I...I Need help with Docking...

[WatermelonMax]

I.....I Need Help with Docking in Space....... well i meant different docking one.....i just wandering and dreaming to build a ISS...on space.... but i don't know how actually....(not to brag but... it's a shame on me that... i have landed on the moon/mun countless times..... and i have build a base on it too....  and have a probe on Minmus too...but i don't know how to dock on space.) could anyone help me with this?? please?? :3 

[David104]

Hey there!

First you need to set up an encounter with your target craft. That can be tricky but you gonna manage. Its basically the same as setting up an encounter with the mun or other planets, just a bit more difficult as it is way smaller. You should aim for a max. distance of about 0-2 km.

Once arriving there you need to syncronize your orbit with the orbit of the target craft. Just change your velocity display to "target" by clicking in it. Now you see your relative speed to the target, aim retrograde and burn until it hits more or less 0. Now your orbits are basically the same and you kind of "parked" your vessel next to your target. Turn towards the target (pink indicator) and slowly approach it. You want your prograde vector be inside the target vector because then you actually moving directly towards it. You gonna notice that the closer you get that your prograde vector is starting to move. If that happens just use your RCS thruster to keep you aligned. Once close enough, select the docking port as target and do the same until you dock.

Using the autopilot to keep your vessel on target is really useful as you dont need to bother about keeping your craft aligned with the target.

Hope that helps!

If not, there are tons of tutorials on youtube. I would recommend Scott Manley, he explains it in an older version of ksp, but the approach didnt really change..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srsiLZLPiv0

[Evanitis]

A very helpful player (sadly I can't name him) made a nice, simple illustrated tutorial:

[ToukieToucan]

I assume you know how to rendezvous (if not i can give you 10 easy steps to rendezvous)

Basic docking tips:

-Right click on the dockingport of the ship you are controlling and press "control from here"

-Right click on the dockingport of your target ship and set that as a target

-If the target ship's docking port is on the opposite side of you (or just generally not in front of you), switch to your targetship and point the dockingport towards the other docking port, this way the docking ports are alined.

-use RCS to dock, also you want to have the prograde vector in the middle of the target vector you can do this by: either burning towards target (VERY GENTLY!) use the K, L, J, I, H, N keys to let the progade marker go left, right, up down etc.

-Don't dock at high speed! (1 m/s is my max speed when I'm docking)

-When the two dockingports touch you'll notice they are wobbling thats becuase there's a magnet in them so turn of your SAS and wait till your ship has docked properly.

 

hope this helped 

7 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

A very helpful player (sadly I can't name him) made a nice, simple illustrated tutorial:

 

Quite ironically the I found docking with the docking mod way harder than without... 

[Evanitis]

I loved it the first time I used it. Than I realized I can -see- everything that it indicates (unless docking really silly crafts). Than I realized that there are stock indicators too... did those came with an update or they were always there? Dunno, but I neither use that mod.

[Kerbal101]

1 hour ago, Evanitis said:

A very helpful player (sadly I can't name him) made a nice, simple illustrated tutorial:

(awesomeness)

Damn, this simply deserves to go into KSP wiki.
Thank you for sharing this!! Kudos to very helpful unknown player!

[Rocket In My Pocket]

44 minutes ago, Kerbal101 said:

Damn, this simply deserves to go into KSP wiki.
Thank you for sharing this!! Kudos to very helpful unknown player!

I know right? Every time I see the word "docking" in a post, I immediately get ready to copy-paste that as a response lol.

It's how I learned to rendezvous, and it just makes it so easy to learn.

Really wish we could figure out who actually made it...

[Snark]

Aside from the handy guide posted by R.i.m.P. above, you may also find useful this illustrated docking guide I put together, which is designed to take you from "I got an orbital rendezvous within a couple of kilometers" to "ships are docked."

[Norpo]

3 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I know right? Every time I see the word "docking" in a post, I immediately get ready to copy-paste that as a response lol.

It's how I learned to rendezvous, and it just makes it so easy to learn.

Really wish we could figure out who actually made it.

Doing some reverse-google-image searching; it seems like that image tutorial was originally made by the KSP reddit user Entropius in this post, on July 3rd, 2014. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/29qjgm/illustrated_tutorial_for_orbital_rendezvous/

Huzzah Entropius; and good job making a good tutorial.

 

[Snark]

7 hours ago, Norpo said:

Doing some reverse-google-image searching; it seems like that image tutorial was originally made by the KSP reddit user Entropius in this post, on July 3rd, 2014. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/29qjgm/illustrated_tutorial_for_orbital_rendezvous/

Huzzah Entropius; and good job making a good tutorial.

 

@Entropius  <-- explicit tag to get his attention.  Good on ya!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/profile/104709-entropius/

 

[Wemb]

19 hours ago, Evanitis said:

I loved it the first time I used it. Than I realized I can -see- everything that it indicates (unless docking really silly crafts). Than I realized that there are stock indicators too... did those came with an update or they were always there? Dunno, but I neither use that mod.

Or in the dark...  But, yes, the stock indicators came in an update a while back.  I think the tech I've found most useful is the PAR+/- functions in SmartASS which allows me to stop worrying about rotational movement.  Having said that, I wouldn't use it the first few dozen times you dock as you'll benefit from doing it more manually.

