Docking

[7499275]

Wow, that's all I can say at this point is wow... After playing this game since .18 and its now 1.2 I always thought docking was that hardest part of this game. Well, docking and the rendezvous before that. After playing my first true career game for about 3 hours I managed to get docking down! Still can't rendezvous without the help of mechjeb doing a hohmann transfer to the target craft but I am feeling pretty proud of myself after playing for so long finally being able to dock two craft on my own! 

How long did it take everyone else to get down docking by hand? Also anyone have tips for rendezvous with another craft?

 

(yes I was feeling strongly enough about this to make a post just to share my excitment over being able to dock finally lol)  

[LordKael]

26 minutes ago, 7499275 said:

Also anyone have tips for rendezvous with another craft?

I watched a Scott Manley video about docking, and then watched EJ_SA on Twitch to learn how to rendezvous. Took me a good couple hours to do the first manual docking, but that was because I put the MJ part on the wrong side of the decoupler, and the craft was crazy unbalanced. After that, I decided to get good at docking, and have discovered a couple really handy tricks:

1) Always switch over to the other craft ( [ / ] ) and select "control from here" on the target docking port, target the docking port of the primary ship, and then switch back and dock. This will keep the target vessel oriented correctly, and makes docking immensely easier. Of course, this only works with smaller vessels, such as a service module for an Apollo style mission.

2) Use RCS only for translation. Add an extra reaction wheel to the craft, and let the computer handle the rotation. Even in stock KSP, the computer can help a ton by keeping the relevant docking ports lined up and facing each other. Then you just have to translate into the correct approach and cruise in.

3) When building a station or a modular ship, start with the heaviest piece first, not just the center piece. Having the vessel you're docking to weigh more than what you're controlling makes the process go much smoother. 

Hopefully some of those tips will help you continue to master this element of the game!

 

[HoloYolo]

It took me about 50-75 hours myself, I forget how long. I self taught myself and watched some Scott Manley videos.

[Gianni1122]

I must have reloaded hundreds of quick saves trying to rendezvous and dock in the past. It took me quite a long time to get it down.

These two mods offer a docking "camera" of sorts. It makes docking infinitely easier, more convenient and even a bit more realistic in my opinion:

 

[DunaRocketeer]

I can still remember my first docking - I can remember my heart pounding as the distance between the two craft diminished. It was probably an even greater feeling of accomplishment than landing on the Mun, because it meant that the rest of the solar system was now within reach.

As for tips, I've got a few:

- For smaller vessels, individually pointing them at each other so that you don't need to do too much translation/orientation and wasting monopropellant.

- For large vessels, using the verniers is often a good way to go; more efficient, more powerful, and you have one less fuel type to worry about.

- During final approach, switch camera view to 'locked', it will align the camera to the spacecraft's orientation, which avoids those confusing moments when you want to move upwards, only to find that 'up' for the ship is different than 'up' for the camera, and you float off in a completely different direction.

- This is more of an assembly, rather than docking tip: In order to keep parts count under control for large stations/vehicles, think about using little 'docking drones' - essentially just a probe core, SAS module, monoprop tank, RCS thrusters and a docking port. If you stick a couple of little docking ports onto your large modules and attach docking drones to them during assembly, it'll save you from having to duplicate all that hardware for every module that you're attaching.

- Lastly, keep practising!

[nascarlaser1]

My first "docking" (if it can be called that) was a few months ago. I was using a claw to dock with a stranded ship. I hit the ship at 20 m/s.  I got attached but it glitched and went through the craft .....

[RX2000]

3 hours ago, 7499275 said:

Still can't rendezvous without the help of mechjeb doing a hohmann transfer to the target craft but I am feeling pretty proud of myself after playing for so long finally being able to dock two craft on my own! 

I think docking is harder than rendezvous, so you should be able to do that by yourself too.

Instead of straight up Hohmann transferring like Mechjeb does (which can be pretty difficult to eyeball) I usually end up getting into a little higher or lower orbit than my target (depending on if its in front of or behind me in its orbit) & then just time warping until we're extremely close, then burning from there to close in.

[NSEP]

MechJeb taught me how to rendez-vous and dock. My first attempt was probably last summer, but it failed because the docking magnets did not work )-:<

[Magzimum]

4 hours ago, 7499275 said:

How long did it take everyone else to get down docking by hand? Also anyone have tips for rendezvous with another craft?

