How to catch a planet/moons orbit?

[pingo5]

i know it may sound newbish but is there any way to know where to place maneuvers and such so that i dont have to guestimate where my maneuvers should be? i am having trouble hitting mminmus for goodness sake!

[capi3101]

For Mun and Minmus, look straight down at Kerbin (i.e. have the north pole facing you). Then rotate the camera so your target world is at about 100 degrees from the top of the screen (about 3:30-ish). You want to set your maneuver node at Kerbin's six-o-clock position, then plan a prograde thrust until you get an orbit. For Minmus in particular, you may have to plan a correction burn at the ascending/descending node to get an intercept.

For the other worlds, try http://ksp.olex.biz/

[alacrity]

I myself for any captures other then Mun and Minmus have been using a correction burn half way out.

IE

Set your burn for Duna to get it close (capture time windows posted EVERYWHERE at one time or another) and just get it close..(the position carrots close but not needing to actually show a capture). Then an additional maneuver node at about the halfway point or the arc connecting your position to duna's position. use this one to fine tune your approach. Two advantages of this are a) almost no delta v needed for the maneuver (most I ever used was 38 delta V in a 7 sec burn for a Jool fine tune and that was for a crazy approach to get me into a polar orbit when I arrived so I didn't need to do a lot of inclination correction on arrival and . the second manuever is closer to target meaning when you pull the node tabs you can be more accurate.

Trying to spike the bullseye from you solar orbit to any other planet is problematic, and leaves you with a huge burn at your target for slowing down.

As far as the Minmus and Mun aproaches the same tricks work, but I am usually carrying enough fuel not to have to worry about it. the thing I find helps the most for this fine tuning burn is the Radial in and radial out (the blue ones). While the pro/retro burn direction (the yellow ones) give you dramatic changes in orbit and speed, they don't give you the dynamic orbital changes you may be looking for. sliding your orbit across the plane gets you a lot of options for insertion for a lot less fuel.

Alacrity

[SRV Ron]

Try to catch a planet, moon below its orbital path rather then above it. Catching below will use less fuel in getting there as well as slowing down for a capture. By approaching below, the slingshot will slow you down even more instead of speeding you up. Plan on a mid course maneuver to set the plane and point of capture. As those burns can be very critical, consider using thrusters to fine tune the intercept during the correction burn. Don't be afraid to set up a third of fourth burn if needed. Aero braking can be used for capture to save fuel bit is tricky and very critical to get the encounter just right.

If you are really lucky in planning the retrograde capture, it is even possible to get a near orbital capture with only a small burn by the thruster pack needed for completion.

[pingo5]

yours is the most helpful, but how do i know where to burn to get close? theres a bunch of different factors, like going into suns orbit, planets moving, rotating, ETC.

your terminology also confuses me alot.

i dont understand anything but it sounds important

[pingo5]

also! i made it to minmus and the mun already, but interplanetary travel seems much harder.