My first sub-orbital flight in KSP 1.2 loud and clear :-)

[Pawelk198604]

 

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Some advice: You don't need two decouplers. Heat shields can automatically jettison now. Right click.

 

[Northstar1989]

8 hours ago, Pawelk198604 said:

 

I'd suggest not making use of a continuous burn approach, even to a suborbital trajectory.  You can get much faster/further by throttling back up to max once you pass the lowest 6-10 km of atmo, cutting engine power to cruise to APO once you have enough vertical speed to clear the atmosphere, and then re-igniting your engines near APO to build up as much horizontal speed as possible.  You probably also want to pitch over earlier and more sharply in ascent- so you build up horizontal velocity sooner...

If you do this right, you also require little to no heatshielding, as youre-entry will be quite shallow.

Finally, more fuel tanks could have gotten you a LOT further on your first liquid fueled launch.  Your TWR was far higher than is optimal.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 13, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Vanamonde]

This report of a mission has been moved to Mission Reports. 

[Capt. Hunt]

You don't really need to jettison the heatshield anyway.  I think that option is mainly there to clear it away if you have landing legs or (with some mods) flotation devices behind it.  Besides, as long as it's a shallow sub-orbital, you probably don't even need the heatshield.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Capt. Hunt

[Pawelk198604]

10 hours ago, Capt. Hunt said:

You don't really need to jettison the heatshield anyway.  I think that option is mainly there to clear it away if you have landing legs or (with some mods) flotation devices behind it.  Besides, as long as it's a shallow sub-orbital, you probably don't even need the heatshield.

I was required to do this because contact specification "to test heat-shield trough staging sequence after splashdown"

And BTW i think it look even cool giving fact that from i know original mercury spacecraft did this too, and Soyuz spacecraft did this too.  

[Capt. Hunt]

Ok, well, for that you'll need to check enable staging on the heatshield.  Just decoupling it probably won't complete the contract condition.