Patience When Docking

[DrGonzo]

Hey all!

I just thought I would post a picture of my fueling station (as I'm calling it now). The main reason is because I've never felt a greater feeling of success in a game than docking without mods in KSP. Especially when I docked the giant three tank stack to my station. After almost eight hours of game play and nearly two hours of very subtle adjustments when within 100 meters of the target, just when I thought my ports were bugged, I switched to controlling from the station, made a very small SAS adjustment and wallah, it snapped to that glorious extended view that indicates docking.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

[Landge]

IMPRESSIVE SIR! That looks very familiar. Brings back memories of massive drops in frames per second when I was re-fueling my Jool Expedition Mothership.

It took 4 Fuel Tanker ships to refuel that beast in LKO before sending her to Jool:

Edited August 21, 2013 by Landge

[DrGonzo]

Wow! Nice man. I really like how symmetrical yours is.

I'm not sure what to do next. I've got a kerbal stranded on the moon (couldn't get him back in the ship) so I think I'll go rescue him tonight.

[Stankleberry]

I'm not sure what to do next.

Smash another spaceship into your fuel station as hard as you can.

[Landge]

Smash another spaceship into your fuel station as hard as you can.

lol! You just reminded me of how I used to dock before I knew how to dock.

I prefer to deorbit my stations just to watch them burn up. Well... watch the giant solar panels be ripped to shreds before lithobraking.

[leax256]

I like how the new sas has made docking easier for me. would like to point out pactience is not always key. i did manage to dock something while talking in under a min. I didnl't realise how fast i did it till today

[NoMrBond]

Sometimes if what you're trying to dock too isn't stable, a little haste can save a lot of trouble

Nothing worse than finally getting close enough to dock, but the target has spun off axis during approach

Of course, entirely possible to nudge (in some cases rather firmly, even catastrophically) the target and make it worse.

[bonyetty]

Quick quick F5 now man. Wow nice one, bigger than any station I've built. Some cred probably should go to the new SAS in 0.21 as I dont think anything like that would have been possible 0.20 or earlier.

[brienne]

Docking: most difficult achievement.

Congratulations!

"wallah": voilà?

[SkyRender]

Docking isn't really that hard, even with a stock game. You just have to have a solid grasp of what way you're going to move when you thrust. Intercepting might be tricky if you don't understand how it works, I suppose, but the actual docking process is only difficult if you just gun it for the docking port and don't bother orienting yourself correctly.

Besides, you can't make nifty stuff like this if you don't learn how to dock.

[Arran]

Docking never seemed too hard to me, till i tried to dock last night my New kethane Drilling unit back up to its station core. The Ship with 32000 units of kethane, weighting a massive 700 tons fully loaded, had one huge design flaw what came to notice on the final approach to dock..

It was seriously underpowered in RCS thrust, no matter how long i used my RCS trusters, i just coudn't get it into position, and it just kept gliding diagonally..

I admit I have MJ on the drill unit, but for docking OPs it just doesn't work, and which such heavy loads MJ just wastes Monopropellent, and never gets the job done.. So MJ is mostly for informational help, and the one thing I still haven't mastered, pinpoint accurate landings.

So all the Docking manoeuvres I do manually, what seems much more efficient, as MJ ever can..

Then i got a AHA moment again, switched to the emtpy fuel section, and moved that into positon to the Heavy dril unit and snapped it in place..

Then repositioned the whole structure back into its original place, and started transferring the raw kethane into the processing unit, refilled the Drils engines with fuel and sended it back on its way down.

But it reminded me how hard docking can be at times.. After many succesfull docking operations you tend to start cutting corners and start to think docking is easy.. Then you at a point get a reality check

Edited August 22, 2013 by Arran

[DrGonzo]

Ha! Yeah, how did I not realize how to spell that? I even looked it up when writing the post. Thanks for the correction!

[DrGonzo]

I found the most difficult thing with docking an extremely large ship with a large station is the amount of time it takes to turn the things. I ran out of RCS fuel on my vessel before I made it to the station. Turning those things is like turning an ocean liner. Also, the station wobbles like mad even when making subtle adjustments. I guess that's why patience was key for me. I had to make such subtle changes. Moving the vessel back and forth between prograde and retrograde, in order to get the speed and alignment perfect was extremely time consuming while only having SAS to rely on.

Edit: The good news is, after docking a "three large tank" vessel into the station, docking small ships (one large tank) has become VERY easy.

Edited August 22, 2013 by DrGonzo

[Matt56]

I have taken to using a utility bot around the base for docking akward things. It is a small probe that is way overpowered in terms of SAS torque and RCS thrust, so when docking to large modules it adds to the manouverabity of the module.

