Your first successful docking

[Jouni]

I delayed my first docking attempt quite long, because I assumed that some components would be destroyed if the ships collided too fast (maybe 0.5 m/s or more). Then I finally tried it and learned three things:

1) Docking is fun and relaxing.

2) Fuel-efficient rendezvous is way harder than docking.

3) The ships are made of some ridiculously tough stuff and basically cannot be destroyed.

These days I use MechJeb for rendezvous planning, as the standard maneuver node interface is too clumsy and hard to use. For long-term dockings I also use Docking Port Alignment Indicator to have proper roll alignment. Getting all the markers align is harder than visual docking with just the navball, but roll alignment within 0.1 degrees makes the ships look much better than the 2-3 degrees I can achieve visually.

[Seret]

2) Fuel-efficient rendezvous is way harder than docking.

Word. Docking isn't really that hard, even I can do it. Rendezvous is much harder IMO.

[Luckless]

Yes, docking isn't hard. Getting your craft within 500m of your target and getting relative speed down to a few m/s, that is the hard bit.

If you are having issues docking then stop trying to dock, and just work on your rendezvous and brining your craft within docking range such that you can hold it there for awhile without shooting way past or falling way behind.

[jcraft]

Yes, docking isn't hard. Getting your craft within 500m of your target and getting relative speed down to a few m/s, that is the hard bit.

Interesting, I never considered it to be hard, quite the opposite - actual docking is giving me more problems than rendezvous process (thanks to lack of proper docking camera in stock game, trying to dock in third person view is rather inconvenient).

Edited January 6, 2014 by jcraft

[Camelotking524]

Anyone here remember Warp Docking Clamps or something like that? I did my first docking with that mod. Stock docking is so much easier.

[draeath]

Check into "Docking Alignment Indicator" (as I mentioned earlier) and/or "Lazor Docking Cam"

Yes, it's not stock... but the game isn't done. There's hardly any shame in filling a gap, now is there?

I'm not really a fan of the Lazor solution, as the fake CCTV effect makes it completely impossible to see (seriously, I've seen a 1995 digital camera wielded by an amateur with better exposures), and the other mod does the job quite well. If you don't know how to use it - big orange marker is your relative rotation, green crosshair your target, and small yellow marker your motion vector. Point the small yellow marker at the green crosshair, put the big orange one in the center crosshair, and you're on-target.

EDIT: if you like the idea of the camera but want to "fix" the terrible exposure, have a look here.

EDIT2: maybe a picture will get the point across. You want this mod. You need this mod.

Edited January 6, 2014 by draeath

[Camelotking524]

Warp clamps or whatever the name of the mod was, was made before docking was even stock. It and ORDA were the only way to docking at that point.

[running]

Yes, docking isn't hard. Getting your craft within 500m of your target and getting relative speed down to a few m/s, that is the hard bit.

Of course your orbits should already match more or less, orbitting in the same direction makes life a lot easier.

By staying in a higher or lower orbit than the target your speeds are different so you should get closer over time.

Set your target as the target (like the name says) in the map view.

Then use the manuvre node. Tweak it so the intercept get's close... 10 km is close enough but I'd prefer 5 km.

Move around the manouvre node and play around with it's parameters untill you get it right.

After executing the manouvre.... wait.

In map view it should tell you the closest point to your target. Don't start going crazy 100 km's away from the target when you know you are going to be at the closest range at 5 km.

Click on the top of the nav ball so it shows target speed and not orbit speed.

Look at your nav ball. Where is the pick circle showing the target... where is the open yellow circle shoing your direction of travel?

Now if you are racing more or less towards it at high speed, turn around, point your nose away from the target. Use the other pink indicator and the yellow circle with the cross in it. Point at the yellow crossed out circle and and start to burn to slow down.

The yellow crossed out circle should start to move towards the pink target telling you that you are correcting your course. If it doesn't move fast enough, point further way from the pick target in the same direction as the crossed out circle was and burn.

