Opposite Rotation How do I dock ???

[Lohan2008]

Took the fuel barge upto Mun to practice using Kethane mining ship ... to find I am going in opposite directions ><

Is there a way to match speeds ??

or do I

launch fuel barge 2 ?

Edited September 11, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Sirine]

No. You need to spend lots of fuel (and time) to turn back the right direction. Just launch fuel barge 2.

[thescientist]

There is a second way. If you quicksaved before the liftoff, you can do it again and choose the right direction. It's the less expensive way, but if you have around 1200 Delta V left in the tanks you can revert the directio fo the orbit with a retrograde burn till it became prograde, then you must accelerate to generare a new orbit in the right direction. Remember that it's allso expensive in terms of lost height. Finally, don't forget to quicksave before trying this extremely dangerous manuovre!

Edited September 2, 2013 by thescientist

[shand]

OP: could you not land your kethane miner on the mun and launch to RV with tanker? this seems to be what you are planning anyway? why not do it now? cost of 1400 deltaV, only 200 more then correcting the tanker.

otherwise you can correct very easily by leaving mun SOI. if you had noticed this problem just as you entered SOI you could've corrected for around 20 deltaV.

So long the miner, or raise the Ap of the tanker as high as you feel like, wait til Ap and then correct the orbit.

[Sephta]

Land with your miner - and launch west again (270° instead of the normal 90° east) against the rotation. You don't need that much more fuel for that on Mun and you don't need to launch any more ships.

after you carry back the fuel to Kerbin, you can check the next trip to have a prograde orbit at mun. Problem solved.

[Lohan2008]

I ended up launching mining ship V2, as the original design for the kethane tank is too small for re-fueling fuel barge & command pod

[codepoet]

Would it be more efficent (I am not sure) or certainly safer to raise the apoapsis to be very high, and then at the Ap change the inclination by 180 degrees (which takes less Delta-v that at lower altitudes), before circularising again at a the periapsis?

[Lohan2008]

Update: It took the whole large (orange) tank to reverse and match command pod rotation !

So not worth the effort ...

Thanks the info.

[Lohan2008]

How do I change the tag to "Answered" ?