FinalFan

To your first point, it depends on how long you would otherwise be hauling the tankage proposed to be dropped, and also how soon you plan to drop it (i.e. how much drag is even a factor considering you launch at 0m/s). [edit: And really, think of it this way. If you're going to have a given LFO tank that is empty when the SRBs separate, what is worse: the delta-v lost to the drag penalty of having it on top of the SRBs up to that point, or the delta-v lost to both gravity and acceleration for the empty tank's mass from separation to as far as the rest of the stage is going?] For the rest, I am aware of the drawbacks you mention, but I am not convinced you are giving appropriate weight to the advantages. Why is 59 seconds of additional Twin Boar runtime only "a slight boost in Delta-V"? When you say full LFO asparagus is better than doing it with SRBs, are you factoring in cost or going by pure physical effectiveness?

For me, "moar SRB" has a limit when the number of them just gets too ridiculous, either aesthetically or practically. Usually there's a sweet spot for me of how many I can make share a smaller number of decouplers. In addition, while SRBs are cheaper than the full LFO package, they are only cheaper than JUST adding tanks if the engine is a dedicated vacuum engine. Even a Rhino pretty much breaks even on pure cost (for just the fuel to run it while the SRBs are burning, assuming the engine is "free" since it's already there anyway), and it adds a lot of thrust that in turn reduces gravity losses. See below. The "additional advantage" is shared by traditional asparagus, so I'm not really sure what you meant to say it's advantageous in relation to. See below. While that's true, the question was if the SRB was cheaper than the equivalent in LFO thrust out of the launch engine. After doing some simplified math comparing a Kickback to a Rhino, the answer appears to me to be "Adding LFO tanks (tanks alone) is cheaper unless it's a vacuum engine". The Rhino was pretty close to the break-even point: if you assume that the average ISP is halfway between sea level and vacuum then the Rhino's tanks are either slightly more or slightly less expensive on a "kilonewtons per credit" basis depending on which tanks you buy, but that ISP average is probably too generous for a mere 63 seconds of runtime out of the sort of thing you'd slap a Rhino on. The Rhino's ISP is 205 at sea level; only the Poodle, Terrier, and Ant are worse among the LFO engines. The next best is a tie between the Swivel and the Twitch at 250, so I think it's safe to say that these and any other LFO engine would get more kilonewtons per credit than a Kickback. Of course, you still need good launchpad TWR, but unless I've made a mistake somewhere I see no need to refrain from firing an LFO engine that isn't a dedicated vacuum engine (and adding fuel for that purpose). I imagine that even the Rhino comes out ahead after considering the reduction in gravity losses that extra thrust would give you—assuming you didn't put moar SRBs under the bell! I do have to question your claim that the Kickback "puts out 650 kN of thrust for a little more than a minute". The wiki reports that the KB's kN output ranges from almost 600 at sea level to 670 in vacuum. Isn't a 650 average much too optimistic? Having said all that, your post does demonstrate pretty well that SRBs will get many more kilonewtons per credit than traditional asparagus.

Although I disagree with Vanamonde elsewhere, I don't really disagree with his characterization of what I described as "a variation of asparagus staging". I actually said myself in the OP that "you might call [it] 'SRB hybrid asparagus'." While it's true that the SRB doesn't use any of the LFO it's pushing, it's not that much of a stretch from normal asparagus: —Normal: LFO fuel with LFO engine underneath. Some LFO goes to the center stage and some LFO goes to the booster. —SRB hybrid: LFO fuel and SRB fuel with SRB engine underneath. All LFO goes to center stage and all SRB goes to the booster. Bonus points for timing the LFO and SRB fuel to run out at the same time. The only difference is that the dropped section has two types of fuel, which might require more careful rationing. P.S. I love the typo in your signature: "And even if you DO do everything correctly, an unplaned-for mountain can totally ruin your day." I'm assuming that you meant "unplanned". If I'm wrong, let me know! But taking "plane" to mean "to make smooth or even; to level", an unplaned-for mountain is one that you failed to remove from your flight path .

Is that a Stargate reference? Oh, that takes me back...

