Docking and Making Space Stations

[MitchellKim]

Hi, I have been playing KSP since the early Alpha and I can still not get the hang of docking. Does anyone know of any good mods that can help me achieve this?

[Xannari Ferrows]

There's always the NavyFish Docking Alightment indicator. That's a good one.

[Benaiah]

http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220221-mechjeb

MechJeb has a docking autopilot, but I've never tried to use it. It has a lot of features, but you are free to only use the ones you want. Very soon though, the game is going to update, and you'll need to wait for the mod to update and redownload it.

PS - Scott Manley helped me learn how to dock on youtube. Maybe he can help you.

[Starwhip]

Check out the first link in my signature for some (stock) tips on docking.

[StormKat]

Track down one of Das Valdez' Kerbal Space Academy videos.

[juanml82]

There's always the NavyFish Docking Alightment indicator. That's a good one.

I'd love for that mod to indicate which keys I'm supposed to press to align. I see the bars, the lines and I'm not sure if controls are supposed to be reverse or not. Lately, I've just outsourced all my dockings to MJ

[LN400]

Just a few pointers on docking/rendezvous. I'm not saying this is The Best way, but it's a way that consistently works for me. Probably several steps you already have figured out in here but for the sake of completeness:

First thing: RCS. Once in orbit and with the inclination as well as altitude for overtaking sorted, use RCS for adjusting altitude/trajectory. Main engines tend to be way too powerful for fine adjustments.

Ok, back to the launch pad. In map view, set the target so you have one less thing to worry about later. Look at the target's apo/periapsis to get an idea of your orbital altitude. Launch (getting close to target on orbit injection is real nice but it won't break the game if you miss the target by half an orbit). During the ascent, figure out if you'll get ahead or behind the target and set your apoapsis to give you the necessary overtake speed once in orbit. Higher if you're ahead, lower if you're lagging. How much depends on how much distance is between you two.

Once in a stable orbit, get the inclination sorted first. After that there are in essence only 2 different scenarios. First is: The target is far away (>100km the way I prefer it) , in which case you circularize with both apo and periapsis well above/below target orbit for a quicker rendezvous. Second is (and it should come after the first anyway): The target is close (I regard less than 100km close at this stage). Get either your apoapsis or periapsis (not both) to match the target's apo/periapsis. Now the overtake speed will drop which is good. Keep a close eye on both of the closest approach markers and when your 2nd orbit approach is greater than the 1st approach, raise/lower the apo/peri so that the 2nd approach is closer than the 1st. Do this gradually. This will get you into an orbit that will be very close to the target's orbit everywhere on the orbital trajectory. It will also bring the target speed down to just a few 10's m/s where RCS becomes really effective.

When the distance is between 15 and 5 km, use RCS to glue the prograde marker to the target marker, and keep them glued together. You might want to initiate this by using the main engines if the prograde marker is more than 10* off the target marker but once the two match, and target speed is less than or at least not much greater than 10m/s, switch to RCS.

Keep the 2 markers glued to eachother and gradually slow down as you approach using RCS. Rule of thumb: Under 500m apart at around 50m/s, reduce target speed by 10m/s per 10m closing in. Don't allow the markers to separate. Be on it. 10 or so meters away, slow down to crawling speed and align the docking ports. Eyeballing works courtesy of the magnetic pull on the ports.

Again, there are many ways you can do it, but this is a way I found would work consistently. Plan ahead and don't do sudden improvisations to you plan unless it's part of the plan. Jazz is not what you want to play here.

[Harry Rhodan]

I'd love for that mod to indicate which keys I'm supposed to press to align. I see the bars, the lines and I'm not sure if controls are supposed to be reverse or not. Lately, I've just outsourced all my dockings to MJ

Your docking port is the big grey reticule in the middle and the big orange circle is the targeted port. That's easy to confuse. And the yellow marker has to be in the same quadrant between the grey reticule and the green markers to translate in the correct direction.

[Skorpychan]

Mechjeb. Watch how it does it. Then you re-bind the translation controls somewhere that makes sense.

You don't even need to translate, once you get the hang. I managed to dock something without RCS a while ago, since I forgot to include monopropellant. Just main engine burns and a lot of reaction wheeling.

[gmiddlemass]

I found the "Lazor Docking Camera" mod very useful when I first started... http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220272-lazor-docking-cam

It basically adds a camera to all docking ports and a little (re-sizable) pop out monitor view of what the camera sees along with the docking alignment indicators. Some spot lights pointing in the same direction as the docking port can also help in low light situations.

I don't really use the mod that much now but found it pretty much invaluable when I started out and it's still worth looking at now, it makes it much easier to get yourself lined up. You can just select one ship and rotate yourself till the target is in the middle of the crosshairs on the monitor, then switch to the other ship and do the same and you should be pretty much there. Keep your approach speed nice and slow and adjust the position on the way in using the alignment indicators on the monitor.

[TheXRuler]

LN400 has the basics right however there are some ways to improve upon this technique.

