Rendezvous tips.

[perseus]

I am a hard time rendezvous any tips?

[AoD_lexandro]

Take it slow. Make is simple. Dont overthink it.

My usual technique is to make sure both ships are exactly aligned to 0 inclination. That makes sure they are on the same parallel course. One ship I send up first and set to 100k alt. Second ship I send up as the first one is overhead KSC. I send it to 80k alt. Then I just have to burn some prograde at the end of my orbit insertion burn to keep going and hopefully RDV directly with the first vessel.

If that doesnt work or I mis-time it, I just wait for the second ship to pootle around till its in position again and keep increasing my alt so I can get as close an encounter as I can.

At the RDV point, its then just a matter of circularising your orbit to match the first ship. You can get pretty close after a bit of practice.

[andylaugel]

1. The Inclination Burn

Go to the ship you're using to intercept. Go to the map view, and select the other vessel as target. It's orbit will turn yellow, and you'll get AN and DN markers for the ascending and decending nodes. Hover over them, and you'll get an angle. You want to burn normal or antinormal on those markers to bring the angle to 0.0.

2. The Intercept Burn

Add a maneuver node on the map screen anywhere on your orbit. Pull the prograde or retrograde markers out until your orbit just touches the target's orbit. You now need to move that node to the appropriate time in the orbit to make either the orange or the magenta pair of markers to touch. Hovering over those will show you how close your orbits will be at that point. You can click and drag the node around the orbit. You can also right-click the maneuver node to toggle it's mode. In the other mode, you can click "+" to advance the node an orbit, and "-" to do the reverse. This is usually necessary around Kerbin when your orbits aren't very far apart. When you get the maneuver node right, you can click on the orbit, fast forward to the burn, and then do the burn.

3. Matching Velocities

Make sure the other vessel is still selected as your target. Click on the word "Orbit" or "Surface" on the navball until it reads "Target." Orient your ship retrograde--autopilot nodes work just fine for this. When you burn and the speed is 0.0 m/s, you've matched velocities. You want to burn so that your vessels are as close as possible when they stop.

If you like some math here, hover over where the intercept will be and look at the relative difference in velocities. Then look at your vessel's total thrust, divide by its mass, and you'll have your vessel's acceleration. velocity * velocity / acceleration / 2 will give you how far you'll be from your target when you want to start that burn.

Docking

By now you should be within a few hundred meters of your target. You can use the '[' and ']' keys to switch between vessels within physics range (2.2 km). Orient the docking ports at each other. Have one vessel accelerate gently towards the other. You can use 'R' to activate RCS thrusters (if you have them and fuel to run then) and use the IJKL buttons to move sideways and HN keys to accelerate and decelerate. You'll want to keep your target marker and prograde marker stacked over the center of the navball. Touch at about 1 m/s or less. Disengage SAS at the last moment if you need to, to let the magnets do their magic.

[F'lar]

I used to have a devil of a time with this myself. He's been mentioned a thousand times and it's from an older version of KSP, but Scott Manley's vid is still relevent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHkY3FusJIQ&t=471s&index=5&list=PLYu7z3I8tdEm5nyZU3a-O2ak6mBYXWPAL

After some practice rescuing Kerbals stranded in orbit, I finally got the hang of it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348190125

[maestro]

Just tell us what point your stuck at. I can talk you thru it.

[Elementus]

For a low kerbin orbit wait for them to be over the desert to the west of KSC before you launch, this will make the mission quicker and easier

[NorthernBruce]

@andylaugel
NIce set of instructions! I wish everyone was as helpful as you are!

[Mightylink]

Once you get close enough, even within 2 or 3km its very easy, all you need to do is switch to target, do a retro burn until its 0m/s, then burn towards the target, keep repeating until your docked.

[perseus]

Thanks guys for all the tips. 👍