I just can't seem to dock.

[Frederf]

I recommend at 500m you close quite deliberately, something like 10 meters per second for every kilometer separation. This puts you on a "hundred seconds" collision. Do it again when you're most of the way there and repeat. 100 seconds collision speed will get smaller as you get closer. At 100m or so, stop, then dock.

Slower docking closures are nice if you want to think about the orbital mechanics in the proper sophisticated way. If you just want to focus on "I'm going toward it" then you can't take too long.

[miketheveeg]

my fav tip is no rushing..

i have found that i will do a lot more orbits now as I am running stock, no mechjeb or anything

ship already in orbit we'll call B

2nd ship we'll call A

put B with the docking port facing UP (like facing the north pole) so it revolves around it's own center

ship A will be facing down (towards south pole)

this eliminates the constant chasing of the ports

that is of course if you have already ship A in a pretty close orbit to B

good luck.. it takes a lot of practice and patience but major joy joy feelings when you do get that dock

remember take time and small adjustments

[ElRageO]

Well I got mechjeb 2 and man does it make things easy So if you dont want to do it the hard way get mechjeb 2 and use the rendezvous autopilot. Not the 1.9 but Mechjeb2 will get you within 100m.

You can learn quite a bit from watching it as well.

@ Nurph Thanks

[dlmarti]

Well I got mechjeb 2 and man does it make things easy So if you dont want to do it the hard way get mechjeb 2 and use the rendezvous autopilot. Not the 1.9 but Mechjeb2 will get you within 100m.

You can learn quite a bit from watching it as well.

@ Nurph Thanks

I have nothing against mechjeb, but I will say that once you get good at docking you can do it much quicker than it.

Just relax, and play with it, it DOES get easier.

[innovine]

Here's my recipe for rendezvous and docking.

Start with ship A, the destination/target, and launch it along the 90 line into an equatorial orbit. make the orbit circular at 100km. These instructions also work for other orbits but a few more steps might be needed somewhere. Mostly with in- and outwards burns.

Wait with ship B until A passes directly overhead. By the time you get to orbit, A will have moved ahead of you by 30-45 degrees. The goal here will be to maintain a smaller, faster orbit for a few orbits, and close that distance. If you end up ahead of the target, the opposite applies, ou make your orbit a little bigger, so you are slower and orbit in a longer time, then on each orbit the faster target is allowed to catch up with you.

After launching ship B, fly as usual until your Ap just goes a few km above 100km. Turn off the engine. When you get to Ap, raise your Pe to about 75-80km. You are now in a smaller, faster orbit, so will start to catch up.

Set ship A as your target. You'll see two nodes appear, An and Dn (ascending and descending). These indicate where the planes of your orbits cross. Right click on the one ahead of you and add a little of the purple direction so you'll end up in the same plane as the target. Precision counts, so try get it neat as you can. Do the burn when you get to the node.

Now, as your Ap is a little higher, you'll see an intersection with ship A's orbit on either side of the intersection (one as your altitude goes up over 100 and one when it goes back down). If your Ap is close to 100, the intersection will be close to your Ap. So if you are at Ap and make your orbit circular, you wont change distance from the target any more...

Mouse over the intersect points and watch the separation... as you complete an orbit, the separation will decrease on the next intersect. This is because you are orbiting faster (due to the lower Pe), and so each orbit you'll catch up by a few degrees. If you burn prograde at Ap (make sure to select Orbit on the navball so you get your orbit prograde marker, not the velocity vector to the target) to raise the Pe, your orbits become more like each other, and so you'll catch up by a smaller amount. When you reach the next intersection point, you'll just be a short distance from the target and now ideally want to burn to make your orbits identical. You can do this with a maneuvering node (you can use a bit of inwards or outwards burn too) or simply select Target on the navball, point towards the target and burn...

Depending on your relative speed to the target, you either burn towards or away from it. Switch the navball to Target (you can forget all about your orbit from here on). Rotate so you find your relative velocity prograde marker on the navball, and also locate the target, and burn so that the velocity prograde moves to the target. It'll drift off slowly, so do a correction now and then (this is making your orbits identical). If you are closing too fast, turn the ship around and burn the opposite way. Position your nose so your retrograde marker is between the nose and the target retrograde marker and burn, you'll 'push' the velocity marker onto the target, aligning the orbits and decreasing your relative speed at the same time. Eventually you'll just drift on up to the target at a few m/s and can easily stop and start to float around it.

Note that it'll make docking much easier if the port you want to dock to is pointing north (the orbit normal, perpendicular to the orbital plane). If you approach from the orbit normal direction, the target will tend to rotate around the docking port, but the docking port will stay facing you. If you approach it from some other angle, the docking port will appear to rotate away from you all the time, so you'll need to translate and roll continuously to keep up with it.