Official Docking!

[engiNERD]

So I was lucky enough to come across a claw download like 2 days ago n figured this had to be gold for docking...Needless to say I been getting my orbital maneuvers down packed the past 2 days n finally made the docking happen! But when you back out and resume the ship again it became disingaged > So I\'m challenging anyone who can officially dock to space stations to do so WITH PICTURES! Any mechanism will do, but it has to be an actual dock

~I used the claw obviously and a kosmos dock (supposed to be fucntional apparently but who knows with a adapter piece to make the connection snug...It worked exactly as docking should, except again, when i loaded another ship and returned.... BOOOO we want docking ;P

[Joshmo]

So badly do we want docking!

[Phoenix Aerospace]

I feel your pain. I want my orbiting fuel depots/drydocks.

...

[Semo]

So basically you grabbed an object in space with a claw yeah?

[engiNERD]

Lol yup....like playing a big arcade crane game in space. Only there was 1 stuffed animal, which rotated constantly, and only had 2 places you could grab onto. ??? But once I closed the claw everything was nice and secure. The issue was that the calculations of the docked capsules trajectory was different than the 'mother' ships. So when I went to the tracking center and returned to the ship it had drifted away from the mother ship, only by a few meters tho... Regardless, it\'s still awesome practice for when they do implement docking, orbital rendezvous take a little getting used to. If you look closely at my pics you can see the funnel attachments. I was also trying to close the claw, insert it into a funnel decoupler, and open the claw, ie, docking. HOW ELSE HAS NEONE GONE ABOUT DOCKING THEIR SHIPS? (besides just flying ur little ship into a tube of space junk)

[BlazingAngel665]

Is this strong enough to fire engines on a craft attached to another and change orbits?

[engiNERD]

I was able to use RCS on the small ship that attached to the mother ship in order to make it rotate, but compared to the main engine on my space station this wouldn\'t be able to actually change much of the orbit. The small ship made its approach purely on RCS at the final stage, so it doesn\'t even have an engine capable...

[BlazingAngel665]

Drat, I was hoping to stack my massive boosters to my other massive boosters and fire them all then drop the 1st stage and save my other stage for my rtk burn but I guess we can\'t be that lucky . . .

[Captisaac21198]

Lol yup....like playing a big arcade crane game in space. Only there was 1 stuffed animal, which rotated constantly, and only had 2 places you could grab onto. ??? But once I closed the claw everything was nice and secure. The issue was that the calculations of the docked capsules trajectory was different than the 'mother' ships. So when I went to the tracking center and returned to the ship it had drifted away from the mother ship, only by a few meters tho... Regardless, it\'s still awesome practice for when they do implement docking, orbital rendezvous take a little getting used to. If you look closely at my pics you can see the funnel attachments. I was also trying to close the claw, insert it into a funnel decoupler, and open the claw, ie, docking. HOW ELSE HAS NEONE GONE ABOUT DOCKING THEIR SHIPS? (besides just flying ur little ship into a tube of space junk)

\

Just remember, grabbing onto a constantly rotating spaceship with a claw in orbit is still harder than grabbing anything in a claw game.

[Volt]

I\'d love to see docking in 0.17. I know they said a lot of changes had to be made for it, so maybe like EVAs and Animation it should become the main focus? Please?

Edit: Just saw the 0.17 planned features. Daaaaaaamn. Docking can wait, but it should come soon! Interplanetary flights will be harder without space-assembly.

[Eldestish]

I\'d love to see docking in 0.17. I know they said a lot of changes had to be made for it, so maybe like EVAs and Animation it should become the main focus? Please?

Edit: Just saw the 0.17 planned features. Daaaaaaamn. Docking can wait, but it should come soon! Interplanetary flights will be harder without space-assembly.

Thats why we have the spacedock mod

[Volt]

To be honest, I\'ve never made a rendezvous. I almost got it once but my Mechjeb module spontaneously exploded, turning my rocket into an orbital three-piece. The capsule was also destroyed. Rendezvous is tedious and time consuming... we really need instrumentation, etc. to make it more \'noob-friendly\'.

[Bluejayek]

To be honest, I\'ve never made a rendezvous. I almost got it once but my Mechjeb module spontaneously exploded, turning my rocket into an orbital three-piece. The capsule was also destroyed. Rendezvous is tedious and time consuming... we really need instrumentation, etc. to make it more \'noob-friendly\'.

No, what we need is more people who can acually pilot their ships without relying on mechjeb, so that we don\'t need as much instrumentation

But really, a headsup display ( as I believe is coming at some point) that gives relative velocity/direction when you are close to an object would be great.

[Volt]

Ever seen inside a Mission Control Center? All the consoles in there are instrumentation. The current instrumentation, even with MJ, is EXTREMELY limited.

[Mr_Orion]

No, what we need is more people who can acually pilot their ships without relying on mechjeb, so that we don\'t need as much instrumentation

But really, a headsup display ( as I believe is coming at some point) that gives relative velocity/direction when you are close to an object would be great.

I completely agree. I\'ve managed rendesvous, without mechjeb, around both kerbin and the mun (not tried minmus yet, though), and it\'s pretty easy as long as you are patient. Now that every warp amount has been bumped up one and thus you can do 50x warp at 70km, it shouldn\'t take long at all.

Instrumentation would make it a lot simpler, we don\'t need anything other than some orbital inclination synch helpers and a relative velocity heads-up really.

Ever seen inside a Mission Control Center? All the consoles in there are instrumentation. The current instrumentation, even with MJ, is EXTREMELY limited.

A lot of that stuff isn\'t even used, it\'s just there so we can see it as they get computers to do the difficult stuff for them!

I really don\'t understand how MJs instrumentation is limited at all. The normal one is ok for almost everything already! When we get mission planning, it\'ll make stuff even easier.

[Volt]

Well there will be difficulty settings. I don\'t think everyone wants this game to become a sim, but I feel we\'re getting into another Orbiter/KSP discussion, so I will stop commenting now.