Rendezvous with the ISS

[Stogas]

I have never thought i\'d manage to pull this off.. All my earlier orbital rendezvous had failed.. I present you...

(My) The First-Ever Interkerbinal Space Station Rendezvous!

Original ISS post:

My new 'Interkerbinal Space Station', orbiting at ~85km above Kerbin:

Stock parts, except additional 'crewpod' from Damned Aerospace.

Having put up a space station in orbit and never having pulled a meet-up of vessels in orbit, i thought the new EVA stuff would be perfect for my first successfull rendezvous!

The full huge gallery can be seen here: http://imgur.com/a/Pi5O3

But the key moments are selected here:

First logged photo of the approach

Getting closer than 150m (where the label stops showing)

Decelerating

The captain of the ISS, Ronler Kerman, EVA\'s first for the famous handshake of the two captains

The M-1C captains, Macfry Kerman\'s turn

Moments after the handshake

The famous meeting of the so-called 'Four HorseKerbs of the Apocalypse'

Macfry boarding the ISS (addon: crewpod, http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=10138.0)

The four Kerbonauts having a ball (Macfry in the upper left corner of the screen)

Final bye-bye\'s

Semi-powered landing

Macfry gazing at the sky where the ISS should be

Criticism, suggestions and applause are all welcome!

Edited August 31, 2012 by Stogas

[VincentMcConnell]

[gmod]Yeah, real constructive Vince....chill out.[/gmod]

[Stogas]

I didn\'t intend to boast or anything.. It was meant as *my* first rendezvous. And the show-off stuff was just the writing style, sorry if I seemed a little.. narcissistic (is that the word?). Apologies, I just though this might\'ve been a fun way to post...

[A7k]

Way to sound like a condescending ass Vincent. I thought it was rather impressive. Thanks for sharing!

[patrickcanttype]

Well I liked it. Cool post format

[Vostok]

Way to sound like a condescending ass Vincent. I thought it was rather impressive. Thanks for sharing!

Agreed, both points. I particularly like the ladders on the station \'arms\', very nice.

I need to make a note and send my own space station of some sort into orbit sometime. Tip: the smaller extendable ladder makes a damn good antenna model.

[Vanamonde]

Other people have done it before. Everything has been done before. It\'s still fun when you\'re the one doing it for the first time.

[ElectroxSoldier]

Well, first rendezvous or not, it\'s the first rendezvous of the Interkerbinal Space Station, and it\'s damn awesome!

The pics are done in an epic way, it gives such a grasping story, I couldn\'t have done better .

I don\'t think Vincent wasn\'t being mean though, he thought you were saying as if you\'re the actual first person to do a rendezvous in all the people of KSP. Not his fault, anyone could comprehend that. The way to understood is; the First rendezvous of Stogas\'s ISS.

Anyway, I should continue my little new 0.16 roleplay thing I\'m doing, I\'m at the point where I head to the Mun with a 1-Manned pod, after training landing in the north pole with a prototype lander. Wish me luck!

[VincentMcConnell]

If he meant 'My' first rendezvous, then nothing I said applies. If he meant 'The' first rendezvous, that\'s a different story.

[RayneCloud]

Great job!

[Stogas]

If he meant 'My' first rendezvous, then nothing I said applies. If he meant 'The' first rendezvous, that\'s a different story.

Yeah, just a misunderstanding, no hard feelings

Also, thanks everyone for the comments!

[togfox]

Nice job. ANd all without mods to help the meet up.

[pebble_garden]

Congratulations on your first successful orbital rendezvous!

For what it\'s worth, I understood you weren\'t claiming to have achieved the first such rendezvous in the world, just for yourself. Many KSP players create their own personal space program narrative, which makes sense since there\'s no multi-player component.* And people should feel proud of their accomplishments. It is rocket science, after all.

The images you posted are quite dramatic. I love your sense of composition. The later shots remind me a bit of Chesley Bonestell\'s art from the 1950s.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but Kerbal Space Program is the most fun I\'ve had in ages. Best money I ever spent.

*This does give me an idea though! If two people have identical installs of the game (plain vanilla, or have exactly the same mods) could they share the persistence file and fly with the other participants orbiting craft in place? I\'ll have to post that question where it can get answered by the devs.

[theflyingfish]

Really well done. I like how you didn\'t rely on the pod\'s reaction wheels, instead putting RCS on the rendezvous module, just like the pros IRL. Really good ISS design, too.

[Redrumsalad]

I\'m actually really confused as to how you made the 'arms' of the space station. Any hints?

Great job on the rendezvous tho. I\'m hopefully gonna do my first as well.

