Search the Community

I'm horrible at orbital rendezvous missions, but I REALLY want to be able to build stations and refuel my spacecraft. Is there any way to add a "Teleport-to-Rendezvous" system to the hack menu?

I previously made a pair of videos explaining rendezvous and docking. This one is much shorter and to-the-point than the last.

Mission Parameters Gemini 7 Apokee: 35km Perikee: 33.5km Inclination: 4 degrees Planned time in space: 1 day. Semi-Major Axis: 634.25km Orbital Period: 28.15 minutes. Gemini 6 - Initial Parameters Apokee: 31km Perikee: 30.6km Inclination: 3.6 degrees (corrected to 4 degrees on orbit) Planned time in space: 6 hours. Semi-Major Axis: 630.8km Orbital Period: 27.92 minutes. Rendezvous Parameters Planned Orbits: 4 Terminal Phase Initiation on 4th orbit. Altitude at TPI: 30.8km TPI, 45 seconds after sunset. Phase Transfer: 178 degrees. Planned station keeping distance: 3 meters. Active Vessel: Gemini 6 Passive Vessel: Gemini 7 And here are the pictures from the mission: (some of them anyway...) Gemini 6 after inserting into its 31km orbit: Gemini 6 on orbit Gemini 6 and 7 Preparing for station keeping Gemini 6 and 7 Successfully rendezvoused. Gemini 7 viewed through Gemini 6's window

I'm having trouble making an encounter with an asteroid. I got to within 200 kilometers but that isn't close enough.

Hey all, I know there are a million docking tutorials out there. But I noticed in watching some youtube videos and the like, that a lot of folks often end up docking in the dark, behind the planet. I used to have this problem all the time as well. So I've put together a tutorial on controlling where you dock, so that you maximize the amount of daylight in which to do your docking. All feedback is welcome. I'm tempted to make more tutorials, but I'm not sure what hasn't already been covered by lots of very talented people out there. Shorter, "nutshell" version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMPu6RhnaVM Long version:

This is my first tutorial. Feedback appreciated! Thanks guys

Hi! So I got this game a few months back and so far Jebediah got to the mun but destroyed his engine so I rescued him, and the launch of the Nirvana 1 Satellite over Kerbin was a massive success. Now I want kick things up a Notch. Orbital rendezvous and docking. But I've only watched vids and I can't find any good ones... So. What I need help with. When do I launch? How do I rendezvous? How I dock? Is it the same on, say, the Mun, Minmus, Duna etc? Thanks, Rex3921 . P.S: I've built my ship and do I need to show photos to help you guys???

I hacked on RinComp 0.4 a bit today for fun. I cleaned up the code substantially, and made the Rendezvous pane a lot more useful. So I thought I would release the updates (under a new name to avoid confusion). New features: [li]Find rendezvous targets in a list sorted by distance. Ignores landed ships.[/li] [li]Mode to match direction with target.[/li] [li]Button to kill relative velocity with RCS.[/li] [li]Mode to station keep a few meters off nose of target with RCS.[/li] [li]Slightly larger window, various usability tweaks.[/li] Now, I can reliably rendezvous with my target ships without much trouble. Too bad there\'s no docking port that works very well! I have included details instructions on how to rendezvous with a target ship in the README. You can download it at https://github.com/bengarney/RendezMe/zipball/master. You can view source at https://github.com/bengarney/RendezMe. I\'m posting this so it can be useful to others (maybe Zool will take parts of it to put back into RinComp; it also shows how to drive RCS from a plugin, which I hadn\'t seen before). Feel free to hack on it, fork it, etc. edit: removed attachment as github link is always going to be fresher

I do not know how i do this without MechJeb:D (I've done this but a long time ago) I don't have developed docking port, but i think about make rendezvous. Like Gemini 6 and 7. But does i get any point for this?

