Space to Space (KSP 1.12.5 + FAR)

[rockmeowstar]

Just press the spacebar. No SAS, no gyrodynes, no control, just SRBs. Drink tea, enter orbit.

I've done something similar in stock before - it really did manage to launch crew, satellites, and a bunch of other things - and even make all this beauty returnable. FAR brazenly takes away 100 m/s of delta V, complicating the situation.

It would seem that this is a simple craft of five boosters, and such attention to it. But everything is in the details.

1. The angle of the small booster and the amount of fuel affect the starting pitch angle, and its location relative to the center - the final pitch angle. The further it is from the center, the faster the craft spins in the thin atmosphere.
2. The wings at the end of the booster, looking like a dart, reduce the tilt and increase stabilization. The further they are from the center, the slower the craft spins in the thin atmosphere. Outside the atmosphere, they have no effect at all - only point 1 works.
3. At first glance, it seems that the optimal formula is to maintain TWR 1.0 after acceleration and not increase the time to the apocenter. Everything is almost true, but reducing TWR reduces the delta V and the height of the apocenter, which requires changing the amount of fuel in the small booster and the distance of the wings to the center (points 1, 2).
4. Intuitively, burning down is like burning the delta V in vain, but this is moving the apocenter closer to the craft and setting the pericenter directly below it on the other side of the planet. At the moment the burn is completed, the apocenter and pericenter change places, and the craft remains in a stable orbit of 73.8/76.2 km, which I consider a good result for SRBs.
5. The Kerbonaut in the chair greatly affects the symmetry of the craft, and therefore it has to be placed very precisely and clearly, because in a vacuum, every kilogram of weight in one direction or another without SAS and gyrodynes gives a turn of several degrees, which completely changes the geometry of the orbit.

To summarize: FAR forces us to invent more complex centering schemes, but the hypothesis is confirmed - it is POSSIBLE.

Video with proof of concept:

Craft download link: 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3347523570

[Vanamonde]

That was a silly thing to do. Congratulations.