TransferMFD Tried to follow Interplanetary tip in manual for Transfer MFD - didn't work (?)

[MetalMania]

I'm getting a little ahead of myself with this one, still very early in my "Orbinaut training" but since I've successfully done Earth-Moon transfers with the stock Transfer MFD I thought I'd try an Earth - Mars transfer. I was following the advice in the Orbiter manual section 13.10, page 70 that says 1. Set reference to the Sun and the source the planet currently being orbited 2. Ship in zero inclination to the ecliptic 3. - and this is the one that everything fell apart - immediately before the ejection burn switch the source orbit to your ship so DV can be estimated.

I interpreted this to mean set up the ref and source to sun and Earth, set up an HTO like you would normally by adding DV and rotating the EJ line around until the grey and dashed yellow overlap, wait until DTe counts down and go. So that's what I did, and following the manual's advice when it was time to burn I switched Source to ship and...... no more HTO solution! Just got the "no intercept" and my solution was ruined.

I've read another post or two from searching the board that says to go into a hyperbolic orbit for a simulated month or two and then work it out, but I wanted to do it the way the manual described. It said "immediately before the ejection burn", so I did it when DTe was 30 seconds, which I thought was the "norm" for starting the burn - expecting to kill the prograde autopilot when DTe hit zero. Since my initial source was the Earth's orbit, should I have waited until DTe hit zero and then switched sources and started the burn? Would that make a difference?

By the way, I do realize that TransX and IMFD are more robust tools for this sort of thing, I'm just not ready to climb those learning curves yet. I'm still getting my feet under me with Orbiter and the standard Transfer MFD seems pretty simple, I just wanted to see if I could get in the ballpark with the method described.

 

[Shadow Addict]

I can't help you with TransferMFD, but I really do recommend TransX or IMFD. I know you want to stick with the simplicity of Transfer, but in the long run you will use either of the aforementioned MFDs far more than Transfer (which I haven't used since my first Earth-Moon transfers). If you want simplicity, use IMFD. It's highly automated and has a great Map feature. I'd recommend TransX to start, however, because it gives you a better idea of what you're doing. Flytandem's tutorials (http://flytandem.com/orbiter/tutorials) are wonderful (especially the video ones) and make it very easy to learn TransX.

 

[Cpt CryBaby]

Greetings Metal Mania,

I've just now posted my updated checklist for getting to the outer planets with TransX. If you're of a mind to go that route, you may want to have a look.

http://www.stillmixtup.com/E2M.html

Good Luck!

 

[the.punk]

I would also advice IMFD or TransX as said above. For an IMFD tutorial I recommans looking at the IMFD Full Tutorial. It explains well all the steps you need. [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4142"]IMFD Full Manual/Playbacks[/ame]

 

[Tommy]

By the way, I do realize that TransX and IMFD are more robust tools for this sort of thing, I'm just not ready to climb those learning curves yet.

Learning to do an Interplanetary transfer with Transfer is a steeper curve than learning IMFD or Trans-X. Trans-X is closest to Transfer, and may be easier to learn since IMFD does things very differently.