The planet closest to the orbital parent could help too
#Slowing down using Gravity Assists.
sinful turret
craggy sentinel
- To put it in technical terms, you want to use gravity assists to reduce your Icebound encounter velocity, i.e. the orbital velocity you have when entering Icebound's sphere of influence.
- You can't have an encounter velocity less than zero, otherwise you'd be stationary w.r.t. Icebound. So, you always need to do some propulsive braking.
iron thunder
Didn't someone make some kind of a crap diagram?
Like if you go clockwise, it slows you down. Counter-clockwise speeds you up.
craggy sentinel
- The theoretical limit of "almost zero" can only be achieved by slingshotting off Icebound itself, probably many times.
sinful turret
alr
craggy sentinel
- With Silence, the best you could do is an elliptical orbit which touches Silence at apoapsis and Icebound at periapsis. Still potentially a lot of gravity braking.
sinful turret
kk
craggy sentinel
- Still, it should be fairly practical to use Silence to get into a much lower-energy orbit of the parent, and then set up a Hohmann transfer to Icebound. For your first time, do not let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
And, um, do you know where to find the option to always show closest encounter? This is huge for setting up intercepts.
(I also can never remember which way brakes and which way accelerates, I just play around with maneuver nodes)
sinful turret
And, um, do you know where to find the option to always show closest encounter? ...
like the two little white things?
blueish
craggy sentinel
Yes. There's an option under settings (main menu only) which lets you always see them, not just when there's a close encounter.
sinful turret
oh cool
also uh
stupid question, but by "much lower-energy orbit of the parent" waht do you mean exactly
craggy sentinel
There's also a few ways to both add +1 and -1 orbit to a maneuver node, which helps immensely with timing and setting up encounters on the cheap.
craggy sentinel
stupid question, but by "much lower-energy orbit of the parent" waht do you mean...
Basically means "not a screamingly fast elliptical orbit, but something vaguely resembling the orbit of your target".
sinful turret
alr