Maneuver Nodes for Parent Body Orbit to figure out interplanetary travel departure

[sylze]

Hi everyone!

I'd like to suggest the possibility to place a 'maneuver node' on the orbit of the body you are currently orbiting and thus figure out the perfect alignment of your current and the destination planet. I know there are tools and even mods that tell you the right moment for departure (and I also know how to do it by hand and already held my protractor to the screen to measure the angle ), but I think something similar to a maneuver node would be a fun way to figure this out in a way that suits the game (Moving the node back and forth and fiddling with those little arrows to change velocity). The problem with the current system is that you can put your maneuver nodes only one orbital period of your craft in the future, but with these new nodes you could put them one orbital period of the body you are currently orbiting in the future. That way if you plan interplanetary travel you can always figure out the right time to burn if you are going to inner planets and almost always if you are going to outer planets.

However, because it kind of abstracts away the departure from your current planet (finding the right ejection angle and so on) it does not really make sense to mark the maneuver on the navball or even show delta v requirements. So it differs from the current system, but I think it is still similar enough to be implemented easily.

What do you think?

(I took some minutes to look for similar ideas posted before and couldn't find any, but I did not spend my whole evening doing that.)

Greetings

sylze

Edited October 2, 2013 by sylze
Clearify this and that

[BluetoothThePirate]

You can very kind of sort of that now. You set up a maneuver that just barely escapes, that gives you a planned orbit that closely matches Kerbin's, then you plan a second maneuver on the new orbit you just made that you can play with to get intercepts and whatnot. Or, put a probe on an orbit close to Kerbin and use it as a reference, that one will give you a live delta-V meter if not an accurate burn time.

I agree it's a good suggestion but the stock game is most of the way there.

[boomerdog2000]

There was a thread around recently about giving you the launch windows and possibly phase angles as part of the new observatory.