Terrific game, now I am stuck.

[Razorforce7]

As you can see, this is my first post. And I'm here to say that this sim is absolutely terrific, I love space and spaceflight.

Never knew this sim existed, wish I had found it sooner.

I've played it for over a week now. I made suborbital rockets, spacewalks, full orbital rockets. I even made a 5 stage moon rocket that got one of my kerbals walking on mun and minmus and returned them back safely to the earth .... uhm Kerbal I mean ofcourse.

This is my moon rocket. http://imageshack.com/a/img818/5060/qhih.jpg

To be completely honest. I havent yet learned how to properly navigate. I only have understanding about gravity and planetary orbits because I'm fond of astronomy in the first place. So for that reason I have understanding of it. The way I got to the moon was orbiting kerbal in a way that the plane aligned to muns orbit and then I fired my rocket into a elliptical orbit roughly past the opposite side of kerbin. I wasn't always completely accurate so I sometimes had to retro burn speed in the hope that the mun would pull me into her orbit.

I didn't fail a moon mission because my moon rocket is pretty decent and if I was innacurate in my aproach I knew usually what to use my fuel for in order to fix my aproach.

Basically I'm trying to say that I have no idea what instruments to calculate byforehand how to exactly insert my burn in a transmun injection transminmus injection. I basically just guess where I should posibly hit one of both and havent yet failed in my instinctive qualities.

I'm sure there are some necessary instruments, data that I can extract from tutorials assuming some would share them with me.

I'm actually not asking this because I want my mun, minmus missions perfected.

The thing is that I decided to take a sattelite trip to "eve" with these newbysh poorly inaccurate transfer methods. Just guess only once how hard I failed?

Well, actually not to bad. My understanding in getting to eve is to leave kerbals orbit in kerbals retrograde position around the sun when eve is still about 1/6th orbit behind kerbin. Or in other words when eves orbit inclination is so many degrees behind kerbin (how many must that be anyway?) By leaving kerbin in the correct position I lower my periapsis around the sun, hoping that this route closes down to the same position eve is about to at the moment I reach eve at my pea around the sun.

I got close, very close. about 500,000,000m close. Obviously not close enough to be captured by eves gravity. Or to burn into his orbit with the fuel that I had left.

Out of interest, I used this probe to get to eve that I mounted onto a modified version of my moon rocket. http://imageshack.com/a/img819/3186/p5um.jpg

Oh and this is the orbit chart to show you how I got my orbits worked out atm. http://imageshack.com/a/img69/4671/z6w9.jpg

You see that my path with eve might intersect.

Another navigational piece that I think I cannot deal with yet is that eves ecliptic (angle) around the sun is a little different then kerbins. And if not then the angle of my probes orbital plane does not match eves ones at all as you can see right here http://imageshack.com/a/img89/3494/zije.jpg

Long story short is that I don't know how to really perform interplanetary travel. I only basically (which is incompletely) know how to plan the course and perform it. I don't simply know to do a trans injection to any place.

Can you guys help me with some reading material, or tips of any kind.

[Sternface]

Sorry, no time for a proper response. I recommend using Mechjeb as a form of tutorial. Don't just click and go, but study what it does, and use it as a template.

Travel in space is basically a game of changing orbits. As opposed to "straight-line" travel. You always want to modify your orbit such that you intersect with your target's orbit, and at a time when the distance between is smallest. Then, at minimum distance, you match orbital velocities. Matching velocities is much easier when you are entering a target's gravitational sphere of influence. All you need to do is set your Pe as low as possible, and burn retrograde to reduce your eccentricity to below 1. Mechjeb and EngineerRedux will show you the data needed.

[Sirrobert]

Welcome. 500.000km is actually pritty close for a first noobish try on Eve after a week

My first tip: That cockpit on your Mun rocket (it's the Mun here, not moon. Small details) is an airplane cockpit, not a rocket cockpit. Not to big a deal, but it looks silly

Second: The way you discribe failures sounds like you are not using manouvernodes. Click on the orbit (blue line) and it'll open a manouver node. Now drag one of the icons to simulate what would happen if you burned in that direction for that long. It'll draw a dotted line of your predicted orbit. Play with that until you get what you want (you can also drag the manouver node around by clicking in the center and dragging it) until you get what you want. Than excecute that node. This is how you get a Mun encounter.

