Trying to carry ship back to Kerbin. Time warp turning off collisions. Please help

[ISmokeThis]

Hello,

I have a ship that is on its way back home from Gilly. However, the ship has run out of fuel and I regrettably did not put a side docking port. So to bring the ship back I have created a ship with a grabbing mechanism using girders and landing gears. I have successfully rendezvoused with the ship and grabbed it. Unfortunately, when I turn on time warp the ships do not collide and so the stranded science vessel goes through the claw-like contraption.

Can someone please tell me what I can do?

Edited January 9, 2014 by ISmokeThis

[Dreadp1r4te]

Hello,

I have a ship that is on its way back home from Gilly. However, the ship has run out of fuel and I regrettably did not put a side docking port. So to bring the ship back I have created a ship with a grabbing mechanism using girders and landing gears. I have successfully rendezvoused with the ship and grabbed it. Unfortunately, when I turn on time warp the ships do not collide and so the stranded science vessel goes through the claw-like contraption.

Can someone please tell me what I can do?

Your best bet here is to do your burn very carefully without timewarp on to get the science ship back on a course to Kerbin. Once done, un-grab it with the claws and back your rescue ship a way a few meters then match velocity. Then execute your time warp. Once back inside Kerbin's SoI, exit time warp, re-grab the science ship, and put the science ship on a low orbit (like 30km or so) to aerobrake it, or alternatively just de-orbit it from whatever orbit you manage to push it into (assuming you're not using mods that affect re-entry like FAR or Deadly Re-Entry). Because of the way time warp works, doing this in stages is the only way I can think of; just keep your relative velocity to the target at 0 so you don't drift (too far) apart. If you're having trouble matching velocity, set the sci ship as your target and click on the speed indicator on your Navball until it says "Target" (which it should by default when you set a target) now, the indicators on your navball show your prograde and retrograde velocity RELATIVE to the target, so you can use RCS to 0 it out. If you start to drift too far apart during time warp, just un-warp and maneuver back closer.

Hope this helps, and kudos for the creative rescue!

[Markus Reese]

Here is the way I do these sort of recoveries.

If you hold shift (or is it alt) and hit the timewarp hotkey, you can do up to a 4x timewarp with physics enabled. But there are concequences. The best thing you can do is get your burn for escape, release your captured ship, timewarp and end timewarp a bit before you need to do your next burn. Re-capture then do your next burn.

[togfox]

What they said.

a) grab

correct

c) release

d) time warp

e) go to step a)

f) post pics or it never happened.

[ISmokeThis]

Ok, thanks guys. My screens are messed up by I can link my steam acct and u can see the thumbnails at least. Maybe the screens will work for you...

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198103627065/screenshots/

[TheDarkStar]

One thing that might help is setting up a Kerbin intercept and collision course while still early in your orbit. That way, you don't have to worry too much about correcting the orbits.

[ISmokeThis]

Guys, thank you for the replies. I made it back to Kerbin with what you suggested. I think I was too frustrated last night to think of any of this.

As before, the thumbnails are there but the screens seem to have not been uploaded properly because when I try to expand them they are cut off. IDK why this is happening.