How did you learn how to rendezvous and dock?

[Fox Arcana]

It took alot of Mechjeb before I tried it myself.

How did you learn?

[AustralianFries]

I figured it out myself, in all honesty. I had rendezvoused a few times in .16 and .17, so when .18 came out it wasn't too bad (especially with the new nav ball nodes). I watched a few videos here and there to get a more efficient way of doing it, but the first time I did it I hadn't seen any gameplay footage or tutorials of .18.

[TheRabbit]

I tried to copy Scott's launch angles for the Reuseable program. Then I learned to slow down, then slammed the two docking ports together.

[lammatt]

scott manley

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and of cos...

a lot of crashing/ bumping into each other which turned them into a spin

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well...once you managed to recover and successfully dock from those bump-into-spin situation a few times

you can do the docking fairly easier in normal circumstances

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the trick is that you need to build you RCS well

ie... when you JKLIHN it doesnt rotation or change heading; and when you WASD it doesnt move literally

Edited July 26, 2013 by lammatt

[fatfluffycat]

Scott Manley and Mechjeb

[DisarmingBaton5]

I sort of figured it out using manuever nodes.

[nAssailant]

I learned it from trial and error, mostly. Prior to .18 I had rendezvoused several times in Kerbin orbit with several craft (mostly just to see if I could do it). I wasn't very good at it until watching Scott Manley explain it a few times right when 0.18 came out.

I never really thought it was difficult, and just like when I learned to orbit or get to and from the Mun it only took a few attempts before I finally understood how to do it. Perfecting it, however, took a few hours and several destroyed Space Station solar arrays.

[regex]

Chickenkeeper24, some text tutorials, and a lot of practice.

[mythbusters844]

Watching a lot of videos of Kurt docking, practice, and a few tutorials.

Also, does anyone here use "retro rockets" on their craft to slow down to their target instead of turning a giant craft around to slow down?

[deadshot462]

I played Orbiter first so that was not fun to learn docking with. Watched a bunch of YouTube videos (had to pause and rewind a lot to understand). A lot of trial and error, where I'd zoom by my target at 500 m/s, there's no collisions on Orbiter so I went through the ISS multiple times without destroying it. I'd imagine if I had learned docking in KSP first, I would have blown the target and my own ship when "approaching" for the first time.

[Bothersome]

I did it the hard way about 10 years ago on a program called Orbiter. Figure out those computer readout displays and trial-n-error to see what the burn maneuvers were actually doing to my craft. Then it just clicked. It's an easy thing to do once you get your mind wrapped around what needs to happen. KSP has always been a walk in park compared to Orbiter.

[Fleb]

I struggled with rendezvous, watched a couple of vids, but it it took a lot of trial and error to sink in. I learnt how to dock building this thing.

It took me ages to get those fuel tanks connected.

Most important thing I learnt, make the RCS balanced!

[TheHockeyPlayer]

In all honesty, I learned to dock and rendezvous from Scott Manley (that man's a genius!). When I began to do it, I let MechJeb do all the hard work. Eventually, I learned from MechJeb and started to do the rendezvous manually, then the docking. Since then I've been doing everything manually, with MechJeb no where to be found.

[Jarin]

Entirely through trial-and-error. It's probably the one thing I'm truly proud of in my KSP career. I figured out docking without autopilot or tutorial.

[Themohawkninja]

Initially through a lot of trial and error (I didn't know there was a magnetic force, so I kept trying to jam them together, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong), and then I saw a video on how to do it correctly (I think it was Danny's, but it might have also been Scott Manley's), and now I've just been perfecting it (I just docked my shuttle with my space station, and landed the shuttle on the runway!).

[spacetortoise1]

I taught myself, I learned how to rendezvous messing around with the maneuver nodes. Docking was pretty straightforeward, although at first I would do it haphazardly, spinning & turning wildly before I learned to use the docking mode. Now I can do it in no time with a balanced craft.

[Brotoro]

I already knew the theory. But as for the practicalities of how to do it in KSP, I learned much from watching Stomp Thompson's videos.

[Flixxbeatz]

Figured it out by myself after knowing what does the additional markers mean and how maneuver nodes and markers work. Took alot of time though, I learned it myself since I don't have time to read walls of text and/or watching 20+ minute commentaries designed to bombard your brain with unnecessary information and additional mathematical formulas about rendezvous and docking.

Read abit, though. Abit.

[Son of Hicks]

Wanting to do an Apollo munar mission, I read up on it on the wiki, launched the mission, and failed miserably. Several times. Finally my first successful docking was over Minimus, where I learned that the trick is to be in a lower orbit and raise your apoapsis to intercept a ship in higher orbit, then accelerate to circularize. Later, I learned that you need to do 99% of all maneuvering with your main engines, and use RCS to fine-tune your approach inside the last ~100m.

[Brabbit1987]

I watched lots of Scott Manley long before I ever even looked up the game. I learned a lot from his videos, so knew how to do most things before even owning the game.

[Superfluous J]

Lots of fuel and lots of near misses at 30 meters per second. And one not-so-near miss. Actually a collision.

Then a lot of thinking and looking at the navball, and suddenly understanding how it worked.

[TheDarkStar]

I learned to dock on my own during 0.16 or 0.17. I saved a Kerbal in Minmus orbit; later, I saved one in Kerbin orbit. Docking without maneuver nodes is easy with practice, but it takes a bit more time.

[Kimberly]

I didn't really feel the need to dock until I had already done a lot of other stuff, so a rendezvous was no real problem for me; maneuver nodes got me there. With a bit of trial and error I got to within 50 meters. It all went wrong when I tried to use RCS, but then I figured out that you don't really need RCS to dock, so I ended up docking with my main engine and that worked out alright.

[MR4Y]

I never learned how to do so.

[Robbii6]

Through countless hours of trying