Hang on, now! I think you're wording this a bit too strongly. First off, thrust actually does matter to a certain extent. Aside from convenience, longer burns use more fuel for the same maneuver due to, for example, reduced Oberth effect. Secondly, the fact that dropping dead weight means that you have now become "over-engined" doesn't retroactively make the overall design overengined if the vessel needed it at some other point in its life. Every rocket that's 3/4 of the way to running dry has "redundant engines" but it's silly IMO to say they're all poorly designed. And, as others said, some designs are not amenable to asparagus staging. Reasons can include mission considerations or cost considerations (recovery of engines). I don't know why you say drop tanks are counterproductive. The only drawbacks I see are design hassle, aerodynamic losses, and connection overhead—design hassle probably being the biggest issue most of the time.

Great post, and it helped me get back in the right mindset. The SRBs aren't fitted for the tanks--it's the other way around. We're just eliminating the deadweight of having dry tanks on the core vessel when the boosters drop off. I knew that, but I was starting to slide into tweaking the SRBs' runtime to match the tanks' instead of the other way around.

I agree with your underlying objection, but not necessarily its conclusion. In the OP I described drop tanks that are supported by SRBs instead of liquid engines. Do you have an opinion on that? P.S. Also, I recall one time I used drop tanks just because I was uncomfortable with how tall my rocket was becoming (I'd forgotten all about it until now), but that's an edge case unrelated to the OP.

Note: Drop tanks as distinct from asparagus boosters that have an engine using the type of fuel that is in the tank. I was inspired to create this poll because I was curious after I found myself beginning to use drop tanks in certain circumstances. I hadn't been using them much previously—I'd used a little asparagus a few times but no tanks without LFO engines attached, except when I stuck a couple T800s on top of Kickbacks once or twice. But then I realized an interesting coincidence: —One Jumbo tank with a cone tank on top and bottom was enough to fuel a Twin Boar for 59s, or two sets could fuel a Mammoth for 62s. —A Kickback ran for 63s at full thrust —A Kickback's full thrust was almost enough to cancel the weight of itself plus a Jumbo tank and two cone tanks. Therefore, it seemed to me, you could get a large drop tank at relatively little launchpad TWR penalty that would conveniently run dry at close to the same time that its accompanying SRB ran dry. Tanks and Kickbacks are a lot cheaper than tanks and Mammoths. So the last couple of times I have built a heavy-lift launchpad stage, I've tried the tactic of adding an appropriate number of Kickback-assisted drop tanks, then adding a few more KBs if I need more launchpad TWR (to a seemingly reasonable limit). Now I'm sort of curious where this lies on the spectrum of "Nifty trick"—"Welcome to the crowd"—"Rookie mistake". On paper, it seems to me that this thing you might call "SRB hybrid asparagus" is a cheap alternative to traditional LFO-engine asparagus, but is that somehow an illusion?

Today I launched my first asteroid capture mission. (It was not a contract.) I didn't calculate the delta V ahead of time, and I wanted to make sure I got there with everything I needed, so I think I went overboard. [edit: TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr. Original link for insanity posterity: http://i65.tinypic.com/fp2tt4.jpg ] On the pad it weighs 1602 tons, or not too far from three times as much as my previous heaviest rocket, and has 1.16 TWR without the Rhino (1.28 with). (I wasn't sure whether it was more efficient to burn it on the pad or not; originally I was going to have another Mammoth in the center but then I realized that loading up on Kickbacks was cheaper and saved LFO.) [ http://i66.tinypic.com/10r4ab5.jpg ] I designed it so that the central core vessel would get to orbit will 100% fuel. (I've been fooling around with ISRU for a while, but I have nothing in place yet that would handle fueling a ship this size in a reasonable number of trips.) I put some hardware on the giant boosters so I can potentially put them to some kind of use in the future; I don't anticipate putting that kind of nonsense into orbit often and if I change my mind I can still recover most of the funds. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/2zef9ly.jpg ] The 273 ton center stage, as it turns out, has plenty of delta V to rendezvous with the asteroid. (It would have been 303t with even more, but I forgot to fill up the ore tanks.) The plan is to hit a Class B that is still a while away from its Kerbin encounter, then suck it dry while moving to a Class E to haul back to Kerbin.

To modify a quote from Homer Simpson, "Mods. The cause of—and solution to—all of KSP's problems." (Beer/life)

Today my first Minmus landing party returned to Kerbin (who were also my third Mun landing party and prototype mining ship test crew) aboard my first spaceplane. The mission lasted about 50 days, or nearly 50% of my career to date. (In large part due to a direct Mun-Minmus path that in retrospect could probably have been done a lot faster via Kerbin.)

