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[BigD145]

Rescue Kimlyn in orbit around Minmus. You have 12 years.

Well okay then. I'm glad I have so much time. Hang in there Kimlyn. I'll get to you, eventually.

[puke]

So is that bonus science lost forever if you science somewhere without a scientist?

Haha, yep. 

Now you get to worry that you should avoid collecting any science until your kerbals level up to as much as possible, and you also get to delay until you have a mobile lab to cook the science in before using it.

I have to fight that OCD pretty hard.  If it helps, every time you lose some amount of opportunity cost in science points due to sub-optimal use of scientists, think of it as a little victory against the compulsion.

With just 1-star, you need to be gathering 20 science to see a 5% difference give yo even 1 point extra.

[puke]

Ugh. I'm horrible with the new aerodynamics.
I can (for the most part) pilot a good enough rocket to orbit, but I suck at building rockets that can do that. My best method at this point is a 35k rocket that has just enough fuel to exit orbit after reaching it, and nothing else.

Seriously don't get what I'm doing wrong.

Just like in the old version, you're over building and going too heavy.  You can totally reach orbit with level-1 parts.  Maybe not level-0 parts (I'm sure someone could, but thats crazy).

I like how they only start you with the smallest fuel tank now, so rockets tend to be crazy wobbly things.  Build a tall rocket without much weight on the top.  Don't build it too wide.  If you use radial boosters, put nosecones on them.  Tweak solid booster throttle down to some lower percentage so they don't have to fight the atmosphere so much.

Actually, I sometimes have two boost stages -- first is the "get me off the ground" stage that burns at 100% to heft my stupid overweight rocket off the pad and get it some forward momentum.  Second is the slow burn that goes at 50% (or whatever, depending on how fat my rocket has gotten) to plow through the atmosphere at a slow steady pace.

Try to avoid seeing too much sonic effects.  If you have re-entery effects on launch, it is definitely too fast.

[LoSboccacc]

New dv requirement for orbit are way smaller, you can get there with 2.7k dv, by turning early

And by early I mean starting a 2k and reaching 10 deg inclination at 35k, stayng there till ap is 100K

[BFEL]

New dv requirement for orbit are way smaller, you can get there with 2.7k dv, by turning early

And by early I mean starting a 2k and reaching 10 deg inclination at 35k, stayng there till ap is 100K

Good luck having enough control to actually do that without flipping though

Personally there are two general ways I get myself to orbit. Either the "Kickback" boosters which are fucking amazing, or asparagus stuff. I am woefully inefficient but I get the job(s) done. BFEL tends to just go straight up and then burn sideways. Tried to learn gravity turns, but aero always slaps that idea away.

And once you get the "Twin-Boar" all fucking bets are off because that shit was super efficient, powerful AND could be used asparagus. It's gotten nerfed a little in this version, but I THINK it should still be good.

This is why I take any stupid contract that gets me an experimental version of them.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, owing to the crazy flipping whenever I tried to tilt seemingly at all below, like, 50km or so, I just burn straight up until 90 or 100km and then turn sideways.

Seems like I used to be able to turn at 70 and stay up there, but I was probably using more engines.

I've probably also been losing some dV to drag because I thought solid rockets were locked to 100% thrust in the factory.

[Chiefwaffles]

Alright. I think I made a non-horrible rocket. I was able to get it to a 70k/100k orbit and deorbit it by using all the fuel in its test flight. The deorbit may of not been complete, but the atmosphere took care of the rest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

25.5k, and it can hold 2 passengers! And tons of science!
Now to add 30k of engines, fuel, and fins to it so it can do a mun flyby.

[Shadowlord]

Hmm. Testing the rocket I linked to pictures of earlier with the solid rockets set to on 50.5% thrust instead of 100% resulted in a rocket that didn't get the wind effects from the solid rockets and got about 1 km higher before they ran out of fuel, but but was travelling significantly slower at that time. Ultimately, I presume as a result of the lower velocity imparted by the solid rockets, the second stage (the LV-T45) ran out of fuel at 100km. Normally it can reach 100km and then have a bunch left over. (Both tests were executed with a small amount of tilt at around 15km)

[puke]

fiddle with it a little, maybe aim for 75%.  I'm certainly not an expert, especially now that things have changed a bit.  I had no idea that you could start an aggressive turn as low as 20K... though I guess it depends on your speed at the time...

[Shadowlord]

I only tilted over to the first tick mark (Appears to be labelled 80 degrees on the navball), and stayed there until I hit 100km. I wouldn't call that aggressive. (And that height is mostly because when I turned to 0 or 10 degrees at 80km, I was falling back into the atmosphere, and it was still sometimes happening if I turned at 90km, although I'm not sure why only "sometimes.")

[miauw62]

I agree that this is a good time for a new OP.

[Rhodan]

The key to a gravity turn is to turn slightly as soon as you take off, then keep turning while making sure your heading never strays far from the prograde marker. If you still tumble, add some fins. If you keep getting pushed back straight up, remove some fins. Scott Manley did a video on it.

[puke]

Yeah, you can be way more aggressive with the atmosphere now.  I just flew four kerbals around the mun to get them some experience, and barely had the DV for the return trip.

I was worried about heat, so I made my Periapsis about 40K for the lowest speed aerobraking I thought I could manage.

I've actually been around Kerbin orbit 4 times now, passing through Atmos at 40K each time bleeding a little bit more velocity each time.  In previous versions the atmosphere would have been dense enough to drag me down on the fist pass at that height.

[Vicomt]

There's quite a bit of discussion going on over at the KSP forums about what's the best ascent profile. Current thinking now is that you should aim to maximise velocity as soon as you lose air drag. This basically means agressively turning from launch until you're above the worst of the thick air (which is now at about 30-35km). At that point you should be more or less horizontal and pouring all power into getting up to orbital velocity, leaving your Apoapsis to rise naturally with velocity, rather than aiming to get to an Ap of 70-75km (or 100km or whatever you want) and then turning to increase velocity.

so...

from launch, go to 5-10 degrees very quickly
once up to about 10km, turn as hard as your vessel will cope with, aiming for (just above?) horizontal at 35km
keep burning at that angle until you reach desired Ap, then coast
circularize at Ap.

I've been using a similar profile in FAR for a while and although new-stock-aero is similar, there are some differences, hence the horizontal at 35km.

YMMV

[Rakonas]

I've been having a lot of problems keeping my rocket stable when going from solid to liquid fuel stage in this version. Maybe it's pilot skill? I usually still manage to regain control but it's kinda crazy.