does anybody use stage speration rockets?

[M5000]

How could you not? It's the only way to have booster sep safely whilst at the same time performing a gravity turn. I could never see my designs working as well as they do without the sep motors.

[Stargate525]

How could you not? It's the only way to have booster sep safely whilst at the same time performing a gravity turn. I could never see my designs working as well as they do without the sep motors.

Eh. If the boosters are small, and not strutted to anything, the radial decouplers generally have enough force for me. As an example, one of my lifters has got eight 1.25m booster assemblies on detachment manifolds around an orange tank. Those get away right quick even without the sepratrons.

[Kromey]

Same as many of the others here, I use them to deorbit orbital insertion stages. And for LES towers. Only occasionally have I found need to use them to get radial boosters clear of my ships, usually the decoupler's own force is enough for that, and when it isn't a radial chute does the job nice and cleanly too, without the risk of damaging my ship from the sepratron's thrust (although that might be a holdover habit from earlier versions where that was actually a problem; seems now that so long as a part has time to cool down you can blast it as much as you want with no harm done).

[MBobrik]

I use them on my more compact designs to get rid of empty later stages up where the atmosphere is too thin and the last stage has poor twr. I use them also to fly off chute sections of duna rovers and used them once as landing retro-rocket with moderate success ( timing is very critical - fraction of a second too early or too late = high velocity lithobraking ).

[DeathFromBelow]

Every rocket/aircraft needs a few for the escape system or just ejecting the nose cone on ships with a Sr docking port. I find I usually don't need them for staging if I can avoid dropping stages in the middle of the gravity turn.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I use them for suicide burns on landers, I hate landings.. it takes so long, so I just wait until im close to the ground, fire some boosters, once my velocity gets low enough, i decouple the boosters so i dont fly off.

[The Jedi Master]

Only for abort systems, anything else is impossible to set up.

(OT: 1,111th post )

[Milkshakefiend]

I use them almost religiously. I've had too many launches buggered up by collisions from large lateral stages not having enough clearance during gravity turns etc. I use PDCWolf's Perfectrons because I find they work a bit better than stock sepatrons and they look the part.

For those saying about struts eliminating decoupling force - I believe one of the newer KJR releases fixes this glitch.

[Eric S]

I've used them for just about every reason mentioned here, and one more on top of that. I often use them as a booster for satellites. I'll put a multi-satellite launching vehicle in an orbit that's got the right apoapsis, but a periapsis that makes the orbit faster than the final orbit, and I kick the satellites out one at a time and they do their own circularization. Depending on the amount of delta-v that they'll need to circularize, I may just use RCS, I may use a few Sepratrons to give it an extra kick, or I may even mount a regular tank and engine.

[Aladran]

how does one set them up?

Put them in the same stage as the decoupler.

Don't aim them toward other fuel tanks (It may explose them on separation).

[Tex_NL]

I ALWAYS use them to 'throw away' heavy asparagus boosters. Regular radial decouplers are just not strong enough.

I never had any need to use them on linear staging.

[ComradeGoat]

If the exhaust from a sepratron hits your main rocket, it will damage it. I avoid this not by having them push the tanks outwards, but by placing one on the *inside* of a tank, at the bottom, so that it fires upwards on separation. As you separate the tank stops accelerating. If there is a small upward force on the inner edge, it will cause the tank to tip outwards, falling neatly away from the rocket. The sepratron exhausts hit nothing but the other spent stages, peeling away, keeping that nasty exhaust flame away from your main rocket.

[Merinsan]

I don't often use them, but when I am having trouble with a clean separation I will use them.

Also, I've used them to deorbit the final stage before - works nicely, providing you get enough on there - otherwise you end up with a decaying orbital path which doesn't decay.

[Caelib]

In addition to using them for clean separations with strut-bound radial boosters, you can use them for soft-landing boosters if you calculate the delta-V and use them at just the right time.

[FITorion]

All the time? nope.

In certain situations? yes.

They are good for getting stages away when you've had to strut them in place. They work as a way to deorbit small craft. They're great for getting excess structure used for landing away from your rover. If you do launch escape towers then they work great for that.

[Madrias]

In situations, yes, I use them. Ejecting the cockpit of a spaceplane, complete with a second 'stage' of sepratrons for my deorbit burn. Chucking stages away from my middle stage primary engine. Making my own retro-rockets when sepratrons aren't big enough for the stage. Deorbiting stages into the planet. Emergency decouplers, just point two at a decoupler and fire. Within seconds, decoupler explodes, freeing the rocket.

[Soda Popinski]

I did an asparagus launch when I should probably have been asleep. I accidentally staged 0.5s early, shooting a pair of slightly fueled boosters up and away (thanks separatrons). Unfortunately, the seperatrons, where I placed them, imparted I nice arc to the boosters, allowing both of them to do a full circle and crash back into my ship. I did not go to space that day.

[Brotoro]

They are import an for separating large side boosters because whenever you have struts connecting side boosters to the rocket, the separation force of the radial separators is nullified (a bug I hope gets fixed some day).

BE careful where you point them, or they can damage remaining parts of the rocket. I position them in paired sets pointing at an angle away from the core of the rocket, and located slightly ahead of the center of mass of the expended boosters so the boosters are pushed away without excessive rotation.

[Ravenchant]

Let's see... booster separation, launch escape systems, soyuz-style capsule retrorockets and the occasional probe deorbiting. Yeah, they have their uses

For use on boosters, attach them slightly below the CoM - as fuel drains away, the engine makes for a higher percentage of mass and so the center wanders downward.

[lajoswinkler]

I'd use them on large rockets to do clean separations, but that increases the alreary high number of parts so... no.

[Spatzimaus]

Back when I did a lot of asparagus launches I'd use them constantly, because of the struts cancelling the separator forces. Now that I've switched to only SSTO designs I don't need them for that, but I now use them for a different purpose. When I'm lifting something huge to orbit (like a 900-ton space station) on my giant booster block, I can't afford to have the two parts collide after separation. My payloads all have engines of their own, of course, but they're usually low-thrust, high-efficiency types because the booster's done all the hard work of getting to orbit. So, any small rotation at detachment becomes a real concern... except that I've got separation motors mounted on the big booster to kick it backwards just a bit. This completely removes the danger of collision, for only a small investment in mass. Sure, the amount of velocity imparted to a 12000-ton booster by a few separatrons is tiny, but it's just enough for this purpose.

[Murph]

I use them, but generally only when a design can't be made reliable by other means. Keeping the part count down and the staging relatively simple is a bigger priority for me, adding Sepratrons goes against that if they are being added more for the hell of it than because they are actually needed. Most of the time, I don't find them to be necessary.

[DisarmingBaton5]

For radial stages but not serial stages.

[chaoko99]

For radial stages but not serial stages.

serial?

If that means what I think it does, I usually say in-line.

[Boris_T_Roach]

I use them on the various heavy lifters I use when dumping the outer jumbotanks/mainsails so that I get the tanks away from the center core tanks/engine faster with less chance of having that bang that ruins your day.

Also use them on the aerodynamic caps on the front end and as braking rockets on my return capsules that land by parachute.... hitch hiker pods really dont like smacking the ground faster than 5m/sec