Interplanetary travel, the Easy way

[Raptor kerman]

Are you to tired [lazy] to wait for the right time to transfer between planets. Are you not good enough to do it? Well here I am, ready to help.... with no pictures (I'm on a laptop without KSP ,please don't kill me ). This technique should cost no more than your entire life's savings in DeltaV and time. 

Step 1: Go up, straight up, no point going to orbit, we're going on an escape trajectory, so pack at least 3000 m/s of dV. 

Step 2: Get in an Solar/Kerbol orbit. Nothing much to say really, easier than going into LKO.

Step 3: The more circular your Kerbal orbit is, the easier your transfer to your chosen planet, not entirely necessary to circularise since your orbit should already be pretty circular already. 
 

Step 4: Get a manoeuvre node going, set your destination or gravity assist planet as your target and play around with your node until you get an encounter...

 

Step 5: Well done, you now know how to go interplanetary, the easy way. Now go and learn it the proper way, KSC will love the fuel and time savings. For those who are too lazy to learn it the paper way [i.e me], make more efficient spacecraft... good luck making an SSTO with this concept.  

 

Anyway, I hope this tutorial has helped you, I'll go back to making aeroplanes now if you don't mind. 

 

chomp chomp

-Raptor

Edited January 8, 2018 by Raptor kerman

[Mystique]

15 hours ago, Raptor kerman said:

Step 1: Go up, straight up, no point going to orbit, we're going on an escape trajectory, so pack at least 3000 m/s of dV. 

Isn't this gonna take a lot more than 3k dV? You're going to suffer lot of gravity losses during such an ascent (though with load of TWR and lot of dV and not looking at budget, why not).

P.S. And how should I know how much juice I'll need to make that burn from Solar orbit (+braking on target most likely will require enormous amount of dV, as it'll be done way outside of transfer window which will cause approach at speed angle and krazy relative speed).

[Raptor kerman]

6 hours ago, Mystique said:

Isn't this gonna take a lot more than 3k dV? You're going to suffer lot of gravity losses during such an ascent (though with load of TWR and lot of dV and not looking at budget, why not).

P.S. And how should I know how much juice I'll need to make that burn from Solar orbit (+braking on target most likely will require enormous amount of dV, as it'll be done way outside of transfer window which will cause approach at speed angle and krazy relative speed).

I know, note the usage of 'at least'. Escaping from Kerbin SOI takes almost exactly 3k dV. It's not an ideal or cheap way to do it. but it is (I find it to be) easier than waiting around and doing things precisely. Just muscle your way to your destination, who needs finesse

[wumpus]

6 hours ago, Raptor kerman said:

I know, note the usage of 'at least'. Escaping from Kerbin SOI takes almost exactly 3k dV. It's not an ideal or cheap way to do it. but it is (I find it to be) easier than waiting around and doing things precisely. Just muscle your way to your destination, who needs finesse

Orbit is at least 3k delta-v (typically more), escape takes about 4k (including orbital).  While theoretically "not going into orbit" is more efficient, most high-efficiency rockets don't provide sufficient  TWR to hit escape before orbit.  In practice, it makes more sense to get into orbit to at least try to correct any inclination errors that might have crept in, and also to use the maneuver planner to choose your exit burn time (I'd love to be able to use the maneuver planner on the launchpad).

[Raptor kerman]

On 1/10/2018 at 2:53 AM, wumpus said:

Orbit is at least 3k delta-v (typically more), escape takes about 4k (including orbital).  While theoretically "not going into orbit" is more efficient, most high-efficiency rockets don't provide sufficient  TWR to hit escape before orbit.  In practice, it makes more sense to get into orbit to at least try to correct any inclination errors that might have crept in, and also to use the maneuver planner to choose your exit burn time (I'd love to be able to use the maneuver planner on the launchpad).

Are you sure, in my testing it took circa 3k to escape, in basically every test I conducted. 

[NASAbulbafan]

My maneuver would not go on Duna’s orbit

[Raptor kerman]

17 hours ago, NASAbulbafan said:

My maneuver would not go on Duna’s orbit

How long have you played around with the manoeuvre node? If you use this technique you HAVE to be sure to have a metric ton of DeltaV and you'd be surprised on where the node should be sometimes. Try setting Duna as your target (map screen, r-click on Duna and select set to target, you want the markers to be as close as possible. Hope this helps.

[NASAbulbafan]

It did, I got an encounter with Duna but my burn would go somewhere different