VincentMcConnell
New member
Just docked the DG-IV to the ISS tonight. I am never...doing...that...again...
It took about two hours and I ended up 27km from the target for some reason. I found myself burning my main engine like a mad man just to have any hope of fixing the relative velocity. So after successful docking, I have decided not to do that anymore.
Now I really need to start learning how to land. Is it easier with a joystick?
---------- Post added at 09:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:17 AM ----------
By dump fuel, I meant "ALL OF IT".
I wanted to drop my weight down as low as possible. But I found that it helps to have an engine during landing because sometimes I start to stall and need to add velocity. The weight is still kind of a problem. My gear sometimes breaks off and I'm never on target.
It took about two hours and I ended up 27km from the target for some reason. I found myself burning my main engine like a mad man just to have any hope of fixing the relative velocity. So after successful docking, I have decided not to do that anymore.
Now I really need to start learning how to land. Is it easier with a joystick?
---------- Post added at 09:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:17 AM ----------
I don't want to nitpick, but these two statements you made just don't match together, IF you really "did everything Grover showed".
He explains perfectly how and why one should dump fuel before reentry, and that the DGIV-2 needs to be under 19 tons.
There is the reentry checklist (press d65 on your keyboard) which alerts you with beeps and tells you what still needs to be done...
In the beginning Orbiter and some of its add-ons are indeed overwhelming, and one can easily oversee/forget/misunderstand something and be overloaded with new infos.
It's a (for me it was, and still is) slow read/apply/rinse/repeat process, where every single time you always learn and understand something new, and the "big picture" slowly takes shape.
There's a lot to read.
By dump fuel, I meant "ALL OF IT".
I wanted to drop my weight down as low as possible. But I found that it helps to have an engine during landing because sometimes I start to stall and need to add velocity. The weight is still kind of a problem. My gear sometimes breaks off and I'm never on target.
Personally for me, rendezvous and docking is a fairly simple exercise. So I am curious as to what you actually did. My guess is that the difference between the DGIV's orbit and the ISS's orbit was too high. So you had a very high RVel at the intersection point. You were probably trying to do this one quickly. I suggest that you take a couple of sim days to manage your approach and work with a smaller orbital difference.
