Can anyone make sense of this trajectory?

[Boffinbox]

So i'm adjusting my trajectory around Duna, and then I get this:

I've been playing for a while now, but I haven't had that happen until now.

Does anyone wanna try and make sense of what it wants to do with the vehicle?

[SDIR]

You vehicle is going to go out, enter the influence of the moon, and then it will get slingshotted back into Duna orbit. Basically the moon will capture you ship and then give it extra speed and a different direction.

[NeoMorph]

Yeah, moon slingshots are fun... I went for a straightforward run from Kerbin to Minmus using MechJeb's Transfer orbit system.... and ended up crashing on Moho lol.

[SDIR]

Yeah, moon slingshots are fun... I went for a straightforward run from Kerbin to Minmus using MechJeb's Transfer orbit system.... and ended up crashing on Moho lol.

Wow. I've never actually used slingshots to that extent. They've always been more of a pain in the ass when I want to go into orbit around Duna or something.

[RocketPilot573]

It looks like your ship will get a gravity assist from Ike, come back around Duna and Encounter Ike again. Its a double gravity Assist!

[Tw1]

Yeah, moon slingshots are fun... I went for a straightforward run from Kerbin to Minmus using MechJeb's Transfer orbit system.... and ended up crashing on Moho lol.

Wow. If only there where easy ways to replicate that. My attempt to use a gravity assist to get to Moho cost more than a direct transfer, even with everything lined up. (As far as I could tell.)

[Boffinbox]

oh right, i see. i got thrown off by the "Ike Apoapsis" marker because it doesn't make sense :/

i was wondering if anyone has had similar conditions before, or whether my game is just bugged or something...

[SDIR]

No, happens all the time with me.

[SmallChange]

It's pretty amazing how much velocity you can gain from gravity assists.

That's the only way Voyager was able to get as far out as it is. There was a launch window where they were able to just chain the gravist assists, one after the other.

[leax256]

It looks like your ship will get a gravity assist from Ike, come back around Duna and Encounter Ike again. Its a double gravity Assist!

assist might be streaxhing it, n less your goal is to excape.

[CalculusWarrior]

I think Ike is incredibly easy to get an encounter on; as I always manage to get one accidently when I visit the Duna system. I think your spacecraft is in a partially synchronous orbit with the moon, which is why you're getting that non-elliptical brown trajectory. Then, of course it fires you away with a gravity assist.

[NeoMorph]

I think the best gravity assist I ever had was from Ike too... I managed to get one of my mining pods into Duna orbit without even having to aerobrake because Ike caused my orbit to flip and forced me into a figure 8, came back around and then Ike slowed me again. Unfortunately I had accelerated time so fast that all this happened before I could stop it so I couldn't replicate it which was annoying because I spent about 4 hours trying to do so lol. Total accident and I got a perfect circular orbit with NO aerobrake and NO retrograde burn. The ultimate in fuel economy. Did get some good slingshots though and learned a lot about getting into the right orbit after aerobraking without having to do orbit alignment changes.

Sometimes accidents are the best teachers.

[Nuke]

think of it as a cheap way to change your inclination.

[tavert]

The reason this looks so strange is since Ike is so large relative to Duna, it's sphere of influence is quite large relative to its orbit. And your trajectory has a rather low Ike-relative velocity at the SoI transition, so you are orbiting Ike for a good long time. Blue is in Duna's SoI, yellow is in Ike's SoI for what looks like more than one full Ike orbit around Duna. Purple is back in Duna's SoI again.