Orbital Inclination

[RocketScientistsSon]

Hi All!

So during the Orbiting 101 Tutorial they had you practice changing your Orbital Inclination, or the angle your orbit is to the equator (i.e. equatorial orbit is 0 degrees and a complete North-South orbit is 90 degrees)?

Edited September 24, 2013 by RocketScientistsSon

[KSK]

Hi All!

So during the Orbiting 101 Tutorial they had you practice changing your Orbital Inclination, or the angle your orbit is to the equator (i.e. equatorial orbit is 0 degrees and a complete North-South orbit is 90 degrees)?

Other way around. A polar orbit is 0 or 180 degrees and an equatorial orbit 90 degrees (launching eastwards) or 270 degrees (launching westwards) In practice you'll want to be launching onto an easterly heading to take advantage of Kerbin's rotation and shave a couple hundred m/s off your delta-v requirements.

[Specialist290]

KSK: He had it right the first time. You're talking about launch headings; he's talking about the inclination value of the final orbit. Inclination represents the offset of the orbit's plane from the planet's equatorial plane.

[csanders]

Some FYI: your Orbital Inclination in the highest latitude you can reach from your orbit, so if you want to land at X longitude, Y latitude, make sure your inclination >= Y.

[RocketScientistsSon]

Thanks for the help. Is there any way in the game to see what the angle is?

[DisarmingBaton5]

0 would be an equatorial orbit, 90 would be polar.

[KSK]

I stand corrected. Thanks everyone and apologies to RocketScientistsSon!