why is 1.0.3 so easy

[herbal space program]

Well this is better than was managed in 1.02, with a payload fraction of over 41%:

After you eat your helmet (ahem ....) try more wings again - they seem a lot less draggy, as do many things, and build speed lower if you need to - 4 rapiers should push 47t very easily.

That was crunchy!

You were right. This plane weighs 50 tons on the runway and has 4 RAPIER and 1 nuke engines.

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The trick for me was to build speed for maybe 15 seconds right above the ground before really pulling up at all. If I did that, then I could get the engines to the point that they would sustain a quite reasonable rate of climb without losing too much fuel. It almost seems like there's some sort of ground effect with acceleration, but maybe it's just that it's critical not to lose any of your takeoff speed with this weaker low-end thrust. In 1.0.2, I was able to power straight up to 12km in short order, but my takeoff speed was >200m/s. It's much lower in 1.0.4, so now how I fly it in the lower atmosphere matters. I also stuck a few more canards on it. I was interpreting my low speeds on the runway as too much wing drag, which is why I thought I couldn't slap any more wings on. It was actually just about the weak thrust. With that one change, I was able to go back to having 270+ m/s speed and >50 m/s ROC at 12km, which allowed me to go transonic quickly and with hardly any altitude loss. It seems like best altitude for the flaming fury phase is a good 2km lower in this version too, maybe around 17km. This plane made it to orbit with almost 30% of takeoff mass in propellants and just over 4000 dV, which is the best I've done on dV and close to the best on PF. Presumably I can do better with more practice in this new and improved-for-the-third-time air. Anyway, I'm sorry I scoffed, but I really did spend a lot of time trying to get back to what I could do in 1.02 without any success. Having to change everything over and over again is making me cranky.

Edited June 25, 2015 by herbal space program