First Orbital Rendezvous - Bad orbit, Bad manoeuvring.

[Vostok]

The story begins with me letting my Gf play KSP. She made a rocket that (surprisingly) made it into orbit. However, a lack of RCS and SAS meant the orbit was at about 45 degrees of inclination.#

I decided to launch an intercept ship.

I chose a ship I already knew worked, it was a generic lander ship for landing on the mun or minimus. I launched it, and placed it into an orbit at 90 degrees around the planet\'s equator, that intersected the inclined orbit.

I burned north at the point of intersection to incline the orbit to be parallel with the target ship.

The target ship was in an elliptical orbit, so I had to adjust my apoapsis and periapsis to fit with it.

I began the process of catching up with the target ship, adjusting the orbit radius to speed up and slow down accordingly.

When the target was within 12km, I boosted towards it with three small engines, remembering to slow down on the way.

After a long time (my RCS fuel ran out about now) I managed to get in viewing distance of the target, and with a LOT of fiddling and ship rotating (I could only use main engines to manoeuvre, since the RCS was out of fuel, meaning I had to swing my ship in massive circles to point the engines) I eventually jettisoned the landing stage as it was too large and heavy to turn with quickly, and I used the re-entry stage for controlling.

After a while, I arrived close enough to touch the target ship.

A parachute broke off, but I had three. Mission success! Finally, I performed a re-entry burn.

I jettisoned the re-entry stage, leaving the landing stage short of one parachute.

The ship landed on wheels and two parachutes in a desert somewhere. The pod broke off the lander part, since it only had 2 out of it\'s normal 3 parachutes.

But nevertheless, my first attempt (and success) at an orbital intercept was a complete success! I just need to remember more RCS fuel next time.

[Millst0ne MK II]

Dang....You should have pushed the big ship back to Kerbin with you