Orbital Rendezvousing

[BlazingAngel665]

How to: Beginner Rendezvousing

This is a guess and check tutorial for those who have no desire to do math after the get home from class. MechJeb is lovely and will help you get started, or you can use an orbit calculator just to get things going. Or be really amazing and do Stock minus plugins, So first off:

1. Launch: launch make it to orbit this is your target vehicle, try to keep the orbit as circular as possible and right on a specific auspicious orbit, like 90 degrees in any direction. This makes calculating burns much easier. Also altitudes with both apses above 120km will enjoy better time warp capabilities.

2. Launch rendezvous vehicle: instructions as above HOWEVER this vehicle MUST have an RCS system (essential) and a Thrust Vectoring Engine with a good tank and a half of gas. Also remember the bigger your vehicle the more impossible this becomes as precision control will eventually go out the window.

3. Orbit: Controlling the second craft enter as close an orbit as possible to the first ship. Inclination and position are less important right now just that your Apoapsis and Perapsis are with in an extremely tight tolerance (like .005 km)

1. To execute this step wait until you are at your perapsis, with you ship pointing at the green sign in your navball (the one without an X in it, called your direction of travel, I call it DOT) do a prograde burn to raise your apoapsis to the same as your other ship.

2. Now, time warp to right before your apoapsis.

3. Quickly move your ship back towards the same green icon as before, and do another prograde burn to raise your periapsis to the same as your apoapsis.

4. In completing these steps it helps to use long duration burns at very low levels, otherwise you won\'t be as precise as you need to be.

4. Align orbits: Alright, the usefulness of MechJeb if you want to cheat, and haven\'t already been using it, Either use the only functioning piece of the Rendezvous Module and align your orbits (this piece works suprisingly well for how badly the rest of the Module fails) or use Smart A.S.S and set it for Normal or anti-normal and do short burns at the points where your orbit intersects your target orbit.

1. The point you are looking for can be found like this, in the map rotate the camera is level with the target orbit, and it looks like a straight line, the where the other orbit crosses it like a really misshappen X do your short low power burns till your orbit works

2. If you DIDN\'T bring MechJeb with you, more power to you calculate you Normal by moving 90 degrees right and 90 degrees up from you DOT, your anti-normal is just opposite your Normal on your navball

5. Sync: Now raise you apoapsis by 20km, and accelerate time until your ship is very close to the place your target in it\'s lower orbit. This will take a potential forever if you are far apart which is the benefit of a high orbit (better time warp)

6. Re-align apoapsis: Now you are very close so wait until you get to your periapsis which should still be exactly on the orbit of your target and do a retrograde burn to lower your apoapsis to the point where it is circular.

1. To do a retrograde burn point your ship toward the green icon with a X in it this is exactly opposite your DOT

7. Great time to jettison your almost spent fuel stages, this makes maneuvering much easier. Turn off SAS and ASAS if you brought them, and Use MechJeb to lock your ship in a way that leaves the RCS controls in a way that makes sense to you, then turn on RCS and maneuver to your target slowly. Congrats, you have successfully rendezvoused

WAIT!!!! What if I didn\'t rendezvous? Well a burn might have been off, or you need to wait longer, this meathod has insane amounts of waiting involved, and no math so high efficent meathods have been disregarded in the intrests of simplicity. Also occasionally your altitude change burn in step 5 you can mess up your orbital allignment, just repeat step 4. Didn\'t work for you? Tell me please.

I disclaim any credit for dead/stranded/crazy/sandwicheating kerbals which might result from following these directions. . .