Wemb

[radonek]

I don't like to be a nitpick, but IMO point (3) in that guide is superfluous, radial burn will only cut a bit of your final velocity matching burn. Also, it will likely make "jumpy" intersection markers.

On 24. ledna 2016 at 2:03 PM, ToukieToucan said:

Quite ironically the I found docking with the docking mod way harder than without... 

Same here.  Never used it ever since I learned what "fixed" camera is good for. 

[WatermelonMax]

On 1/24/2016 at 0:58 AM, Evanitis said:

A very helpful player (sadly I can't name him) made a nice, simple illustrated tutorial:

oh my god, that is so totally helpful O_O  thank you very much for sharing this!

[Evanitis]

34 minutes ago, WatermelonMax said:

oh my god, that is so totally helpful O_O  thank you very much for sharing this!

It's all around, I just paste it sometimes when the question arises, as it's better than what I could tell (and I dislike videos).

Though I'm not fond of that docking indicator it propagates. Eyeballing is fun and good enough, and now we have a stock way for the same - those 'rulers' in the bottom-left corner.

[AlphaMensae]

On 1/24/2016 at 11:50 AM, Snark said:

Aside from the handy guide posted by R.i.m.P. above, you may also find useful this illustrated docking guide I put together, which is designed to take you from "I got an orbital rendezvous within a couple of kilometers" to "ships are docked."

Snark, thank you, that is an exellent guide!  The best thing was alerting me to the Navball Docking Alignment Indicator mod.  I remember doing my first successful docking unaided, then I must have forgot what I exactly did as I started having trouble, then lately I've been completely screwing up docking, with my ships flying off in all directions, having to use MJ to finish it. That little mod added the missing piece to docking--the direction of the target's port axis.  THAT is what I needed to point my ship at, do that and the rest was easy, as I did a made a quick ship for a docking test and succeeded on the first try.  Heck, I was still centering the pink target indicator while moving slowly forward when all of a sudden I was docked.

 

[Gojira1000]

Funny you should ask:

 

[Snark]

21 minutes ago, Laguna said:

The best thing was alerting me to the Navball Docking Alignment Indicator mod.  I remember doing my first successful docking unaided, then I must have forgot what I exactly did as I started having trouble, then lately I've been completely screwing up docking, with my ships flying off in all directions, having to use MJ to finish it. That little mod added the missing piece to docking--the direction of the target's port axis.

Yeah, that's an absolutely brilliant mod.  It's a marvel of simple design, and is practically a Zen koan on "how to do more with less."  It's especially impressive if you actually go and look at the mod's source code-- the whole dang thing is just a few dozen lines of code, there's practically nothing there!

The author of that mod is my personal hero.  This was the first mod I ever installed in KSP, and it's still my favorite more than a year later, despite having played around with much bigger, fancier, "impressive" mods since then.  I've never seen anything that tops it.  It was the simplicity and effectiveness of this mod that inspired me to start writing my own mods-- "heck, if you can do something that cool with just that small amount of code, I wanna get in on this!"

The simplicity of that mod is what I aim for when I write a mod of my own.  I haven't been able to manage something quite as Zen as that yet... but I'm working on it.  It's good to have a goal. 

[FullMetalMachinist]

50 minutes ago, Snark said:

I haven't been able to manage something quite as Zen as that yet... but I'm working on it. 

I think your better burn time mod comes pretty close. It doesn't even add a new UI element, just adjusts the one that's already there. Pretty minimalist if you ask me. (which is a good thing) 

[Snark]

1 hour ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

I think your better burn time mod comes pretty close. It doesn't even add a new UI element, just adjusts the one that's already there. Pretty minimalist if you ask me. (which is a good thing) 

Thanks! 

It meets my personal "Zen standard" for minimalism, in terms of UI.  But it's got a lot of code under the hood; I haven't actually gone a-counting, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has ten times the code volume of Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.

Some of that is probably unavoidable-- it's solving a problem that's considerably more complicated than docking alignment, it pretty much has to be more code.  But I'm a newb at KSP modding, and the API is very sparsely documented (read: almost not at all), and I can't shake the feeling that if I really knew what I was doing I could write that mod with half the lines of code that it currently has.

But in any case, thanks for the props.    The reason the UI experience is as simple as it is, is that I was using Navball Docking Alignment Indicator as my touchstone, and kept asking myself "how can I make something that simple."  There was a lot of extra functionality I was tempted to wedge in there, but relentless application of the "Zen standard" kept it simple.  And I think that's a good thing; we already have KER, I don't want to try to write another one!

[Hysterrics]

The picture pretty much sums up how to preform orbital rendezvous.

But these ellipses, it's too much!

[Entropius]

On January 25, 2016 at 8:31 PM, Snark said:

@Entropius  <-- explicit tag to get his attention.  Good on ya!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/profile/104709-entropius/

 

Oh hi, thanks for the name-mention!  I probably should have noticed this post a month ago but I haven't been logged in for a while so I didn't notice it for a bit.  ><  

 

It's always nice to see the old rendezvous guide helping people, although I should probably mention I maintain an updated version of it here, and it's significantly more refined, not to mention I added 3 more efficient alternative techniques alongside it.

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2016 by Entropius