Interplanetary rendezvous - is it even possible?!?

[FritzDC]

So, it was finally time for Eeloo in Career mode. The trip there went fine, three sets of science stuff full of science goodness and looking forward the journey home and meeting the guys in Duna orbit for the final leg. But uh, oh, something has gone wrong and there's only enough deltaV to meet the guys in Dres, not all the way to Duna and make capture. Well, what can go wrong here, I tell the guys to go home and come back with bigger ship and meet me at orbit of Dres.

What can go wrong: everything.

Fast forward more than 10 hours of gameplay, two failed rescue attempts to third one and 26 years of game time. The capture with Dres failed miserably, I had failed to internalize the low gravity of Dres and shot right of to highly eccentric orbit traversing between Dres and Eeloo. Finally, I have a ship in close-enough orbit with PLENTY of deltaV left to make the final corrections and fly back when strange things started to happen. The maneuver node-system had stopped working a long ago and orbital predictions were all over the place - distance was perhaps 20km and the closest encounter was predicted to some 300.000km on the other side of the planet.

So, at first I tried to fly closer with my rescue craft, and just *couldn't* get closer than 4km, no matter what I did. I was flying closer and closer, and then BAM I was again some 10km away, going in to wrong direction. So, I settled to 4km being the closest I can get for some reason, collected all science and jumped for one heroic EVA to catch the ship with some precious deltaV in it. Things looked good, 3km and closing, 2km, 1873 meters, BAM 6km! What! GUYS! REALLY! Same thing, over and over again. If I tried to accelerate to 2x even for split second, this seemed to happen every time - I was closing the ship with meters counting down, fast click of . , and the ship was further from me, again counting down meters. If I let it roll without time acceleration the jump would be bigger, but happen eventually.

So, am I hitting the wall with the internal precision system that causes this space-time anomaly? Or is it the Kraken that is playing sisyphean games with me? Will my family still recognize me when I get out from my KSP binge?

[Insomn]

Apparently .24 will provide better tools for interplanetary rendezvous. I personally have never tried, because I never had to, but I would expect it to be much like rendezvous around a planet, except obviously with a greater fuel requirement. I may be wrong.

[acc]

Yep, it's possible

[SkyHook]

Perhaps it's better to say solar rendezvous in your title, OP. I was very confused by what exactly you wanted to say. But yea, 23.1 and .24 should clear up the barriers to your problem.

[Stargate525]

I've done it. It's a royal pain in the butt since once you get within about 10km, as you've observed, non-physics timewarp is rendered useless. I needed to bring fuel to a stranded Moho vessel... The next time I need to do that, I'm sending a new ship and EVAing like you did, rather than sending a robotic fuel tank.

[FritzDC]

Thanks Stargate525! With trust I got from your post, I set to try it once again, but without any acceleration and yes, it indeed can be done. As a matter of fact, the rescue ship ran out of fuel as well and I needed to do another similar rendezvous, this time close to Kerbin orbit and it was significantly easier, when you start out fine adjustments from kms, not from Mms... Final mission time around 34 years!

Thanks!

[timsfitz]

Yeah I've done it to for stranded Kerbals. It was such pain I make sure they have enough fuel or I refuel them before they leave. Last time they ran out Jeb got out and pushed. Luckily it was a small ship and he was able to get them home.

[Comrade Jenkens]

How will 0.24 help for solar rendezvous?

[Caelib]

How will 0.24 help for solar rendezvous?

Actually 0.23.10 (ARM patch) will help with solar rendezvous -- this was specifically mentioned in yesterday's twitch livestream.

[Max Grant]

I've done it a couple of times. It is just more painstaking.