Mission: fly by the sun. stuck!

[Beatz0121]

So I just got to the other orbit line and completed the mission, sooo how do I get back home?

I cannot figure it out. and now I am traveling at 8000m/s!!! =O

[JTpopcorn]

you would have to wait until your AP unless you can adjust your orbit enough to have an encounter with kerbin. If you gravity break(reverse slingshot) with the moon, you might be able to slow yourself down enough to make a deorbit burn.

[paul23]

If you really can't get to kerbin anymore. But do have a bit of fuel reserve a few hints, in order of importance - all with the goal of adding a rescue mission and making that as easy as possible:

1) Make the orbit in the same plane as kerbin (inclination = 0, removes a whole step of an approach)

2) Make the orbit near circular (makes approaching much more easy as the delta-v becomes independent of the time when you do it).

3) Make the orbit as *small* as possible. NOT as close to kerbin as possible.

Step 3 seems counter intuitive: but a smaller orbit means kerbin & the rescueing craft pass each other more times: giving many more potential times to do a hohmann transfer. When the orbit is near kerbin's size you might have to wait 10 years before you align up correctly, and you'd have to do a two step (first decrease the rescuers orbit from kerbin's orbit - then increase it again). Making planing more difficult.

[Beatz0121]

Wow! This seems way to complicated to save my 4.0 ton ship lol.

I am going to revert to vehicle assembly and send out an unmanned probe.

Thanks guys!

Edited October 28, 2015 by Beatz0121

[mabarry3]

The way that I did it that I found quite easy for me to just do a sun flyby was to launch in the direction of Kerbin's orbit (zoom out and find which direction Kerbin goes around the sun, then launch from Kerbin in that direction), and stop right when you have a Kerbin escape. When you get into the Sun's sphere of influence, you should be able to do what you need, then burn very slightly retrograde to slow yourself down. Kerbin should catch up with you and you will fall back into its sphere of influence without too much hassle.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

If you haven't relaunched yet, I sent an unmanned science probe on my first sun mission, and got lucky enough to get a chance at an Eve encounter as well. Pack a bit of dV onto the probe, maybe you can pick up some bonus science without too much effort (and get some practice at intercepting another planet).

[FancyMouse]

It isn't really complicated if you've been out of Kerbin SoI for just a couple of seconds/minutes - you just turn around and burn to move towards Kerbin. You can pretty much ignore gravity when dealing with several minutes of travel time in a one-year orbit.

If you're out for a while, then you'll probably need a standard rendezvous to Kerbin.

[The Optimist]

The hard part isn't getting there, the hard part is letting go.

Literally. I hope you didn't put anyone on that ship :3

[Snark]

A few thoughts:

First, don't freak out about the 8000 m/s velocity. That's just how fast you're going around the sun, and it doesn't matter. What matters is your velocity relative to Kerbin. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to see that directly, since when your target is a planet (as opposed to a ship) you can't put the navball into "target relative" mode to see. (It's annoying, they should fix that.)

However, as long as you didn't leave Kerbin's SoI with much velocity, and as long as you haven't been outside it a really long time, then your Kerbin-relative velocity will be quite low and it's easy to get home.

You could always send an unmanned probe: fast, light, cheap, doesn't have to come back.

However, one very nice benefit of sending a kerbal is for the experience. Peeking outside Kerbin's SoI is the only way to get past level 2, so it's worth it for leveling up before you go on grand adventures out into the solar system.

The simple recipe for a mission outside Kerbin's SoI and back:

1. Launch to LKO normally.

2. Do a prograde burn that's just barely enough to escape Kerbin. That is, life the apoapsis up just enough that it grazes the outer boundary of the SoI.

3. Wait. It'll take a couple of weeks to get out there. You leave the SoI, you'll be going very slowly, with a Kerbin orbital velocity under 200/m/s.

4. As soon as you're outside the SoI, point the nose of your ship directly at Kerbin, and give it a medium-hard shove. Doesn't have to be huge, just a few hundred m/s will do.

5. Pretty soon you'll be back in the SoI. Arrange for reentry and landing as per usual.