I did another couple launches last night, being a bit more aggressive in my goals while still remaining unmanned. The first launch was a mistake example of inattention, not bothering to fire my 3rd stage until I was going to nick back into the atmosphere. I was able to pull back out but only after burning far too much fuel. Realigning my goals with the reality of my flight, I assumed it into an interior with Eve. After burning all remaining fuel, I’m now an a meandering path around Sol. I won’t abort, but neither do I have much hope for some good hard science.
The second launch, while infinitely better, setting as how I don’t flake in the first five minutes was still giving me grief. It appears as much as I like to fly by the seat of my pants, it would behoove me to actually look into done decent orbital formulas.
This all gets me to the crux of the issue. I’m playing a game of rocketry and space exploration. Much like my views on many game mods, using someone else’s calculator for this seems dirty. That being said, while I’ll continue doing my amateur hour launches, I’m going to start building my own formulas for the job.
Peter's stuff.