Perfectly equatorial or polar orbits

[DevoidLight]

How do you line up perfectly equatorial or polar orbits? For Kerbin equitorital I've been told to line it up with Mun, and that's worked out pretty well. Now I'm wondering about how to line up polar orbits, and equatorial orbits on other bodies.

[KerbMav]

Easiest way would be to install a mod that gives you more information about your craft/orbit/flight vector - KER Kerbal Engineer Redux is a readout mod that also calculates data during construction of your craft so you can see TWR and dV - VOID Vessel Orbital Informational Display seems to do similar things.

[Sirrobert]

Line up with the day/night line on the plannet

[Lheim]

For polar launches, switch your velocity readout to orbital before you even launch. You'll see you have some eastward velocity already - imparted by the spin of the planet.

Just aim north-westish in your launch until your prograde vector is pulled directly over the north line; then start aiming directly north..

Edited October 24, 2013 by Lheim

[SRV Ron]

Start the gravity turn due north, W,S key, with a slight aim West. There will be some drift at first due to the rotation of Kerbal but most will get cancelled out by the time you reach orbit. From there, you can fine tune the inclination. Keep in mind that map mode indicators will go nuts if you get the orbit exactly circular. This example is OK.

[TechnicalK3rbal]

To get a polar orbit (around Kerbin) set the mun as the target, but adjust the descending/ascending nodes to 90 degrees to the Mun's orbit.

Edited October 24, 2013 by TechnicalK3rbal
90 degrees and perpendicular are synonyms, aren't they?

[SandMan13]

Simplest way to do this would be to point due North and at the horizon on your navball. Make sure the "wings" on your heading marker are parallel to the horizon. Now switch ships and line up the same way. Your roll will be perfectly in line.

Obviously you might need to turn and what not but just keep that heading in mind when docking so you get the desired result.

[UbioZur]

As KerbMav and Sirrobet said.

You can either use a display info mod.

Or I would guess align the polar first, and then you can target that orbit and get a 90° node to have the equatorial one.

I don't know of any other way (unless one of the moon of the body is in an equatorial orbit). Actually you could use the data on the wiki for the bodies that have moons. because if a moon have a inclinaison of 12° it's not hard to get a 12° Dn to be equatorial. Then it will just be those planets without moon.

[lajoswinkler]

Even in the game, you'll never make a perfect alignment, but you can get very close to it.

[thunderstar]

well for equatorial orbits i use the mun, it has a perfectly circular an eqautorial orbit, so i set it as target and put my AN and DN to 0.0º