Moho Landing

[LethalDose]

The point about theoretical vs actual windows is an interesting one, does anyone know a good way to calculate truee transfer windows taking into account eccentricity? It seems like it would be easier to correct for that THEN burn, rather than go from a planar orbit around kerbin to a planar sun orbit, THEN correct.

The problem is that, given concentric (non-overlapping) orbits, the transit time to get to the target's periapsis is different than the transit time to the target's apoapsis if the target has an eccentric orbit. Since the transit times are different, transfer windows are different.

That being said, calculating the window isn't really that hard since you're just aiming for a different altitude above the sun.

It's odd that you mention planar orbits in this question, though... did you actually mean transfer windows taking inclination into account, instead of eccentricity?

[loch.ness]

I'm very glad I started checking this thread. Aparently I fell pray to the Kerbal Alarm clock / MJ error mentioned earlier on but this thread helped me catch it before I departed. I'm at Y1 d 127 with a calculated window in 22 days while the actual window is on Y1 D 269. If I leave at the calculated window I'd be lucky to hit a transfer that drinks up all ~7.8k dV in the tanks and refueling or not, might not make it at all.

On the plus side: Yay - not going to loose my crew. On the negative side: Boo was really looking forward to tat first interplanetary mission.