Kestrel-9a

I saw AG1 light up, didn't put that together.

I really hadn't tweaked my program much since I'd gotten working, never really tried to optimize it. The g-turn on mine started way too late in the ascent. I knocked it down to 2.5km and saved 75m/s Dv right there tried your 60 seconds tap and lost a bit ov Dv. I'm gonna play around with it and more tomorrow and maybe upload v.2 later. Doubt I'll ever reach quite the same efficiency your program gets...we'll see.

@kananesgi re the flickering at the end, hit 1 to shut off the autocircularizer, I should probably find a better way to keep it available, for now that's its "I'm still active" notice.

For the time-to-orbit, yeah, I'm getting a lot of the efficiency from Oberth and during ascent that means smearing out the acceleration so as much energy as possible gets stored in the remaining fuel, to be used to better effect later. You can do that part manually, hit X1 during the ascent to shut off the circularizer, poot out the apoapsis yourself and drop a burn node, the first stage profile also gets a lot of efficiency, higher twr to cut the gravity loss, the turn profile avoids needless vertical acceleration.

edit: might need to pause to get the X1 to work during ascent

edit 2: actually, the remaining Δv looked familiar, just retried it with and without the slow circularization, it gets very little benefit overall, it's basically all in the first stage.

Hmm, I just tried your version and it pitched over wildly at about 15km ASL to a pitch of about 10 degrees up and then accelerated until the fairing failed from heat damage at 30km and had spent 80% fuel by then. Something obviously didn't compute right.

Is there a special procedure to launching it? I just hit the Stage key like my original design.

[EDIT] Disregard, something janky happened on the first try. Second try seems to be working.

[EDIT 2] Ok, the second try worked. I think mine is a "prettier" launch. Yours is much more efficient, given the smaller booster and the leftover Dv at the end, but I don't like the flickering engine at the end, and mine finishes a lot more quickly.