Basics of Space Flight: Orbital Mechanics
I flew Orbiter to Mars from earth, docked with the ISS, also made a game of trying to visit each of Jupiter's satellites about 10-15 years ago<p><a href="http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/</a><p>Its interesting to look at the MFD design for mission planning as an applied version of the linked page.<p>I have not played much KSP, is there anything as realistic as orbiter?  From what little I've seen it tended toward comical set of pants, like comparing ChopperLifter to MS flight sim.<p>Orbital docking dynamics are weird.  If you undock from the ISS and thrust up a little bit, in half an orbit you'll come right back.  Increasing or reducing your speed along the orbit (moving front or back) will eventually affect your altitude.  Docking isn't as simple as "if you wanna go forward, thrust forward".  All the control mix; like hovering a helicopter but slower.  Flying "in formation" can be very expensive in terms of fuel depending on the formation, or it can be free if in a favorable geometry.  There is a classic very hard sci fi story along the lines of extorting someone who doesn't know orbital mechanics by literally throwing them off a space station, and the victim panics not knowing he'll be back in half an orbit seeing as escape velocity is a little faster than a human shove!<p>One amusing anecdote is for an inclination change greater than 60 degrees or so, its cheaper to land and take off again or go on a very high orbit into deep space and change your inclination there.  The ISS is at a very high inclination and at least energetically, to put the thing into a GTO around inclination 0 or so, it would be cheaper to land and re-launch the thing.