[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

how? I miss the ship each time. This is frustrating...

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

Did it worked out ? It's the easier way to handle docking.

1- Taget the dockling port, Go near it (10m) with SAS activated

2- Swith to other ship, control from the targe doching port

3- rotate your ship to your docking port is aligned, wait for perfect stabilisation

4- Swtich again to first ship. Simply go forward slowly

This way, you don't have to translate sideways, but both ship must be able to rotate (they usually can, even very slowly).

This is the easiest way to dock without indicator mods. Personaly, I use indicator mods, because I love to translate around target ships and end perfectly docked. I find it that much relaxing.

I'm using a new smaller ship now. how do I move the green cross?

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

Staging mode is the mode you use. Docking mode is the mode you don't use. Ever. For anything.

Actually some people use it for rovers.

I'm actually being serious, but if you must know, it screws up your keys so the spacebar - instead of staging - toggles WASDQE between translate (what the IJKLHN keys do) and rotate (what the WASDQE keys do normally). Why someone would want to risk staging just to confuse their brains about what the keys do is beyond me.

Good

Note, your station is not lost. Once you've mastered docking (or at least are comfortable with it), you can build a tug in the VAB that is designed to attach to your large ship and balance its RCS jets Or at least have a TON of reaction wheels so unbalanced jets aren't as big a deal. Then - with your more balanced ship and better feel for docking, you should be able to get them connected.

And don't feel bad about not getting it. My first docking attempt caused both of my orange tanks (yes, each ship had one) to collide in a cross formation at about 50m/s. Needless to say I didn't actually get the docking done on that attempt.

uhm... my probodobodyne HECS randomly overheated when I was in a stable orbit of about 80 000 meters, is this a bug?

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

It is possible to align fairly easily in stock, as mentioned before, by rotating ship to point to vertical axis. You can see the example here:

The best advice I can give you is to do it slow and practice. Use the NavBal and learn how to use it well. Docking is not something you can just yolo on visual. There is a reason why docking to ISS takes hours

Thanks, I'll try it soon. Whats the difference between docking and staging mode?

also, lining ships up would be very hard for me since I had a massive bulky ship with wrong RCS placement. Also no reaction wheels. Going to try with a small agile craft soon.

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

One problem with the mod: My ship was too bulky and had RCS in wrong places so docking would be near impossible for a beginner like me. The reason I made such a big ship was to make a refuelling station as well. Though I will first set my goal to docking. By roughly guessing where the station would need to be at the launch I made an oribt 6 km away from the craft (yes I am using Mechjeb but only for precise orbits (I dont think many astronauts control the craft manually either.)

[I want to learn this game.]

The ksp wiki has (almost) all the information about ksp youll as a beginner and as a more advanced players.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorials

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

Yeah, that can be a pain, particularly since the game doesn't give you any real aids for that, and eyeballing can be tricky.

The Navball Docking Alignment Indicator mod is a really handy one that I highly recommend. Very minimalistic, uses practically no memory, has no controls to use or UI to get in your way. All it does is this: when your target is a docking port, it adds a red icon to the navball such that, if you center it in the crosshairs, it means you're perfectly aligned with the target port's orientation. Takes all the eyeballing out of figuring out your alignment.

There's also this other mod that serves a similar purpose, which some people like. Personally, it's not my cup of tea, since it adds UI to the screen and I'm very jealous of screen real estate.

Thanks, I'll check it out and I will post my results.

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

Set the docking port as target, line up your ship to be in the right plane as the port. Keep an eye on the nav ball and use rcs to move your prograde marker over the target marker. Check that you are properly aligned to dock straight with port, disable SAS right at contact. Keep it slow.

Aligning is the problem for me.

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

Pointing is very much in the cards, but for future reference that video shows how to align using just the one craft, and how to do it with very little RCS.

Granted that ship is much smaller than yours, though as someone who has never docked before I would not recommend your first docking be with those ships you have there. There's a reason NASA had an entire program (Gemini) to learn how to dock 2 ships together and nothing else.

I had this mission to make a refueling station in orbit and have 4000 liquid fuel (havent unlocked orange tanks so stacked two half size tanks on it and came short by just 200 liquid fuel.)

also, I will complete a contract for docking and could even bring the station to the mun for a mun base so 3 contracts in one.

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

I made a tutorial video just for this exact thing. You could find worse ways to spend 10 minutes.

I'm on the wrong side of the ship, RCS is very rough aswell (pretty big ship) so I guess I'll make my station point to the ship.

[Docking, How do I allign two ships?]

So this is my first time docking and I'm close to the ship i want to dock (20 meters) and going 0.3 m/s.

no spinning going on by the way

edit: I completed the docking training, this gives me motivation!

update: I docked! Not as hard as imagined thanks for all your help!

isnt it glorious. Jebediah would be proud of me if it werent for that I killed him...

[Inefficient inclination burn?]

Use the nav ball. It has bearings written on it's "equator". 0 is north, 90 East, 180 south, 270 West.

In your case, you would want to launch westwards, towards 280. (east minus 170)

One more question how do I edit the argument of peri without using a lot of fuel and messing up other things like apo and peri height?

[Inefficient inclination burn?]

Use the nav ball. It has bearings written on it's "equator". 0 is north, 90 East, 180 south, 270 West.

In your case, you would want to launch westwards, towards 280. (east minus 170)

Thanks, that worked very well.

[Inefficient inclination burn?]

Hello ToukieToucan, and welcome to the forums!

Inclination changes are very expensive in terms of delta-v.

The best plan to match the inclination required is to launch into that inclination, or close to it.

In this case, you want to launch to the West rather than to the East, since that would give you an inclination of 180 degrees. It should then be fairly easy to adjust to match the required orbit.

Hope this helps.

Happy landings!

Thanks, though how do I know I'm going east? Going to the left of doesnt directly mean going east right?

[Inefficient inclination burn?]

So, I need to launch a satellite in a specific orbit:

Apo - 5 408 688

Peri - 965 842

inclination - 171

Long. of AN - 68.8

Arg. of Peri - 114,6

Now I am in an orbit around kerbin of about 100 km and I noticed when I burned at the normal node it took a lot of fuel to go from around 0 degrees of inclination to 10 degrees and that it takes a long time.

Should I increase the inclination while in the atmosphere of when I am at my apoapis (or something else) ?