Now at some point you might reach 0 speed and still be of course and/or to far away from the target.

In this case you want to spead up so turn towards the target.

It works just as with the breaking with one little twist. Instead of aiming at the open yellow circle or even further awaw from it as you did with breaking... now you need to point in the direction you should be traveling or further out.

So if the yellow open cirlce is a little bit to the left of the pink circle... point a little right of the pink circle and burn to move the yellow open circle towards the target.

If you start going to fast you have to turn around again to start breaking again...

When you get below 1 KM. You should be going really slow and it's time to let RCS take over.

All this goes best with highly manouvrable ships. Lot's of SAS and if needed for the big ships use RCS too.

The later you start (or have to start) manouvering, breaking the less fuel you spend but the more risk there is to missing the target or hitting it.

To be on the safe side I usually retract the solar panels on both vessels before I attempt to dock just in case.

Edited January 6, 2014 by running

[James_Eh]

Just yesterday I executed what I thought was a perfect docking manouvre. One of my first to be executed without the help of MechJeb. As I bounced off of the ship I was headed towards I realized that I had installed the docking port upside-down. For the record, that confuses the Docking Alignment Indicator to no end as it tries to tell you to dock THROUGH the target... Moral of the story is - it is always good to occasionally look away from the Indicator to make sure that you are actually going where you think you are going. Well, that and "install docking ports correctly".

[Javster]

My first RV was nail-biting. Docking is easy. Then I managed my second RV really easily.

The craft was a lab with a home-made cube docking adaptor thing.

EDIT: How I did it

Launched a bit ahead of the station, got into low orbit, used a manoeuvre node until I got quite close, then at closest approach I matched orbits, then I reduced relative speed, then I pointed at target and went to it. Kept getting confused about whether to use retrograde or retrograde from target.

Edited January 10, 2014 by Javster

[Javster]

Interesting, I never considered it to be hard, quite the opposite - actual docking is giving me more problems than rendezvous process (thanks to lack of proper docking camera in stock game, trying to dock in third person view is rather inconvenient).

If you have RasterProp Monitor, there's an external camera you can use, with a stream to the capsule.

[spinikar]

My first successful docking was after watching Scott Manly do it in one of his videos. After days of try and failing at 300ms, watched his video and now docking is a boring, mundane task I dont even think about. If you struggle with docking, youtube Scott Manly. Some great Kerbal vids there.

[Titan Space Agency]

When I did y first docking I got a really close RV. My RV was 0.0. My docking procedure took so long because I was really far away when I positioned to use RCS and try docking. After my RV I took 1 hour to dock. Now I'm much better.

[Seret]

Interesting, I never considered it to be hard, quite the opposite - actual docking is giving me more problems than rendezvous process (thanks to lack of proper docking camera in stock game, trying to dock in third person view is rather inconvenient).

Hit V a couple of times to put your camera into chase view, then align yourself along the axis of your craft. That makes the translations of your RCS system a lot more intuitive. you should be able to put your axis on the target marker in the navball pretty easily, I normally swing out to a 3/4 side view a couple of times to eyeball the distance. There's the distance to target readout too, but I find it helps to check that visually.

[Bobbydylan]

Once you get close enough, then you are docking.

It helps to be facing the docking port, I find.

[rholtsla98]

Ahh I remember my first docking, and now I look back and realize it was pretty derpy. The rcs was unbalanced I took about four hours to just get near enough, I must have quicksaved 60+ times and once I was just about there (another two hours or so) I freaked out and thew it off about a meter now I look back and think all in good fun.

[Flowz0r]

I remember ghetto-docking rockets together with landing legs and decouplers on mk 1 pods for clamps in anticipation for actual docking being added. Not being able to set something as a target in order to match your velocity was a huge pain. I ended up just putting the "station" on a geostationary orbit around Kerbin and setting the velocity display to Surface to zero velocities.

It's a damn tragedy that I didn't save any pictures of it, I felt like a genius when I finally pulled it off.

