Docking Confusion

[nathan-is-frosty]

This may have already been covered elsewhere, if so I'd love to know where.

anyway........

I'm a keen user of Orbiter, and verry interested in docking to the ISS. I've followed the scenario from 'Go Play in Space'. I can align the orbital planes and sync the orbits well but after that I get extremily confused. The checklist steps from the book saythat at around 2km start to thrust toward the V[ISS] with short bursts of main engines until the V[ISS] is close to 0. It's this bit where i get confused, what am I looking at, should my Sync MFD be on? What do I need to do?

Can anybody help me?

 

[dutchpirate]

Docking

Make sure your HUD is in 'Docking' mode. V(ISS) refers to a 'bullseye' target on the HUD display that shows your velocity vector relative to your docking target (in this case the ISS). When closing in on the ISS, what I like to do is to have the nose of your ship pointed right at the V(ISS) bullseye and watch the HUD for your distance to the ISS. Once is stops closing and starts moving away again, thrust into the V(ISS) until the value underneath it reads close to zero. It will start to drift off center as you approach zero, but just keep thrusting in the same direction. Once you've done that, point your nose right at the ISS and thrust forward for a few seconds until you see the -V(ISS) crosshairs near the ISS. Use translational thrust to put the crosshairs squarely on the ISS. Again, it will drift a bit, just keep correcting. When you are getting close, either use retro thrust, or spin 180 to point again at the V(ISS) bullseye and repeat the whole process until you are close enough to move in on thrusters only. If you use the DGIV docking autopilot PRO300SPEC0 (<alt>4), you will see something similar to this process. Just make sure that you have NAV1 tuned to a valid ISS dock frequency, and that your nose cone is open!

 

[polaris149Tiberius]

How about using LOLA to learn

How about using LOLA to learn. I use LOLA to see what it does and it helps me understand what needs to happen.

For rendezvousing, I recommend a crash course in it from NASA's Apollo Flight Journal
Lunar Orbit Rendezvous
This site has pictures and explains everything with no calculations (I promise)
After this reading, I went and used LOLA and its pretty dead on. Once things work for you in your head as to how it supposed to happen Im sure all the recommendations we give you will help even more.

Good hunting

 

[ar81]

Delta Glider to ISS tutorial
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3074"]Tutorial: DG to ISS[/ame]