Rendezvous Tutorial

[luchelibre]

Another forumer suggested that I repost this in the tutorials section. I'm retreading some ground here, but this tutorial may be a bit more comprehensive for the bare beginner.

......

So we begin with your starting position. One ship at 80Km, and another at 100Km. The lower one is the one being controlled and is going to reach the higher one.

See the little blue ball about an inch ahead of my lower ship? That's where I'll start with the placement of my node. I'll be dragging it forward later, but I'm starting here.

Ok, node's up and ready to go.

All I've done here is drag the prograde marker on the node until the projected AP is about 100Km. Doesn't matter if nothing else matches up, just get that much done. For this simple maneuver, you won't need to touch the maneuver node again other than to drag it around the orbit line. Click and hold the node by its middle circle and drag it counterclockwise (the direction you're orbiting) around the blue orbit line.

This is what it looks like after dragging it ahead by about half the orbit. You'll notice as you do this that the projected rendezvous markers slowly get closer together as they circle ahead of the maneuver node.

See? Ok, now, what will likely happen is that you'll drag your node all the way around the orbit and get back to your ship. If you keep going, you'll notice that your markers go back to what they were when you started. This is because the markers only show what will happen on your current orbit. How to go farther? Use timewarp to orbit your ship farther along by an inch or two and then drag the node some more. You can do this all of this without getting rid of the node.

You'll notice my ships are farther along in their orbits. This allowed me to keep dragging the node far enough to get my markers very close together. Take note that it's the marker tips that must touch.

After timewarping to and doing the node burn, I then timewarped until my ships where about an inch before the rendezvous markers.

My target was projected (by the rendezvous markers) to pass me about 600 meters away. I'll want to begin the next step when the distance between me and my target is getting close to that point. I chose to begin at about 1100 meters.

I'm now going to eliminate the speed difference between me and the target. Notice I've got 'Target' in my navball. You bring that up by clicking that small space until it shows the word. You'll notice I'm pointed toward the negative relative velocity marker. Finally, you see I have to kill about 20m/s of velocity.

This is what I'm left with after a short low-power burn.

Now I want to get closer to the target. I'm pointed at the target ship marker. I'll make a short burn toward it. I've chosen to go about 10m/s toward it.

I've made my burn and have started to turn back toward the negative relative velocity marker so that I can cancel out the speed difference again once I get very close.

Once I got close enough, I did a short burn against the negative velocity marker (NOT the one in the image, sorry) and the image is what I'm left with. I think you can maneuver from there with the RCS system.

Edited August 15, 2013 by luchelibre

[HeadHunter67]

Thank you for helping teach people the fine art of rendezvous.

[Specialist290]

Nicely done! This is definitely one for the Drawing Board

[luchelibre]

Thank you. Glad to help.

[Tank Buddy]

Yes this is very good, I tried it myself. It may just be my method, but on the final approach, I open the map and thrust towards the target until the intercept node is 0.0 km and moving closer to me, then cut velocity so it requires very little adjustment.

Also, how do you create these tutorial/scenarios, I would be interested in making a follow up docking tutorial!

[Apollo13]

Also, how do you create these tutorial/scenarios, I would be interested in making a follow up docking tutorial!

Here's an example interactive Docking tutorial:

Blizzy's Docking Tutorial

Note: I'm not trying to guide folks away from luchelibre's rendezvous tutorial. But, after you rendezvous, ya gotta dock.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Apollo13