Ssto flight, success and failure!

Getting to orbit and back! A quite adventurous trip for our Kerbal. What happened to the parachute? :) And if I may: for such a small craft, you have ample power reserves in the rapier to push through drag. If you want to get the most out of the rapiers, you might want to try to minimize drag. You can minimize body drag by flying completely level and have the wings installed at a small angle of 2.5 degress. Also, Mk2 parts are rather draggy compared to 1.25m or 2.5m parts. Best is to check drag by using the inflight drag lines, I think it was with F11. Good crafts have supersonic drag lines of the same length behind the craft. And it is always a good idea to have parts with a high heat resistance at the nose, this allows you to fly faster in atmosphere during ascent, minimizing your oxidiser requirements. A fairing has a high heat resistance and can be shaped rather pointy to minimize drag. Have fun!

should try to stay prograde longer and accelerate around 15-17km altitude. The 15degree attack angle incurred 100-150m/s fuel tax.

Tansy was shitting his pants on takeoff

Was it just your aggressive reentry or is the design flawed?

The Kraken favoured you that day.