Need more exact intercept info

[Ulico]

For reasons that are not relevant, I want to crash two crafts in LKO at high speeds. I'm going about this by using the same process I would to rendezvous, but instead of decreasing my relative speed when we get close, I'm increasing it. I've gotten very close, but not hit it yet. The problem is, even when it says your intercept with be 0.0 km away from your target, it's not exact enough. Are there any mods that can give me more exact information on how close an intercept will be? Thanks!

Edited October 23, 2016 by Ulico

[bewing]

I can't answer your question about mods, but you may end up disappointed overall. This has been tried before in previous KSP versions, and generally the physics timestep is too big and the ships quantum tunnel through each other without colliding.

[Ulico]

24 minutes ago, bewing said:

I can't answer your question about mods, but you may end up disappointed overall. This has been tried before in previous KSP versions, and generally the physics timestep is too big and the ships quantum tunnel through each other without colliding.

I'm only going about 350m/s relative to my target, is that too fast?

[bewing]

I'm not sure that anyone has tried it in ver 1.1.3 -- so there is no real way of telling what is too fast to work, now. You are the guinea pig. At that speed, you have 5 seconds to do a little RCS maneuvering to get your prograde and target markers lined up perfectly. So I don't see why you are having a problem?

[Ulico]

7 minutes ago, bewing said:

I'm not sure that anyone has tried it in ver 1.1.3 -- so there is no real way of telling what is too fast to work, now. You are the guinea pig. At that speed, you have 5 seconds to do a little RCS maneuvering to get your prograde and target markers lined up perfectly. So I don't see why you are having a problem?

Thanks for your help, I'll just keep trying.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I've definitely hit a space station I was intending to rendezvous with going about 100 m/s because I fudged the timewarp. Forcing me to revert back to a quicksave.

So it is possible. It really just depends on the size of the target, 2 very small ships will have a hard time colliding in the vastness of space even at 0.0 distance.

So my suggestion would be to basically make the target ship bigger and wider.

[Ulico]

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I've definitely hit a space station I was intending to rendezvous with going about 100 m/s because I fudged the timewarp. Forcing me to revert back to a quicksave.

So it is possible. It really just depends on the size of the target, 2 very small ships will have a hard time colliding in the vastness of space even at 0.0 distance.

So my suggestion would be to basically make the target ship bigger and wider.

Yeah, I finally got it to work this morning. We collided at about 200 m/s and they were both relatively small rockets. Thanks for everyone's help!

[FancyMouse]

Now the next one is to rendezvous something in prograde orbit with something in retrograde orbit...

[Plusck]

Is this actually something that even NASA (or any other space agency/military) can do? Sure, hitting a volume to within about 100m from a thousand km away is a question of pure maths, but is is possible to be more accurate than that without some sort of closer-range guidance?

[ineon]

14 hours ago, FancyMouse said:

 

Now the next one is to rendezvous something in prograde orbit with something in retrograde orbit...

 

Scott Manley has done it (with a little help from magic slow time warp). Mechjeb is really the only way to get any accuracy on the closest distance <100m.