Efficient maneuvering at the destination

[Loren Pechtel]

Before I spend a bunch of time testing I wonder if someone has already figured this out:

With a low relative velocity maneuvers at the SOI are very cheap.  I came across the wall fast (interplanetary) and they were anything but cheap.  Would I be better off killing some velocity before maneuvering?  (My final destination was orbit, I wasn't planning to aerobrake.)  And should I have done the plane change or the periapsis change first?

[bewing]

You want to be setting your Pe during your interplanetary mid-course correction. You will still be going fast all the way to your Pe. Burn or otherwise capture into your destination SOI at the Pe -- but leave yourself with a very high Ap at the edge of the SOI. Plane change at the Ap on the next half-orbit. During your interplanetary mid-course correction, you can tune your encounter a little bit, so that your An or Dn is near the Pe -- which will put the other one near the Ap, once you have created an Ap.

 

[DD_bwest]

use thw view feature to look at your encounter and try to get your an/dn as close to the  pe as possible, then capture yourself with the highest ap possible and do the inclination correction there.

[Loren Pechtel]

20 minutes ago, bewing said:

You want to be setting your Pe during your interplanetary mid-course correction. You will still be going fast all the way to your Pe. Burn or otherwise capture into your destination SOI at the Pe -- but leave yourself with a very high Ap at the edge of the SOI. Plane change at the Ap on the next half-orbit. During your interplanetary mid-course correction, you can tune your encounter a little bit, so that your An or Dn is near the Pe -- which will put the other one near the Ap, once you have created an Ap.

 

Duh!  Oberth!  Burn low!

Why didn't I think of that?