[Stogas]

*This does give me an idea though! If two people have identical installs of the game (plain vanilla, or have exactly the same mods) could they share the persistence file and fly with the other participants orbiting craft in place? I\'ll have to post that question where it can get answered by the devs.

Take a look at this: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=16839.0

Is this what you\'re talking about? Though it\'s more of a surface base thing rather than the orbiting one you have in mind.

pod\'s reaction wheels

I don\'t really get what you mean, can you explain?

Edit: If you mean the command pod\'s gyroscope-SAS-thingy, then yeah, i didn\'t use that without the rcs blocks

I\'m actually really confused as to how you made the 'arms' of the space station. Any hints?

I\'m quite astonished i achieved that too - i took an empty plane fuselage, turned on four-way symmetry, and just clicked the sh*t out of that passenger crewtank

[MaxMurder]

Awesome! You\'ve completed one of the most challenging accomplishments in ksp! Once you get it down it\'ll become easy!

Next step is to build a survivable shuttle and get it to the ISS for a crew transfer. It is actually quite an interesting challenge to do because it has to fly in drastically varied conditions.

Preforming a crew transfer at the KALMAZ station.

[Stogas]

Next step is to build a survivable shuttle and get it to the ISS for a crew transfer. It is actually quite an interesting challenge to do because it has to fly in drastically varied conditions.

That is exactly what i\'m trying to do now, but I still have problems with getting a vertical liftoff design working: (I want it to be similar to the real NASA shuttle, but the fuel weights too much)

Note that this is one of the test flights, it may not be my best attempt

[MaxMurder]

Ya shuttle designs are pretty tough! and a IRL inspired launcher designs tend to fail.

The real key is symmetry. My launch design moves away from the belly mounted fuel tank and puts two tanks with large non-gimbling LFEs with a large SRB in the center below the orbiter. The engines on the orbiter are for steering, final orbit insertion and deorbit. It is a sound design which doesn\'t stray too far from the IRL shuttle\'s design.

The toughest part of the design is getting a stable reentry and landing. I shot for an unpowered decent and landing. It is very difficult to get a design that wont flip over during reentry and still be able to nose up for a safe landing. Manually flying a shuttle through reentry is probably one of the most thrilling moments ive had with ksp.

I don\'t have screenshots of the launch stage, but i will post them when i get home.

EDIT: Also you mite want to use the spaceplane hanger to build your shuttle. It will allow you to get a more stable orbiter design as you can use mirror symmetry. Just turn the Cockpit 90degrees when you are ready to launch.

[Stogas]

Thanks for the tips, looking forward to seeing your craft!

I haven\'t really built many planes, so I expected my shuttle building to take some time..

[MaxMurder]

As promised, the screens of ma shuttle.

Sitting on the launch pad runway.

The LFEs stay at low throttle until the solid booster burns out and is drops away. Then I throttle up and gain speed. This is a tense time for the kerbanaugts, as the most spectacular launch failures tend to occur at this point.

In orbit it has plenty of fuel for menuvering and deorbit. However, like the IRL shuttle it is only designed to operate in LKO.

The Shuttle will drop its RCS tanks before reentry.

The decent into the atomosphere is thrilling. At hypersonic speeds the craft will tend to flip backwards if it is facing to far from prograde. If it flips, control cannot be recovered and the crew only will survive if they deploy their drouge chute and pray they land in water. Im sure if reentry heat were implemented the craft would brake apart and explode in this situation.

Anyway, it is really rewarding when you complete your first crew transfer where everybody lives. It took me many test flights and kerbals to get to this point, but it was well worth it.

EDIT: Derp, i guess it would be best to attach the .craft file. Its all stock.

[YoshiFan501]

i need to learn how to rendezvous

[Galaxy613]

Yeah are there any really good tutorials in the How To section? I haven\'t ever tried it and I thought you pretty much HAD to have MechJeb or such to even consider it?

[leopardenthusiast]

Yeah are there any really good tutorials in the How To section? I haven\'t ever tried it and I thought you pretty much HAD to have MechJeb or such to even consider it?

Eh, I always assumed it was as simple as getting into a VERY SLIGHTLY lower orbit than your target and time warping until you\'re close enough. Then adjust your orbit to match your target. It\'s what I\'m going to do to supply my currently incomplete station once I work out the kinks with my rocket.

[MaxMurder]

Ive never used mechjeb....

I belive op mentioned some tutorials that helped him.

A few rules of thumb which are invaluable:

- Launch when the target\'s orbital path is directly overhead.

- It is easiest to align your orbital plane with the target at launch.

- If you are in a lower orbit than the target you will catch up to it.

- If you are in a higher orbit that your target it will catch up to you.