As I recall, my first station had a viewing cupola, a science lab, a large RCS tank, a half-jumbo fuel tank, and 4 XL solar panels. Four regular Clampys and one large for visitors and to house landers, escape modules, whatever. Almost exactly 50 tons. I pushed it to the Mun where two scientists remain willing captives to this day.

Can't really suggest a "next" without knowing the current list. Science lab does no good without solar panels.

My first serious attempt at a spaceplane was a success by any measure. It was my own design and not a copy of anything else, though I'm sure the things I absorbed by osmosis helped. Everything just worked in a combination of design and serendipity. The only serious problem I had was that the thing fishtailed like crazy on the runway (but settled down when it got airborne). The COM was sitting right on the COL but it moved forward as I spent fuel. The controls were too strong but the airbreathing flight profile was practically a straight line so it didn't matter. I got lucky in the design phase by making it light enough that it bulldozed right through the transonic range without my even really noticing while still having the delta V to do the orbital crew transfers it was destined for. (I was in for a nasty surprise on my next design!) I needed a docking port to transfer tourists but did not include RCS; however, the docking port was far away from the center of mass so I just parked it close and swung around at the right angle. It partially refueled at the rendezvous, so even though the reentry was less than perfect the plane had plenty of fuel, and yet it was so light that it did suborbital hops with the greatest of ease to get home. The landing was also less than perfect but close enough. This isn't the most perfect mission I've run, and not necessarily the most "successful" depending on the definition, but for a combination of entirely new technology (my planes were rocking Wheesleys until this), untested designs, and everything just coming up Milhouse, I can't think of anything that beats this. Mission report here.

Thank you for all the support! But when do you find time to sleep?

Extended Mission Report, Final Entry The B-team may have returned to Kerbin first, but the A-team was going to do it in style. Specifically, in the space program's first successful spaceplane, thankfully not actually named "Style". It fishtailed like a maniac on the runway but settled down as soon as it got in the air. It was light enough for its two Rapiers to power it through the transsonic range without even really noticing, which was lucky, as the space program was to find out the next time it designed a spaceplane. And it had an extremely simple flight profile: go in a straight line with the same shallow climb until you need to switch to rocket mode, which was also lucky, because it later turned out that it was very easy to oversteer with it. The elevons were probably overkill. [ http://i66.tinypic.com/fdulnc.jpg ] In addition to picking up our heroes, the mission was to drop off a bunch of extra crew members to get "experience" on the Minmus shakedown cruise. It was also going to pick up a couple of tourists instead of dropping them down in a capsule as usual, which was why the docking port was necessary. In retrospect, spaceplanes that plan to dock probably ought to have RCS, but actually this design works pretty well too: the pilot killed velocity close to the target, lined the ship up just right (the other one lined itself up as well), and swung the plane around its center of mass like a door on a hinge until the door "shut" on the two docking ports. [ http://i64.tinypic.com/os72x5.jpg ] It was quite a party up there, with four to seven ships depending how you counted and several hundred parts between them. Lag was the guest of honor. Detachments, dropoffs, pickups, refuelings, and reattachments took a lot of time and care, but eventually the docking do-se-do concluded with only a couple of banged fenders (which Bill assured would "buff right out"). [ http://i65.tinypic.com/121qujl.jpg ] The KSC was wrapped in darkness as the plane approached. The reentry was too steep, and the plane also flipped out and flailed its way to below 5000 meters, but there was enough fuel to try again. The lighter craft soon found itself going over 1400m/s with an apoasis over 30km! This was more than enough to reach the KSC, and the plane gently circled around to the runway. [ http://i64.tinypic.com/2eluyza.jpg ] However, once more the distance was underestimated, and the plane donated its NERVs to the front edge of the runway. The glow will just be another runway light, right? [ http://i65.tinypic.com/dc9ezr.jpg ] Thus the mission ended in a similar way to how it had gone in general: not perfectly, but fulfilling all mission parameters, and very much a learning experience in all stages of planning, design, and execution. Everyone agreed that they could hardly wait to get back out there. FINIS

P.S. Science collected: 4,275. Getting close to fully-unlocked. (1,940 left in the tree) Haven't left Kerbin SOI yet (though that will change soon) and with minimal use of science labs (300-500 science produced by them as a ballpark estimate).

