TO DUNA!.........Which..........Which way is that again?

[Spinecone]

Hullo, some people might remember me from the help section, but this is my first proper post on these forums, and I'd mainly like to open it by asking for some help.

My contraptions can, for the most part, get to orbit, and maybe the Mun, but before I venture any further afield, I need to know how to aim for the other Celestial Objects. Aim might.............not really be the best word, but how will I know how to intercept a planetary body beyond screaming to divert all power to the engines and cross my fingers?

Having checked out some of Scott Manley's stuff, I am aware that he is using what may be some form of geometry to calculate where he is going, and while I think I could do it, I have no idea what is is at present.

Similarly, whats the best method of getting into orbit? Scott got to minimus and home again with 7 bits, but I only recently got to orbit!

What mods are good for intalling, apart from damned robotics, and how would I go about installing them?

Also, short of MechJeb, whats the easiest way to circularize an orbit?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Spinecone

HOLY ****, WHY IS THE ESCAPE POD ON FIRE!

[Markus Reese]

hiya and welcome to the forums! Aiming for celestial bodies. Well the easy way to think of it is when you de-orbit, you typically end up exiting 90 degrees off your burn start. So with that in mind, if you want to go outer, you want to exit the same direction the body you are leaving is going. This way your escape velocity also adds to your orbit transfer. Want to go inwards, go counter orbit. Is simple of when to know the burn. Want to go in, burn at and towards sunrise. Want to burn outer body, burn away from a sunset.

Get really good, and you can use an orbital slingshot to fling yourself out, but that is for another day. As for timing when to burn, you can use a calculator or do what I do. F5 quicksave and do a burn, check how far off you are and that is the difference in distance the orbits have to be. F9 reload and try again until you get the feel for transfer.

Easy circularization? The easiest is the braking/accelerating at periapsis and apoapsis. When at one, break/accelerate to get the other to circularize or the orbit you want. When at the other end, do the same. Perfect circular orbits. Also, you can burn towards/away from orbital body to help circularize.

Good mods, I like the KW/novapunch ones. Powertech and dynasat.

The escape pod is on fire because you put your boosters on upside down.

[Spinecone]

Thanks, good to be here!

Alright, sounds like you know what you are doing with the choosing which way to make my turn to orbit, but if I might ask, how can I tell which way Kerbin is spinning from it's surface? Zooming out? Putting an observatory into orbit?

Thanks for the advice on orbit circularization, just what I needed.

I think a better way of asking my Original question is how do I calculate how far ahead of a a planets current location I need to aim for to hit it? Like firing a gun at a moving target, you need to know how to figure out how far ahead of it you will have to shoot, except in KSP, the distances are too great to just go on instinct, I guess I am asking what formula would I need to figure it out?

Wait, you mean those were not air intakes?

Oh......

Oh dear.........

*sticks fingers in ears in expectation*

[sal_vager]

Hiya Spinecone, welcome to the community

You can check out a good tutorial here for getting into orbit, and Kerbin spins the same way Earth does, with the sun rising in the east.

This might help you with aiming for Duna, don't forget to take enough fuel to get back, or take a lot of sandwiches and a few good books for your Kerbals while they wait for the rescue ship

[mustwinfull]

Welcome to the forums Spinecone.

Since everyone else answered your questions before I got here, I'm just here to introduce you to the forums.

Well Done so far with your achivements in KSP, keep shooting for the Mun as well as Minmus to get some practice for that voyage to Duna (I haven't even attempted to go to Minmus yet, maybe I should tommorow).

Have fun playing KSP and go blow up some rockets!

[The Destroyer]

This is like ksp.olex.biz, but better:

http://www.kerbal.net/mod.php?id=36

Also, WELCOME!

[Vanamonde]

which way Kerbin is spinning

Everything in the Kerbal solar system rotates and orbits west-to-east, or counter-clockwise when viewed from north. A few bodies are eccentric and/or inclined, but no natural objects (non-spaceships) have a retrograde motion or rotation.