[SaturnV]

Your station is big, but I can see only 5 Jumbo-64 tanks, and many small ones. Watch mine

Half done for the current step. It can provide 6 Jumbo-64 tanks per fuel bridge, fully extendable. 2 bridge means 12 tanks, 3 means 18, etc.

[DrGonzo]

I'm testing to see if my ribbons work in my signature.

EDIT: Yay!!

[Dave Kerbin]

I've not had too many problems with docking close in, and now know how to get ships into orbital position for the close approach thanks to some help on the forums.

What I did find out is hard and frustrating to dock, and what is maybe making it so hard for other people, is when a ship is poorly designed for docking. I was building my station and sent up my fuel reserve tank - big orange tank with a large RCS tank, battery, probe control and Sr. docking port on one end and a poodle engine on the other, with 4 docking ports on the side and 4 RCS thrusters near the docking port (poor thinking on my part). It seemed impossible to dock due in large part to the poor RCS placement: any thrust at all would throw off the docking port position. So I finally stopped, parked it about 100m from the station and undocked my empty crew module (escape pod/station keeping craft). I flew that over and easily docked with one of the side ports on the tank. With the new combined ship I disabled all the RCS ports on the fuel tank and the reaction wheel to turn it into dead weight. I then set it to control from my command pod and used it as a tug to dock the fuel tank in just a few minutes with an almost picture perfect approach. Lesson learned, the ship makes all the difference when docking.

Unfortunately I may be back there again. I was already courting trouble bringing up the permanent habitat module to the station, it is intended to dock to my center axis and has the docking port, a hitchhiker pod and a cupola module. Problems already started in that the module was 2 tons more then what my delivery system normally carries (everything so far has reused the design and testing I did for the crew module) so after a failed launch I had to add an addition fuel tank for the booster. I got to the station a little light on fuel but in good shape. Because of the cupola on top the plan for docking was a bit different - I put a Jr. docking port on the side of the hitchhiker module so it could be carried into position by a tug. My tug was a mostly untested micro ship - a regular docking port attached to a small RCS tank lined with 4 RCS thrusters and solar panels, in turn attached to a tiny probe and battery and then a Jr. docking port. This way the tug could be used to clamp and tug with either port type, and served as an adapter when docked. There have been a lot of issues trying to do the docking mission - I didn't put a light near the port so its hard to see, I can't seem to get it set as a target until I'm real close (which is an issue), and by itself the tug is so tiny that even with fine controls it whips around at the tiniest thrust. And the Jr. port is on the top, so it flys backwards if I want to use it that way (I think I can fix that with control from here).

[AIux]

I'm also testing to see if my sig works, I know, I'm sorry. I'll remove my post after I've seen it.

Edit: Can't remove posts I'm sorry D:

[meeware]

Are there any top tips for docking with a dead (out of electric) probe that's spinning end over end about twice a minute in a semi polar Munar orbit? I folded away the solar panels before docking, but left a large kethane scanner running. T's a huge vessel with a nerva engine at the other end- centre of mass is such that the nozzle for the nerva would clatter into the docking ring of an approaching ship at reasonable approach speeds.

I do have a KAS equipped lander rig ready to send (in LKO) but unsure of how it might be used. Lasso?

[CorruptDB]

If you have KAS why not use the magnet or grappling hook to grab the probe?

[meeware]

I was thinking of grabbing it with the magnet, but wasn't sure of the best approach. I'm assuming I'll need to EVA over to the spinning beast, magnet on the back. I magnetise it, clamp onto the hull, and then go back with my EVA guy to collect the end of the line, which i then attach to the back of the magnet.

That seems tricky, so perhaps there is a better way.

Anyhow, once attached i was planning to restore power to the probe- i know i can transfer fuel, oxidiser and rcs propellant, but can i also restore electrical power over a KAS line? If so, job done. If not....

Using the KAS line to drag the spinning probe to a stop is a tall order- it weighs in the order of 50 tonnes, has a nerva engine at one end and a kethane refinery at the other (with a docking ring on a strut atop that). There must be a chance that the shock on the kas line of trying to haul that in could damage the line, the winch, or even the rescue ship (same basic design and mass, but with a crew module).

[Kerba Fett]

Stopping a spinning ship is easy. Just use warp for a couple of seconds and it will stop all rotation. It's a bit of a cheat, but very effective.

[meeware]

Tried that, it's not completely effective actually, amd e slight orbital difference pulled the targets way apart. Thanks thiugh, nice idea.

[Lanfranc]

If you EVA a Kerbal over to the probe, he can extend the solar panels manually and restore power.