Hello All, I am able to dock fine currently but I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better way. Usually after 3 hours late one night I'll be doing some mundane task and realize 'Eureka! Why didn't I just do this instead!' So here are some scenarios where I know some of you veterans have developed easy tricks to make things like hauling station fuel a little less tedious. (I run bone stock, no MechJeb or anything). 1) When I currently rendezvous with my target for docking, I use a slightly eccentric orbit with an apoapsis above my target's apoapsis and a periapsis just below or at the targets. Then near my periapsis I just burn retrograde near an intersect to match orbits. The problem; It takes many time-sped orbits to get a close intersect, and the more eccentric the orbit, the greater dV needed. I have seen tutorials that recommend something along these lines: First set your orbit concentric and slightly 'lower' than the target's orbit. Time warp a few orbits until you are close. Use a manuever node to burn prograde and then move this node along your orbit until you get a close intersect. Is this a better way? I find that when the orbits are only 10 km apart, say you're in LKO (70km) and the target is 80km, it takes a very long time for the two objects to intersect if you were sloppy with your launch time. Anyone have any tricks? I've recently started moving my parking orbits higher and higher to give me more wiggle room. Are two concentric orbits best to burn up to the target orbit, or better to burn down to the orbit? Eccentric orbits work? I understand there is no one best case, just some chatter on the subject would be helpful. 2) When I am in the same orbit, and am closing with RCS thrusters is there a way to orientate the ship so that the WASD keys correlate to up, down, left, right translation on the screen? With unmanned control modules there is no cockpit view or is there? I find myself, as I close in on the docking point, moving the camera to the "Chase view" (which doesn't get the rotation right?) and using Q or E to rotate the ship so that W, up, translation is up on screen. If I get this right, I can usually dock in 5 minutes from say 70m out. Is there something easy I'm overlooking here? perhaps using the navball horizon? (I just thought of that as I sit at work dreaming about KSP). Also say for whatever reason you can't have a cockpit view (unmanned), and you can't orient your camera so that up correlates to W (station is tilted and you are trying to match alignments), is there an easier way than tilting your head at crazy angles or chanting "up is left, up is left, up is left" as you attempt to close the last 10 meters. 3) Lastly, what are the best methods for building in space? For example, I am currently building a fuel depot in a high orbit. My course of action is to build the light weight girders with nothing more than docking ports, lights, batteries, panels and some RCS. I'll blast this giant, oversized, but lightweight rigging into space. Then I'll drag a large fuel tank up one at a time and dock them into a docking port on the rig. Is there a way to join multiple assemblies together using a method other than docking ports? Can a Kerbal get out and 'fasten' items? I guess my question is simply, are docking ports the only way to join parts outside of the vehicle hangars? Thanks!