Extended Mission Report Part IV: The Voyage Home After the vessel was fully fueled, the crew lifted off and discovered one complication no one had thought of: despite Minmus's low gravity, that much fuel does actually add up to a heavy vessel. As the ship ascended at less than 2m/s2, everyone had plenty of time to contemplate the fact that, technically, the three NERVs still granted a thrust-weight ratio of almost 3:1. Gravity losses are not usually an issue on Minmus, but this was truly an expedition looking to break all the records. Even so, the alternative of switching control and flipping over to use the Rhino was rejected due to the difficulty of pulling off the stunt mid-maneuver with a fully-laden vessel and very limited attitude control, and also the fact that the higher ISP of the NERVs was some compensation for the slow ascent. However, the proposal to use the Rhino for the Kerbin transfer burn was universally accepted. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/15x0lqv.jpg ] The Mk.I miner had served long and well on this mission—well enough to extend said mission from the Mun to Minmus. But its days were numbered. The decision to retire the Mk.I miner had been made for several reasons. As a prototype, certain design decisions had proven suboptimal, chiefly, carrying LFO tanks with the idea of having "ready-to-go" refueling capability. The design team had decided that extra ore tanks were a much more versatile way to store fuel, worth the time cost of refining on the spot for the recipient as well as the higher dry tank mass. They were also more compact. Speaking of extra fuel storage, there wasn't all that much on the Mk.I miner; it was okay at refueling itself, and it could perhaps refuel a probe or give an emergency supply, but it had no hope of ferrying large amounts of fuel to other things. Aside from wrong turns in the design, there were also limitations and rough edges from the technological level at the time. It had three-way symmetry not by choice but because quad adapter designs had not yet made it out of the engineering department—and its three-way adapter married a 2.5m part to a 1.25m connector for the same reason! And lastly, a little bit of industrial espionage (tutorial designs and Youtube) had inspired a revolutionary new side-mounted engine design that made the Mk.0 fuel cans not worth the part count. Between all that, and the R&D department's desire to examine a ship that had actually been to Minmus and back, (and the storyline contract demanding the same,) the Mk.I miner was on a one-way trip to a museum. Interestingly, though, the Rhino manned orbital stage that had been its faithful companion was not as completely obsolete and would remain in LKO for possible future use. (It also had extra copies of science for science labs to potentially use.) Farewell, Minmus, we hardly knew ye. The crew had watched with interest as a flurry of activity took place down in LKO, but it cleared up well before their arrival. The plan was to supplement a couple of aerobraking passes with burns near periapsis, because the combined mass of the lander and Rhino promised to make "free" deceleration take entirely too long. There was some uncertainty about how well the NERVs would take to the combined heat of partial-reentry and extended burns, but they didn't complain a bit. [ http://i66.tinypic.com/20jr1qe.jpg ] (Not pictured: things other than the NERVs overheating) After a suitably low apoapsis was achieved, the periapsis was brought up to orbital height and the Rhino was detached one last time. Then the periapsis was brought down to 37km and the final pass was here at last! Unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the planet for a KSC landing, but everyone agreed that it wasn't worth waiting for a window to open up for attempting a KSC-adjacent recovery. ... That was the plan. But in the excitement to get home, the Rhino was detached before the re-orbit maneuver. It was no problem as it had plenty of fuel and the crew was still on board (to be picked up later). It turned out for the best, though, because the periapsis was at almost the perfect point for the re-entry deceleration to achieve a new suborbital path that would finally decay at around KSC. Perhaps a burn to extend the re-entry and achieve the KSC landing was possible. Turning the ship from retrograde to prograde at 45km and 2350ish m/s, however, needed more muscle than the ship turned out to have. Seesawing the ship back and forth proved able to build up sufficient momentum to flip around and a burn was done based solely on guesswork. Flipping back to retro was done (much more easily) at the new apoapsis of 50km, and then the crew waited anxiously to see how well they had anticipated the deceleration. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/5n3apy.jpg ] [ http://i65.tinypic.com/155ht0n.jpg ] ...Oh, right. The inclination hadn't been entirely zeroed out. Still, other than being a touch too far north, this was right on the money. [ http://i67.tinypic.com/dy4q44.jpg ] All in all, this was proof positive that the "Extreme Training" program worked. The B-team swam triumphantly home. Now, let's go get Jeb, who was weeping tears of pride and joy from orbit. (When you're that badass you don't feel the need to prop up your toughness by hiding emotions.)

