gray apogee line

[gingerbones]

Hi apologies for the newbie question but I've not been able to find an answer anywhere as yet,I'm trying to get my first craft into a stable orbit but when I go to the map screen I only ever see a gray line never a blue one I have a total altitude well over 70k metres and a speed of 2500 k but I can never get a complete circle around kerbin in either gray or blue

Any ideas what i'm doing wrong

Thanks

[selfish_meme]

Are you playing career, I think you have not upgraded your mission control and telescope, the grey means you can't place a manoeuvre node

[Phil deCube]

Yep, as selfish_meme says, you need to upgrade the Mission Control building. If you Right-Click on the building you will get a box appear. In the box there is an upgrade button. Hover your mouse over the button and it will show you the result of an upgrade, which in your case will say something like "Mission planning". If you pay the money and upgrade the building you will be able to plan missions with the blue line, and manoeuvre nodes.

[Snark]

Are you playing career, I think you have not upgraded your mission control and telescope, the grey means you can't place a manoeuvre node

^^This. You need to upgrade your mission control and tracking station.

When you're in KSP view, and right-click the buildings, it shows you their capabilities and provides you with an "Upgrade" button that displays the price tag for doing so. Mousing over the upgrade button shows you what you get if you upgrade.

So, what you need to do is to save up money until you can upgrade the right buildings. You will have to do a fair number of missions before you get to that point, which means you will have to get to orbit without benefit of the blue lines (the magic phrase you're looking for is "patched conics", that's the thing you don't have right now). So you have to get to orbit with just your plain gray line.

Fortunately, that's not too difficult. If you launch and turn eastwards so that you hit suborbital apoapsis above the atmosphere (say, 80-90 km to give yourself a little safety margin), just coast up until you're reasonably close to apoapsis and then thrust horizontally until you have orbit.

Since you'll have to do this without a maneuver node, the easiest way to see what you're doing is to do that circularizing burn while you're in map view. When you go to map view, by default the navball is hidden, but if you click on the little tab you can see at the bottom of your screen, it will bring the navball into view on the map. While it's visible, you can control your rocket, i.e. you can rotate it, adjust throttle, etc. So all you have to do to make orbit is to go to map view, display the navball, use the navball to orient yourself so that you're pointed horizontally prograde, and then go to max throttle. Then you can just watch your trajectory in the map view until your periapsis rises above atmosphere, and cut thrust.

[Kryxal]

Actually, it can be easier than that ... suborbital tourists and parts contracts work well enough for getting enough money for upgrades.

[Snark]

Actually, it can be easier than that ... suborbital tourists and parts contracts work well enough for getting enough money for upgrades.

True... though they don't pay a lot, and in my experience it can be a bit of a grind to save up for a tracking station upgrade without having reached orbit yet.

With a bit of practice, going to the Mun without patched conics is doable and not super difficult. (Minmus, though, is best left for after the tracking upgrade.)

[gingerbones]

Many thanks guys

will have a look and see how much cash I have at moment,I might have enough to upgrade both already

but will take your advice.

[eddiew]

Solving a slightly different issue; you don't need a manoeuvre node to circularise your orbit, you just need to know where to make the burn and eyeball it. This has the advantage of not needing to splurge on facility upgrades

2500m/s overkill for LKO, so I suspect that you have a high apoapsis (2-300km?), but the trajectory still comes back down to ground afterwards.

If that sounds like you, remember that you never need to burn 'upwards' once you're out of the atmosphere. Get your AP marker to the altitude you want, then cut thrust and coast until you arrive at it. Burn perfectly horizontal/prograde at AP, and the far side of your orbit should come up above the ground.

Best of luck

[ygarl]

With a bit of practice, going to the Mun without patched conics is doable and not super difficult. (Minmus, though, is best left for after the tracking upgrade.)

I did my first Mun mission last night (just) w/o upgrading to complete a contract - only took one go, no adjustments.

I find the trick to get the hang of it is to do it a few times on Sandbox (w/ or w/o Mechjeb) to see where in the two orbits you leave from (i.e. what "o'clock" the Mun is compared to your periapsis), and then see what orbit you need on Sandbox and it's fairly easy.

The trick with Minimus is to zoom out so you can see your orbit, Kerbin, and Minimus's orbit. Pan around until you find where your orbit CROSSES Minimus's.

Then - after seeing the relative position you need to go to on Sandbox to reach Minimus, you can just make your orbit match it and you'll get pretty close the first time even without upgrading.