Efficient asteroid capture

[Provisional Name 12]

I have been playing around with some missions involving collecting asteroids and it is turning out to be quite difficult to do on the career mode budget. I have definitely made some mistakes, it seems like I really need to intercept at a location at the SOI so that I can get a fuel efficient course correction, is it possible to do this before the SOI and would that improve things a lot? I'm just trying to figure out what to do here, I am always having to tie in so many contracts to pay for the vessels. Someone has to know what the deal is with the mistakes I am making here. I am not too sure if I have characterized my issues well enough, but I wonder if it is just that I haven't had a real good crash course in handling asteroids.

[Mikki]

If you want to approach a Near-Kerbin asteroid which is still in Soi of the sun, you can pretty much eyeball the direction, burn and make the next intercept burncorrection (should be pretty small) outside Kerbins SOI.
Make sure the trajectory of your first burn contains also the right inclination and points at the Kerbin SOI edge straight to the desired target, aim at the Roid Icon, regardless all the colored trajectories!!!
In Soi of the sun, draw an encounter regarding the Roid trajectory, fiddly but you are still in SOI of the sun while meeting it.
It is somehow a bit brachistochrone but hey, you meet the chunk quickly an you have plenty of time to change his trajectory after rendezvouz errm rendezvous.
After you get it, it becomes a piece cake. I learned this by my own, the ingame tutorial is somehow crazy, IIRC.

Good luck, i may post a picture or two if you still get problems.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Mikki
french spelling 8D

[WanderingKid]

This is a great tutorial:

 

[Provisional Name 12]

Thank you, both of those are brilliant and that tutorial definitely shows a good methodology for how what I had though should be possible works.

I just had a really unsuccessful mission and I think the issue I am having is not so much a mater of my understanding of the physics but my understanding of design. First off, I might have too many mods so I am wondering if this might be a problem as well. My last mission due to an oversight of using remotetech even though I swear I put the dish on there I had to pilot with 1/7th or 1/8th of the reaction wheel capacity and I couldn't control anything. I thought reaction wheels would be better this time because last time I used RCS and even though I deactivated all the RCS thrusters before flight the game decided to use them anyway for some reason. Then on top of that once I used the thrusters and steering the ship would sometimes bug out and swing around even going in the asteroid. I'm definitely doing that part wrong and I don't really get what I have messed up.

[Mikki]

@Claw, we bow down before you, Kerbal master!  Excellent tutorial!