Interesting to see the margins of error on 3.6 - 10-15km in a 200x360km orbit. A lot less accurate than I would have expected, and makes standard mission designs (with separately-propelled payloads) make a lot more sense.
Launch vehicles can't be controlled during atmospheric flight. All the control is in the first seconds with the roll and pitchover maneuvers and the rest of the way is maintaining a zero angle of attack during the gravity turn.
This causes errors to accumulate and they must be corrected with rocket burns with the payload satellite or space craft.
15 km may seem like quite far off, but it doesn't take a big rocket burn to correct.
This is absolutely not the case, angle of attack is not zero, but moreover most of the orbital insertion is exo-atmospheric and you can burn in whatever attitude you want. The factor determining the accuracy of the apogee of your orbit is how accurately you can shut the engine off at the right moment and control your velocity.
