The_FD

Hi! Green KSP-er with some gravity turn issues.. FYI no physics mods except FAR. I read up and looked at videos about gravity turns and I think I grasped the basic concept, but mine seem to be inefficient. I can get into orbit, I’ve orbited and returned from the Mun, yet I still seem to get pretty inconsistent or inefficient results. Playing career mode the rocket in question has 2 stages, starting with 4 BACCs, 3 T400’s and one LV-T45, followed by a Terrier with 2 T400 fuel tanks and two passenger cabins plus MK1 pod. The BACCs are throttled back to 80% for a stage 1 TWR of 2. I’ve had it into orbit, but it seems to be quite an inefficient gravity turn. Either I: - Turn relatively slowly, then end up with a high Apoapsis (150k+), coast to it (whilst decelerating) and then fire the remains of the first stage + second stage while falling like a brick and taking forever to accelerate. This seems to work, but makes it a highly eccentric orbit, especially if I burn up a bit to stop the rate of the descent. - Turn more aggressively, ending up at 45 degrees towards the 10k mark and an ~80k Apoapsis. I coast to it, losing all my orbital velocity and then when it’s time to get the Periapsis up it takes so long that I end up back in the atmosphere unless like above I burn up. This doesn’t always work either due to hitting the atmosphere. Both options seem very inefficient and the second doesn’t always work. The third option I just tried seems to be the least inefficient. I try to do a gravity turn as best I can, then when the Apoapsis reaches around 80k I keep on burning, but pitch down slightly towards Kerbin. This keep my orbital velocity increasing whilst maintain the Apoapsis where it is. This seems to give me a reasonably circular starting orbit. So questions then.. - Is my gravity turn too inefficient, or is the 2nd stage underpowered for the payload thus needing another stage. The upper stage TWR is 1.76. - If it’s the gravity turn, how do you work out on the fly (by dead reckoning?) the ideal angle for the most optimal trajectory. Or at least something that comes close! - I sometimes get either white streaks on the rocket which presumably means parts approaching the speed of sound, or red streaks from heat. If this means I’m going too fast, should I throttle back or turn less? I thought a TWR of 2 was pretty reasonable. A bit of a wall of text with questions but I’d really appreciate some guidance (pun intended). Thanks!

Alright! Excellent, thanks very much for all the helpful replies!

Alrighty, back to stock I go! Thanks for the advice guys, much appreciated. Two more questions then if I may.. - Any quality of life and visual mods other than EVE that I should consider? Redux maybe? - If/when I get around to realism stuff, what scale should the KSP galaxy be scaled to? Thanks again!

Hi Guys, KSP newbie signing in, just downloaded the game tonight! I was wondering, I read somewhere that its quite possible to make KSP "real-world" like, with some mods and the likes. So I went ahead and installed a few that sounded reasonable, such as the Realism Overhaul with all the mods CKAN recommended, Real Fuels/Plume/Boosters/Solar System/Atmospheres, Life Support, FAR, etc. etc. So I think I'm pretty well set on the mods front, however I read somewhere that the scale is greatly reduced. Now that the physics should be somewhat accurate, is there any way to get the scale "right"? Also, I don't mind a challenge and I would like to actually learn from this game.. but am I getting too far ahead of myself? Or is it perfectly doable to start of like this? I'm pretty damn far from a rocket scientist but as an airline pilot I do have some notion of physics and flight. I tried to search for the answers to some of these questions but didn't find much.. I hope this hasn't been asked a million times before! In any case, thanks in advance! -The FD