[Jon Tash]

I remember the first time I docked, it was a sunny day, the clouds were high and dispersed... At least somewhere on Earth I think. It took me 30 or 45 minutes to figure out how to dock properly. But in the end it was disappointing. Not because I found that easy to do if you understands orbital mechanics and 3D movements in relation to an other object but because I had an accident right after. Here is how it goes.

The plan was simple, build a space station in orbit around Kerbin, the preferred altitude was 100km. The main module was already in orbit with several docking ports waiting to be used. I remember that it had two 1x6 solar panels but I wanted to have more power so I launched what I call a Solar Module, basically a module with big solar panels to power everything. I had planed to dock two Solar modules to the station, a little like the ISS, solar panels on two sides of the station.

It took me half an hour to get the Solar module to the station, when I got there the sun got behind Kerbin and everything was dark. In that time, I had never used lights and till today I still forget to put lights on my stations or ships. It was dark but I got it all good, the approach was good, I had a lot of RCS to use if I wanted. I docked pretty easily but I didn't put the module in a good orientation so I undocked myself and docked again with a proper orientation so the panels wouldn't obstruct parts of the station core.

I deployed the panels and looked at it for some minutes, warped so I could see the sun again and use the panels. I was happy with myself and with a smile I launched the other Solar Module and docked in record time to the station (it was dark again, apparently all my docking happens during night time, even today).

I had the beginning of a working station ready to accommodate 5 kerbals total. To make good screenshots I EVA one of the Kerbals that was already there, don't remember his name but I will never forget what he did. The first thing I did, while EVA, was to hit accidentally one of the big solar panels. The panel broke and flew to another panel and broke it too (from the other module). I was suddenly angry with myself and gave the poor kerbal all the blame. I decided to leave the station with the "unlucky" kerbal and with another ship, days later, transferred all other kerbals out of the station leaving him behind.

Some days later I build another station in a higher orbit and didn't make any accident. The unlucky kerbal stayed in the broken station till there was a new update from KSP (I usually restart a save when a new update comes).

Some kerbals say that you can still hear him today when you are in the 100km altitude from kerbin. It was decided to never build a station in that altitude ever again.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I went from crashing my first lunar lander after a completely successful first-time landing due to losing all dV while futzing about with the munar orbit rendezvous with the CSM, to this. Hard to do at first but then it becomes second nature

[draeath]

Ha! The fun part with these arrangements is realizing you're stuck with that specific "craft" module - if you try to recreate it or adapt other stuff to fit in, there's really no way you'll get the docking port separation correct and it will never seem to seat properly.

(referring to your orange tank cluster)

[AlexisBV]

My first docking was with the main engines because I was too lazy to try out RCS in the build. Took forever.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

Ha! The fun part with these arrangements is realizing you're stuck with that specific "craft" module - if you try to recreate it or adapt other stuff to fit in, there's really no way you'll get the docking port separation correct and it will never seem to seat properly.

(referring to your orange tank cluster)

Indeed. It requires a lot of forethought and even then you'll run into issues. The biggest facepalm of that particular refuel station is that the Sr. docking port on the bottom was put on backwards so much for my plans for it... now it just sadly orbits kerbin as a monument to how one poorly placed part reduces an hour of work to nothing

[Themohawkninja]

I don't remember how my first successful docking went, but I remember the 1.5 hours of trying to get everything perfectly lined up, and moving everything in perfectly straight and super-slowly not knowing that there was a magnetic force that would bring to parts together as all of my precision adjustments never allowed the magnetic force to engage (oops).

[WillHop]

My first docking was a complete fluke. I was trying to perform a vastly over complicated rescue mission, and had to dock a rescue ship to an orbital Mun station. I had no idea how to rendevouz or dock, flew past my station more times I care to remember, and finally when I killed my relative velocity I had no idea how to dock. I didn't know the translation controls existed and just mashed WASD until I got close. When it did somehow connect, I was stunned and took loads of screenshots ignore the horrible ugliness of the ships, this was a long time ago.