Flight Question ISS Rendezvous Problem

skyballer455

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It's been a long time since I've been on here, but with the quarantine going on I decided to get back into Orbiter.

On my last flight to the ISS using the standard Delta glider, I ran into a problem. It seems that I can't fully stop my motion either towards or away from the ISS. If I do get my CVEL down to 0, I just start moving in the other direction. Thus starts a vicious cycle where I start moving towards the ISS only to have the CVEL go into the negative at an increasing rate, whereas I have to kill that momentum and start moving towards the ISS, only to have that motion stop and start moving the other way and I never actually rendezvous with the ISS.

I don't know what could be causing this. I'm pretty sure I synced my orbit correctly.
 

n72.75

Move slow and try not to break too much.
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Keep in mind that even if you're only a few km away, when you null all your relative velocity you change your own orbit, such that it diverges from your target over time. This will manifest itself as a slowly increasing relative velocity.

An easy way to rendezvous if you're in something like a Deltaglider where fuel is relatively cheap, when you're about 15 km away and you have the same orbital inclination, LAN, LPE, rather then nulling your relative velocity, use your translation thrusters to keep your velocity vector pointed at the station. Generally you'll pick up speed as you do this, so periodically slow down so you don't go above 50m/s or so.

You'll catch if eventually.
 
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