I think it was about 30 minutes for me - as long as it takes to do the training. (I cannot remember if I messed up the training so bad that I had to restart it - it may have been closer to 60 min...)

Did you play the training too, or did you prefer to figure it out yourself? 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Magzimum

[Allocthonous]

Most of my problems with docking come down to being in the wrong camera mode when I try it, these days. Nothing more frustrating than seeing that your ship needs to go left, applying left RCS, and having the ship on screen move right instead.

 

For rendezvousing, place a maneuver node. Add enough delta v to the node to produce an intersect between your orbit and the target orbit, then drag the maneuver node forwards or backwards until your target position at intersect is fairly close (less than 10k for Kerbin SOI, certainly). You may need to increase or decrease the burn time on your maneuver node as you move it if one or both of the orbits involved is not circular. Depending on how close in size the orbits are, you may need to right-click on your maneuver node and move the node forwards by a few orbits (the right-hand button).

Once you've made that burn, warp to about 1/8th of an orbit before the intersect point. Switch to target mode on your navball. Face anti-target. You should see the retrograde vector indicator somewhere in the vicinity of the anti-target indicator. Draw an imaginary line going from the anti-target indicator to the retrograde indicator, and point your spacecraft at a spot on the line past the retrograde indicator. Apply gentle thrust so that the retrograde indicator moves towards alignment with the anti-target indicator. While doing this, observe the target distance at intersect. It should be going down as you apply thrust. When it stops, cut thrust and wait for a while until the retrograde indicator moves out of alignment again, which it will naturally do as you move around the orbit. Repeat until you reach the desired target distance at intersect. It's entirely possible to have that distance be 0.0.

(You can do this using RCS, as well, but I like using the main engines. It drops the relative speed at intersect some on the way to rendezvous, which simplifies that step a bit.)

From there, wait until you've almost reach the intersect point, then apply thrust pointed at the retrograde marker until your relative velocity is 0. Again, you can make fine adjustments by pointing your ship so that the retrograde marker is between your thrust vector and the anti-target marker. I usually manage to drop in to rendezvous at less than 100m using this method.

As you do this a few times, around different celestial bodies and at different orbital heights, you can start to get a feel for what kind of corrections will need to be made when. Larger orbits are easier.

[Vanamonde]

Everybody is different. I succeeded in docking the first time I tried, and flew rendezvous many times back before we had navigational aids such as maneuver nodes and closest approach markers. But I still struggle to make SSTOs that work. 

[Palaceviking]

I've been playing since 1.1 and had docking down by 1.1.3- too much ksp time methinks 

[Garrett Kerman]

I actually put off docking for awhile. In fact I spent ~ 700,000 funds launching a massive station to minmus orbit because I couldn't dock. It took me ~30 min to get down docking. However, I still have to orient my stations so I can dock (mostly)

[HoloYolo]

Just now, Garrett Kerman said:

I actually put off docking for awhile. In fact I spent ~ 700,000 funds launching a massive station to minmus orbit because I couldn't dock. It took me ~30 min to get down docking. However, I still have to orient my stations so I can dock (mostly)

You shouldn't be orienting your stations in my opinion, unless the station is the thing docking. The docking craft should be the one that orients.

[Garrett Kerman]

36 minutes ago, HoloYolo said:

You shouldn't be orienting your stations in my opinion, unless the station is the thing docking. The docking craft should be the one that orients.

I orient both. The docking ports on both craft line up.

[HoloYolo]

9 minutes ago, Garrett Kerman said:

I orient both. The docking ports on both craft line up.

Makes sense. Just sounds weird that you have to orient a station, do what you want.

[Draco T stand-up guy]

7 hours ago, 7499275 said:

Also anyone have tips for rendezvous with another craft?

1. Target the craft that you're going to rendezvous with. This will allow intersect information to be displayed
2. Use a manoeuvre node to plan a Hohmann Transfer to the orbit of the target moving the manoeuvre node and manipulating the direction and amount of thrust to get intersect distance down to less than 2km - preferably less than 1km
3. Use a second manoeuvre node to plan a burn to make your orbit the same as the targets
4. Switch between both craft and set the targets as the docking ports and both ships are controlled from those docking ports. This means that you can use the target indicators in the HUD to align the docking ports

After that it's just a case of using RCS to bring your craft to the target craft.

 

Really, never forget your RCS as docking two ships on main thrusters alone is a real PITA.

1 hour ago, HoloYolo said:

Makes sense. Just sounds weird that you have to orient a station, do what you want.

