How long did it take you to dock ...

[Superfluous J]

The first time I tried docking, I had no clue what I was doing. I somehow managed to crash my two ships' fuel tanks together at about 50 m/s. I don't think I could do that again if I tried. After I stopped laughing, I did the responsible thing and used their RCS tanks to deorbit each ship. Yes, somehow the Kerbals survived the ordeal.

I successfully docked the next time, though it was more luck than anything else and it took maybe 30 minutes of orbital ballet to even get the shot at being lucky.

These days I can dock most of the time, so long as I don't get ahead of myself and keep each step simple.

[Keome]

My first docking attempt (.20 version, I'm kind of new) ... I figure I better take a lot of RCS fuel. I load up the biggest tank there is. Then add a second. I want to make sure it was enough. Lots of RCS thruster blocks. I want good control. I balanced it out so that things should go right. Right?

I ran out of RCS fuel.

[Flowz0r]

My first attempt was in anticipation of the update that actually added docking.

I basically spent about an hour trying to get four lander legs to wrap around a decoupler mounted on top of a small 1-man pod. I eventually succeeded, too.

[bainbridge]

I still can't dock, got within 100m. I can't get both ships on exactly the same plane.

[Pds314]

My first docking attempt succeeded, the trick is to rendezvous with the other ship, and then fly up next to it by just rocketing toward and then cancelling out momentum just before reaching it.

It took a ridiculous amount of RCS fuel and doubtlessly knocked the ship's altitude on the opposite side of the orbit by thousands of km, and it was nothing close to correctly angled, but it worked.

My first rendezvous was actually a rescue mission, which I then realized didn't have any extra space to store those being rescued.

My younger brother decided to put his satellite (space station) at a highly eccentric and inclined orbit, my rendezvous got to within 8 km, I then fired my SAS-stabilized missiles after burning all of my RCS fuel to kill my relative velocity to 12 m/s. Unfortunately, they aren't guided, so they missed by over 30 meters.

The ship is still in the highly inclined orbit, I should probably launch a rescue/extermination mission with better timing (that one was launch at the exact wrong time).

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

Took me over a month to dock, by that i mean i'd try once every two/three days or so, i'd attempt, fail, go and make a rover to send to Minmus, try again, fail, make a new space-plane, try again, fail, visit a planet, try again, fail and so on, because there are so many things to do with Kerbal i never really lost interest even if i did lose hope.

My first successful attempt was just luck, i got my ship within range as usual, and i was trying to align my docking ports, i'd inch ever closer, ever closer, just to sail by missing the target by a few millimetres and scraping my ship down the side of the other ship, eventually after pressing F9 about 68 times i just rammed the ship in a swivel-eyed rage hoping to smash it to pieces, but i somehow rebounded off it and then magnetism locked me in, i had docked, but it's the only new experience in Kerbal that did not bring me a sense of elation, just relief.

Now i can do it regularly, but it's very time consuming and i do not enjoy it, i made my space-station and i'm proud it's made of more bits than i could take up in one launch, but docking is a real pain in the a** for me.

Here's my noobish method operandi,

1. get ship into orbit

2. get my orbital inclination to be the same as my target's, by making the appropriate manouver at one of the yellow inclination nodes.

3. If my target is in front of me, i shorten my orbit so that i am traveling a little faster, if it is behind me, i lengthen my orbit so i travel a little slower.

4. Then comes some twiddling, i twiddle nodes and fast forward time until i have a close encounter with my target, for me anything around 20 km will do.

5. kill my speed relative to my target, turn around and point the nose of my ship at my target, thrust to get closer, turn around and kill my speed, thrust to get closer, turn around and kill my speed, thrust to get closer, and repeat till within 30 meters of target, then kill speed.

6. Press [ or ] to jump over and control my target, point the docking port on it that i wish to use at my original ship.

7. Press [ or ] again to retake control of my original ship, right click on the docking port of my target, set as target, thrust slowly toward it, no more than 3 or 4 meters a second and that's probably still too fast but i usually manage.

