Lost in Space

[CplClegg]

Greetings fellow Kerbinautical Engineers!

I've only been hooked on KSP for a few months now, aka totally addicted. Demoed it, loved it, bought it on sale on steam. 10 yrs into career mode and I've finally L&R&R Duna's moon. Just researched mainsails, oh yah..its about to get good anyway I'm cleaning up my abandoned probes and ships that have run out of fuel. Just discovered one ship that has a full flt2 and flt4 sitting atop a nuke engine.

Some how I built a rocket in my earlier days that managed to exit kerbin and I left it parked in Solar Orbit between Kerbin and Duna. I'm no longer synchronous with Kerbin , I am lost as to how to plan interplanetary transfers without knowing what phase angel I need to shoot for in order to time the encounter. This ship does not have mechjeb. The best aprt about mech jeb is that it gives you that burn window time. That's all I need as I basically get the stock maneuver node maker to fine tune after I see there will be an encounter.

So in short, I'm Lost in Space, I don't know how to find a reference point for the phase angels that are found on the phase angel calculator some one made, in order know WHEN to burn!

DANGER WILL KERBALSON HELP WILL KERBALSON!

[Vanamonde]

In a pinch, you can always almost-match orbits and warp until close enough for an intercept. (Assuming you have enough fuel.)

[EtherDragon]

Here is how to plan an interplanetary transfer the Kerbal way (e.g. without MecJeb or phase angles)...

These steps assume you have already aligned your orbital plane with the target. If not, please do so at the next Ascending / Descending node.

1. Select a spot a little ahead of your craft's orbit line and create a maneuver.

2. Add Prograde or Retrograde thrust to chance your orbit so that it barely overlaps with your target's orbit.

3. Notice the two markers indicating separation at the closest point - they will likely be very far apart.

4. Drag the maneuver around your orbit until you find a place where those two markers are very close (or even create an intercept).

4a. In case you can't find an intercept at all - complete a full orbit and try again from step 1.

[bptrav]

^ Yep doing it without Mechjeb mainly just requires a lot of patience and fiddling around with the maneuver nodes. My first trip to Duna (before I had Mechjeb) it took probably half an hour of doing orbits and maneuver nodes before I found something that was acceptable.

2. Add Prograde or Retrograde thrust to chance your orbit so that it barely overlaps with your target's orbit.

This part is really important. It's pretty easy to get an intercept, but if you come in at too great a speed/angle you will end up wasting a ton of delta-V trying to match the trajectory of your target. The difficult/time-consuming part is timing your intercept correctly.

[Kasuha]

There is whole lot of approaches. Probably simplest while still relatively effective:

1/ Exit Kerbin's SOI just barely to stay on orbit close to Kerbin's.

2/ Select your target

3/ put a maneuver at the closest An/Dn node and pull prograde till your orbit intersects with your target's orbit. You should see an indicator of closest approach and it should be at the other (Dn/An) node. Execute that maneuver

4/ put a maneuver at the place where the two orbits intersect and pull prograde till the other indicator is against it. If that would mean you would exceed the target orbit, time warp one orbit and try again. When the approach indicator tells you that you get below 2000 km distance, it's ok (but of course get it as low as you can). When you find a match, execute that maneuver. While thrusting, delete the maneuver node and check what real indicators are doing. Stop your thrust at minimum of these.

5/ Time warp a little behind the place of your next-orbit-rendezvous and put another maneuver node on it. This time do what is necessary to put the two orbits on top of each other (i.e. match inclination, excentricity, Ap, Pe, everything as close as possible). Execute that maneuver.

At this stage you should be relatively close to your target (below 2000 km) and at approximately matching orbital parameters (i.e. low relative velocity). From there you can start executing standard orbital approach using navball. Use map view only to check your distance to the target (necessary when the distance is over 100km; shown when you put mouse over it), do not trust anything else shown in the map.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Kasuha