Can Loads be pulled under the Docking Force?

[Night60700]

So I was wondering. When you go to dock, there is a magnetic force that draws you in when you get close. If you used thrusters to keep from docking. Could you in fact pull a load from the docking force?

This Clearly has no practical use. But I just wanted to know if it can be done anyways, since I lack the knowledge of how the game physics apply in this scenario.

Thanks for the help.

[sal_vager]

Actually you kind of can, I've had a few craft where an upper lifter vehicle tries to pick up a rover, and if the ports don't connect you can drag it along with you.

It's not brilliant, and maybe if you have something in the way that is not on the node it'll prevent the connection so you can tow while turning, but you can't go too fast or the force is lost.

[Pecan]

Theoretically, yes, since the magnets do draw both ships together. Obviously the acceleration would be pretty minimal and it'd be very hard to keep close enough without docking/touching. Might make an interesting challenge :-)

[Jasmir]

Some month ago, i had build a satellite-tug with dockingports on it. I tryed to dock the satellites with it, but some parts were in the way. So the magnetic force grab the satellite, but it can't dock. The magnetic force is surprising strong, i could carry the satellite at full throttle with the tug.

Then i timewarped, the satellite beguns to clip into the tug. I switched the timewarp of, and everthing explodes

[Skorpychan]

Probably, but just docking them is more reliable and safer.

I'm sure someone can bootstrap it into some sort of jump drive, though.

[JumpsterG]

I'm trying really hard to come up with a use for this. If you create a reliable pseudo-docking port, say one with a little cube strut stuck on it, you could use this to loosely connect objects in the field... Essentially a docking port that will automatically release if sufficient force separates the two.

Only thing I can think of would be vehicles that can be separated by being struck in particular ways with less force than would destroy the parts... Maybe some targets for a bumper-cart challenge? Lol, I'm reaching here.

Maybe it's a way to create a stock rotating hinge/bearing/whatever-it's-called? (Brain is currently mush after 8 hours of work). This would be temporary since the whole contraption would probably fall apart after time warp or even losing focus, but still...

[James_Eh]

I landed a fairly large lander on Minmus which had a rover attached to one side with docking clamps. Undocked and tried to drive away. The rover was horribly designed for Minmus and I started noticing things. Primary among them was the fact that no matter what I did I couldn't seem to get out of the vicinity of the ship. It felt like trying to acheive escape velocity from LKO with an ion drive. My rover was in essence "orbiting" the ship. Ultimately I decided it was the magnetic attraction between the docking ports overcoming the pathetically low amount of traction the rover had. Once I increased the "orbit" to around 40 m, suddenly I was able to drive in a straight line. Took something like 10 laps around the ship though. Might have to try to recreate that someday...

[Javster]

TweakableEverything: you can tweak attraction of magnets