Best recommended Orbital Rendezvous tutorial?

[illuscion]

so after about a year? i've returned to KSP and lots has changed, i was the definition of a newb when i left but now i'm getting the hang of it, but there's one thing i just cant seem to do and thats the "Orbital rescue mission over Kerbin" contract. Orbital rendezvous is the bane of my kerbal existence. i should probably note that i have not unlocked RCS thrusters as yet.What would you guys recommend watching to help nail this bit of KSP. oh and i tried Scott manley's orbital rendezvous tutorial but he can get too technical too fast for new players like me.

Edited August 20, 2014 by illuscion

[Vlk]

I think i've learned that part without tutorials, it is really not that hard.

The first part is about getting close to the target (5 km - later you can do 0.5 km as well). The trick for this is that if you have a lower orbit, you go faster, if you have bigger, you go slower. It is good if you have a periapsis/apoapsis close to the orbit of the target, and you only lower/raise the other side of your orbit. Then you wait until you get close, and make a maneuver node so you get close to the target at some point. I recommend a maximum of 10km difference between your initial orbit and the target's orbit at first, and use a lot of time acceleration.

The second part is when you are close (5km, preferably 2km) to lower your velocity relative to the target then get closer. You click on the navball where it says orbit, until you see it says target. Now the green circle with the x means you can lower your relative velocity. You dont want to kill it all. You want to go relatively fast towards the target. If you dont go fast enough, the target's position will change while you are orbiting. You also have a purple or pink target pointing towards the target, and pointing away from the target. You want your velocity vector (green circle) at the same position as your target's position (purple circular target), and/or your negative velocity (green x in circle) where the purple triangle-like target is. You will probably see this last one more. To make this happen, experiment: kill almost all your relative velocity (1m/s), then see how it changes as you burn in different directions. The green circle will follow your compass, and the green x will go away from it. The furthest you are from them, the faster.

[Kasuha]

Try some of HOCgaming's early videos, I remember they were very instructive and simple to follow.

Or try tutorials mentioned on The Drawing Board.

Not much has changed on rendezvous recently, even very old tutorials can tell you how to do that. And you don't need RCS as you'll be able to control the Kerbal on EVA as soon as you get close enough. Just switch to him using [ or ] keys, press R to activate the jetpack, aim at the ship and use WASD to get him to the ship.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Kasuha

[Kerolyov]

PebbleGarden's tutorials are some of the best out there for me, if you're after rendevous/docking then try his Phoenix series.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/15652-Orbital-Mechanics-101-A-Kerbal-Space-Program-Tutorial

[cantab]

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Basic_maneuvers

That's what I learnt from. Sorted the rendezvous on my second go.

[Skorpychan]

I recommend watching mechjeb do it a few times.

Otherwise, it's incredibly simple once you understand it; get as close an encounter with your target as possible, then match velocities once you're at that close encounter. Once you've done that, you can burn towards it to get closer.

[illuscion]

Thanks for the help guys, i didnt really have a problem getting close, i remember getting an encounter as close as 1.9km one time i tried. Where i was obviously failing, now that you guys have said it, is that i was completely clueless to the point that i needed to match velocities with the target. i thought i needed to get as close to the target and that was it. I'll give these tutorials a go and see which one works best for me. Question though, how long did it take you guys to get rendezvous/docking down?

[Kasuha]

Question though, how long did it take you guys to get rendezvous/docking down?

Before I bought the game I played the Demo for a week and I did my first rendezvous (and exchange of crew) during that. Docking had to wait till I bought the game (no docking ports in Demo) and I remember it was really hard at first as I had the two ships approaching really slowly and they were always drifting out of alignment as they were orbiting Kerbin. So for newbies I recommend either learning the docking in a high orbit (500+ km) or orienting the docking port towards North/South as that prevents them drifting out of alignment.

[Navy2k]

It all comes down to the informations you have.

At my first aproach i nailed the seperation and came to 0m distance, unfortunately my speed difference at the time was >100m/s witch the engine solved by spontanious rapid separation of all parts involved.

The next i overshot bout 10 times until my fuel was out.

The 3rd time i found out i can switch the speedometer to ralative speed to the target (great help) and managed to dock just fine by changing the camera angle about 700 times to check all relative speeds and angles.

After that i installed Lazer Docking Cam and Docking is no pain anymore.

Greeting Ben

[Alshain]

I liked this one a lot. He uses the most fuel efficient method and it's very well explained.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90621-How-to-Dock-in-6-Steps