1. Come up with a bone head final product that will be a giant pain to build... Examples... Single launch vehicle for deploying 4 probes in a race around Karbol Space. Launch vehicle for take Station parts up that aurrounds the parts instead of just stacking them on top. "Spindle Station" designed merely to showoff the in line docking ports in such a way to fuel pods radiate from a central stalk. Build as close a replica as I can to the "Rifter" in EVE Online. http://i.imgur.com/USCxbT0.jpg 2. Get a basic design setup, add a heavy lift stage and see what happens... Don't need an example for this... really just four options. a) Should have used more struts option. Ship rips itself apart on launch, usually starting with the solid rocket ripping of the sides and colliding randomly with other part. A little thin in the middle. Connecting the upper stages to the main first lift stage, I left it too thinly attached. Usually ends quickly and snaps in half at initial launch, or rips in half when the main engines cut off and wobbles apart. c) Came up short on the math. Underestimated my weight load and don't make orbit. usually I try this design flaw twice. I run it up again to see if I can try a different flight profile to claw my way up to orbit...and then fail... again. Ends in a swim home. 3. Fix the obvious problems. a) Add struts. This process probably last for a few launch cycles. Strut balancing is a tricky biz and I don't like ending up with a ship that is more strut then ship. Spread the contact point between stage 1 and 2 out with struts, different engine configuration, and weight redistribution. c)Thin out any useless mass and add some more punch the the second stage. 4. Get to orbit and celebrate. This is the part of the where things go really wrong. i get to orbit and then I have to decide what the application of the crazy idea is. a) Too many parts. I watch my insane creation go through a process of becoming a flip book. using the design take longer then building it. The multi probe deployment idea to 4 hours to actually deploy all the probes. c)New version of Kerbal comes out making my design impossible, useless, or fataly flawed... assuming a fatal systems crash does not kill off my whole inventory and I have to start over. 6.Get bored with the current design download all the mods I can and make everything from scratch with weirder pieces. Alacrity Fitz