So, it was finally time for Eeloo in Career mode. The trip there went fine, three sets of science stuff full of science goodness and looking forward the journey home and meeting the guys in Duna orbit for the final leg. But uh, oh, something has gone wrong and there's only enough deltaV to meet the guys in Dres, not all the way to Duna and make capture. Well, what can go wrong here, I tell the guys to go home and come back with bigger ship and meet me at orbit of Dres. What can go wrong: everything. Fast forward more than 10 hours of gameplay, two failed rescue attempts to third one and 26 years of game time. The capture with Dres failed miserably, I had failed to internalize the low gravity of Dres and shot right of to highly eccentric orbit traversing between Dres and Eeloo. Finally, I have a ship in close-enough orbit with PLENTY of deltaV left to make the final corrections and fly back when strange things started to happen. The maneuver node-system had stopped working a long ago and orbital predictions were all over the place - distance was perhaps 20km and the closest encounter was predicted to some 300.000km on the other side of the planet. So, at first I tried to fly closer with my rescue craft, and just *couldn't* get closer than 4km, no matter what I did. I was flying closer and closer, and then BAM I was again some 10km away, going in to wrong direction. So, I settled to 4km being the closest I can get for some reason, collected all science and jumped for one heroic EVA to catch the ship with some precious deltaV in it. Things looked good, 3km and closing, 2km, 1873 meters, BAM 6km! What! GUYS! REALLY! Same thing, over and over again. If I tried to accelerate to 2x even for split second, this seemed to happen every time - I was closing the ship with meters counting down, fast click of . , and the ship was further from me, again counting down meters. If I let it roll without time acceleration the jump would be bigger, but happen eventually. So, am I hitting the wall with the internal precision system that causes this space-time anomaly? Or is it the Kraken that is playing sisyphean games with me? Will my family still recognize me when I get out from my KSP binge?

Hello! I think I have docking figured out, but I can not for the life of me rendezvous. I hope you guys can help by answering a few questions. 1. What is a good height for the docking target? In this case a station. 2. What is a good parking orbit? 3. How do I set up my maneuver? 4. How do I know if the orbit I'm on can give me a good transfer? Thank you, Kvick

So after a long time I decided to make a video. Since this was made on my old laptop,don't scream at me for weird graphics. Also I hate G+,so I quit using my youtube channel,thanks to my friend who gave me a hand here. Enjoy!

Hi, I'm new here, I just bought KSP like three days ago and I am doing pretty well, learnt the basics pretty well, prograde, retro, gravity assists, etc, deployed a bunch of satellites around kerbin, mun and minmus, landed unmanned and manned missions on the mun, and I have deployed my first Space Station Module around Kerbin I found a mod called MechJeb 2 and its a pretty great tool, because I don't have to do every single thing manually and Now I'm trying to connect the next part from launch, but somehow I can't do it. I am using the "Ascent Guidance Launch to Rendezvous: option, and I found it inaccurate, it only puts me around 30km around it, and I don't know what to do after that. because the docking autopilot is only useful for around 200m Can someone help me? I've been trying to do this since yesterday and my orbit is getting spammed with debris The Space Station's orbit is AP - 121k, PE - 119k My Options: Orbit Altitude 120km Orbit Inclination 0 Ascent Path: Start 20km, End 75km, Angle 0, Shape 100% then I'll click the Launch to Rendezvous I don't quite understand the Ascent Path so maybe the problem is there? HELP and the next Space Station part is quite heavy here is the pic

Now that I can get my refueler into orbit, I need to rendezvous it with my lander. But it seems near impossible to even get clsoe to my target, even afetr burning out my entire orange rockomax tank with a skipper engine. It almost seems like the lander's orbit is below my and not really inclined... I'm not really sure about a good procedure for getting the intersects closer together, since they always stop moving closer once they get about 10 km away.

Hi! How do you launch for rendezvous on some other planet than Kerbin? I know that on Kerbin you should aim for about 400km distance from your target and then launch. Is there some general method how to calculate such distance on other bodies/different orbits? I even tried it with mechjeb and I often end up tens of kilometers away from my target. And now that I think of it ... since these are nonatmospheric bodies, it really depends on the acceleration of my rocket doesn't it? On Kerbin the speed is more or less fixed, but not so on moons etc., right? Anyway, this question might not have an answer, I think.

What's the best way to set this up before entering the Mun's SOI?

So at my first mission to the mun, I got stranded, and barely managed to get back to orbit. The problem now is that, being the noob I am I launched from the mun towards the wrong direction. So now I have the vessel with no fuel at a 180 degree inclination towards the other. Any suggestions on how to make the two meet, without crashing, and have enough time to move bill to the rescue vehicle?

