My Voyager Quest

[Blazer Ayanami]

Alright, Voyager Quest, as the title indicates. This is the rocket:

Almost at the limit, but still within the limits.

Here's the mission:
Launchpad:


Liftoff:


High atmosphere, and gravity turn:


Low Earth Orbit:


Ejection burn:


Passing the orbit of Mars, mission completed:

Will post some general tips in a minute.

 

[Blazer Ayanami]

Some general tips to anyone that might want to try the Voyager Quest:

Gravity Turns save a lot of fuel:
I've seen a lot of people launch straight up, trying to leave the atmosphere as fast as possible. Problem is, with that flight profile you lose much more energy fighting the gravity, than what you save by not fighting the drag. That's because for every second you spend burning vertically, your rocket has to compensate for the Earth's gravity and keep going up. Earth's gravity is 9.8 m/s^2, meaning that for every second you spend fighting the gravity, your rocket is wasting 9.8 m/s of its total deltaV...

So what do we do then? We try to turn left or right, trying to not fight the gravity that much, while also gaining altitude and horizontal speed, to get rid of the drag and go for orbit. This is called a gravity turn, and it looks like this:

So, I recommend following the ideal angle shown in the top left corner of your screen, during your gravity. I mean it is there for a reason.

Ejection angle:
Once you are in LEO, orbiting Earth, the next step is to go interstellar. The most efficient way to do this, is to make sure your ejection angle is paralell to the direction the Earth is going. So, when you are in LEO, you can zoom out, check the position of the planet relative to the Sun, and then burn in the side of the planet that is opposite to the Sun, so you are burning prograde relative to Earth, but at the same time, believe it or not, but you are also increasing your speed relative to the Sun, to escape the solar system.