Creative docking tricks.

[nhnifong]

I've been playing with ORDA and Erkle's mod lately and I love them.

I want to share with you a few things you can do with docking that I think are cool, and I hope you will share some ideas too.

1. You can make re-attachable small rovers which hang under your lander. When you are ready to land, decouple them from wherever you mounted them on your rocket (I put mine on the top) and then dock them under the rocket. when you land, the wheels will be just touching the ground. just un-dock and go exploring. when you are ready to go, just drive the rover under the rocket and press dock. And watch it hop up and connect.

2. You can bring re-configurable engines with you! Mount on the side of your rocket, a single atomic engine, and a single powerful landing engine, each with small fuel and rcs tanks, and rcs thrusters and mechjeb for control. detach and dock them in orbit. When you want efficiency, put the atomic engine on the bottom of the rocket, and when you want to land, dock the powerful engine on the rocket and leave the atomic engine in orbit!

3. You can rescue a weak lander by landing a powerful booster stage nearby with a docking node on top. assuming your lander has a docking node on the bottom, which the previous two suggestions also require, just carefully balance the lander on top of the booster stage, dock it, and use the assembled rocket to get to orbit.

[pebble_garden]

This is really brilliant stuff. I will have to try that mod. Thanks for the clever ideas!

[Tommy521]

I've considered the rover one but the rest of the ideas are awesome!

[MaverickSawyer]

I'll have to try this on the Mun with a new rover design I have. Skycrane, anyone?

[nhnifong]

I've never tried the third one. Honestly that's one of the hardest maneuvers I can think of in KSP. Those docking nodes are finicky and require perfect alignment. It's hard enough in freefall, but doing it under powered levitation is just going to be wicked hard.

[AmpsterMan]

1. You can make re-attachable small rovers which hang under your lander. When you are ready to land, decouple them from wherever you mounted them on your rocket (I put mine on the top) and then dock them under the rocket. when you land, the wheels will be just touching the ground. just un-dock and go exploring. when you are ready to go, just drive the rover under the rocket and press dock. And watch it hop up and connect.

If you don't mind, can you post some pictures on how to do this with a one seat pod? Right now My small lander consists of 1 pod, half tank and small engine. how would I be able to add a dockable rover to that?

[ash73]

OP - you could use that mod to attempt my satellite rescue challenge here - hardly anyone took it on!

[TouhouTorpedo]

I did some experiments with using docking clamps on land, and only ORDA has the right stuff for docking and undocking rovers/cargo on the surface. Unfortunately, ORDA doesn't detect objects on the surface yet though, so you'll have to align manually without the computers help. (I normally just put the clamp on a rotatron) but I have been told that is likely to change in a future version, since Hog wasn't originally expecting people to find other uses for it!

[nhnifong]

If you don't mind, can you post some pictures on how to do this with a one seat pod? Right now My small lander consists of 1 pod, half tank and small engine. how would I be able to add a dockable rover to that?

That's all I've got right now. There's a pod in the crane, and the rover. They were launched seperately, and the rover was driven under the crane and docked on the launchpad.

To do it all in one flight, you would need to use a mechjeb on either the ship or the rover, but beware, it cannot rotate evenly like a pod.

EDIT

Ok something like this

This is a real example of a ship with a rover that docks on the bottom where the wheels just meet the ground. Note the erkle clamps on the top and bottom.

If I did this again I would have made the rover have the pod and the ship have the mechjeb. either way rotation is a problem though.

Edited October 5, 2012 by nhnifong

[IvanTehFennec]

Yes I know, cheat menu, but I was just testing the concept.

[AmpsterMan]

-snip-

Wow! Those are really nice designs you have there. Really makes me thin of what can be possible in the future when docking is official