Superfluous J

No the best way to test is on the launch pad. Both mods COULD be reporting real things, or COULD be using the same (or even different) outdated methods of determining torque that the game doesn't use anymore.

Thanks for doing the launches. I'm hoping to try some more tests soon with varying TWRs (So far all my TWRs have been similar and low, around 1.25-1.3) to see if it's better. I'm like Venkman in Ghostbusters. I never studied. So, when you say remove the lift module and add a drag box module to wings, that sounds to my uneducated ear like it'd remove wings' ability to lift and add drag to them. That doesn't sound good on either count so I assume I'm missing something important.

By "realistic" do you mean "nonexistent"? Or do you want the SSTOs that look like planes but could never actually get to space anyway?

Yeah the 909's my early career workhorse once in space.

That corrected ship looks surprisingly like my Mun lander. I'm not going to post it because It works in 1.0 which means it's horribly underpowered for 1.0.2. I will be remaking it for 1.0.2 because (with a bit more dV) it's hopefully going to be my first Minmus hopper. I used no gimbaling engines in the first stage (the 6 outer engines were Reliants) and the center stack, which was stage 2, had a single Swivel. Everything else were 909s (whose new name escapes me at the moment). I did not have control surface fins so I used the basic ones. In 1.0.2 I plan on trying the dinky ones as they're lighter and much cheaper.

ALA doesn't interact with the stock toolbar (to my knowledge) and my personal Blizzy Toolbar has an icon.

Yeah I hate to say it but I think I'm going to just go back to the old way to climb :/ I totally agree wiht NathanKell. Test it to see. I did, and 45@10km is the way to go. Woo hoo for the new aero. I feel like regex and I changed bodies or something.

As a stalwart opponent of the old aero model's pushing us to climb 10km before turning and then cranking a turn over 45 degrees, I'm a bit surprised that (from my testing at least) you don't find this an issue. Or is it okay because doing a more realistic gravity turn is only SLIGHTLY more inefficient instead of being TERRIBLY so?

BTW Career mode is a terrible idea for a new player. I think Science mode is perfect for teaching. The last thing you want while learning gamified rocket science and orbital mechanics is massive, game-ending penalty for failure.

I don't want it back. I'm afraid it IS back. At least in part. EDIT: Sorry I misread you. I thought you said people complained about 0.90's model being unrealistic. I have no opinion on the realism of 1.0. It seemed good to me but my flying experience is limited to knowing where the good bars are in various airports and how to get a full can of pop when they're passing out glasses. I can say that 1.0's air seemed to encourage a realistic gravity turn more than 1.0.2's does. I have flown several test rockets. At the very best, a "real" gravity turn EQUALS the dV of a "crank it over 45 degrees at 10km" turn. Sometimes the old way does BETTER. I've not yet - in my testing - had the more gradual turn come out ahead.

Your sky is darker on the horizon than mine, though mine is darker above than the pictures I see of Earth. I think your extra darkness is due to that visuals mod you have installed. Granted, Kerbin is not Earth (though it approximaes it at sea level) so you expect some differences.

That would be nice. Instead of having the 3 exclusive options now have 2 options that are inclusive and not required, and on by default [x] Science [x] Funds Turning both off is Sandbox. Turning both on is Career. Turning Science on is Science. Turning Funds on would be what you want. Instead, I would suggest you start a career game and make sure you have "automatically unlock items as you buy tech nodes" (or whatever it's called) checked. Then hack in a ton of science. Then manually buy all the tech nodes with that science until they're all unlocked. Then (and this is the most important step) back up that persistent.sfs file so you never have to do it again.

How fast are you going and how low in the atmosphere are you? If you're going 100m/s 45km up there's a problem. If you're 1km up going 2000m/s then I'd expect anything to slow down. Somewhere in the middle you'd not be able to accelerate, but wouldn't decelerate. The simple fact that it happens means nothing.

Are you converting the meters on your gauge to feet, or do you mean 30000 meters up? At 30km the sky is quite dark, actually.

1.0.3 here we come...

...science? Sorry, I had to. But seriously, I'm doing science. I'm bringing all the science instruments with me, and a scientist to reset the goo and jr experiments for multiple uses, and then returning all the data to Kerbin in the pod. I'm using contracts to make money and science experiments to get science. Which, in my opinion, is the correct way the game should do it. I've not blown the tech tree away in 2 missions but I did just get 800 science from a mun landing, not counting the (much smaller) values from the contracts. I won't get that every time, of course, but there's also Minmus hanging up there waiting to be all scienced out. I fully expect that if I only visit each Mun anomaly and all the biomes on Minmus (which I'm hoping to do in one mission), I'll have more than enough science to tackle interplanetary when the time comes, in spite of fairings being too far up in the tech tree.

That's really weird. All I can think is your ship isn't balanced. The one you posted looks perfectly balanced, however. Do you turn SAS on? I know that's a crazy question but I'm grasping straws here. If you have the means, I'd love to see a YouTube video of you launching and the ship going crazy in the first km of flight. In .90 I didn't even bother with Jrs or goos, as they were one-use and you could get more science by just doing contracts. In 1.0(.2) I bring 2 people, a scientist and a pilot. The scientist can reset the goo and jr for multiple uses, making them much more valuable. Then, before burning home, I toss everything but what is needed to get the science (and I guess the Kerbals) home. I almost never transmit. On those rare occasions that I remember to bring an antenna, I frequently forget to use it. No problem. I had similar misconceptions about the trusses when I started, but someone set me straight.

I've not had enough time to decide. .90 is by far the bottom of my list. 1.0 seemed too drag-free but 1.0.2 seems like maybe it has too much drag. I have no idea which is more realistic. Both are "realistic enough" that it comes down to opinion.

I find sandbox totally boring. I also tend to get a bit bored whenever I finish off the tech tree and complete all my immediate goals. Then, I start a new career. Luckily, this usually matches up in time with a new release For all the tech tree's (obvious) problems, playing with it is better for me than the not playing at all I'd do without it.

So it wasn't "Narnia"?

I'd be interested in knowing more. Obviously what worked in FAR and 1.0 don't work now. How much higher do I need to go? What are some rough benchmarks for degree tilt vs altitude, speed, apoapsis, or whatever else makes for a good metric?

I just tried a gravity turn that was pretty efficient both in FAR and in 1.0, in 1.0.2 and then launched the same rocket to 10km, cranked it hard 45, and then followed my old 0.90 gravity turn. The old 0.90 gravity turn saved me about 50m/s NOTE: This was with as aerodynamic a rocket as you can make in the early tiers. Just a straight stack, 2 stages and a mk1 pod with a parachute on top. I added the new fins too to help with stability.

I've had pretty restricted play time (due mostly to it being a weekend with BEAUTIFUL weather) but I just launched 1.0.2 for the first time, copied the ship that got me to orbit in 1.0 over, launched it, and... ...got into orbit. I then bright it back down and landed it. I had more trouble keeping it steady, especially during descent (no heat shield or decoupler on the last small stage) but it made orbit and from what I remember of my first launch it actually held the gravity turn better than it did in 1.0. If I'd had fins on it and decoupled that last fuel tank and engine, I bet it'd have worked even better.

It's pretty likely. I just tried it and though many complained that they were for 1.0, on a quick check everything that I expected to work, worked. At least well enough to make trying wroth it for you.

Interesting, and it makes logical sense. Do rockets do this in real life, does anybody know?