Gravitational assist timer.

[FREEFALL1984]

Hello guys, before I start I would like to point out that I know NOTHING about modding, I know how to install them and use them but not create them.

Anyway, to my suggestion, Stop me if this already exist, but would it be possible to make a timer, similiar to Kerbal alarm clock, which alerts the player of impending gravity assist possibilities, these would of course be classified as times when the mun or minmus (perhaps other moons too) are either normal or antinormal to kerbins trajectors (depending on planet you wish to transfer to) at the exact same time as a given planetary intercept window, it should also provide an optimum launch window for leaving kerbins orbit and hitting the munar peri at the optimal time. Obviously these launch windows would be fairly rare so some kind of tolerance would need to be included, to allow people to GA more regularly at the cost of efficiency via imperfections in lunar angle at the given window. Also, even more rare windows could be achieved by using a double GA from munar GA into a minmus GA, assuming all of the planets/moons are aligned correctly, for me this would be the holy grail of gravity assist.

I'm currently trying to GA probes into interplanetary intercepts but because the windows for an accurate GA are quite very small, I tend to end up spending almost as much dV trying to fine tune my orbit into an encounter as I would if I just flew direct from kerbin.

What do you think?

[Frank_G]

I think the option to plan a complete missions trajectory in mission control before launching would be really nice and could include this in a graphical way. Just pull some nodes and see, what happens during the mission... However it could kill those little surprises you get during missions... Something like this must be thought through really carefully.

[Ruedii]

This should be under mod requests, as it is not under what is planned in the game. However, there are several mods that will line up transfer windows to various targets, you can use them to test gravitational assist situations.

[MR4Y]

I don't think people use gravity assists that much, especially considering how KSP's rockets have high ISPs