Basic Tutorial Lesson 2.1

Lesson objectives:

1. get close to a tonne of rubbish
2. get back to the station

Bring up the communications console and head to the market to buy some rubbish. It's about the only thing that they will actually pay you to take from them, so it won't matter if you don't have any money. One tonne will suffice. Then take off. Remember to retract your landing gear.

Increase your speed to a hefty 10 km/s relative to the station. Wait until you're a few hundred kilometers from Lave Station (use your external camera, pan around and select the station to find out). Then select the ship's inventory (F3, shopping cart). Dump 1 tonne of rubbish into space.

Looking through your wind shield, roll, pitch and yaw around until you see the rubbish flying away from you. When you see it, select it (use your mouse).

Objective 1

To get close to something in space, you have to assume the same direction and velocity. When you're trailing it perfectly with only a minor difference in speed, you can get really close.

Remember how you lined up to the station's bay entrance. Watch if the rubbish is getting closer or going away from you. If the distance between you and the rubbish is increasing, you'll have to accelerate in its direction.

The rubbish will almost certainly drift toward the edge of your wind shield. Watch to which edge it is drifting, and add velocity in that same direction. Don't roll, pitch or yaw, but add velocity.

If the rubbish is getting closer too fast for you to react, it will disappear from your view. If that happens, change your ship's orientation (roll, pitch, yaw) to get it back into view, then repeat the above to try and assume the same direction and speed. To prevent this from happening, decrease your velocity toward it, to decrease the difference in speed between you and the rubbish. If you decrease your velocity too much, you will start increasing your distance. You will notice this from that the direction cross-hair has disappeared from your screen.

Practice this. If you find your thrusters aren't subtle enough for what you want to do, press shift while firing for more subtlety. You can also press select a lower thrust on all your thrusters (F8, 1-6).

Try and get as close as you can for as long as you can.

Objective 2

Change orientation to get Lave Station back in your wind shield. When you've found it, select it.

Now you basically have to do the exact same thing as with the rubbish, but Lave Station is a whole lot bigger than the rubbish, so its easier.

Remember, the rubbish and you are still hurling away from the station with about 10 km/s. So you have to add a lot of velocity to turn around, i.e. get back to the station. Change orientation so that the station is exactly inside the orientation cross-hair, and accelerate toward it. You will notice that the increase in distance between you and the station will grow less. As soon as the distance itself starts falling the direction cross-hair will enter the view.

Don't let your velocity relative to the station climb too high, or you won't be able to get it down in time for your final approach. About 3.5 km/s should give you enough time. Also, your forward thrusters aren't as powerful as your rear thrusters, so to decrease forward velocity you need more time than to increase forward velocity. Then try to align yourself with the station by adding velocity up, down, left and right.

During your flight home, decrease forward velocity relative to Lave Station for a few seconds to find out how much time you'll need to get that velocity to zero. Also, keep correcting your direction every time the navigation cross-hair drifts away.

Bring down forward velocity to about 300 m/s when you get within 100 km. from the station. Then dock.

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Basics Tutorial Part 2 - Next: Lesson 2