keep in mind that you can correct a little during ascent.

[CreatureX]

My advice is to read up a little on using the navball. Then go into sandbox where it's free and doesn't affect your game. Build something simple, open the cheat menu for infinite fuel (optional but it's one less thing to worry about) and go to space and play around. You can watch video's all day but until you actually play around with it, it seems harder than it is.

I messed around for about 2 hours like that one night and I can now easily get any orbit asked for in very few moves and can grab something in space with the claw pretty quick. Lining up docking ports is still a little tough for me but I think that's more muscle memory than anything.

[Sharpy]

"Start game" -> "Tutorials"

Matching orbit + Docking, orbital maneuvers, lots of helpful advice.

[Venusgate]

allow me to explain some terms!

Apoapsis (the "Ap" in the upsidedown house in your orbit ring) is the HIGHEST point in your orbit. If you burn prograde (the green circle with three fins in your navball) when at your Ap, you will increase your periapsis (lowest altitude of your orbit, upsidedown house with "Pe"). Inversely, if you are at your Pe, and you burn retrograde (the green circle in your nav ball with fins and an x in the middle), you will decrease your Ap altitude.

You can do this to either circularize your currently eliptical orbit to either a higher altitude, or a lower one.

If, say your Ap is not high enough, burning prograde when at your Pe will keep your Pe the same, but will raise the Ap.

So lets say your target orbit is 300km x 300km (that's a circle, where both Ap and Pe are as close to each other as possible) and your current orbit is 70 x 120. When at your Pe, burn prograde, watching your Ap rise until 300km. Now wait until you reach your Ap, and burn prograde again (this will be in the opposite direction of your previous burn!) until your Pe raises up to 300km.

Non-flat orbits are a little bit more complicated, but not by much

[banterlad]

Using RCS can help a lot with making those finer adjustments. And my recommendation for docking is just practice and more practice, eventually you will get the hang of it. Also maneuver nodes, lots of maneuver nodes.

[Ferdoni]

The optimal way to the Mun is to start your transfer, burning prograde when the Mun is rising over Kerbin from the perspective of your vessel

[Dilli]

How do I get into an exact orbit, how do I navigate to and then dock with another ship, etc.

For an exact orbit use maneuver nodes.

For docking try:

https://youtu.be/XuqnH4yLAdE

https://youtu.be/4Jztv_EKzt8

https://youtu.be/QuwdHnntB-0

For Polar orbit generally - launch North / South. Watch the proprograde marker as you ascending, if it drifts left angle your rocket slightly right of 0 or 180 degrees to pull it back on course; likewise if it drifts right angle your craft slightly left of 0 or 180 degrees to pull it back on course.

For the contract, once you have a polar orbit approximetly matched use manouvour nodes where your obit and the contract orbit meet to plan a course correction.

[jarmund]

I find that what I like to call "launch to target" is the key to many precision flights. This helps you practice towards timing launches so that you save a lot of time and potentially fuel. This is especially useful when having time constraints such as life support systems running out etc.

To practice this, put a very basic station into a nice circular orbit, and see if you can launch and dock with it less than half an orbit after leaving the pad. This ofcourse depends a lot on your craft, but I find that launching just before the target rises over the horizont isn't too far off. When launching into a polar orbit, the craft specs also matter a lot, because one of the early maneuvers involves stopping the eastwards momentum you have from the planets rotation. This means that your TWR plays a big part of the timing, which leads to the following conclusions:

- Learn your craft! Build a craft that you can fly a lot so that you get good at eyeballing maneuvers by knowing how fast it can accelerate under certain conditions. In addition, learn its optimal launch profile.

- Get good at timing launches

With those two skills under your belt you will find that you will no longer have to spend time in interplanetary space, waiting for planets to line up for a holman transfer. Instead of orbiting to sync, you just launch to transfer. That being said, transfer windows is probably something you should look into. I find Kerbal Alarm Clock to be really useful for this. Even if I don't have any flights I need to keep track of, I still use it for keeping track of launch windows.

[MadChris48]

maneuver nodes are your friend. place one and play with it. you can pull a marker a bit and the click the node and drag it along your orbit to see how it will change.

Here is my pro-tip for nailing orbits around other bodies; Use a node to get a rough intercept with a body (say Mun), click on the body you are targeting and click Focus View. You should see your projected path in the SOI. Pan the camera around until you can see your node off in the distance, select it, and then fine turn your insertion orbit. About as surgical as it gets. Making these course changes as early as possible will help save buckets of dV too(generally).

If you are landing, just go straight to the surface, no need to make orbit first.