It's much easier to orient both.

[razark]

I watched someone's video on rendezvous and docking, followed the instructions, and nailed it on my first attempt.

Turns out I didn't understand what any of it meant and ended up getting very lucky that first time.  After that, it took me many attempts to understand what any why things were happening before I managed to get another rendezvous.  Now, it's pretty routine.

 

The two best tools I've found for rendezvous and docking:

Docking Port Alignment Indicator and Kerbal Alarm Clock.  Once you're close, DPAI lets you dock without needing to even see the two ships.  All the information you need on one simple screen.  To get close, KAC is awesome.  Open the Add an Alarm screen, switch to the Closest Approach tab, and you've got the closest distance and when it happens.  RCS on fine control, and you can get rendezvous to less than ten meters.  Set an alarm, SAS to target retrograde, and it's done.

Edited December 5, 2016 by razark

[Sharpy]

Docking with badly designed craft can be a hell. But if the craft is neat... eh, docking the dinghies to the base nowadays... Instead of orienting the craft straight ahead from the port, a good way out, by the book - yesterday, approached the base right from the bow, stopped by the containers, disembarked (leaving the dinghy floating without control 2 meters away), shuffled through the KAS containers in search of something that provides a node, found a COStrut and pocketed it, boarded the dinghy, weaved my way between the huge solar panels, stopped by the narrow core section, disembarked, attached the COStrut to the engineer's cabin squeezed between two huge relay antennas, detached the recovered capsule and attached it to the COStrut (with a kerbal inside!), then boarded dinghy again and kinda slipped along the crewed section. Then turned the dinghy perpendicular, to face the oncoming port, and burned a little towards the hull. Got captured and docked literally in lateral movement against the port.

And hardly touching RCS in the process too. I think I used it only to arrest last 0.2m/s when making my two stops along the way.

[LordFerret]

I watched one video, forget who's it was (maybe Scott Manley's?), and after that it all just clicked. Now, at this point, I can consistently rendezvous between 1000m to 500m separation... and a few of those times it was just too close for comfort. There's nothing like being spot-on target. The docking itself is a breeze, actually fun, with a docking camera.

This is all manual mind you, no MechJeb here.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I docked the first time I tried. I was "smart" enough (ie, read it somewhere) to build a simple well balance craft to practice just docking.

Rendezvous on the other hand... man I cursed like a madman until I understood what I was supposed to do and why.

And yes, docking is a ton of fun with docking cameras, no contest.

[Sharpy]

1 hour ago, LordFerret said:

I watched one video, forget who's it was (maybe Scott Manley's?), and after that it all just clicked. Now, at this point, I can consistently rendezvous between 1000m to 500m separation...

Heh, small separation is the easy part. How about relative speed? It's the delta-V that counts after all.

...yesterday I did a "rendezvous" in Eve orbit at <200m separation and about 1400m/s of relative speed. Absolutely on purpose and without even trying to slow down. Just to see what craft the stranded kerbal is in. If it was a normal craft, I'd fix my orbit for a much better rendezvous at periapsis, match orbits using the kerbal's jetpack and perform the standard rescue. But nope - the craft appeared to be an inflatable emergency shelter - not inflated. So - constructing a minimalist dinghy with ludicruous amounts of delta-V, engineer on board, "classic" rendezvous, attaching the pod, inflating it, then save, load (to update crew rooster and the kerbal to finally appear) and I could finally complete the rescue.

[LordFerret]

12 hours ago, Sharpy said:

How about relative speed?

That's what I was referring to with 'too close for comfort'. Meeting up with your spacestation, coming up on it fast, not realizing or paying attention to how fast, watching it grow bigger and bigger in the view, because it's pretty and all that... and then all of the sudden it's like, Whoa! Brakes!

Fun stuff.

[Aluminator]

My first time of docking, I had no idea I needed RCS trusters to do it.  So I had to  turn and twist and do small burns to allign.  But after 45 minutes of trying, I finally got my vessel aliigned and docked. Rendevous was a little tricky, but not the biggest issue.

[NSEP]

30 minutes ago, Aluminator said:

My first time of docking, I had no idea I needed RCS trusters to do it.  So I had to  turn and twist and do small burns to allign.  But after 45 minutes of trying, I finally got my vessel aliigned and docked. Rendevous was a little tricky, but not the biggest issue.

I once had to do the same thing too, but i instead ran out of RCS fuel. Pretty crappy challenge.