For clarification, I was able to understand the phrase itself, but I wasn't sure at the time what it had to do with the topic, which also made me less certain about my (correct) interpretation of your words. I think we can agree that, when saying "hey, you are asking us to agree to give you power that could easily be abused, and probably will be by someone at some point", it is better to NOT say "you are personally planning to abuse these powers" without evidence.

I don't really know what "the argument is innocuous as an actor" is supposed to mean. You said, "Most of them just don't realize the exact meaning of what they are doing themselves, they are doing it because everybody else is doing it, and that's all.  It's mined field - by reacting, you essentially are "accusing" them of what them can do, but they receive it as an "accusation" over what they intended to do: two different things in their minds - and then the offense became agravated." If they say, "yes we are asking for all these permissions to do whatever we want, but we won't use it for more than x and y!" the problem with that claim is that they are a for-profit company and cannot be trusted to voluntarily forgo the rest of the alphabet. So, for practical purposes, the "accusation" you referred to is indeed justified. What the hypothetical company intended to do was indeed grab all those permissions that they cannot be trusted to not monetize, as you agree. Just because they did not necessarily intend to cash in immediately doesn't invalidate the objection. While the accusation may still cause offense, it's still warranted. On the finger-pointing, I agree. If you shoot into a dark target practice range, you're not guaranteed to miss all the targets, but the opposite is also true. P.S. Why the heck would a logged-in user need to be hit with a captcha test?

The problem with that argument is that I'm pretty sure the legal version of "cover your ass" is "obtain permission to do literally anything, then you have a legal defense for them getting mad at you for stuff you did." The original goal may be just protection against silly people getting upset over reasonable actions, or trolls mad you banned their troll account etc., but the method is still pretty pernicious. [edit: And it's an extremely short step for a for-profit to company to say "hey, look at this thing I now have, how can I monetize this?"] Having said that, I do not trust that video at all. Maybe they decided not to read the part where the third party businesses only get info necessary to run KSP, or governments only get info when they have a search warrant, etc. The closing statement betrays the video as obviously propaganda: "Are you on the side that just doesn't care about privacy, or are you on the side that cares whether companies are taking advantage of you" is only a slight exaggeration of what he said. This is the first I'm hearing about the EULA. I may look into it, but right now the evidence I have is little more than wild finger-pointing.

Today I had the busiest day in LKO I've had in terms of juggling ongoing activity. There was a triple docking situation (old ship + new ship + late addition to new ship's mission). Meanwhile, I was also performing my first capture and deorbit/recovery of non-contract space junk -- 2 of them in one trip. (They were 95 game days old. My career is 97 days old.) And there were also a couple of finicky satellite orbit insertions to fulfill contracts. I only missed a couple of maneuver nodes, which were close enough that I could get away with doing them anyway, so I'm pretty happy about it.

You "stage" your clothes before going to bed. Or should it be "undock"?

I can't think of something quite like what you're talking about, though it probably happened a fair few times, but I have an example of a different sort of epiphany: the "bolt from the blue". I never really bothered with the tutorials, which is unusual for me. I fooled around in the demo long enough to justify the full purchase and then dove straight into career. But I recently decided to do the asteroid wrangling one because I want to do that sometime hopefully soon and don't want to screw it up. The tutorial vessel had RADIALLY MOUNTED ENGINES! I had conceptually limited myself to the adapters, and they're great and all, but this idea was revolutionary for me. I immediately used it in a heavy lander design.

The only problem I ever had with early career asparagus was when I didn't quite line up the boosters to the decouplers. I discovered the problem when I tried to separate and found they were fused to the final stage. This also created unwanted crossfeed, so I was nearly out of fuel as well. Thankfully I was able to make a stable orbit (periapsis 70,122) and later rescue the pilot (my first rendezvous). Since the thing had power generation, kerbal capacity, and an antenna, I changed the tracking icon to "space station".