Why is creating a Kerbin orbit so unpredictable?

[Alshain]

My 'procedure' is as follows. My lifters were tested under this profile.

1. Launch (duh)

2. At about 1km start your turn very gently.

3. By 3km be roughly a 85 degree angle (90 degree heading, don't confuse those, the lifters may be able to make it to orbit but not 100km going retro or polar)

4. By 6km I'm close to a 70 degree angle

5. By 10 to 12km I will be at a 45 degree angle.

6. Here, I start watching my time to Ap closely, if it falls below 30 seconds I will linger a bit between 45 and 30 (regardless of prograde). No matter how you launch, the one thing you don't want is to be going down.

7. Eventually that Time to Ap will start going back up (again this depends on the rocket design) and I will go ahead and turn all the way over to 10 degrees. If my Ap is getting close to target and my Pe is still low, I will put it all the way on the horizon.

All this can be hard to do if a. The aerodynamics on the craft are bad. b. You don't have gimbal. I rarely use the Reliant, when I do it's a booster engine only. SRB's are boosters only, they never get used without at least a swivel to steer. This is largely my preference, different people have different styles.

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I agree.

The HUD displays maybe don't give you much extra info, but periapsis and apoapsis heights are continuously shown, rather than having to click on nodes in map mode. That makes things much easier.

The current version also gives Mach Number on the RH HUD. It can make for a better launch to throttle back so as to stay below Mach 1 for the first few thousand metres. I aim to stay subsonic below about 6000m. The drag can be very high in the trans-sonic speed range, and many craft either struggle to fly faster at lower altitudes, or burn a lot of fuel for not much gain.

Mach number is more important for air-breathing engines. Depending on the engine/intake combination, thrust can increase a huge amount above about Mach 1.5

The HUDS are configurable, they can give you anything you want if you take the time to set them up.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Alshain

[Red Iron Crown]

Pretty sure that's a typo in Step 2, made me do a double take.

[Alshain]

Pretty sure that's a typo in Step 2, made me do a double take.

yeah, you should probably turn sometime before 1000km