First rendezvous

[Kerbal01]

I completed my first ever rendezvous, manually. Launched the STS Columbia (from the SSP by Mike-NZ) first, some unwanted yaw steering put it in a slightly inclined orbit 15 minutes after SSME start. Then I launched the Buran when Columbia was directly overhead a fraction of an orbit later. Yaw steering put the energia on the right azimuth. The circulization burn put us with an intercept of 20 km between Buran and Columbia. A 12.1 m/s burn at the ascending node refined that to 3.9 km. Time warped to closest approach, took pics, then my computer session ended (darn library). I'll try again tomorrow, and upload pics of the first attempt. Not bad for eyeballing complex orbital rendezvous maneuvers with no practical experience.

[CaelumEtAstra]

Great job! It makes me realize just how much we forget rendezvous are amazing. After it became a routine thing with the Salyut program nobody really seemed to care. Also, imagine a Shuttle-Buran mission where the two of them were docked together. What a sight that would be! (Even though it would be impossible with the incompatible docking ports, i.e. APAS-95 & -86)

[HoloYolo]

You're saying first MANUAL? Really? It's so easy manual when you get used to it. I've never had MechJeb or any autopilot dock me, just my fingers.

[Venusgate]

"It was THIIIIIIS big!"

J/K :P

Congrats! Exciting, isn't it! Just wait till you pull it off in darkness with your small battery in the double digits and dropping, and mono in singles :P

[rdwulfe]

Well done and congrats, DarthVader!

[Mister Spock]

Congrats! It's always satisfying to do this in KSP.

[JAFO]

[quote name='DarthVader']Time warped to closest approach, took pics, then my computer session ended (darn library).[/QUOTE]

:0.0:

Your [I]library[/I] lets you play KSP on their computers???

[Findthepin1]

His library has computers capable of running KSP?

[JAFO]

[quote name='Findthepin1']His library has computers capable of running KSP?[/QUOTE]

That doesn't surprise me so much.. I run KSP on an 8yo 1.7GHz Core Duo laptop with 3GB of RAM.

[Rune]

Congrats! Now just you wait until you do your first full-fledged docking, [I]that[/I] will feel like an accomplishment.


Rune. And then after a while the darn things will become routine!

[Kerbal01]

They strictly don't allow the use of other programs on their computers, but I can get around it with bringing a copy on a flash drive that allready has permissions set up. Playing isn't bad, just need to turn the settings down a bit.

[JAFO]

[quote name='DarthVader']They strictly don't allow the use of other programs on their computers, but I can get around it with bringing a copy on a flash drive that allready has permissions set up. Playing isn't bad, just need to turn the settings down a bit.[/QUOTE]

Hehehehe.

Clever.. and I reckon you've earned your name.. well done!

[HyperbolicKerbonaut]

[quote name='Venusgate']"It was THIIIIIIS big!"

J/K :P

Congrats! Exciting, isn't it! Just wait till you pull it off in darkness with your small battery in the double digits and dropping, and mono in singles :P[/QUOTE]
I once saw a video of a guy do an EVA only mission to all the moons and on one of his rendezvous he had a fraction of one 1 unit of RCS left before he hit his command pod.

[Pecan]

[quote name='Kaboom!']You're saying first MANUAL? Really? It's so easy manual when you get used to it. I've never had MechJeb or any autopilot dock me, just my fingers.[/QUOTE]

Really? You should tell that story when someone mentions docking.
Back on topic; congratulations, I never bother to launch to rendezvous, just <whenever> and use phasing orbits.
Oh yeah, and since it's annoying to work out how many orbits I'll have to wait, I let MJ do it.

Yourself is better :-)

[Tourist]

Good work! The first time you do rendezvous is hard, I had so much trouble with it when I started. I read instructions online, but it all seemed a bit counter intuitive, so I couldn't quite get my head around it. You feel like a real rocket surgeon when you manage it the first time. For what its worth NASA had to overcome the same problem during Gemini. They made the same mistake everybody makes when they start out in that they tried just pointing at the target and propelling towards it.

Good to learn to do without assistance first, after that use mechjeb all you like.