  Under the dissipative effects of gravitational radiation, black hole binaries
will transition from an inspiral to a plunge. The separatrix between bound and
plunging orbits features prominently in the transition. For equatorial Kerr
orbits, we show that the separatrix is a homoclinic orbit in one-to-one
correspondence with an energetically-bound, unstable circular orbit. After
providing a definition of homoclinic orbits, we exploit their correspondence
with circular orbits and derive exact solutions for them. This paper focuses on
homoclinic behavior in physical space, while in a companion paper we paint the
complementary phase space portrait. The exact results for the Kerr separatrix
could be useful for analytic or numerical studies of the transition from
inspiral to plunge.
