Ascent profile challenge

[damerell]

22 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Tilt the rocket forward/eastwards 5 degrees. That's one notch (holding shift) of the rotate gizmo on the command pod.

Please could you retry without this tilt? I admit the OP wasn't totally clear on whether or not it is permitted. Sorry about that.

[swjr-swis]

46 minutes ago, damerell said:

Please could you retry without this tilt? I admit the OP wasn't totally clear on whether or not it is permitted. Sorry about that.

Nah I'm fine, leave it off the table. The tilt is the key to this launch profile, so removing it invalidates it. The whole idea behind it is to not need any attitude input at all, neither manual nor automated.

Trying to fix it by manual input would basically make it a copy of ReactorDrone's entry, and he already has the best manual entry anyway. I'm fine with that.

Btw, re-reading the part you quoted, I wonder if you understood that I tilted the whole rocket, not just the pod - I mention the pod because by rotating it, since it's the root part, it tilts the whole rocket. So I didn't change the rocket in any way. I just pushed it over a notch.

Edited December 23, 2015 by swjr-swis
btw

[damerell]

11 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Btw, re-reading the part you quoted, I wonder if you understood that I tilted the whole rocket, not just the pod - I mention the pod because by rotating it, since it's the root part, it tilts the whole rocket. So I didn't change the rocket in any way. I just pushed it over a notch.

I did, yes, although fair enough to ask.

[damerell]

I thought I would try the newly released Gravity Turn mod. I had to experiment a bit, but results were very satisfactory:

Here we are at launch. I have set the SRBs to 100% (I'm sorry about the default value on the challenge craft; I think I must have botched the takeoff TWR calculation somehow) and restacked it. I've also adjusted some of the Gravity Turn defaults and hit Best Guess.

And here we are in orbit. I did have to stage manually (Gravity Turn inputs a MechJeb circularisation if possible, but MechJeb manuevers don't autostage) and apply a small squirt of throttle to get Pe just above 180km. 164 LF is not the best result we've seen, but it does suggest this is a good automated tool.