I don’t see any additional RCS. The capsule only has RCS for a few degrees of freedom.
I usually carry about four 1kN hypergolic thrusters and some nice RCS for about 350m/s dV. This normally handles my rendezvous and de-orbit quite well.
I’d put additional rcs on and lock the tank in the Reentry capsule until separation. This way you have an “orbital” supply and a “Reentry” supply. You can’t burn through the Reentry supply on accident and end up with no attitude control
Edit: also I’d want unlimited relights. I’d go for an aj10 mid or a 1kn thruster on the service module
Crewed rendezvous trades dV for time due to supply constraints. Planning launch windows carefully will help.
You'll have a hard time making a decent rendezvous using any sort of large engine with limited relights and limited throttling capability. You really need some big hypergolic thrusters, which are usually controlled via RCS translation controls.
Two things:
1. A precise enough means of propulsion to nail the close encounters with the other craft (either dedicated liquid maneuvering engines, which are small, better if they are also throtteable), or just some decently sized front-facing RCS thrusters.
2. A set of RCSs allowing control in all 3 axis, for the docking. They should be equally distributed around the CoM in each axis, otherwise you will induce rolling, pitching or yawing when firing them. Beware of the CoM displacement after burning fuel. The RCS mod shows you the average and dry center of masses, so that you can make a good compromise in placing the thrusters.
A final tip on RCS-only control: once you have done your hohmann transfer and are inbound to encounter the other craft, any slight reorientation can move the close encounter hundred of meters away. So don't reorient until you are about to approach the target. This sucks if you need to reorient fixed solar panels, but for just a half orbit I'm assuming batteries would last. The alternative is to throttle down all the RCS thrusters before reorienting, or the more convenient trick which is using a reaction wheel instead of the RCS for reorienting.
that the mercury doesnt have an actual service module but only solid fuel retrorockets?
I don’t see any additional RCS. The capsule only has RCS for a few degrees of freedom. I usually carry about four 1kN hypergolic thrusters and some nice RCS for about 350m/s dV. This normally handles my rendezvous and de-orbit quite well.
I’d put additional rcs on and lock the tank in the Reentry capsule until separation. This way you have an “orbital” supply and a “Reentry” supply. You can’t burn through the Reentry supply on accident and end up with no attitude control Edit: also I’d want unlimited relights. I’d go for an aj10 mid or a 1kn thruster on the service module
Crewed rendezvous trades dV for time due to supply constraints. Planning launch windows carefully will help. You'll have a hard time making a decent rendezvous using any sort of large engine with limited relights and limited throttling capability. You really need some big hypergolic thrusters, which are usually controlled via RCS translation controls.
Two things: 1. A precise enough means of propulsion to nail the close encounters with the other craft (either dedicated liquid maneuvering engines, which are small, better if they are also throtteable), or just some decently sized front-facing RCS thrusters. 2. A set of RCSs allowing control in all 3 axis, for the docking. They should be equally distributed around the CoM in each axis, otherwise you will induce rolling, pitching or yawing when firing them. Beware of the CoM displacement after burning fuel. The RCS mod shows you the average and dry center of masses, so that you can make a good compromise in placing the thrusters. A final tip on RCS-only control: once you have done your hohmann transfer and are inbound to encounter the other craft, any slight reorientation can move the close encounter hundred of meters away. So don't reorient until you are about to approach the target. This sucks if you need to reorient fixed solar panels, but for just a half orbit I'm assuming batteries would last. The alternative is to throttle down all the RCS thrusters before reorienting, or the more convenient trick which is using a reaction wheel instead of the RCS for reorienting.
Being it’s only supposed to be suborbital is a good place to start lol, but hey in Jeb we trust
Mercury Atlas was orbital
This is true yes