Hi! Haven't been around here in years, but I have come back to orbiter and have got stuck at the same annoying problem.
Consider any of these flight plans:
Moon to Mars. Europa to Earth. Titan to Earth.
Lets pick Moon to Mars, but they all requires the same problems solved. There are several approaches you can take which work.
1. Direct burn from the moon forming the inter-planetary eject maneuver. ie. one burn, direct transfer. IMFD will calculate this using the slingshot view. It's often inefficient though. TransX screws this up really badly, or I'm using it wrong.
2. Dive and sling. In one burn, eject from the moon on an orbit that will take you close to Earth, have Earth's gravity sling you onto course. IMFD again will calculate this. Hardly likely to be efficient though. Again, TransX seems to get confused connecting the eject from the moon and connecting it to the earth eject orbit.
3. Drop and fling. This is the same as 2. but you leave the moon in a rather more casual way and add velocity at perigee at earth. I understand, for the Earth/Moon system this is the most efficient way. Not entirely sure about Juptier or Saturn moons though. Neither IMFD, nor transx will calculate this for me and I have tried until I give up and try one of the "hacks" or "ball parking" parts of it. I have even came to using a makeshift protractor on the monitor to transfer an orbit angle from one to the other.
I thought I would throw this out there, it seems that asides Flytandem's Moon to Mars video (which uses the surrogate ship already in the Earth eject orbit to rendezvous with with TransX) and David and Demitris's you tube series with Moon to Venus there isn't much out there.
So, experienced Orbiters... how do you solve the "Drop-Sling&Burn-Target" problem?
Consider any of these flight plans:
Moon to Mars. Europa to Earth. Titan to Earth.
Lets pick Moon to Mars, but they all requires the same problems solved. There are several approaches you can take which work.
1. Direct burn from the moon forming the inter-planetary eject maneuver. ie. one burn, direct transfer. IMFD will calculate this using the slingshot view. It's often inefficient though. TransX screws this up really badly, or I'm using it wrong.
2. Dive and sling. In one burn, eject from the moon on an orbit that will take you close to Earth, have Earth's gravity sling you onto course. IMFD again will calculate this. Hardly likely to be efficient though. Again, TransX seems to get confused connecting the eject from the moon and connecting it to the earth eject orbit.
3. Drop and fling. This is the same as 2. but you leave the moon in a rather more casual way and add velocity at perigee at earth. I understand, for the Earth/Moon system this is the most efficient way. Not entirely sure about Juptier or Saturn moons though. Neither IMFD, nor transx will calculate this for me and I have tried until I give up and try one of the "hacks" or "ball parking" parts of it. I have even came to using a makeshift protractor on the monitor to transfer an orbit angle from one to the other.
I thought I would throw this out there, it seems that asides Flytandem's Moon to Mars video (which uses the surrogate ship already in the Earth eject orbit to rendezvous with with TransX) and David and Demitris's you tube series with Moon to Venus there isn't much out there.
So, experienced Orbiters... how do you solve the "Drop-Sling&Burn-Target" problem?