RCS can be very usefull, however the low ISP makes it rather inefficient and the low thrust makes it incredibly tedious when flying very heavy ships. During the early phases of rendevous I would recommend using the thrust limiter (right click on the engine [you probably already know this]) to reduce maximum thrust to something like 10 or 20 percent and using RCS solely for attitude adjustment.

However all this comes after the launch and I would first explain how to set up an easy rendevous (target) orbit.

Launch as usual from KSC and aim for an apoapsis of roughly 250km. Try to keep your inclination as low as

possible and circularize at apoapsis as well as you can.

Now to launch your docking vessel:

Set it on the launch pad, set the vessel you want to rendevous with as your target and launch when the target is almost right above you on the navball. Now follow a standard launch procedure with gravity turn etc. and aim for an apoapsis that just meets your target orbit. Before your apoapsis hits the target orbit height you should switch to map view and kill your engines (hotkey x [you probably know this as well]) as soon as your orbit reaches the target orbit. At this point the game should give you either two or four closest approach markers. If there are only two, they should both be pinkish if there are four there should be one orange and one purple pair.

Let's first assume that you only intersect the target orbit at one point. This will provide you with a pinkish pair of closest approach markers. When you mouseover the approach markers they should be called "intersect 1" and "target position at intersect" (or something similar). Now if your target position at intersect is ahead of the intersect (this should be the case as it makes things a little easier) don't worry (be happy) but simply stick a manouvre node right behind the intersect (as close as you can get it without it being ahead of the intersect) and increase the prograde component of the manouvre until your orbit after the manouvre has a periapsis of at least 71km. Now the position of the two intersects should have changed a little. By further increasing the prograde component you should be able to move the target position at intersect around a little. This happens because as you change your periapsis you also change your orbital period (again you might know this, I just mentioned it for the sake of completeness). Try increasing your periapsis to the point where you are almost on a circular orbit and see whether or not you can get a very close approach by doing this. If not change the manouvre back to just raise your periapsis out of the atmosphere. After raising your periapsis out of the atmosphere you should place another manouvre node just behind the intersect.

Now you might or might not know (I found this out very late) that when you are editing a manouvre node you can rightclick on the node which will change the appearance of the node to a circle with an x at the top righthand side and two little circles at the bottom left and bottom right. Clicking these little circles tells the game that you want to execute the manouvre one orbit, for every click, later or earlier respectively. This can be very helpful during rendevous as it means that you can look ahead to what will happen in a few orbits time. As you now have an orbital period which is smaller than that of your target you will be continously catching up. Just keep skipping orbits ahead (using the manouvre node) until your target position at intersect goes past the actual intersect. Now start editing the manouvre node by adding to the prograde component you will increase your orbital period (bringing it closer to that of your target) and the target position at intersect should now be comming closer to the actual intersect. Keep playing around with the prograde/retrograde and the radial components to bring your apporach markers as close together as possible.

Once you have done all this (and assuming you had the patience to read the entire thing ) all you need to do is warp to the manouvre and execute it. Now you have yourself a nice close approach (yay :3) but you're still not quite done yet. But you're about halfway there. The next thing you will want to do is set up a manouvre right at the closest approach to match the target orbit. This will reduce your relative velocity to the target to a manageable number. And NOW you can start using RCS to finalize your docking.

From here on LN400 perrty much nailed it with his expanation so I will simply qoute him here

When the distance is between 15 and 5 km, use RCS to glue the prograde marker to the target marker, and keep them glued together. You might want to initiate this by using the main engines [use the thrust limiter] if the prograde marker is more than 10* off the target marker but once the two match, and target speed is less than or at least not much greater than 10m/s, switch to RCS.

Keep the 2 markers glued to eachother and gradually slow down as you approach using RCS. Rule of thumb: Under 500m apart at around 50m/s, reduce target speed by 10m/s per 10m closing in. Don't allow the markers to separate. Be on it. 10 or so meters away, slow down to crawling speed and align the docking ports. Eyeballing works courtesy of the magnetic pull on the ports.

As you were having trouble with finding out which keys corrospond to which translational direction I reccomend using either C or V (I always get it mixed up) to switch the camera angle to chase, then use RMB to place the camera behind your vessel. This will make the controls more intuitive. Also check out the wiki page concering key bindings if you are unsure as to which keys to use for translation.

[LN400]

TheXRuler: Thanks for the additions (and the rep ) and thanks tons for explaining the 2 small buttons on the maneuver node. I never figured out what they were good for.

[-M-TheDoctor]

This thread has got me closer than ever to rescuing my poor stranded Kerbals from orbit. I sent an experimental station up with 5 Kerbals on it, ran out of fuel, and now they are stuck. I then sent a manned rescue mission, ran out of fuel, and now that vessel is stuck in an eccentric orbit. 6 brave Kerbals, stuck in the void. I'm hoping to save them in the coming days (after learning my lesson: unmanned rescue operations now). Thanks!