8. Jump repeatedly between my two ships making sure their respective ports are facing each other, every time remembering to right click the target docking port and setting it as target, it will not magnetically grab hold otherwise!

And that's it, an utter noobs guide to docking, you will find much better ways of docking than this but i put it here as a form of perspective in the hope it will help.

Edited July 9, 2013 by Custard Donut (In Space)

[Khrissetti]

Possibly the most frustrating was docking a full orange tank plus a docking ring (all stock) to my space station with just one ring of 3 RCS blocks around its CoG. I covered the last 50-100m at a 0.1m/s crawl.

[Felsmak]

I completed my first docking within maybe half an hour or so. However, it took a few attempts to perfect it and I didn't know about the IJKL keys at the time.

[CrazyCoco]

I got close. But I gave up. Maybe another day...

[Umlüx]

my first docking took about 15 minutes. it was time consuming, but not that hard

..but it took me hours to get a successful rendezvous i always overshot or couldnt match speeds.

[Tremzack]

My first "rendezvous" was back in 0.17, I got 11 kilometers close to Jebediah stranded in his fuel-deprived ship in low Duna orbit, I made Jebediah jump out of his ship and E.V.A. over to it, barely having enough fuel, and completing my first Duna landing mission

Back then Mechjeb couldn't do interplanetary injections, or rendezvou, so all it helped with was the getting into an exact low Duna orbit

Here's how much fuel I had left when I got to orbit....Good times

[RocketYeah]

Managed to dock on my first attempt by watching KSP 0.18 game play just before .18 was released. When I docked I was terrified I'd never be able to do it again so I left those two ships together for ages

[Arran]

Took me about 9 months before i know how too dock, and i allmost gave up on it ever too master it..

The docking manouvre itself once i was close too both ship wasnt the problem, but getting the rendevous done seemed to me at first nearly impossible..

Granted i knew nothing of real "simulated" spaceflight, nor of Homann transfers, orbital flights etc, so i had too learn it all from scratch..

Only spaceflight expierence i had in games was of how most populair spacegames handle spaceflight, so it took a while. Nowerdays i hardly even can be arsed too use mods like MJ and ORDA and do most stuff by hand..

I still have MJ installed, but notice i hardly use it anymore only time i use it, is too plan my Landing Node still, but even that i now slowly plan by hand as well, now i roughly know where too set start the langding manouvre.

[Martonaut]

I managed to dock the first time I tried it , I did rendevouz before, and at 0.17 docked with Orda, now Im lazy and I build my ships or stations with mechjeb while im working

[esinohio]

I completed my first docking within maybe half an hour or so. However, it took a few attempts to perfect it and I didn't know about the IJKL keys at the time.

This was what happened with me as well. I managed to get fairly close after some playing around with the maneuver nodes but was so excited about doing so well I neglected to even use the IJKL keys when bringing them together with RCS. No idea how my two capsules I was trying to dock didn't just explode with all the bumping around I was doing to them.

[Noticeably FAT]

and keeping Kerbal "down" so the ship moved how I expect.

You can use V to switch to chase cam, then UDLR is always the same on screen no matter where you are pointed.

[0x7be]

First time I tried to dock two ships (Noyuzes, as I remember) in 0.17. I've spent two days trying to do this, calculating rendezvous by hand.

As 0.17 didn't have docking functionality, I put four landing legs on one of ships so it could "grab" other one.

After encounter I spent some epic two hours trying to navigate ships one to another. After first ship ran out of RCS fuel, I switched to other and, finally, got "docking" with only about 10% of RCS fuel left.

My English is not good enought to describe my emotins after I've done it!

After that I've stopped playing KSP until 0.18

[Pulstar]

Too long, two hours of flying around the target station I think, still didn't quite grasp how I did it after the fact. Took me at least a dozen dockings to finally "get it". Now I'm doing rendezvous and docking under 3 or 4 orbits from launch easily. Biggest three problems were understanding exactly how the navball works, how to get close to the target and how to build a craft that can keep it's heading on ASAS in lateral translation mode without shaking all around

[kacperrutka26]

First time was a few days after 0.18, I had no RCS I docked with a nuclear engine. I was proud and I think I was one of the first people to do it (2nd if you count Scott Manley)

[roosterr]

It took a few days before I understood it, and once I understood it, it took me almost 2 hours to actually dock. And it got progressively easier every time after that.

