How do you make sure to arrive at a new planet in prograde (90 degrees) orbit?

[szputnyik]

I want to send space station pieces to Eve to assemble a station in orbit, so it's important that on arrival, all pieces will orbit Eve in one direction.

For interplanetary travel I use this page http://ksp.olex.biz/. I wait on the launch pad, until the planets are aligned as shown, then I send my payload to Kerbin orbit, plot a course to the other planet and go.

How can you make sure that everything I send to the other planet, arrives in a prograde orbit?

Edited October 4, 2013 by szputnyik

[Arbolus]

Try and make sure that your pre-braking trajectory passes Eve on the side facing away from Kerbol. The exact inclination is difficult to get right from a distance, but you can get reasonably close and then fine-tune it once you're in a circular orbit.

[madbadger2742]

Here's my system:

1) tweak your primary burn for lowest periapsis. (Preferably none, i.e. impact)

2) use RCS at your mid-course correction to do the same as 1)

3) when you're still out of SOI, but close enough to see your trajectory around the target on the map screen, you can use RCS again to tweak your direction and periapsis.

You'll probably be coming in at some odd angle off of the ecliptic, so watch the tail-end of your trajectory to see roughly what inclination your orbit will have after capture.

4) Do a final check once inside SOI to adjust heading and altitude.

That's my 4-step method to efficiently getting a pretty orbit.

Edited October 4, 2013 by madbadger2742
Stupid iPod keyboard

[maltesh]

A really, really useful thing to do is to open up the games settings.cfg file, and find the line that says

CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE = 3

And change it to say

CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE = 0

When you do this, instead of getting weird squiggly lines of dubious value when your future path passes through a world's SOI, the patch will be drawn in the frame of reference of the object (So it looks like a normal hyperbola) and at the current position of the object (So you can hit Tab a few times and center on it for a really close view.)

The result being that, weeks or months before you reach your destination, you can pop a maneuver node a few hours ahead of your ship, run your time accel up to 5x so things stop jumping around, center the map screen on your destination, and spend a few minutes finessing the maneuver node that will move your periapse and arrival trajectory close to where you want them, and spend maybe a 10-15 m/s of delta-V doing it.

It also makes it a hell of a lot easier to plot circularization nodes inside the SOI before you reach it, if that's something you want to do.

If you use Mechjeb, the Maneuver Node editor allows you to change CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE in-game, and there are a couple other mods that do the same thing, but personally, I change it in the settings.cfg as soon as I install a new version, as I have no use for any other mode than Mode 0.

[merlinux]

Maltesh gave you the answer.

This conic patch is a game changer.

[rhoark]

If you arrive the wrong way, the cost of reversing an extremely elliptical orbit at apoapsis is pretty small.

[szputnyik]

Great idea maltesh, I didn't know about this config option.

[Blue]

Though when the Uranus-like planet comes along, totally inclined (or worse yet, retrograde) orbits are going to throw a wrench in the works.