yithpistol

When doing the recreation of the Gemini mission per the Wiki I ran into the problem of using lateral movement and my movement always having too much rotation in it. Then I remembered what I learned from the game and physics class and remembered 'center of mass'. I realized that the way the gemini was designed in the game (not sure if they did this IRL) places the two sets of RCS blocks where they are not equidistant from the capsule's center of mass. So when the top ones are firing, they may be firing at the same time as the bottom ones, but they're too far away from CoM and impart rotation. What did was place the two closer and equidistant from the center of mass and the rotation nearly disappeared. I still had to make minor corrections, but it was enough to think "This is lateral movement" rather than "this is poorly designed rotatational movement". Still, somehow, even with the original thruster placement I got those puppies docked. I shouted and cheered. I had been working at getting those two joined up for hours (counting previous attempts to get their orbits matched and failing... and one entirely aborted mission). Anyway, if you're getting too much rotation, try making sure your RCS blocks are equidistant from the center of mass. There's a button in the VAB (assembly building) that shows a big dot where it is. once you do that and you're not rotating like crazy, you should be able to get to the other capsule easier. Definitely check out the Gemini mission setup in the wiki and read the docking instructions there. I learned on those. The above video certainly can't hurt to check out as well. You may have to keep switching back and forth from lateral and rotational movement or just use rotational movement entirely with H and N to go 'foward' and 'reverse' respectively to control your approach. Good luck. I know my hands were shaking at one point. That's one docking down a million to go... especially if I ever want a space station.