Prograde or retrograde encounter icons in map view

[Death Engineering]

When looking at the encounter icons in map view, either when creating a maneouver node or when the encounter is already in the orbit, is there a way to know whether the encounter will be in prograde or retrograde to the targeted body?

I see the (tiny) clockwise and anti-clockwise circles.. are those they? And if so, what do they indicate/how to read them?

Edited July 5, 2013 by Death Engineering

[Motokid600]

Uhm.. are u asking how to tell what direction you'll be orbiting a planet after a transfer? Hard to tell try rewording your post a bit.

[Pursuedtank]

I think what Death Engineering wants to know is whether you can tell which way around the body you are going to be orbiting by looking at the line drawn by the patched conics.

If this is the case then you can, but sometimes it is a little tricky, it all depends on your patched conics setting. It is difficult to work out most of the time, but there may be an easier way that someone can volunteer.

[rryy]

You want to go into the settings.cfg in the KSP folder and look for the line that says, "CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE". By default, it will be set to 3, but change it to 0. Then, in game, when you get an encounter, the encounter trajectory will be shown around the current position of the planet you are encountering instead of its position in the future. This allows you to switch your camera view to the target planet and see if the trajectory shown is going prograde or retrograde. If the encounter trajectory is going counterclockwise, it is a prograde orbit. If it is clockwise, it is retrograde.

[SRV Ron]

Generally, if the Mun or planet show a a paragee after it passes your ship, you will be boosted further away if you do not do a retrograde burn at the paragee mark. If you do the capture burn, that orbit will be prograde.

If Mum or the planet shows a paragee in front of it, your orbit upon the retrograde burn will be in the opposite, or retrograde, rotation. If you don't do the burn, your ship will be redirected towards Kerbin as its speed will be slowed down. The real Apollo missions did the retrograde capture so that they wouldn't be slingshot into a solar orbit if they were unable to make the orbital insertion burn at paragee. Instead, they would have been slingshot back towards Earth.

Note, it is also possible to get a prograde orbit if your elliptical orbit goes way past Mun or a planet and you get the paragee in front of it on the return loop. That path, however, is quite wasteful on fuel.

[njd80]

rryy is spot-on - Conics mode 0 is the way to go. Focus on the planet you want to hit.

I have found the Maneuver Node Improvement mod (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/maneuver-node-improvement/) extremely helpful - it allows you to change the conics mode on the fly in-game. It also allows you to re-open the node when it inevitably closes at the worst moment.

Edited July 6, 2013 by njd80

[Death Engineering]

Thanks a lot, folks!