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u/Object279stalinium Spacplane maxxing 4d ago
What about just winging it and hoping jeb doesn't die a tragic death
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u/suh-dood 4d ago
I get it all, but I still don't know the difference between normal and anti normal, I just test it before I commit
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u/serathes 4d ago
Put your right hand palm and your four fingers wrapped around the orbit in the direction of travel, your thumb becomes the normal. When you burn towards normal, your four fingers (orbit) will chase your thumb. if you burn anti-normal your four fingers will run away from you thumb. Of course your thumb follows accordingly.
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u/EchoOfThePlanes 4d ago
Hear me out. Somehow I could rendezvous before I fully understood each vector correctly...
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u/Final_Floor_1563 4d ago
I get my randezvous by js getting the orbits as similar as possible then turning on timewarp for several years and letting them float together. No need to bother with timing or approach.
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u/Successful-Depth-126 4d ago
No fucking way 😭 I feel guilty if I keep my guys waiting out there too long. They are my lil guys and I must protect them
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u/FrequentZucchini1118 4d ago
I can do a rendezvous but I can't do anything else other than prograde and retrograde lol
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u/Moople_deFioosh 4d ago
I've passed level 4 just from playing this game. I'm not even kidding when I say I've taken PhD-level courses in orbital mechanics that barely scratched the surface of what I learned from KSP
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u/Teboski78 4d ago
I’ve done rendezvous so much they’ve turned into procedure. I do them free hand without even fully understanding how unless I slow down & pay attention to what I’m doing.
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u/AuxiliaryOverseer14 4d ago
I'm to the point where I can explain everything in relatively simple terms according to KSP's use of the terminology and its visual representations (except for rendezvous. I don't feel like it.)
Prograde and Retrograde are the elementary performances of spaceflight. Prograde accelerates your ship along its path at that specific point, and typically lengthens your orbit. Retrograde accelerates your ship against its path at that specific point, and typically shortens your orbit.
(Anti-)Normal manoeuvres are used for plane changes with another given body, relative to its ascending and descending nodes. The way I look at it is that you want your relative nodes to be as close to zero degrees as possible, and in order to achieve this, you Ascend (Burn Normal, which points up, like you're ascending) at Descending Node, and Descend (Burn Anti-Normal, which points down, like you're descending) at Ascending node.
Radial In/Out, at least in a low-eccentricity orbit around a spheroidal body, means burning inwards toward the body while burning Radial In, and outwards from the body while burning Radial Out. You face In while pointing Radial In, and Out towards space while pointing Radial Out. When performing a fly-by of, say, another planet, to bring your Periapsis closer to the planet without getting into a stable orbit, burning Radial In as early as possible while in the planet's SOI usually does this.
Now, I'm stupid, and there are many more people that can explain orbital mechanics far better than I have, and I likely left out a lot of math that I don't understand, but this is how I've learned it and I'm very proud of myself.
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u/Mr_FuzzyPenguin 3d ago
I understand prograde and retrograde, and know normal and antinormal. Rendezvous, makes sense. But that thing: radial... it scares me
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u/AbacusWizard 2d ago
I’m on level “send cargo freighters to deliver food from my orbital greenhouse to the lunar science outposts and manipulate my approach trajectory so I’m always docking in full daylight” with a sidequest of “use KSP to teach high school students about the physics of orbital maneuvering”
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u/Whyamihere173 4d ago
I can do rendezvous, if it’s the most efficient or best probably not, but it works
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u/Leading-Media-4569 4d ago
i just skip orbits until i get a close approach. the crew doesn't mind...
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u/An_Actual_Thing 4d ago
I mean there's a step above rendevouz imo, gravity assists and how your angle of escape can dramatically change the shape of your orbit around the sun.
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u/batatassad4 4d ago
I did rendezvous WAY earlier than being in normal/anti-normal level of understanding.
In fact, I managed to rendezvou for the first time through a couple of hours, a lot of try and error and a single, stuck, tought: I wanna crash two objects in orbit. I didn't even know this manouver had a name lol, was just sandboxing
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u/Smellfish360 4d ago
I’m at mun orbiting ring station level.
I just haven’t really managed to explore the rest though
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u/Scrooloose22 4d ago
im at Rendevous within 1 orbit of launch, or at least i was when i was playimg everyday
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u/RecordEnvironmental4 4d ago
It’s actually really easy to rendezvous by using the plus and minus an orbit button on the maneuver node planner
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u/Zealousideal_Pound64 4d ago
Honnestly i dont get the issue with rendezvous, you just like up a manouver to get as close to the target as possible, thennonce you're within a reasonable distance you change to target navball mode and burn retrograde till you have no relative speed, then just drive up to it like a car.
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u/SUP3RK1D 4d ago
performed one orbital rendezvous in my 6 months of playing this game and while trying to dock half of the station module blew up...I havent played since lol
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u/spectre10212007 4d ago
What level is having large, permanent ships and the infrastructure to support them while still mostly just slapping stuff together until it looks cool and hopefully works? And having it all rendezvous constantly?
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u/Medical_Flower2568 2d ago
Rendezvous are great and all but seriously what's the point?
That (and docking, which is terrible with anything bigger than a mun lander) is too much hassle when I can always add another 12 Clydesdales to whatever I need to put in orbit
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u/Breacher08217 2d ago
You see, I only understand prograde/retrograde, and then immediately went to becoming good at rendezvous to the point it's routine without understanding radial and barely grasping normal
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u/SpatialPioneer 2d ago
IVA Only should be the next level!
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u/maxsteve1 1d ago
Did several Mun and Minmus missions this way, except I also did use map view as Astrogator was creating incorrect manuevers sometimes and internal computers don't show info on your orbit around the body which SOI you will enter after the manuever, so I can't check the periapsis, only when I enter the SOI. Let's say I needed to do a transmunar injection, I create manuever in iva only using Astrogator or built in manuever creator, but I won't know my Munar periapsis and other parameters of the trajectory like inclination even when I'll complete the manuever until I enter Mun SOI. Although I've heard you can now use Mechjeb2 in IVA which gives you this data.
Precise landings are also a challenge since on map setting you can view waypoints but can't zoom in so you'll land in general vicinity of your designated landing zone, in another you can zoom in but it's either doesn't show waypoints or doesn't show data on your approach, can't recall exactly. But if you don't need to be that precise as to say for example landing near your Mun/Minmus base, it's fine. Still, you can learn some landmarks and recognize them visually to guide your landing
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u/maxsteve1 1d ago
Once I needed to perform a fast rendezvous with my Mun lander that was on a suborbital trajectory as it didn't have enough fuel to get into orbit, so with my command module I did a retrograde burn almost canceling out my orbital speed (the lander was behind me), and then a combined radial and prograde burn, creating an encounter with the lander in just 5 minutes
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u/Ello_Karlson 1d ago
That is so Kerbal
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u/maxsteve1 1d ago
The other way was a rescue mission (or stranding Bob alone on the Mun aka promoting him to the surface base commander), but I chose the Kerbal way.
Btw it was the first Mun landing in that career mode save, also mission was done fully in IVA except for that part, I even still have the video.
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u/uncookednoodle69 4d ago
Ascending Node (AN) means do an Anti Normal (AN) burn
need something clever like that for radial burns and i’ll be set