Finding a cheap solution to a hard problem

[Bothersome]

Sometimes you will come across a problem that looks like there is no easy answer to.

Sometimes all you need is patience. Here is a problem that I ran into.

With Lunar car with lander that I sent to Laythe with the attached long range transporter, I missed it's "align planes" orbit burn point. So, I decided to try and make the best of it. It had already had it's tranfer orbit burn done. So it was on it's way to Jool anyway. There was Jool encounter shown in its orbit path. So I knew it would at least get close.

Close is a loose term here though. Like WAY OUT THERE close. I had to use up most of the fuel just to get captured in Jools orbit or else it would have fallen back in and then the mission would have to be scrapped. After I used up all the fuel on the long range transporter that brought it to Jool and then just a bit of the mission fuel for the car lander. It was in a very ugly orbit around Jool. Has an apoapsis of 2.189 billion meters. Yep that's just about on the edge of the SOI for Jool. But at least the problem is now contained at Jool. Oh, and the orbit plane is off by no less than 60 degrees if the previous wasn't enough problem. And oh yea, the apoapsis was pointing downward so it was not going to be an easy cheap plane adjustment. Somebody was gonna have to spend some money on a fuel burn to fix this one.

So I just left it hanging there until I could think of a solution to fix the problem.

So after I sent an airplane to Laythe, the long range transporter that it used still had most of it's fuel remaining. Yeah I used a better design for that one. Plus, the payload was much lighter. 5 tons vs 26 tons if I remember correctly.

Well, I figured I'd send the transporter after the car/lifter and finish the job... but I got to thinking, maybe I could use the fuel on the lifter (what remains) to fix it's on orbit planes first. This would save tons of fuel on the transporter that would have to dock with it. Since it is already in a nice plane with the moons already.

OK long story getting shorter. Here is a couple of pictures I took of the solution... Each picture worth a thousand words ya know...

I found a cheap solution by using the gravity of Tylo to slow my rapid decent towards Jool AND fix my planes with the same burn. Only gonna cost me 84.5 units of DV to make that happen... That should save me a ton of fuel to fix my problem. Since I'd be close to the moons planes, I should be able to find a fixer to help get me to a destination. Preferably Tylo. The neat thing about it, is it doesn't use an atmospheric brake to slow down.

Comments are welcome. I'm always up for learning something new. But don't recommend using any mods. I'm adverse to using any sort of mods.

[bsalis]

With some knowledge and enough fiddling with maneuver nodes you can do things quite cheaply.

Last evening I returned an spaceplane from (low) Moho orbit. Did it in one main burn with some minor adjustments later. Only cost about 2800 m/s, since i didn't do a plane change and aerocaptured into Kerbin.