Ability to plan gravity assists in map view

[szputnyik]

I suggest the advancement of maneuver planning in map view, that would enable you to plan gravity assist maneuvers too. Basically, when you plan a course that would result in a planetary, solar, or lunar flyby, the planner would show your course further, after you escape the flyby-body's SOI, thereby allowing you to include the gravity slingshots into your flightplan. With this, you could for example use the Mun to save on required delta-v during interplanetary travel or use Kerbol to reach Jool or Eeloo with less fuel.

Edited October 16, 2013 by szputnyik

[boomerdog2000]

It does that already doesn't it? blue for current orbit, yellow for next SOI, purple for SOI after that.

[astropapi1]

If you really need it, you can even increase the number of predicted orbits in the settings .cfg

[Superfluous J]

Yeah I set it at ... 8 I think? Yeah. So I can go Kerbin -> Mun -> Kerbin -> Kerbol -> Duna -> Ike -> Duna and see every step.

Actually performing all of those maneuvers is another thing, but it's nice to actually see that there IS a plan.

[DMagic]

Yeah, it should already do this. I'm not sure if the maneuver node improvement mod does anything to change this though. You have to get pretty close to the planet in question for it to have a big effect, but it does work. You can see a Jool gravity assist here. I'm on an escape trajectory away from Kerbin now, the first node is a correction for the Jool intercept, after that you can see how my orbit takes a sharp turn after I hit Jool in the upper right part. Then there are a bunch more nodes to get to Eeloo.

Edited October 16, 2013 by DMagic

[Person012345]

As said it already does this, so I'm not sure if this has anything to do with what he's talking about instead: For me, when I get an encounter with say, the mun on the way out of kerbin, this causes my "closest approach" markers for the target planet to disappear (even if very little about the resulting solar orbit has changed). It's a giant PITA and would mean that I would not be able to use gravity assists if I wanted so I figure it might have some relevance to what he's trying to get at maybe. I should note that I have to do more testing to make sure it isn't just pulling my inclination too far out of whack, although the inclination tolerances for closest approach markers seem very weak.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Person012345