How to catch a ship to dock?

[Gary_P]

I've watched many videos showing me how to dock, but how do you catch up to the target ship? Or slow down? I have Mechjeb 1.9 just as an FYI.

It seems when I accelerate I move to a higher orbit. I tried slowing down but then I fall into a lower orbit.

Any help would be great. A video reference would be great too.

~Gary

[AustralianFries]

If it's in front of you, go for a slightly lower orbit. If it's behind you, go for a slightly higher orbit.

High orbit = slower. Low orbit = faster.

[Tangyboxhead]

I learned how to dock using this person's tutorial. take a look at it. here it is:

[WhiteWeasel]

BTW if your going to use his example craft, add some more fuel.

[Troberg]

Easiest way: Install MechJeb and see how it does it. Once you've seen it done a couple of times, you'll know how to do it.

[Flixxbeatz]

This might give you an idea. FF'ed for your convenience.

The first burn was an inclination match burn (setting both AN and DN to NaN/0). The next was the intercept burn. You've got to master using the maneuver nodes.

Happy docking!

Edited June 19, 2013 by Flixxbeatz

[Spyritdragon]

Understanding orbital mechanics is important. You stay in orbit because your speed continiously causes you to 'fall past the horizon', one could say. The more speed you have at the moment, the longer it will take for gravity to reduce your speed, and the farther your ship will fly out on the other side of its orbit.

Say you want to rendezvous with a ship that's a bit ahead of you. You'll want to put yourself in a lower orbit than that ship, this will go along with your ship moving faster. You will slowly catch up to the other ship. Once you get reasonably close, set the other ship as your target in KSP. Then switch to your staging view, click your speed indicator till it says 'target', and find the retrograde icon. This icon now represents retrograde relative to the other ship, so burn that way untill your relative velocity is zero. Burn towards your target ship, but don't go too fast. At some point you'll probably start moving away from them again, so burn retrograde again and repeat. After doing this once or twice, you should be able to dock with your target :-).

[Scarecrow88]

It's a bit of a paradox; in order to slow down you need to speed up and vice versa. Speeding up will make your orbit bigger, which takes longer to go round, thus slowing you down and of course the reverse is true. So if your target is in front of you, in order to catch him up, you need to slow down to make your orbit smaller.

I hope that makes sense.

[Sirrobert]

Upgrade to Mechjeb 2,0

I'm not sure if 1,9 does it, but 2,0 has rendevouz planner, which automaticly makes manouvernotes for you that set up a perfect intercept. Or you have the rendevouz autopilot, which simply does the whole thing for you. Good for observing how it is done in real time.

I started with the autopilot, after a while used the planner to make the notes, and I'm starting to do the whole thing myself now. It's a good learning tool

[capi3101]

Gemini 6A/7 tutorial on the wiki. It's a good way to learn docking.

AustralianFries has it on the nose.

[Gary_P]

Thank you all for the replies...

This is a good one too. I'm collecting all these to watch at lunch.

And All Scott's video's rock!

I have MechJeb but I'm just learning how to use it. I got the auto orbit to work, but I haven't figured out how to dock yet. I can't seem to take enough fuel up with me.

[Sirrobert]

Thank you all for the replies...

This is a good one too. I'm collecting all these to watch at lunch.

And All Scott's video's rock!

I have MechJeb but I'm just learning how to use it. I got the auto orbit to work, but I haven't figured out how to dock yet. I can't seem to take enough fuel up with me.

Yes, the docking autopilot is grossly inefficient

[Sauron]

Gemini 6A/7 tutorial on the wiki. It's a good way to learn docking.

AustralianFries has it on the nose.

When I was learning to dock, I found that tutorial to be rather unhelpful. I've found that docking with smaller craft (and ones with more than just RCS) tends to be a good bit more forgiving. Also, building your own docking targets is good practice for later--it teaches you about effective placement of RCS thrusters, etc.