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Help with small rockets


Nerbal The Second

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I've played KSP for about a year now and have always had problems with small rockets even with the vector engine's gimble it seems to flip around the 20Km mark, I've added wings and tried everything to keep it from flipping but nothing seems to work. If anyone has tips to keep them from flipping that would be really helpful. 

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1 hour ago, Nerbal The Second said:

 https://1drv.ms/u/s!AichGTQO8KnRgTu9LiO27hva1ljK?e=JM1Aht

this might show you the picture or it wont idk

Yes, that worked. 

Hmm. I don't see any obvious problem, though I would advise using 4 fins instead of 3 for better steering. It looks like quite a reasonable build, though. I wonder if your problem might be steering too hard. Try turning more gently and using one the engines with a smaller gimbal range. I know it sounds like the Vector's wider gimbal range should give it more control, but actually it can over-correct and swing the ship around in a way that's hard to control. 

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That rocket image looks reasonable. Flipping problems can be caused by too much drag near the nose, but it looks like you have a good design with what seems to be a parachute, capsule, heat shield, decoupler, followed by your rocket stack. Your find are at the back where they belong.

It's not a very big rocket, so maybe the Vector is too much thrust and causing excessive acceleration. Even a streamlined rocket will get a lot of drag at the nose if going too fast in the low atmosphere. What's your TWR at liftoff? (if you don't know how to check, click the "///" for stage 2 near the lower-right corner of your screen image.)

 

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  • 1 month later...

I used to have a big problem with rockets flipping over. At the time I used the "Matt Lowne" ascent profile. Essentially, straight up until 10km, then tip over to 45degrees and burn until desired apoapsis is achieved. I have since learned a more realistic gravity turn. It's much less likely to flip a rocket, and it saves a lot of fuel to orbit.
 

Basically: launch straight up until speed is about 100m/s, then tip over about 5 degrees. once there watch your time to apoapsis, and when it reaches 32-45 seconds, lock SAS to prograde and throttle down on the engines to maintain time to apoapsis in that range. The rocket will then slowly tip over all by itself as you ascent, and because you're always facing prograde your rocket doesn't flip, and you minimize air resistance. If you want to tip over faster, throttle down, if you want to ascend steeper, throttle up. 

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