Make a node, drag prograde (in the direction you are traveling) until you get an encounter. Than excecute that node. Boom, mun encounter.

Same thing for interplanetery. Firstly, get towards it. Burn towards either a prograde, or retrograde escape from Kerbin, depending on if you want to go to inner planets, or outer planets. While you plan the node, get the predicted orbit as close as you can. Than once you escaped Kerbin's SOI, put up another node and finetune the encounter. Do this a couple of times along the path, and you'll get an encounter.

On the different plane between Kerbin and Eve: Click on Eve and hit 'select as target' (or something like that. Not sure what it is as I'm not in the game atm). If you have it as target, a node will open up along your orbit. That's the accending, or decending node. Mouse over it will tell you how much degrees you are off. That node is also the spot where you need to make a correction burn to get on the same plane. So put a manouver node on the accending, or decending node (just pick the one you get to first) and drag the purple icons to remove the difference. When you have the manouver node open, the accending/decending node number will you what it is AFTER you completed the manouver node. So just drag the purple icon until the node sais 0 (or something close to it). Excecute that node will get you MUCH closer to an encounter.

The mod Mechjeb will give you an autopilot that does all these things for you. If you let it do that for you, and watch how it does these things, you'll soon learn how to do them yourself (and how to do them better than Mechjeb. Cause it's far from perfect)

Finally: Tuturials.

This one is an awesome explantion on how to transfer to a moon. In this case Minmus, which is easier to land on than Mun

This one is an awesome explanation on how to get to other planets

Good luck

[FenrirWolf]

Have you discovered maneuver nodes yet? Click somewhere on your orbit and an object comes up with 6 radial handles that you can drag on. The handles represent different vectors and when you manipulate them, you get a preview of what the resulting orbit will be. Handy for generating intercepts and flight plans ahead of time.

[Vanamonde]

Here's a walkthrough for getting to the moons. Many of the mechanics for getting to other planets are similar. For the rest, try this.

[Specialist290]

First, welcome to the forums!

I'm going to second almost everything that's already been said. In addition, I'm going to add a few more of my own recommendations:

First: Once you've read the Interplanetary How-To Guide (linked in Vanamonde's post), you may want to check out alexmoon's Interplanetary Launch Window Planner. It's slightly better than olex's calculator for many cases, since it calculates transfers based on the planets' actual orbits, not just idealized circular orbits at a given average altitude.

Second: One thing you can do to help prepare yourself for interplanetary missions is set up transfer missions back and forth between the Mun and Minmus. The principles involved are the same, just on a much smaller scale, so you don't need nearly as much time or delta-v as you would for an actual interplanetary mission. Once you can consistently transfer between those two bodies, you can apply what you've learned doing that to your interplanetary missions. As Sternface says, ultimately everything in this game boils down to changing orbits to get the desired result.

Finally, in addition to the tutorials already mentioned, feel free to check out those listed on the Drawing Board, which is linked in my signature.

Hope this helps!

[Razorforce7]

All wonderfull information I didn't yet know.

Thanks everybody, gonna check it all out.

[Franklin]

Have you discovered maneuver nodes yet? Click somewhere on your orbit and an object comes up with 6 radial handles that you can drag on. The handles represent different vectors and when you manipulate them, you get a preview of what the resulting orbit will be. Handy for generating intercepts and flight plans ahead of time.

Exactly what I was wondering. If he's done everything he's done so far without the use of maneuver nodes I'd be very much impressed. I'm not an awful pilot, but I couldn't even consider approaching, orbiting, landing and returning from any body without planner nodes.

[Sirrobert]

Exactly what I was wondering. If he's done everything he's done so far without the use of maneuver nodes I'd be very much impressed. I'm not an awful pilot, but I couldn't even consider approaching, orbiting, landing and returning from any body without planner nodes.

It's not to dificult once you know how orbits work. For example, start burning when you see the Mun come up on the horizon (while you are watching the rocket in Low Orbit), and you'll end up on a Mun encounter.

