Operation “Screw Gravity” is a success!
Space Station Goliath is now orbiting 120,000 kilometres above Kerbin. The game chugged a bit during launch, but it’s going fine now that I’ve gotten rid of all the booster jets and booster rockets.
Nice!
I managed to put all my space station parts together, but there’s some glitch with the cupola which is preventing the last piece from properly docking and all becoming one ship. Fuck.
How are you doing the docking? I still haven’t figured that out. I think I have finally designed a decent heavy lift vehicle but putting the thing together is another matter.
From the wealth of experience I’ve gained from doing all of 3 dockings…
First I remapped the docking controls. They have translation and rotation both mapped to the left hand and you switch with the spacebar, I moved the translations to the right hand. Also make sure you have RCS and ASAS.
To get an encounter just get the orbits close, then match the inclinations, then match one of the apsises and put the other one just inside or outside depending if you have to catch up of fall back. Eventually you’ll be within a km. Make sure your navball is displaying Target and then try to line up your prograde to the target prograde. Switch your camera to chase, and just take it slow. Line up both both ships and slowly bring one in.
ETA: Oh and your docking ports must be the same size. I learned that the hard way. And final contact should be at like 0.1 meters per second, barely moving.
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Get the two ships into circular orbits, one higher than the other, and select the other ship as your target.
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At your ascending or descending node, create a maneuver node. Add thrust north or south until the orbits are at the same angle.
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Perform the maneuver, and cancel the node. Your ships will now be in parallel orbits.
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Create a new maneuver node. Add thrust east or west until the new, elliptical orbit will graze the orbit of the other ship. Then drag the node itself east or west along your orbit, until the two intercept markers for the two ships are aligned at the point where the orbits meet.
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Perform the maneuver, and cancel the node. Your ships will now be at the same place, but not at the same velocity.
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Create a new maneuver node where the orbits meet. Add thrust east or west until your new orbit is matched to the other ship’s orbit. You may need to add some thrust towards or away from the planet if the orbits aren’t perfectly circular.
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Perform the maneuver, and cancel the node. Your ships will now be at the same place at approximately the same velocity.
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Go to the staging view and select the docking port you want to dock at as your target, if you’re close enough. If not, you’ll have to do this later.
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Your navball should now be showing your speed and position relative to your target. Find the retrograde velocity vector and use it to finish cancelling your speed relative to your target.
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Aim your ship at the target and slowly fly towards it. You can turn the RCS on and use the “H” and “N” keys to increase and decrease your speed.
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While RCS is active, use the “I”, “J”, “K” and “L” keys to align your position vector and your velocity vector.
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Turn RCS off to turn the ship, and turn it on to change the ship’s direction. Repeat this process until you’re facing the same direction as the docking port and moving towards the docking port.
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When you get close to the docking port, your ship will snap to it. Once your ship is wobbling back and forth over it, you just have to wait.
For your first docking, try something small. It’s much easier than docking two large things together.
Also when you dock, making sure your RCS thrusters are balanced around the center of gravity of your craft will make life a lot simpler. If it’s not, you’ll tend to get rotation any time you reorient yourself.
Finally, and as **PacifistPorcupine ** mentioned, I highly recommend using the chase camera whenever you’re lining up your final approach. It makes adjusting your position much, much more intuitive.
So just how stupid am I? Turns out the answer is “very.” I put one of the docking ports on the central hub inside out. Have to start from scratch.
It’s the Kerbal way!
I’m taking the opportunity to redesign my station, to make it better. Scratch that, to make it bigger.
I’m confused.
How is bigger not better?
I’ve just made my second docking with Goliath One. The first was merely a proof of concept, but this time I was delivering three additional crew and sixteen tons of rocket fuel.
I am wondering, because it will be a while before I can build a space station, can you attach solar panels to a landing strut? It would be cool if you can get a solar array to deploy once attached to a space station.
Solar panels work like the ladders do: there’s a single cheap, immobile version, and the rest can be deployed from a little box. Trying to launch with the solar panels deployed is a good way to get them ripped off your ship.
As Grumman says, nearly all solar panels are deployable. Either manually by right clicking on it or by binding it to a key in the VAB. See those two little tabs at the top when building the ship? One of them is titled “Parts” and the other something else. That something else tab allows you to hotkey items. You can make all the panels open at the same time if you want or just part of them. You can create whatever combination of actions which will be triggered by the press of one key.
So I managed to put up my new core and a power segment. I’ll probably add another power segment, then some fuel storage and a docking bay.
Here’s my dedicated tanker. It weighs a total of 136 tons including payload and can deliver 28 tons to orbit.
The jet boosters lift the rocket to approximately 13,000 metres, before being shut off and jettisoned.
The liquid rocket boosters and Mainsail then kick in, and jettison each booster in turn using asparagus staging. This is sufficient to reach orbit.
Once a stable orbit has been established, all remaining fuel is pumped into the top section and the ship separates. The atomic engines and RCS thrusters are used for all orbital maneuvering.
This thread totally convinced me to buy the game. It’s kind of addictive, but I did cheat to get to orbit (i.e. I watched one of the linked tutorials to learn how the flight controls work.) And it did work! No picture at the moment, but I have a couple live satellites in circular orbits, one with enough fuel to think about going to Mun. Exciting stuff!
That’s a good start. At the moment I’m working on a composite spacecraft that will eventually fly to another planet. Hopefully 12,800 litres of rocket fuel and twelve atomic engines will be enough to get there and back.
I have just launched my first section of a space station. It will also serve for a docking test bed since I still haven’t been able to do it as of yet.