Since the anniversary of Mankinds' first steps on the Moon has come around, I have been going through an Apollo mission videos kick. During my searching I have come across some awesome Youtube documentary videos NASA put together back then. Makes for a good time passer during my breaks at work. Here is an Apollo 11 video documenting the whole mission: This channel has a specific NASA section that has the other Apollo missions in there as well as some of the space shuttle missions: Now here is something very interesting. This two part clip shows a pretty thorough explanation of how the Apollo missions went about rendezvousing in Lunar orbit with the LM ascent stage. The explanation here of how to rendezvous and dock has got to be the clearest and simplest example I have seen yet. The next time I try to performing docking maneuvers I am going to attempt this method. I know I'll find people here just as interested in this crap as I am, so enjoy!! Oh and happy 44th!!!

hello, i am extremely frustrated with trying to rendezvous. i get a dectent orbit we're about 1.5 km apart. and then i try to rcs or burn towrds the other craft and it zooms off or i miss entireley! please help i really want to do this.

After half a year of playing KSP, I finally ran out of things to do. Then I realized I hadn't done an orbital rendezvous!(Kerman to Craft) Today, Friday, September 14, 2012 at 5:23 P.M. completed my first rendezvous It evolved launching 4 ships into a 200km orbit before I could get close enough. The lucky Kerman to do all this was Bill Kerman, of course 20 minutes later Bibles Kerman completed another rendezvous! Let me know what you think of my attempts, fails, and successes! BREAKING NEWS: Bill has boarded Sullivan 9 and Nellan has BOARDED Heslen 12! That's 35km! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a list of all the flights I have flown in this mission series,and what the colors mean. I will update it as I go along. Standing By Green is successful. Purple is in orbit waiting for guests Red is failed or damaged in orbit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wirfly 29 Ullgarn 43 Heslen 12-Nellan Kerman Elnox 3 Greenburg 96-Bibles Kerman Sullivan 9-Bill Kerman Falcon 6 Here is a picture of Bill outside Sullivan 9:

So I've managed to place Jebediah directly beside the northern Mohole on Moho. Unfortunately, his ship didn't end up having enough fuel to take him back to Kerbin (or even get into orbit, for that matter). To solve this, I've sent a rescue probe (which may or may not also not have enough to get back >_>) to dock with Jeb's craft. Here's the problem: I don't know how I should set my attitude to meet the rescue ship. The poles are weird and what looks like burning North ends up flipping around and being a seemingly arbitrary direction. I'm having a hard time aligning it with the rescue ship's (also polar) orbit. It's just occurred to me that a polar orbit isn't like an equatorial orbit in the sense that there can be only ONE place where an equatorial orbit lies (directly over the equator), but a polar orbit is simply an orbit that passes over both poles. There's no "equator" that I can align myself with, so while both ships could be in what's called a polar orbit, they'll end up coming in at different directions over the pole. How can I get around this? It really doesn't help that the lander only has enough fuel to get about 1/16th of the way into an orbit. I'll have to slow down the rescue probe and quickly dock before speeding back into a stable orbit again. This will be very difficult, and it doesn't help that I'm terrible at docking two ships anyway. Halp? Edit: Figured it out. I can select the rescue ship as a target and simply burn along that vector to get in the same orbit. Thanks, me!

I still haven't worked how to do that. EDIT: See blizzy's tutorial.

Ok, so I've started constructing my first orbital station, and I need some help to fit the first part there, as well as some general questions. First of all, on what altitude should I position my space station? It's going to be a refueling station. (so I don't get stuck in Mun's orbit again ) Secondly, at what point does it become a "station" in the space center? Cause all I got now is a ship and a probe. Third question is, should I get everything up there, and then move it to it's final orbit, or move it and bring the parts there? Finally, I believe that the Rockomax Skipper is enough to move the station around, even with some extra pieces on it, right? (used that by mistake, instead of the Poodle) Meet Ananke (Greek for Need - Necessity), or at least the core: Now, this is the power module I want to install: And this is their position in orbit: The Core's points are Ap 185.271km Pe 184.545km The P.M.'s points are Ap 190.390km Pe 185.328km As you can see they are almost excactly the same altitude (first try, wooohooo) and are pretty close to each other. The problem is that the intersect points are almost opposite. What do you suggest I do, just timewarp and wait many days untill they get close, or...? Thanks in advance!

I'm not sure if this question belongs here or in the Add-Ons forum, but I am having problems with MechJeb's Rendezvous on Ascent function on the Automated Ascent screen. I understand that you select a target and it time accelerates to put you in relatively close orbit to the target (in this case a space station). In all the vids I have seen, this "relatively close" distance is about four kilometers, but I have done over a dozen launches using this and the closest I can ever get is 100 kilometers. Am I doing something wrong? Thank you!