[Spinecone]

Sal_vager, I think some of the mathematics involved in that may have broken my brain. I recognized Pi and a few other symbols, but is there anywhere that explains what most of those letters represent?

Meanwhile, I will just use the calculator.

Sorry for repeating what is probably obvious, but I want to make absolutely sure I have got this right, the Phase Angle is the angle between where I am, and where the target is, with the sun as the corner.

The ejection angle is the heading I need to be going in when I enter the Sun's/Exit the Starting point's SOI, with the direction the body I am currently orbiting is going in at the exact time of the burn being 0.

And the Ejection Velocity is how fast I need to be going when I make the change from one SOI to another?

Right?

Thanks for all the welcomes, rare to find a forum so friendly!

[sal_vager]

I'll tell you a secret Spinecone......

I don't know what all that stuff means either, I just eyeball it and fly by feel and dead reckoning, plus changing conic_patch_limit to 3 or 4 in the settings.cfg helps a lot

[Spinecone]

I'll tell you a secret Spinecone......

I plus changing conic_patch_limit to 3 or 4 in the settings.cfg helps a lot

I'm not sure I understand what you mean?

[sal_vager]

In your KSP_win folder is a plaintext file called settings.cfg, inside there is a lot of the settings that KSP uses, including one called CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT (its in caps)

It's normally set to 2, and shows your current orbit and the next one, adding numbers adds orbit lines, though they get less accurate with each additional line.

But even inaccurate, they can be a great help.

Also, don't use wordpad to edit it.

[Spinecone]

Notepad okay?

[NIN3]

Notepad okay?

Far as I know, yes. I used it to modify that value, and im not dead yet.

[Vanamonde]

I don't remember hearing about Wordpad being a problem. What's the issue with it?

[Andrew_C]

I don't remember hearing about Wordpad being a problem. What's the issue with it?

It's not so much a problem with the present version of Wordpad, but earlier versions saved everything, even plain text files you were editing as DOC files making them unreadable by anything expecting plain text. A big problem if you were editing an INI file.

It's still too easy to do this accidentally with the versions of Wordpad in XP and later, which is why you should use a text editor, like Notepad. After all Wordpad is a (very simple) wordprocessor, not a text editor.

[(An Original Name)]

In your KSP_win folder is a plaintext file called settings.cfg, inside there is a lot of the settings that KSP uses, including one called CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT (its in caps)

It's normally set to 2, and shows your current orbit and the next one, adding numbers adds orbit lines, though they get less accurate with each additional line.

But even inaccurate, they can be a great help.

Also, don't use wordpad to edit it.

I tried to edit it, but settings.cfg wasn't in KSP_win, it was in a folder called KSP. And inside it when I opened it with notepad was the settings text, but there was nothing called CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT. I really don't know what to do

[jebowlin72]

I tried to edit it, but settings.cfg wasn't in KSP_win, it was in a folder called KSP. And inside it when I opened it with notepad was the settings text, but there was nothing called CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT. I really don't know what to do

trydyingtolive has a video on the youtubes about this and explains how to do it, easy to follow.

[Qumefox]

Well the settings.cfg will be in whatever folder you installed KSP into.. It should be the same place as the executable.

Also, which version of KSP are you using? 0.17 or the 0.13 demo? And what OS? Windows or mac?

[(An Original Name)]

Well the settings.cfg will be in whatever folder you installed KSP into.. It should be the same place as the executable.

Also, which version of KSP are you using? 0.17 or the 0.13 demo? And what OS? Windows or mac?

I already found the folder, and I'm using 0.17 on Vista.

[(An Original Name)]

Apparently the settings.cfg file I was looking at was the demo version of it So I found a different one, it had the CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT stuff and I changed it. When I was testing it out I noticed that it goes crazy alot, especially if it is dealing with mun encounters.

[nhnifong]

Sal_vager, I think some of the mathematics involved in that may have broken my brain. I recognized Pi and a few other symbols, but is there anywhere that explains what most of those letters represent?

Exactly my problem with mathematics. Poor variable naming habits.

[lucidLemon]

I know for a fact that Duna isn't this way