Still impressive offcourse

[Lohan2008]

When you get to 10km tilt 30-45% to East / 90 on blue ball > at 120 km set up circle orbit once you hit 2200 m/s > line up Mun when it comes up to Kerbin's horizon and click on orbit to select thrust/pith/yaw with the orange star > pull green (thrust) til the path line intersect Mun = profit.

Ditto, use a command capsule as they can re-enter atmosphere if they haz parachute.

[Razorforce7]

Exactly what I was wondering. If he's done everything he's done so far without the use of maneuver nodes I'd be very much impressed. I'm not an awful pilot, but I couldn't even consider approaching, orbiting, landing and returning from any body without planner nodes.

The reason I might pull it off is despite knowing things about astronomy is that I play around with things like universe sandbox or orbiter spaceflight simulator once in a while (the latter not that much tbh) It might be ironic to some that I did land there (and got back) w/o using instruments and then come here to ask how to instruments work:sticktongue:

Maybe I should make a non instrumental mun landing video then if I got spare time.

Meanwhile I just watched the 2 aforementioned videos that explained those maneouvre nodes to me. It seems quite understandable and I'll try to practice with it tommorow. The Mechjeb and the protractor mod are a little in depth in terms of information and multitude of different options. Atleast I have new things to work on.

So far I think I have my question(s) answered so will the post status be. But if you have any additional comment, usefull information i.e. i'd gladly hear it.

[obi_juan]

I think that you need a very interesting tutorials (in special rendezvous tutorial). These are in-game tutorials:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/rendezvous-tutorial/

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/docking-tutorial/

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49919-0-22-0-Moon-Travel-Tutorial-1-0-1

made by blizzy78

With them you will learn how to be more precise to made interplanetary ships

[Razorforce7]

I just came back to reply that I got it. In fact I got the hang of these maneouvre nodes near to immediately after it was suggested by you guys. I thought I had to reply to it. I got to a encounter with eve. I even did a munar landing and a Minmus landing in the same mission and got back to kerbin with the aforementioned rocket. Discovering that my rocket was a bit to overdone. So I shrunk mine down to the bare minimum for a return munar mission. Know it's this one, alot smaller http://imageshack.com/a/img600/3342/1cpb.jpg

I think that you need a very interesting tutorials (in special rendezvous tutorial). These are in-game tutorials:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/rendezvous-tutorial/

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/docking-tutorial/

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/49919-0-22-0-Moon-Travel-Tutorial-1-0-1

made by blizzy78

With them you will learn how to be more precise to made interplanetary ships

And thank to you for your share of information.

[Sirrobert]

Like like a fine rocket. No fuel lines though?

If you use fuel lines to drain the fuel from the outer tanks into the inner one, you can drop the outer tanks with the inner still being full, even though all 3 engines were on. This improves your deltaV without adding any fuel

You also forgot the lander legs

[harald705]

When i first started, Scott Manleys tutorials really helped me out. Here is some of the tutorials i have found useful

Beginners guide:

Going to mun and minmus:

And here is some aircraft tutorials:

,

,

Hopefully this will keep you busy

[Mr.Rocket]

I would recommend playing around with maneuver nodes until you see eve ecounter, that way, you don't waste any fuel experimenting. Also, if you like mods, use kerbal alarm clock and you can set a timer to the best time to go to Eve.

[Razorforce7]

@harold705

Thanks.

@sirrobert.

I know i know. The reason i didn't use fuel lines and landing gear is because i play carreer mode. I just didn't yet unlocked one of both. I have NOw though.

Edited December 3, 2013 by Razorforce7

[EtherDragon]

@harold705

Thanks.

@sirrobert.

I know i know. The reason i didn't use fuel lines and landing gear is because i play carreer mode. I just didn't yet unlocked one of both. I have NOw though.

That's why I love career mode, actually - "How do I do that without these parts???"

[Sirrobert]

That's why I love career mode, actually - "How do I do that without these parts???"

That's how I learned to do things without mainsail and nerva engines

Turns out it's pritty easy

[little square dot]

If he's done everything he's done so far without the use of maneuver nodes I'd be very much impressed. I'm not an awful pilot, but I couldn't even consider approaching, orbiting, landing and returning from any body without planner nodes.

The only difference is more effiecient dV use and fewer orbits before encounters, but the mechanics are exactly the same.