HeadHunter67

Okay, perhaps I spoke a little too soon. I understand the basics, but today I learned the difference between theory and practice. I put your docking trainer into a nice very uniform 100k orbit and launched a modified Kerbal X to rendezvous with it. I got within 3.4km but attempts to get closer failed. I guess I need to review further.

Does anyone know if the RoveMate XL will still work, or does the config need to be changed?

I've noticed that - and while I'm fond of KW (I think it was the first mod I ever used besides KSPX), I have decided to remove KW and instead install NP and B9. Maybe the load times will be faster and I'll have RAM to spare. Thanks for the advice.

Yeah, I could have sworn there was a series of them in 0.20 - and not the Mission Manager stuff either.

I actually make the effort to decommission my abandoned vessels. I docked with my first space station last night, moved the crew to the rocket and used the rocket's engine to push the station into an orbit where it would eventually lose altitude and burn up on re-entry. Got a nice shot just before it crashed into the ground.

I want to see improved construction - there's no reason that a stack should require exterior struts for stability. Have Kerbals never heard of welding?

KSP just got SERVED. Thanks for the hilarious video!

I never realized it HAD a use before now, honestly... Both of these are great suggestions.

Even with good use of struts, stuff still falls apart on the pad for me sometimes.

Sounds like a lot of good ideas - but I definitely want to use the Kupola as the "bridge" of my space station, so I hope it has reaction wheels at the very least. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on how your Kupola should compare to the stock one.

I'm going to try to re-add that and see if it's what's screwing things up - it'd be a handy mod to have but not if it keeps the game from loading! [EDIT: Just got the game to load with the docking cam plugin added, as well as the RCS Build Aid and the new Maneuver Node plugin (though I suspect it's basically similar to the feature in MJ). We'll see how it runs.] Agreed. I like some of the NP stuff too, but with Unity being restricted in how much RAM it uses, it becomes an issue. I haven't got the patience to go through both KW and NP and make a list of the stuff I intend to use and keep just that. Perhaps someday I will. It seems that the power drain for reaction wheels is generally 0.5 per second for each point of torque, but I think the best advice for those who want to modify it now is just to copy over the values from the stock cupola.

So I spent the last two hours studying blizzy78's rendezvous thread, watching that video and , and spent a little time last night practicing on blizzy78's in-game Interactive Docking tutorial plugin... and I think I have got the basics of all this figured out. I'm going to launch a couple of rockets and give this thing a try now.

Between this thread and video, and Scott Manley's video, I think I understand the basics of rendezvous. Your tutorial mission plugin made docking easy, this info makes me confident that I can achieve a successful rendezvous without mechanical assistance. I found a useful mnemonic for knowing how to set your initial pre-rendezvous orbit. If the target is AHEAD, your orbit should be ABOVE. If the target is BEHIND, your orbit should be BELOW. (Have I got that right?) I think that'll make it easier for me to remember. Thanks for the education.

Docking wasn't so hard for me to learn - given a ship with a good RCS configuration and adequate light. I'm sure I'll find other challenges in the future regarding docking - but it's taught me to put lights near my docking clamps. Rendezvous, on the other hand? No idea how to do that manually yet - guess I need to watch more videos and read up on it. I can get in the same orbit, but then I'm chasing the target. Turning around and going the other way reduces my orbit, speeding up to catch it puts me in a higher orbit... no idea how I'm supposed to catch up.

There already are KSP players who are astronauts. It's the kind of game that appeals to people in the space program.

No - and in fact, even when Apollo 13 had to power down their computer, they still received verbal guidance from controllers on the ground who had calculated the new course with computer assistance. Though they had to fly manually, they were given their orientation and burn duration by mission control. It still took dead reckoning and a wristwatch, but if they had to do it all by hand, they'd never have made it home.

OK, this is strange... I had installed a number of other mods on a clean install of 0.21.1 and the game ran fine, installed FusTek and then I got the crash. Uninstalled the game, did another clean install of 0.21.1 and installed only FusTek and the game loaded fine. All I can think of is that there's some other mod I've got that runs fine without FusTek but conflicts with it when both are present. For the record - the other mods I use are MechJeb, KW Rocketry, NovaPunch, Chatterer, TacParts Lister, Part Catalog, Docking Cam, Robotic Arm, Soviet Pack, American Pack, Procedural Fairings, and CyDist's SM and ASM modules (the latest versions of each). The only other possible thing I can think of is that due to the large parts packs, maybe I'm hitting Unity's built-in 2 GB memory limit and it's crashing because of that. None of the other mods conflict, the only issue I have otherwise is the expectedly long loading time.

For some, perhaps - for me, as soon as I install this pack, I'm unable to get the game to load. It crashes with a Visual Runtime error. I'm running KSP 0.21.1 on Steam.

Thank you for making the robotic arms and especially the docking cam as standalones! I guess I'm sort of a "purist" when it comes to what kind of tech I use, but these will allow me to create some ships using current technology.

I have it, I use it sometimes, and I don't feel any guilt or shame for doing so. As someone else said: The Apollo astronauts didn't have to freehand it to the Moon, why should we?

Put a typical spacecraft into an 80km circular orbit. Now kill its speed to about 198 m/s and watch what happens. The idea of an orbit is that your ship is moving forward faster than it's falling, so it keeps missing the ground. When it starts its orbit more-or-less stationary, it has only the radial velocity of the planet, which is insufficient to prevent gravity from having its way.

Thank you for this tutorial. Before today, I'd never attempted docking. While I agree with MoonGoddess that this mission could have used more explanation and helpful guidance, I didn't find it particularly difficult or troublesome. It would seem that finesse is key - very brief, gentle nudges in the desired direction. Change one axis at a time - that seems to be the most important part! And remembering that RCS still allows you to use PYR (Pitch/Yaw/Roll) maneuvers with the thrusters made it doable. I look forward to more such tutorials about other somewhat complicated but common tasks.

If I may make an observation, this is essentially no different than what others have tried to tell you about how you feel their gameplay experience should be - as we have seen in this thread and your former sig.

They have determined it is "Mission Control"... by crashing parts into it.

It's working fine for me - I did a clean install of 0.21... I wonder how many people who are having problems just upgraded over their existing version and/or have pieces of mods interfering.