EVA in orbit?

[KrisjanisLiepins]

My kerbal has gone on EVA while his ship was in orbit around Kerbin. (It's still in orbit, just unmanned and uncontrolled now.)

When getting off the ship he lost it. When he finally figured out how to manoeuvre with his EVA suit's thruster pack, he tried to catch up with it but found it is impossible. Then he activated his parachute and tried to deorbit. And ran out of propellant.

"Huston, we have a problem!" he finally called.

Now we are planning a rescue mission as soon as the crew compartment will become available.

Meanwhile, could you share your experience with EVA in orbit, have you done it?

Edited May 7, 2019 by KrisjanisLiepins

[Snark]

Hello, and welcome to the forums! 

8 minutes ago, KrisjanisLiepins said:

Meanwhile, could you share your experience with EVA in orbit, have you done it?

You didn't exactly ask a question about "how to play the game", but this seems pretty close, so I've taken the liberty of going ahead and moving this to Gameplay Questions.

Going EVA in orbit is a pretty common experience, I think just about everyone does it.

However, like so many things in KSP, it's also kinda tricky when you're new, so you've got lots of company there, too-- many people have trouble with this. 

The important principle when doing EVA is to take it easy.  Don't over-thrust.  It's really, really easy to thrust too much, because kerbal EVA thrusters are ridiculously over-powered, and then suddenly you're flying all over the place.

So, a good strategy to use is, just use tiny little baby taps.  Don't press-and-hold the EVA thruster controls.  Just give them the briefest, tiniest little taps, so that your speed relative to the spacecraft is always very slow.  And the newer and more inexperienced you are, the slower you need to go.  Try to keep your speed under 1 m/s relative to the ship for starters, using only the quickest, briefest taps on the controls.  You want to be slowly drifting around your ship, not zooming.

[fulgur]

Also, you can use [V] to change the camera position, so the kerbal EVAs in a different direction relative to the surface. I find this helps sometimes.

[bewing]

When you EVA, make sure to either doubleclick your ship to set it as your target. Or, if you forget and your distance gets too large -- go into map mode and select your ship as a target from there. Then set your navball to Target mode.

If you are at less than 10km separation, you can always catch back up to a ship, just so long as your target velocity is less than 150 m/s or so. Just point your camera straight at your ship, click the spacebar to reorient yourself according to the camera, hit W to get some decent positive speed, and then readjust as needed. Keep in mind that the Kerbal's helmet is forced to point North (in almost all camera modes), so the only way to move North or South is by using Shift/Ctrl.

If you are at more than 10km separation from your destination, you have to treat the Kerbal as a ship with no SAS. Put your navball in "orbit" mode, move your camera until it's looking prograde, hit the spacebar to reorient, then thrust prograde or retrograde with W/S to adjust your orbit so that you will catch up with your destination.

 

 

[FloppyRocket]

I've never heard of the "hit spacebar to reorient" trick.

Is that documented somewhere?

[Daniel Prates]

Also, if you are having difficulty tracking the sky to find your ship (always difficult, specially at night), hit F4. It will put a highlighted tracking bracket on all nerby vessels and make it way easier to spot them.

[Shmauck]

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 9:43 PM, bewing said:

...click the spacebar to reorient yourself according to the camera...

Holy mother! Is that how you do it?

 

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 9:29 PM, fulgur said:

Also, you can use [V] to change the camera position, so the kerbal EVAs in a different direction relative to the surface. 

And this?

Can't wait to get home to try these out. 

[Guest]

I still have troubles and I have landed on every planet! But this will probably work out well

[FloppyRocket]

On 5/8/2019 at 3:41 AM, Daniel Prates said:

Also, if you are having difficulty tracking the sky to find your ship (always difficult, specially at night), hit F4. It will put a highlighted tracking bracket on all nerby vessels and make it way easier to spot them.

Wow, I have never heard of that trick either. Thanks!

[Daniel Prates]

54 minutes ago, FloppyRocket said:

Wow, I have never heard of that trick either. Thanks!

Oh don't get me started. Specially in the dark, its impossible to see around you. And since, for space at least, even the small distance of 1km is enough for a target to look very small, some help is crucial.