Thought I might upload a few shots from my initial launches.
I decided to start unmanned and launch using the stayputnik, usually I start with a full sized rocket and shove a command pod on for gyroscopic stabilization, but that's not very realistic so my first 20 or so launches were entirely ballistic which was rather fun, getting the nose parachute balanced is almost impossible if you're using a stayputnik due to the hacky part clipping I needed to integrate them both, but my chute-less launches were on target and perfect, unless excessive speed caused them to disintergrate, or not enough speed made them unstable. Since I have tweakscale I also started with tiny 30 cm diameter rockets and worked my way up.
I set up a camera on the runway in the hope of capturing a few launches, as I have no wheels or method of moving I had my fingers crossed that it was oriented correctly.
First launch predictably was just a probe stuck to a solid booster, but rescaled to 30 cm. It's got a hell of a kick considering it's mere 5kN thrust.
One camera got a nice shot of the launch 2 km away.
My next designs were 40 cm liquid fuelled, and had a parachute, they were rather unstable.
Finally after successfully balancing the A-2 series and then iteratively upscaling them to 1 meter, we achieved this beast.
Previous to the first B-1 launch the altitude record was 90km and distance was 157 km, this rocket achieves 120kN, half the thrust of a V2 rocket, which weighs 12 tons, but also carries a 1 ton warhead, which the B-1 does not.
The rocket achieved a height of 236 kilometres which is clearly past the 130 kilometre altitude of the atmosphere, and landed 100 km from the launch site, all ballistically.
The next version will be upscaled to full 1.2 meter size and carry an empty command pod, it should have the same weight, thrust, height, and payload as a real V-2 rocket, while also being controllable due to the gyroscopes. From here on we have a pretty standard KSP.
Edit. Since I'm trying to replicate a low tech initial research program, I've decided to use an iterative design process, as part of this my saves are numerical and the craft files contain notes about modifications and testing results. for example:
One major limitation is that the craft description can only hold 2 pages.