Rendezvous and docking on instruments & from the map

[Noticeably FAT]

Well, it looks like my old thread isn't here on in Google's cache, so I'll try to recreate it.

Just to see if it could be done (and I was kinda bored), I tried a rendezvous and dock using only IVA, and then again only from the map. I managed to pull off both, so here they are.

IVA only Pt. 1. I'm not going to try to retype everything from the first thread, and most of it is in the video anyway. Short version is, with the exception of selecting the target ship in the map view, I was able to rendezvous and dock entirely from the IVA view. Pretty neat.

IVA only Pt. 2. Kinda boring, I'd skip to part 4, where the final rendezvous maneuver and docking happens.

IVA only Pt. 3. Again, you can skip this.

IVA only Pt. 4. This is where it gets fun, I actually rendezvous and dock. There's a glitch at the end when I try to undock from IVA. I try a few different things, and end up having to go back to the space center to fix it. Pt 5 is where I'm back in my ship, and deorbit/land. You'll just have to trust that I don't do any maneuvering between vids.

IVA only Pt. 5. Nothing exciting here, just deorbiting and landing.

So, after seeing it speculated about many times, and then being asked to try it in my old thread, I decided to try docking from the map. It wasn't that difficult, surprising enough. The ascent and circularization is nothing special (and can't be 100% done from the map anyway, what with the lack of staging), so I skipped it in the video.

[Vantskruv]

Impressive, how do you do all the calculations of time, thrust, angle and speed?

[Noticeably FAT]

No calculations, it's all based on repeatable timing. First I launched the target ship, keeping careful note of what times I did each maneuver. The ascent maneuvers are pretty standard, and based on experience instead of calculations (starting a 45° grav turn at ~10KM, etc.). That launch (or rather, launches, I kept screwing things up as I paused and unpaused) wasn't done from IVA, it was a normal launch. For the docking ship, I did one partial launch (ascent but no circularization burn) just to gauge the launch angle. Once I had an idea of where that would put me, I just went for it and it worked out. Thrust/speed was based on 'throttle to the firewall', angle was based on 'that seems about right'. There was a lot of that in both missions.