How to get to my space station.

[MaybeADragon]

I am an inexperienced KSP Player who has only been playing for 8 or 9 hours at most. I have currently made several space craft and ran 2 Mun missions (1 to get there and 1 rescue OP, I will forget about the 3 failures) but my question is about my recently created space station. It is currently in orbit around Kerbin and I want to know an effective method to reach it.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but thank you in advance.

[Vanamonde]

Save the game, launch to its orbital height, and note far how the station has moved in that time. Load your save, fast-forward until the station is that far west of KSC, and launch to orbit. You should end up quite close to it. For the final approach, check the tutorials sub-forum for docking guides.

[Pursuedtank]

You could also look at this Scott Manley Video.

It may be old but the concept is the same.

[Taki117]

What I do, and the method that I find works best, is to set it as your target, then when the pink meatball is just on the edge of the navball launch as normal. That will get you close (as you are ascending pay attention to your close approach markers and when they get to less than about 5km (It is possible to get closer, I got it down to 1.6km once) at that point stop your engines and coast. then once you near the close approach marker set your navball to target mode (By clicking the speed) and then burn towards the retograde marker when you get close. Once your target velocity is zero not only are you in orbit, but you can now burn towards the pink meatball (Go slow!) and then you can dock to your target.

[cantab]

This guide covers the basics of orbital rendezvous

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Basic_maneuvers#Docking_.2F_Rendezvous

For meeting with LKO space stations, I tend to:

Launch into orbit as normal, no worries about timing.

Adjust so my orbit is tangent to the station's somewhere. (I set manouevre nodes for all my orbit changes.)

Burn prograde at that tangent point, making my orbital period longer, so my next intercept is as small a distance as possible.

Make a correction at apoapsis to further reduce my intercept distance.

Switch the navball to target mode.

On approaching the intercept, burn target retrograde to match velocities and thus orbit.

Make the final approach as described in that guide.

[That guy who builds stuff]

snip

Alternatively, get into a slightly higher(or lower) orbit, set the station as a target and use manure nodes to find the right time to perform a hohmann transfer. Try to get an encounter within 5km, then switch navball to target mode and try to kill your velocity relative to the target.

Docking is a bit more... complicated.

[nimbim]

You could also look at this Scott Manley Video.

*snip*

It may be old but the concept is the same.

This is the new version:

[MaybeADragon]

Thanks guys, I think I'm ready to get to The Hat Station now! (I called it that because the Kethane sensor makes it look like it's wearing a hat.