Docking Questions

[Firedtm]

well since the last time I have posted i got a Core of my station in to space at about 200 km, now the problem is trying to get the things to dock to it

the closest I came is about 1.2 km.

is there any better docking tutorial then the ones on the wiki part of the site ?

[Westo454]

Try youtube, search KSP Docking Tutorial. Scott Manley Has a pretty good one.

[Peenvogel]

Docking is hard... and can never be done by hand! At least, that is what I believed two weeks ago. It takes a lot of patience to get it right and even more practice to get it spot on every time.

helped me a great deal. Also I remapped the RCS control to the numeric keypad, which made things a lot easier for me. I now use the 4, 8, 6, and 2 for left, up, right and down. 7 and 1 for forward an backwards. Also, for the sake of practice be sure to use a light command pod 'cause these are way easier to control than the remote guidance units.

Hopes this helps! Good luck!

Oh yeah, one last thing... watch your speed! It's easy too go to fast and over- or undershoot the target.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Peenvogel

[Pursuedtank]

This is Scott Manley's tutorial for 0.18 but should still work fine in 0.19.

The key is to keep trying. You will get it eventually.

[DrewBox]

Im having trouble selecting my target. in the orbit view its really close to a peice of debris. is there a way of having debris no show up? or getting rid of it all together? Im finding that space just starts to clutter kerbin orbit pretty fast.

[Firedtm]

thank you for the replies and the two links, i will report back later on my station

[Unistrut]

The thing that makes or breaks docking is careful RCS placement. If the ship your attempting to dock with doesn't translate / strafe / slide sideways well you'll make your life infinitely harder. When you're building your rendezvous ship check the center of mass for the bit that's going to dock and make sure you've got your RCS about equidistant around that center of mass. Also - only use four way symmetry, turn on snap to face, and make sure your RCS are top / bottom / left-side / right-side - this is so that when you try and translate your thrusters aren't pointing off at strange angles. If you need extra oomph because you're trying to push around a fat orange rocko tank then add two more sets of four-way symmetric, don't go for the eight way symmetry. When you're first trying to dock there is almost no way to have too much RCS gas.

Now, closing that last mile. Make sure you've aligned your orbital planes - if you don't know how to do that, ask and I'll go into more detail. Get into an orbit that's co-planar, and about 5km above or below your target, whichever is necessary to catch up or let your target catch up with you. Just remember "You take the high road, I'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland before ye!" Higher orbits are slower.

Wait until you get close to your target and your navball switches to "Target" instead of "Orbit". Wait until you get within about 10Km. Now, the prograde and retrograde and velocity markers on the navball are relative to your target. Burn retro until your velocity is close to zero. Now, burn towards your target. You'll need to adjust as you go. You can try and use RCS translate, but it's usually easier to just turn and burn. Burning causes the prograde marker to move towards your heading and the retrograde marker to move away from your heading. So if your prograde marker isn't lined up with the target marker, draw an imaginary line from the prograde, through the target marker and then put your heading on that line and burn. Your prograde indicator will move towards your heading and be pulled onto the target - meaning you are now moving towards your target.

Watch your speed. It's far too easy to go way too fast. I usually aim for a speed equal to my distance in km x 10 in M/s. So if I'm 5Km away, go 50 m/s. Once you get to 4Km slow to 40m/s. Slowing down gradually gives you a chance to figure out how well this thing stops and handles before you're way too close. Once you get closer than about 500m you can start using the translate controls (I've never bothered with the special docking controls) to adjust your heading. Once you get within 50-100m or so right click select a docking port. Now your target and prograde markers are relative to that docking port. Try to get your ship on-axis with the port and then gently thrust forward. Like ... 0.2m/s gently. Once you get close enough you'll start getting pulled forward. Sometimes they just immediately dock, sometimes they flail around a bit first.

Don't forget to put a headlight on the ship you'll be docking with! You'll thank me when you rendezvous in the middle of the night or the docking port is in shade.