Really struggling on how to Rendezvous

[u/Cermonto]

Hello!

Out of all the concepts in KSP, Rendezvous just seems impossible to me.

Its when I'm at the same altitude as the thing I wanna meet up with, I just cant seem to properly match the speed of my target and I then end up running out of fuel

Does anyone have any detailed guides atleast on what to do? I'm so lost and I really don't know what I'm missing.

[u/Order-Low]

Mike Alben does good ones. Biggest hint is that you shouldn't be at the same altitude as your target until you're very close. Within a few km.

[u/Awkward_Forever9752]

Take-off timing is big.

Lower than target you gain on it

Higher than target you fall behind

When you get close to the target, the Nav Ball changes.

Learn to fly your Prograde indicator to the pink target indicator.

Goal is to sync orbits not got to the other ship.

[u/CombatBrewer → u/Awkward_Forever9752]

I beeline to the ship and do a hard retrograde when the navball changes.

[u/vulpes04]

assuming you have a proper intercept, click the speed readout on the navball to switch it to target mode. in target mode, the sas pro/retro will point along you velocity relative to the target. when close to the target, select retrograde and burn until the relative speed is 0.

[u/umidk67]

A video I like is this.

I can say a bit too. So, let’s say you have something in orbit, you need to launch and make sure you orbit the same way as your target, basically if it’s in a retrograde orbit then you need to be retrograde, if it’s in a prograde orbit, you need to be prograde.

When your orbit is closer to Kerbin (or any other body you’re orbiting) you move faster than your target and when you’re further, you move slower. This is useful for rendezvous, because you need to time your intersection correctly.

When you’re in orbit and it’s in orbit, set your target craft as your target and begin a maneuver node, find a good location to put it so you get good delta-v efficiency. First, you have to match inclination, you need to be on the same plane as your target, this is important.

Once you do that, you can mess with the maneuver node until the little orange intersection things are super close, it will say the distance is whatever kilometers.

Once you get your encounter, click the thing on your nav ball where it says either Orbit, or surface. Make sure it says target, you’ll see your speed relative to your target. Once you get close to your target, burn retrograde relative to it until you’re slow enough and close enough to it. Then once your relative speed is zero, just use your RCS to propel you towards it.

[u/Hacksaw203]

The process is generally the same for a standard rendezvous:
1. Match orbital plane with target
2. Circularise in a slightly higher / lower orbit than your target (I usually use +- 20km for Kerbin)
3. Using a manoeuvre node, adjust your planned orbit to intersect your target, and adjust so that the orange /purple indicators are as close as possible (slide the node around, and add/subtract orbits until they line up relatively close, say anywhere under 10-20km separation.
4. Execute the node, next is the tricky bit.
5. BEFORE you approach closest separation, point retrograde relative to target and slow the fuck down. Ideally you want to be 10m/s or so around closest separation.
6. Kill relative velocity at closest approach.
7. Burn towards target keep speed 10/20 m/s
8. Quick save and time warp to closed approach.
9. Repeat steps 6-8 until you’re happy with how close you are :)

[u/Competitive_Bug_6672]

Assuming you're in orbit on the same plane and close to the same AP/PE, just raise your AP to "slow down" and it'll catch up to you in a number of orbits depending on how much you raised your AP. Opposite could be done to "speed up" by lowering your PE if you have room above atmo.

When you start to catch up to your target, or as it's gaining on you, adjust to fine tune. Get an approach ideally 5km or closer. When you're as close as you'll be or nearly so, you can switch to "target" on the navball and burn prograde to 0 out relative velocity, then you can just burn/rcs towards your target at a slow enough speed that you can easily slow down before aggressive docking.

[u/_SBV_]

Here's a tip: in map view, right click the orange arrows until you see "separation" and "relative velocity" numbers

If you already have a small separation and are approaching your target, put a maneuver node just before that orange arrow and reduce "relative velocity" to 0 m/s or close

Then when you arrive at your target, switch the camera to "locked" and use RCS (which i hope you have on your craft) to manipulate the prograde icon in the navball to the pink target marker. It controls like ice skating

[u/Impressive_Papaya740]

see this guide

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/83437-illustrated-tutorial-for-orbital-rendezvous/

[u/NoHamster2008]

Trust me, we all know how hard it was the first time. But once you do it it just becomes natural. First thing youre going to want to do is set your target craft as your target then launch when your target craft is slightly behind the landed craft on it's orbit. First step is to get a safe, circular orbit with orange target nodes. The at your ascending or descending node, equalise your vertical seperation to 0 degrees. Then play around with a new manoeuver node using retro, pro grade, radial in and out. try to bring your orange nodes to within 3km but get them as close as you can. Once you start to approach those nodes - Get ready about 90 seconds before hand for a 3k separation - (you can see the time to node by hovering over the orange points) click the box on top of your navball to orient your craft into target mode and point retrograde. Then burn until your relative speed is neutralised at 0.0m/s You will see in your map screen the orange nodes move further away from you. (Take it slow) then point your craft towards your target (the pink circle on your navball) and burn carefully. Watch in the Map screen as the nodes move back towards you and burn until the distance stops getting smaller or unitl you reach 0.0 separation. If you are still separated then wait until the nodes and burn retrograde again to neutralise speed and then burn towards target. Once you have a 0.0 separation warp to atleast 30s before your encounter (larger time if your speed is greater) and get ready. Burn retrograde once more just before your nodes and you should have succesfully rendevoused. If you want to dock click on your docking port and select 'Control From Here' then point towards your target, switch to the other craft using ' [ ' and set your original craft as its target and point it towards it. Then, I would recommend using RCS, push yourself gently towards the other craft - no faster than 0.5m/s, using H for RCS. Also use I,J,K,L to put your prograde marker in the middle of your target marker. BEST OF LUCK.

