Rescue Seandock Kerman

[Dranchor]

One of the earlier missions that you can obtain in the game is called 'Rescue Seandock Kerman'. I was quite baffled at how I should do this mission, googled for it several times and found no resources, so that's why I decided to make a short guide here. It's broken down in three parts: building an adequate spacecraft, approaching Seandock and getting him on your spacecraft.

The ship

Contrary to what I thought initially, this mission requires almost no technology development. You will need:

- Two command pods stacked on top of each other. Put a parachute on the top one. There is no need for a fancy docking port.

- Put a separation ring right beneath the command pods so you are sure that the pods survive landing.

- Fuel tanks and a liquid engine with low thrust. Fine-grained thrust control is necessary for the approach. I used the LV-909.

- Put a photovoltaic array on the upper stage. If you forget this, you will run out of electric energy during the approach and will be unable to maneuver.

- You can add RCS fuel and thrusters for even more fine position and velocity control, but I found it unnecessary.

- A lower stage that can bring the above into orbit. Make sure you can accurately control the rocket during launch.

Note that if you do nothing, KSP should put one astronaut in the first command pod you built. The other one should be empty (obviously). It's a good idea to check this anyway.

Approach

The launch is a regular launch in westerly direction. Try to aim precisely for the west, as Seandock is in a pretty equatorial orbit. I will be brief on the next part, but there are several excellent docking tutorials (both written and in video) that can be found on the internet. If you need any help with this part, try here, here or

. I was positively surprised that the instructions are almost a perfect match to my Astrodynamics lecture notes. If you think my succinct notes are sufficient, select Seandock Kerman as target in the orbital window and go.

In summary, you will first need to adjust the difference in inclination between both orbits by manevering at the ascending or descending node. Then you match either the apogee or the perigee of the orbits (not both). You should now get indications of where the orbits cross and how much distance is between you and your damsel in distress. As the orbits are not completely matched yet, this distance will change every orbit. Wait and carefully adjust your orbit until you have a predicted intersection point at around 1 km distance. Warp to this point and observe that your navball has shifted setting from 'orbital' to 'target'. Now you can fire into the green cross to zero the relative velocity between your Deux Ex Machina and the idiot that got himself stuck in orbit.

As soon as you've done this, your orbits should look identical on the orbital window. Go to the stage window and locate Seandock the Silly in three-dimensional space. Now point your spacecraft towards him (there is a convenient pink symbol on the navball) and gently give thrust until you have a few m/s relative velocity. You will slowly drift towards Seandock. If you threaten to overshoot, or your velocity vector no longer points in the direction of Seandock, kill the relative velocity, redirect the spacecraft towards Seandock and iterate. When you are within 20 meters distance or so, kill all relative velocity.

Boarding Seandock

Now this part had me puzzled. How do I get Seandock aboard my vessel? I tried piloting him from the Space Center, but that was not possible. I tried the Advanced Grabbing Unit, but that didn't work either. Turns out that the solution is simply to push [ or ] at this point to cycle between ships until you end up with Seandock. Now push R to activate the jetpack and gently move towards your rescue vessel. You will probably need several tries before you can grab the ladder of the empty command pod. There you go! Seandock is aboard your vesel.

Now, simply do a retrograde burn, separate the pods from the rest of the spacecraft, deploy parachutes and splash down in the ocean.