WTF?! Can anybody explain this? Bug?

[Cesrate]

It's not made by me, so this pic is the only clue.

[dharak1]

It looks like part bug part real. It looks like a transfer to high mun orbit so with the lower relative speed it goes around more of its orbit with the mun, the crazy path may be a result of that and then the rest is a bug.

[rryy]

Maybe the conic patch draw mode is set to 4. I don't know much about it, but I know it is weird.

[air805ronin]

How did you install KSP on an Etch-a-Sketch?

[Horn Brain]

It's Him.

[DMagic]

Oooh, I had one of these once. Laythe led me into some kind of spiral-of-death around Jool. This was back in 0.19 during my Jool Moon mission, I have no idea how I made it happen though.

[Sapphire]

Try fast-forwarding and seeing if your ship actually follows the path, that would be hilarious! Like a crazy treasure map in space.

[Merinsan]

I've seen it happen before, just not that extreme!

No idea why it happens, but it works it out properly after the SOI change.

[Tripzter]

Thats your path to the moon with the earth being at the center of the universe.

[Tw1]

You can get big loops like that when flying under hack gravity.

Maybe a longer encounter, a different orbit results in a more weird trajectory.

[RocketPilot573]

It's the Patched-Conics Kraken!

[lammatt]

when you see anything not very Kepler and Newtonian...it's probably you are hacking gravity.

[Tiron]

I've seen weird paths before without hacking gravity...not THAT weird, but doing things like it looking like it was going to just stop in mid-orbit and start falling towards the body in question. It only seems to happen on predicted orbits where I'm going to enter another body's SOI, and it never actually follows that orbit. Soon as I enter the SOI of the body in question, it recalculates it, and ends up with a valid orbit. Generally different than the one in question.

Mechjeb's 'fine tune closest approach' likes to set up these weird predicted orbits, and the resulting orbit never has the periapsis you were shooting for either, it's always significantly higher. It's annoying.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It's usually happening only on very specific approach angles, and it's not random - i.e. it's possible to entirely recreate the effect, and savestates preserve it, you just need a very specific approach. The bug is only with the calculations, though, not the path itself - once the SOI changes, the path is recalculated and goes along as it should.

[bsalis]

CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE = derp

^ that's my theory. Check yer config.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It's using the default draw mode. Sure, it likely won't appear in the legacy mode (i.e. the previous default) where the patches are always shown relative to the SOI they happen in, but in this mode, this is what can happen.

[spikeyhat09]

What can you expect, the onboard flight computer software was designed by kerbals

[Sean Mirrsen]

Or maybe it's just sentient, and well aware of Jeb's flying habits.

[Tiron]

It's using the default draw mode. Sure, it likely won't appear in the legacy mode (i.e. the previous default) where the patches are always shown relative to the SOI they happen in, but in this mode, this is what can happen.

You know...that almost looks like...it's applying three body physics... as if it's accounting for the gravity of both the new body and the one you're currently in the SOI of.

[Sean Mirrsen]

You know...that almost looks like...it's applying three body physics... as if it's accounting for the gravity of both the new body and the one you're currently in the SOI of.

Except that's Ike. 90% of that 'trajectory' is outside its SOI.

[NeoMorph]

Oh come on... it's obvious.

The Kerbal engineer that designed the navigation system used to design roller coasters before he got a job at KSP... He just wondered what a roller coaster in space would be like and he got interrupted when he was testing it out... and it then got dumped into the live branch of development. It more commonly known as the "OH BABUSHKA!!!!" conic.

[DisarmingBaton5]

I know planetary orbits seem to warp when you zoom in or out really fast, but I have never seen anything like this.

On a side note, you should follow Sapphire's advice.

[Tiron]

I know planetary orbits seem to warp when you zoom in or out really fast, but I have never seen anything like this.

On a side note, you should follow Sapphire's advice.

People have done, and it does NOT follow that path. The instant you enter the second body's SOI it changes to a proper orbit.

Except that's Ike. 90% of that 'trajectory' is outside its SOI.

Yeah, but that's not the path it'll actually take...

[Xaiier]

Thats your path to the moon with the earth being at the center of the universe.

This man has it. Its likely a bug due to the Krakensbane implementation (floating origin). You may actually follow that trajectory relative to something, but as you don't see any of that, you wouldn't know.

[Camelotking524]

Sometimes the orbital predictions are odd. But I never saw anything that extreme.