For my stability handling:
Below the in-line capsule-detatcher (last stage) I put a SAS. Atop either all or half of any further stages (whether in-line, or side-mounted, and depending on what I plan to junk and when during the staging process) I put a SAS. An ASAS somewhere in the mix helps, I suppose. (And I'm talking standard parts only, here.)
Press E before igniting, and you're bound to stay pointing straight up as long as you want. (Even, if you forget to stage or haven't provided enough thrust, while rapidly falling back down tail-first. Sometimes the exploding stack below has successfully 'buffered' the capsule and let it land safely, but that's never been part of my plan.
) But, anyway, my setup generally would keep the launch going straight up as long as I wish. I've built rockets powerful enough, with configurations such as already described in ASCII, that a well-timed launch gets me into a decent solar orbit by just going straight past Mun's orbit. In fact, once it was straight
past Mun, (in and out of its influence, with a hardly curving orbital segment whilst flying through the sphere of influence), skimming that particular hunk of rock. But that was probably overkill in
all respects (except for the "kill" part, they'd probably be drifting still, if I'd let 'em).
For an orbit, however, I tend to wait until exiting the lower-coloured layer of atmosphere, on the gauge, disengage SAS for a moment and touch the controls to allow the heading to 'fall' over onto the 270 degree (or 90 degree!) mark maybe 15 degrees off of verticalm before re-establishing SAS's attempt to hold. Depending on the ship design, natural forces may force it further down, so I may adjust back to a more vertical angle of attempt. As it gets higher (and this bit I consider more an art than a science) I disengage for a few moments and allow it to lay flatter and flatter (sometimes needs a bit of control, but generally while continue its declination for the few moments I allow it), but I
like to get it out of all atmosphere altogether before taking it down to more than 45 degrees from vertical/less than that to the horizontal.
Of course, controlling the ship from the orbit POV screen (with the horizonball controll up, so that you can both see what it's doing and
re-aim it, to whatever extent you actually can) is a useful thing to do, although I do like to see it from the ship-cam perspective to keep an eye on the structure, see when stages are defuelled, etc, so switching back and forth is quite common at this stage of the game.
Once in the 'black' part of the atmosphere gauge, it's a matter of fine-tuning to get a totally non-atmospheric track. It may be a matter of heaving the craft to horizontal and thrusting as much as possible, it's sometimes even a matter of aiming
down between 0 and 30 degrees and thrusting to one degree or another, to try and convert some unwanted rising component of a super-orbital parabola into a largely 'horizontal' component of usefully non-atmosphere-skimming orbit.
But I know there are better ways of doing it. However, my failures to achieve orbit (or surpass it, if that's the plan/accident) tend to be structural failure issues (rare, given the strutting, unless I've overloaded some connector on the pad itself) or just forgetting to make sure there's all the engines/fuel that I want in the first few stages.
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1554620 times)