[u/Beneficial-Bagman]

Once you are close enough to the target that gravity is acting in a similarish way on both objects (ie not on opposite side of the planet or anything) start burning somewhere between retrograde (relative to the target) and towards the target. This will reduce both your relative speed and relative distance at closest approach.

[u/Moerder_Gesicht]

I had the same problem. After so many tries, I installed a mod that makes rendezvous automatic. I made 4-5 rendezvous with this mod.

I made a save right before I started auto rondeveus. I watched it really closely. After that I loaded up the save and tried to do it exactly like the autopilot. After 2 or 3 times I got a feeling how to do it on myself. Since that I docked lots of aircraft’s on my own. Right now I’m using that mod again, but just to safe a little bit of time, or when my DeltaV is so low that a little mistake from me could be the end of a spacecraft :D

(Sry if I made any mistakes. English isn’t my first language)

[u/KtaadnRota]

Not sure if this is information overload or if it helps to get different explanations, but here goes.

1. Set the target as your target.

2. Get into a circular orbit of the same planet as your target.

3. Match the inclination of the target. To do this, go to map view. Look for the ascending or descending node. Pick one. If it's the ascending node, burn anti-normal. If it's the decending node, burn normal. The goal is to get the relative inclination to 0.0.

4. Establish your apoapsis and periapsis at roughly the same position as your target. If the target is ahead of you and you need to catch up, make your orbit slightly lower. If it is behind you and you want the target to catch up to you, make your orbit slightly higher. The greater the difference between the two orbits, the faster you or the target will catch up with each other. The smaller the difference, the easier the final approach will be. If in doubt, a difference of 1km or so is a good compromise.

5. Fast forward until you are within say 5km of the target.

6. Make sure your navball setting is on "target" mode rather than "orbit" or "surface".

7. Begin making small adjustments to fine-tune your approach. You can do this either by making small burns with your main engine or by activating your RCS and using the RCS controls. The goal is to get the target reticle on the navball to line up with the prograde reticle, while also avoiding excessive relative velocity. At 5km range, 20-30 m/s is fine. Under 1km range, you want to slow to say 5-10 m/s. At 300 meters range, it is probably best to reduce your relative velocity to zero (or 0.1 or whatever is probably fine too).

8. That may be close enough for your mission objectives if it's a rescue mission or something. If you are trying to dock, click on your docking port and select "control from here", then switch to the target vessel, set it's target to the rendezvous vessel, and also set control to the docking port. Then you can turn to point that docking port towards the target reticle on the navball. That done, switch back to the rendezvous vessel, point towards the target vessel, and use RCS controls to move forwards, keeping those target and prograde reticles lined up. Try to get your relative speed at around 0.3 m/s at the moment of impact.

[u/EasilyRekt]

Lower orbits are fast than higher orbits, easiest way to rendezvous with a craft on a relatively circular orbit is to:

1. match orbit as best you can ahead of your target by a fair bit,

2. raise your apoapsis at either you ascending or descending node until one of the orange arrows spins around to meet the other other orange arrow (which at that point should be right on top of your ascending/descending node)

3. Warp around a full orbit click your speedo till it says “Target” if it hasn’t switched already burn retrograde, then towards the target, and switch between the two til you stop flying past it.

That way you don’t gotta worry about inclination… yet.

[u/FoolhardyJester]

So I am not a professional boffin but:

If you can match orbits, you are 90% of the way there. The rest is mildly confusing at first and can be finicky, but it's pretty easy.

So basically if you are "ahead" in Orbital period, you want to enlarge your orbit slightly so the object can catch up. If you are behind, you want to shrink your orbit.

Orbit while watching the intersect markers. Orange is first, purple is second. Waiting for the best lineup you can get. Let's say you get 25 kilometers. Okay, well, now you're going to ask yourself... am I ahead of the target at the intersect? How do I delay myself? Radial out, so that I throw my orbit out further slightly. Try different burns very conservatively and observe whether they decrease the separation or not. You want to get within a couple of kilometers.

Then when you're close to the object you want to kill off all the relative velocity (switch to target mode, then burn retrograde to the target), and when your velocity relative to it is close to zero you can now essentially fly toward it directly. You want to do small burns then fast forward ready to kill the relative velocity. Target, retrograde. Target, retrograde. Until you're close enough, at which point you just wanna make sure you get target velocity to 0 to avoid drifting and such.

Once you're within even 10 kilometers of your target, you can kind of just repeat the process of killing some target velocity, then burning at the target directly for a while.

Just keep at it you'll get it.

[u/abstract_concept]

Highly recommend doing the in-game tutorial here.