I never did find one single video that covered it all, so watch as many of the popular ones as possible and compare the similarities and you may find a good tip from each presenter.

The key is to set your target as a target (always), orbit at a much lower altitude then the target to catch up to it (or much higher alt to slow down), maneuver node closer to it from there when you get closest approach, then use the navball on the close encounters to pro or retro bug (relative to TARGET) to match the speed of the target. Once you are less than 1 KM (stable), use RCS/docking mode to get you the rest of the way home.

It still takes me at least 1/2 hour from launch to dock.

Edited July 9, 2013 by roosterr

[roosterr]

Took me over a month to dock, by that i mean i'd try once every two/three days or so, i'd attempt, fail, go and make a rover to send to Minmus, try again, fail, make a new space-plane, try again, fail, visit a planet, try again, fail and so on, because there are so many things to do with Kerbal i never really lost interest even if i did lose hope.

My first successful attempt was just luck, i got my ship within range as usual, and i was trying to align my docking ports, i'd inch ever closer, ever closer, just to sail by missing the target by a few millimetres and scraping my ship down the side of the other ship, eventually after pressing F9 about 68 times i just rammed the ship in a swivel-eyed rage hoping to smash it to pieces, but i somehow rebounded off it and then magnetism locked me in, i had docked, but it's the only new experience in Kerbal that did not bring me a sense of elation, just relief.

Now i can do it regularly, but it's very time consuming and i do not enjoy it, i made my space-station and i'm proud it's made of more bits than i could take up in one launch, but docking is a real pain in the a** for me.

Here's my noobish method operandi,

1. get ship into orbit

2. get my orbital inclination to be the same as my target's, by making the appropriate manouver at one of the yellow inclination nodes.

3. If my target is in front of me, i shorten my orbit so that i am traveling a little faster, if it is behind me, i lengthen my orbit so i travel a little slower.

4. Then comes some twiddling, i twiddle nodes and fast forward time until i have a close encounter with my target, for me anything around 20 km will do.

5. kill my speed relative to my target, turn around and point the nose of my ship at my target, thrust to get closer, turn around and kill my speed, thrust to get closer, turn around and kill my speed, thrust to get closer, and repeat till within 30 meters of target, then kill speed.

6. Press [ or ] to jump over and control my target, point the docking port on it that i wish to use at my original ship.

7. Press [ or ] again to retake control of my original ship, right click on the docking port of my target, set as target, thrust slowly toward it, no more than 3 or 4 meters a second and that's probably still too fast but i usually manage.

8. Jump repeatedly between my two ships making sure their respective ports are facing each other, every time remembering to right click the target docking port and setting it as target, it will not magnetically grab hold otherwise!

And that's it, an utter noobs guide to docking, you will find much better ways of docking than this but i put it here as a form of perspective in the hope it will help.

A nice concise explanation, which is hard to do without going off into too much detail.

[0x7be]

8. Jump repeatedly between my two ships making sure their respective ports are facing each other, every time remembering to right click the target docking port and setting it as target, it will not magnetically grab hold otherwise!

MechJeb can automate this.

[chrischambers]

The first time? Good grief I've been trying for months. I've watched the videos, people make it look so easy. I managed to get within 6km one time! hah! I'm not cheating, or using Mechjeb or any other tool. I guess that's my problem.

I've been playing for about 5 weeks, and I still having issues with docking, I have used MechJeb, to help me get closer to my target, but I find it use a lot of RCS Fuel, so I am training, training and training, to get the hang of it.

[unitetoons1]

I could do dock very easily.. except for the bit where you had to align the orbits of the ships..... i can do it now though( i have had this game for a very long time. i think i got it in 0.15

[GalaxyGryphon]

i dont want to brag but the first time i was ready to dock (the day docking came out) i did it almost instantly when in range, i had already done it a million times in orbiter...