Jury Rigging Radial Decouplers

[The Flying Kerbal]

Hey Guys!

I haven't been posting is some time, but I haven't gone away, you don't escape that easily! 

I have a question which I hope some of you will be able to help me with.  I've heard a few Youtubers comment that there's a way to jury rig radial decouplers if the genuine ones haven't already been unlocked in the tech tree.  Well I'm playing a career game at the moment using Rusty Star Rockets (in 1.2), and part of the limits are to use only RSR parts unless there is absolutely no option, ie the part required has never been given the RSR treatment.  Unfortunately radial decouplers falls within that category.

So I've been trying to figure out how these guys on YT can decouple side boosters, I've never actually seen them do it, indeed one lad says there are ways but "that's another issue".  Normally I can come up with some ideas to try, even if they don't work when put to the test, but this time I can't even begin to think how to do this.

So this is where you come in... can you help RSR beat the KSA to be the first space agency to land a Kerbal on the mun?  Any help or tips would be very much appreciated.

Thanks everyone!

[FleshJeb]

Option 1 on the left, Option 2 on the right. I've added the fuel line just to show you how the nose cone is attached and offset:

 

Option 3, No decouplers. Burn through the side tanks with Sepatrons. Note that this will drain all three stacks unless you use fuel lines or set fuel flow priority.

[The Flying Kerbal]

Thanks so much for going to all the trouble of putting together a rocket to demonstrate how to do this.

Believe it or not, but when I woke this morning, your Option 1 sprung into my head for some reason.  So just in case I forgot it while at work, I powered up the computer.  So there I was at 6am in the morning, playing KSP instead of preparing to go to work.  I might need some professional help maybe..?

Anyway, here is what my early morning efforts came up with:

You used decouplers in your example, but wanting to limit the use of non RSR parts as much as possible, I was forced to use stack separators as decouplers aren't part of the RSR mod.

Option 3 looks really cool, but again there are no sepatrons in the RSR package.  However I definitely want to try that in a regular save.  I don't quite understand Option 2.  You have a stack decoupler between the nose cone and the tank, so the tank falls away when you stage.  But what happens the nose cone?  Does it stay with the rocket?

I do realise I'm being stupid here, but it's now 3.40am and I'm knackered so expect I'm missing something obvious.

Anyway, again thanks so very much for going to all that effort.

Edited March 23, 2019 by The Flying Kerbal

[FleshJeb]

10 hours ago, The Flying Kerbal said:

So there I was at 6am in the morning, playing KSP instead of preparing to go to work.  I might need some professional help maybe..?

The addiction is real. 

Yes the cone stays with the rocket. It's not ideal, but it works.

I already had KSP open, and I realized it was much easier to show the solutions rather than try to describe them.