Jfischer

Can be used as impromptu fins on a reentry vehicle. Place it on the opposite side of your heat shield and if you can't get your heat shield oriented properly, open the service bay and it will flip for you.

Ok thank you that makes alot of sense. I have alot of work to do on my gravity turn. I was always fighting my prograde to keep my ap further

About 1.3 but I hope that will go up when I get better engines. I haven't done any calculations for an optimal twr as it relates/changes with ascent profile but my instinct is that low twr when down in atm but higher as drag forces decrease. Just staying below terminal velocity until the air is thin enough.

So what I needed was additional thrust in my later asparagus stages, it would start below a twr of 1 by the time I released my second tank. I still want to asparagus benefit of dropping mass of empty tanks and engines when the additional thrust isnt needed. I just found it harder to organize the amts of fuel needed in each asparagus release. Therefore I made a center stack of rockomax tanks. Set up a smaller set of stacks of tanks in standard asparagus fashion. Then I tried something because I heard in a different post about unique drainage patterns with different fuel line loops. I put a fuel line from the center top rockomax out to every top outer tank. This causes a strange drainage pattern, which I find useful and I thought I would share it. Each outer tank drains as it would in standard asparagus, and can be dropped as it runs out of fuel just like asparagus. The unique thing, I think, is that the tank remains empty but the engine keeps thrusting. And the top center big rockomax x200-32 is the last tank to empty, keeping CoM high so less chance of flipping.

I meant 100km or 100,000 m. My mistake. Im proud because I vame up with this when I was having trouble making ssto's that can lift larger payloads with the first available liquid engines. This gave me alot more dv available in orbit. The benefit of this design to me is that I wanted to maintain high thrust until I get high enough, then I can asparagus multiple tanks or none at all. I can see how it would sacrifice the efficiency of dropping all that mass, but it gains in flexibility/adaptability and control. I can have all engines burning as long as I want, and the CoM stays high because the last tank to drain is my top center rockomax 32. Raptor9, I tried using the same method for my launcher on kerbal, mainly because I my engine choice is very limited. I now use 3 vertically stacked flt800 with reliant attached as my boosters that I detach as I see fit and I leave my swivel on a center 3 rockomax stack, which gives me the gimbaling plus moderate thrust when I'm out of the atmosphere. I gave up on detaching top mounted fuel tanks because I kept blowing up my ship by hitting my engines with the tanks. It was frustrating to coordinate a launch while spinning to give them some force away from me, but I was using the 1 tier radial decouplers...

couldn't it also gain efficiency since it is not simple to design perfect twr for gravity turning to your desired Ap using fixed size fuel tank volumes

I understand that it can make you lose some dv compared to asparagus but my strongest engine available at this point in career is the 'reliant' so I'm pretty proud of my ssto that can reach 100,000 m circular orbit pushing a 2stage with 4500 dv, especially with my engines and driving.

Anyone, using a standard asparagus set up with 2-3 vertically stacked tanks, tried putting a fuel line from top most center tank back out into the top most outer tanks? It allows ALL engines to keep burning if ANY tank has fuel, and you can still detach in standard asparagus to jettison mass if you have enough thrust.