Impossible Mission

[lhopki01]

I've got this impossible mission in KSP.  It wants me to get into an orbit that is the opposite direction of Ike so if I'm in the oribit I will always intercept Ike.  This stops the mission ever completing.  

So if I get into an orbit that's the same direction as Ike get one end of the orbit to line up with the target orbit then burn retrograde till my oribtal direction changes Kerbal Engineer says my periapses and apoapsis are correct by I intercept Ike and can't complete the mission.

Are these missions randomly generated?  Did I just get really unlucky?  I don't know what else to try.

Edited March 29, 2017 by lhopki01

[Jarin]

You got unlucky. This is rare, but Ike's SOI is so dang huge that it screws with a lot of things. You'll have similar issues if you try contracts around Jool. Just get into the proper orbit, then alt-f12 and find the "missions" entry and mark it complete manually. It's not a cheat if you really did do it.

[Kryxal]

You only need to match the orbit for 10 seconds, so if you can get there while Ike's on the far side, it's all good.

[lhopki01]

@Kryxal The problem is for the mission to complete the your predicted orbit has to match the designated one.  There is no orbit that does that because Ike is going in the other direction which means you'll meet it twice orbit and so my predicted orbit always has a kick around Ike.

@Jarin Thanks I'll do that.  I didn't know if contracts like this were randomly generated so wasn't sure if I was missing.

[Warzouz]

1 hour ago, lhopki01 said:

@Kryxal The problem is for the mission to complete the your predicted orbit has to match the designated one.  There is no orbit that does that because Ike is going in the other direction which means you'll meet it twice orbit and so my predicted orbit always has a kick around Ike.

You can match a specified orbit in only ONE burn (I always do that)

• Start from a lower orbit
• Aim for the farthest AN or DN. You must burn so your AP is very near the targeted AN or DN (don't hesitate to rotate the map view in all direction to be sure)
• Prepare a burn node at AP/DN using radial, normal and prograde to perfectly match the orbit (you must tweak all 3 direction, but you have time to do it)
• Execute the node, you should validate the orbit even the burn is not finished, you don't have to be very precise.

So it's totally possible validate the contract, even if Ike is on it's way. You won't be able to keep the sat for more than half an orbit though, but 10s are enough.

 

[bewing]

5 hours ago, lhopki01 said:

 The problem is for the mission to complete the your predicted orbit has to match the designated one.  There is no orbit that does that because Ike is going in the other direction which means you'll meet it twice orbit and so my predicted orbit always has a kick around Ike.

The orbit does not visually have to match -- there is no way for the game to check the lines against each other. To complete a contract, the game only checks the 6 Keplerian parameters of your current orbit against the required 6 values. But as Warzouz said, it's almost always better to start from a lower orbit than a higher orbit. And then to fill a contract like this one, you need to use some technique to complete that will complete the contract in less than a quarter of an orbit.

 

[Kryxal]

Given that he's already in a higher orbit, I'd just continue on that way, and also match planes whenever you can.  The maneuver at intersect is much simpler if you only have to worry about prograde and radial instead of all 3.