Hello fellow kerbinauts! I'm new, and I'm pretty confused.

[ARich]

Hi,

I just bought the game last friday (but I have experimented with the demo) and I think I'm off to a good start. I made my own OCS, oh yea I didn't want to use the phrase KSS because I didn't want to steal someone else's idea so I call it the Orbital communications station, or for short: OCS.

However, there is a certain aspect of the game that alludes my knowledge. I know it may sound stupid, but I can't get to any other planets or minmus without the help of mechjeb. I really don't like using mechjeb because I like enjoying the physics part of the game. Anyway, on to the question.

How the hell do I get to a planet like duna?

This has puzzled me for 4 consecutive days. I know it's probably something silly but can you experienced players help me out?

All legitimate answers are helpful no trolls please

[Vanamonde]

It's not silly. A lot of experienced players are having trouble reaching the planets, too. I spent all day yesterday failing to reach Jool. So the bad news is that there's no short, simple answer to your question. But the good news is, there are a lot of long and un-simple answers to your question in the "how-to" section. Look over the stickied posts at the top of the page, and you'll find a lot of video tutorials.

[Qumefox]

Well, the brute force way is to just quicksave/quickload over and over again, trying various escape trajectories until you get an intercept.. I managed to get to duna on my first attempt with no mods.. by sheer luck.. The solar orbit took the ship past duna's orbit, and I managed to score an intercept on the return leg... barely.. I think the closest peroaposis I could get for the the intercept was like 1.6 million meters..

If your like me, and dislike the mechjeb easy mode, I pretty much run a vanilla install except for two mods. Protractor and Kerbal Engineer Redux.. Both are purely information displays. No autopilots etc. Just remember, you have to put the associated parts on your rockets/planes for the plugins to work. You can just stick them anywhere. I like to stick them on the front of capsules before I put the parachute on on most of my builds.

[mustwinfull]

Welcome to the forums ARich.

I'm still having trouble getting there, the learning curve shot up with 0.17.

Have a look at some of the add-ons that can help you and the How To section if you want some help.

Have fun playing KSP and go blow up some rockets!

[Awaras]

Basically, to get to any of the planets you have to wait until the position of that planet relative to kerbin is 'just right'.

This position is measured by the phase angle between the two planets. In order to measure the angle, you need to either put a physical protractor on your screen while looking at the map view from straight up or use one of the protractor mods available on the forum such as this one or this one (Latest MechJeb shows these angles as well).

The mod in the second link is by far the most 'user friendly' but I have had a lot more 'false positives' with it than with the first one...

To figure out the angle you need to go to a certain planet, you can use this calculator: http://ksp.olex.biz/

Read the instructions on that site, I found them very helpful.

Edited October 9, 2012 by Awaras

[sal_vager]

Hi ARich, welcome to the community

As others have said, it can take some trial and error to get to the other planets, mostly error

For practice, try going from the Mun to Minmus or back, inter planetary transfers are pretty similar.

[Qumefox]

The mod in the second link is by far the most 'user friendly' but I have had a lot more 'false positives' with it than with the first one...

Protractor assumes several things to give it's readout. 1) that your in a perfectly circular orbit and 2) that your orbit is at the same inclination as your target.. Usually neither are true. following it's output will get you pretty close though, and if you enable closest approach, you can then tweak your orbit to get an intercept.