Orbital docking.

[SmashBrown]

Ok i have managed to rescue the kerbal on the career mode, i can get encounters with other craft in orbit, but i just can't seem to dock two spacecraft. i can get my encounters to under 1km of each other, but after that i just cant get them to stay close to give me enough time to align them and dock, they go zipping straight past and im left frustrated. I have wattched a few scott manley video's, read the odd tutorial, but i just can't get docked!!!

What am i doing wrong? Like i have said i can get close to another craft, but i can't seem to match speed and course quite enough, and just end up zooming past each other. Please help fellow kerbals!!!

Edited December 15, 2014 by SmashBrown

[Wanderfound]

Ok i have managed to rescue the kerbal on the career mode, i can get encounters with other craft in orbit, but i just can't seem to dock two spacecraft. i can get my encounters to under 1km of each other, but after that i just cant get them to stay close to give me enough time to align them and dock, they go zipping straight past and im left frustrated. I have wattched a few scott manley video's, read the odd tutorial, but i just can't get docked!!!

What am i doing wrong? Like i have said i can get close to another craft, but i can't seem to match speed and course quite enough, and just end up zooming past each other. Please help fellow kerbals!!!

1: Switch the navball to target mode.

2: Point the ship at target retrograde.

3: Wait until shortly before your closest approach to the target.

4: Burn until your relative velocity hits zero.

You are now stationary relative to your target. Ideally, you want to achieve this when you're about 50m from the target.

4: Point your docking port at the target, and very gently thrust towards it. RCS is usually better than main engines for this. By "gentle" I mean less than 1m/s. You can crank it up faster if you're further out, but by the time you get within 100m you want to be slow enough that you can zero your velocity with just a couple of seconds' worth of thrust.

5: As you approach, use the RCS translation controls (IJKLHN) to keep your prograde marker aligned with the target indicator.

6: Slow even more just before contact; you want your impact speed to be less than 0.2m/s.

See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entries/3186-Basic-rendezvous-and-docking-tutorial for a bit more detail.

[SmashBrown]

Thanks, just re-watched a scott manley tutorial and i think im getting it now, got my relative speed to match, just need to get them closer, i will go and do this for the first time proper with two massive ships, practicing trying to build and interplanetary ship for when .90 hits.

[SmashBrown]

I did it!!!

[EtherDragon]

Yay! Now, it's time for a true Apollo style moon landing. Get building!

[SmashBrown]

Thanks! And... ermmmm... do i have to?

[Wanderfound]

Thanks! And... ermmmm... do i have to?

Nope.

OTOH, though, now that you can dock you have the entire Kerbol system open to you. The ability to refuel in orbit makes interplanetary travel vastly easier.

[radonek]

Thanks, just re-watched a scott manley tutorial and i think im getting it now, got my relative speed to match, just need to get them closer, i will go and do this for the first time proper with two massive ships, practicing trying to build and interplanetary ship for when .90 hits.

Massive ships are bad choice to practice docking. You are better off with something small and nimble for starters. Weight is not problem itself, but proper placement of rcs port on complicated design is. With small ship, you do not need much thrust to translate and reaction wheel can nullify small torque. On large ships you need to be very careful with rcs port placement, lest any translation swings your axis around. I'd say its wise to start small, like apollo-style mun landing and work up from that.

If you are playing career, retrieving all biomes is good practice for both (somewhat) precise landing and docking: Go down, grab science, get up, catch up with orbiting tanker/lab, clean up experiments, top up tanks, rinse, repeat. When i did this first time, docking was half-hour chore. At the end, I could do it in a minute with eyes closed, not to mention nice load of science at return module :-)

And when you start to fiddle with big stuff, get the RCS Build Aid mod.