Is there any good way to set the orbital inclination to 0 ?

[jiminator]

for landing at ksp and such. you can match other orbits at the axis, but you have no axis for equator/inclination. I find it can be done by using kerbal engineer redux to view the inclination, and at quadrants of the orbit to ping either normal or antinormal to see which makes inclination go down. Repeat next quadrant. Kind of clunky though. there should be a better way?

[KerBlammo]

Use the Mun as your target. It is also at inclination 0.

[monstah]

KER can read your latitude, right? Keep an eye on it; if it's negative, point south, if it's positive, point north. Wait until it approaches zero, and fire then, until your inclination is as close to zero as you want (or until you wandered far away from the equator, in which case you point to the opposite direction and repeat the process in the opposite hemisphere).

[xtoro]

If it's a spaceplane, eyeballing it works well enough and you can adjust as you glide in. As for rockets it's a bit trickier to eyeball, but can still be done in map view by watching your trajectory.

[Moach]

if you have no axis for inclination -- how do you measure an angle for your orbital plane??

not sure I get the question to it's full extent....

my way of tackling the whole inclination matter is "make proverbial lemonade!" -- meaning, plan a maneuver somewhere sensible for your intended trajectory and molest it until the results are to your liking -- then point at the node vector, wait for it and open up

reading your post again - I get a better picture of what you may be attempting to pursue....

if your landing target isn't on the body's equator, how do you time your reentry/descent -- put shortly: carefully

for any planetary body with a rotation to it (moons usually spin slow enough to "fly it off") - your timing calculations climb up a sheer wall of complexity when your target is off of it's equator

in such a case, you got a wave-like pattern governing the alignment of you and your path *cue in slide of 007 GoldenEye control room with the big map screen with a wave trajectory overlay*

that "wave" is the footprint of your orbit over the squarified globe (there's no decent way to box a ball, mind you - always a compromise) - since you're in space, and therefore detached from any push-me-pull-you influences from below besides the usual fundamental forces and minor interferences, your wave-path-thing will seem to "creep" across the map over a period of -exactly- a day

which cues us thinking -- maybe your orbit isn't "creeping" at all... (spoiler: it isn't) -- it's the PLANET (or moon/whatnot) that's rotating underneath the inclination of your orbital plane...

this is where your brain opens up into a third dimension -- at least it was so for me, way back in the day... before KSP... (Orbiter has been around for over 10 years, man - Cheers, Dr. Schweiger)

and now you can picture a planet in glorious imaginary 3d graphics (no DX11 yet, tho - sorry) spinning around while your relatively inclined orbit around it stays put... try and picture where your landing target would be at any point in time -- and where will you be by then....

crazy yet?

don't worry -- this kinda stuff is one of the very reasons humans invented computers to do the math... no normal or even above-average brain can wrestle with that logic while the outside of your ship is starting to glow like it's on fire (oh crap) so yeah - in Orbiter I'd use the very handy BaseSyncMFD for that (couldn't find a good link, sorry - google it as you will)

In KSP, I usually feel pretty good at having landed... at all... so there's that

but yeah, look for reentry phase timing or some such keywords -- you'll get your answer if you don't mind going full geek about it

or somebody help me out... I've had a 16 hour day of programming and debugging - my brain has largely felt the building

[moogoob]

As others have said, target the Mun and it will show you ascending and descending nodes for an equatorial orbit that you can use to match planes.

[ajburges]

KER can also display other aspects, Check the settings!

I personally prefer the the time to node displays. But there is also phase read outs.

KAC (Kerbal Alarm Clock) can also give you alarms on node.

Burning away from node is wasteful (cosine losses) for plane transitions anyway. Only change plane away from node as part of a larger burn.

[jiminator]

thanks guys. this was for landing an asteroid at ksc. i used the reentry mod to help. its a class c, and now the game gets all wonky around it. probably none of this is an issue for a powered landing, but good to know

[W2D2]

Ok I came here bacuse I had the same question.

I then accidentally developed a possible method at Pol which works on 100% stock .

I had to edit this post once I figured out the science.

 

In your left bottom widget there is orbit info showing periapsis and apoapsis info. There is a second tab in there giving you more info like inclination which is highly likely not zero. I believe you want this to be zero 0.

You have your LAN value (longitude of ascending node) which tells you where your ascending node is in degrees which is an angle from a reference direction which I believe to be the direction of travel of the moon/planet (still not 100% sure if this is the case).

 

So the way to do this is to zoom out until you are above the orbit.

Make sure the orbited planet/sun is on the left, and your spacecraft orbiting the planet/moon on the right. Up should be the orbital path of the planet/moon.

The number of degrees is measured counter clockwise around the planet/moon you are orbiting.

0 degrees is basically the point on your orbit that intersects with the orbit of the planet/moon you are orbiting.

 

Now eyball the location of the ascending node and warp there.

Then burn normal or anti-normal to correct the inclination.

The LAN will shift with every burn so you will need to correct in multiple burns to get inclination down to zero,.

 

 

Alternative Method:

Zoom out until you see your elliptical orbit and the orbit of the planet/moon.

Move your camera to squash down the planet/moon orbit into a line.

Imagine that line going though the planet.

Where your orbital lines cross that line should be the ascending/descending node. (Because your orbit will still be seen as an elipse you get two points.

This method only has a limited resolution but I use this to figure out a good enough correction when entering an SOI (when inclination adjustments are still cheap)

 

Hope this is a solution for your question, and I explained it sufficiently....

Edited July 24, 2021 by W2D2
Updated to more correctish information