Eastward Minmus capture

[CaptainKipard]

So I'm doing a lot of back and forth between Minmus and Kerbin, but it seems that every time I make a maneuver node and burn, my craft wants to do a kind-of figure of 8, by getting captured into a westward orbit around Minmus (ie 180deg inclination). Is there a way to choose how to get captured? I already have an orbiting craft with a near-0 inclination that I want to dock with without having to completely reverse my orbit.

Edited June 30, 2013 by Cpt. Kipard

[Jason Patterson]

If you are going to be captured into a retrograde orbit, you can burn to change it into a prograde capture. You just have to lower your periapsis through the planet and out the other side. If you do it early enough it costs very very little delta-v. If you're having trouble seeing whether your encounter will be prograde or retrograde, you can try changing the value of CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE in your settings.cfg file. It defaults to 3 (the loopy, end to end version of orbits you normally see, that shows your actual path around the parent body. I can't recall which it is (1?) but one of them draws the orbits with respect to the object being orbited. That is, it would put the Minmus encounter at Minmus and you'd be able to see whether you were pro- or retrograde right away.

Best of luck.

[MrTaxman]

You could also change both crafts' orbits to polar. Jason Patterson's advice is, however, probably better

[CaptainKipard]

I could. I already know how to get captured like that but it requires corrections mid-transfer. I'd rather just burn properly once and be done with it.

Is it a matter of getting a rendezvous after apokee? That's the only thing I can think of right now because so far I maneuvered to get a rendezvous as quickly as possible.

[entaran]

You can change it via pro/retrograde burn at your departure. If you burn too far prograde you'll capture retrograde and so forth. At least this is how i do it, I also do a correction burn at the AN/DN enroute to minmus or from minmus to kerbin to pick my inclination when I arrive.