Command points - what are they and how to use them properly?

[Plusck]

2 hours ago, jpinard said:

See I had never even considered stacking two 2 tourist tubes on top of each other.  Not having to go with the fatter heftier components could have saved a lot.

You mentioned earlier saving Kerbal in space.  I have been terrified of the rescue Kerbal contracts.  2 years ago when I played I could barely rendezvous in space let alone dock.  I watched all of Scott Manley's new video tutorial series and he did a rescue... Made it look easy, but I'm not sure I can pull it off.  I certainly want to do it and know I need to figure out the skills.  One of the possible contracts I can grab right now is send two rockets up and have them within sight of each other,. Maybe that isn't as hard as I'm making it out to be.

A few months ago I made a long and detailed album about rendezvous. Its here.

However, that is far more complicated than the majority of LKO rescue contracts, especially at the start of career. Early contracts are always in equatorial prograde orbits. So if you built that 2-tourist orbiter, then removed the cabin and replaced it with another command pod (or put a probe core on top of the command pod and send it up without a pilot - but you need to add batteries really), it should have all you need to RDV in low orbit with fuel to spare.

You just have to launch when the target is over the sea off the other coast to the west of KSC. It's generally easier to launch a touch too soon because then you can loop out a touch higher than the target orbit and get a perfect meet-up as you start to descend again.

In fact, I have one of those contracts waiting for me right now. I'll put up another album shortly.

[Godot]

3 hours ago, jpinard said:

See I had never even considered stacking two 2 tourist tubes on top of each other.  Not having to go with the fatter heftier components could have saved a lot.

You mentioned earlier saving Kerbal in space.  I have been terrified of the rescue Kerbal contracts.  2 years ago when I played I could barely rendezvous in space let alone dock.  I watched all of Scott Manley's new video tutorial series and he did a rescue... Made it look easy, but I'm not sure I can pull it off.  I certainly want to do it and know I need to figure out the skills.  One of the possible contracts I can grab right now is send two rockets up and have them within sight of each other,. Maybe that isn't as hard as I'm making it out to be.

I always found the standard ones, where the capsule spawns in just ~100 km orbi9t around Kerbin to be rather simple ... you just have to take care that your ship launches shortly before the capsule is in its orbit above KSC ... this way you already have a short distance to the capsule when you circularize your orbit and usually manage within one orbit, to get within 2 km of the rescuees ship and switch ships in order to transfer the rescuee with a short spacewalk to your own ship.

Unfortunately   it seems like in KSP 1.1 it isn´t the rule that you get those easy contracts as first ones ....

this was my first rescue contract in 1.1. (meanwhile crashed on mun):

 

Edited April 23, 2016 by Godot

[Plusck]

Ok, made the album for those "simple" orbital rescue missions.

If anything isn't clear, just say.