[Tutorial] Orbital Rendezvous Made Easy

[Endeavour]

Kosmo-not, I\'ve read your instructions 3 times and I can\'t visualize them. Is there any way you could make a side-view sketch?

There\'s a video in the main post now.

[Vanamonde]

Thanks for the guidance! My problem was that I was getting close and then trying to brute-force it, instead of setting up the conditions and letting time do the work.

[E. F. Kranz]

Wow, that\'s awesome. It works perfectly.

Craft file, for Vincent: (note - uses parts from multiple mods)

[VincentMcConnell]

Wow, that\'s awesome. It works perfectly.

That plane . Can you send the .craft?

[VincentMcConnell]

(note - uses parts from multiple mods)

Well can you tell us what mods we\'ll need?

[rustymcclintock]

Thanks for the guidance! My problem was that I was getting close and then trying to brute-force it, instead of setting up the conditions and letting time do the work.

beautifully well done, I hope I can achieve this once docking is implemented.

[E. F. Kranz]

Well can you tell us what mods we\'ll need?

C7

Mei Long decoupler, ASAS, and RCS tank.

Sunday Punch SPS-10 rocket engine.

The canard from the Hope shuttle mod.

Kosmos RCS block.

And the Truss Pack from Sherbetlemons.

Whoops, and JellyCube\'s Mk2 Fuselage Bicoupler.

...

Wow, I\'ve got a bunch of stuff installed!

[rustymcclintock]

Wow, I\'ve got a bunch of stuff installed!

My kdp currently Has about 63 mods

[Olsson]

Let\'s say if I want to rendevouz with a craft that\'s in an orbit of 200km and I\'m in an orbit of 180km. Meaning there\'s a 20km difference just like in the video. Will I still have to wait until the target is 50,4km away from me and this will work?

Also what is the math behind this? I\'m really interested by math that has these kinds of implications, I\'m guessing its pythagoras theorem but I\'m only in high school so I may be wrong?

[Khrissetti]

Yeah that\'s about right.

As for the maths, if you download the spreadsheet you can see the formulae involved expressed in Excel terms. I haven\'t followed the maths through so it may look something like this:

=IF(A1<200000,MAGIC(A1=200000),B1)

[Kosmo-not]

Yeah that\'s about right.

As for the maths, if you download the spreadsheet you can see the formulae involved expressed in Excel terms. I haven\'t followed the maths through so it may look something like this:

=IF(A1<200000,MAGIC(A1=200000),B1)

If you want me to show my work...

[TinfoilChef]

This is a great resource and I'm sure I'll get plenty of use out of it. However it's only good for situations where both ships are in a circular orbit.

I have a target ship in an elliptical orbit (apoapis is 45,111,575meters periapsis 1,052,589 meters, inclination 4.93 degrees) that I have been trying to figure out how to rendezvous with so I can de-orbit it.

The target ship ran out of fuel due to super-sloppy-totally wrong burn trying to return from Minmus while it's got five tanks of RCS fuel I got distracted in the VAB and never put any thrusters on it.

I've even tried (with a backup persistent.sfs file) to use the "get out and push" EVA method and the only thing that happens then is that I lose all control of the EVA pack until it runs out of fuel with the hapless kerbal drifting off like Frank Poole.

Any suggestions how to get it done? Without just using "End Flight".

[KleptoKat]

Brilliant, thanks!

[TinfoilChef]

Since I posted my question here I thought I'd post back with the solution. I thought it was a bit unusual but after reviewing a few more of Scott Manley's videos I decided that the best thing to do was "Absolutely nothing".

Amazingly enough, it worked. The ship ended up landing safely back on Kerbin and the only two things I did was to jettison the lower stage and deploy the parachute.

The rest was accomplished by gravity assist slingshots around "Mun"

Here's the video of it.

[Oldcustard]

Hi guys, I'd love to work out the distance required for a specific two radii, but the spreadsheet attatched that is supposed to explain it I cannot download. Perhaps, if someone knows, could someone run me through the formula?

Great chart, makes rendevous really easy!

[gnivler]

Hi - can anyone please repost the spreadsheet file?

[Mahnarch]

We need an updated version of a video, too. There are no squares on the nodes and/or purple lines for fuel thingies.

[INSULINt]

Hi - can anyone please repost the spreadsheet file?

That would be awesome!

[Ebs]

For anyone who's interested, I pm'ed Kosmo-Not about the broken download link and he told me that it is now fixed in the original post!

[White Owl]

I remember this! I used that chart for rendezvous back when the first docking mod made it possible to stick two spaceships together, and we didn't have maneuver nodes yet. Ahh, nostalgia.

I just checked my KSP Stuff folder. Still have the chart!