Galane

Parts hanging off the bottom of a multi adapter can be connected with struts, so can more parts hanging from those parts. So why couldn't the parts like this be connected with strut type bonds?

It will require a multi-piece new part, but would result in a clean looking setup that can be staged normally. As an example. Take one of the 1 to 4 adapters and flip it upside down. Next, cut it into 5 parts, one in the middle with a single node on the bottom and four around the sides, each with a single node on top. The side parts connect to the center part with the same style of non-node attachments as struts. If they can be angled or use interlocking shapes (if that makes a difference in KSP physics) to resist coming apart under thrust, that'd be even better. Hold your left hand palm up, fingers curled up. That's the center part. Hold your right hand palm down and hook your fingers over your left hand's fingers as one of the side parts. Upward thrust on the center locks it to the side part. The catch is an adapter like this would have to be assembled in the VAB, or loaded with the subassembly mod, but it wouldn't violate the tree structure, same as sticking things to the bottom of a 1-to-n adapter then connecting them with struts doesn't.

Seems like a possible solution would be a special multi-node decoupler for each model of 1-to-n adapter for use on top of them when flipped upside down. But could it be shoehorned into the current KSP version? Then there's the issue of if it'd be simpler to allow such "doughnut rockets" (they're loops, topologically equivalent to a torus, as are humans and all animals with a digestive tract with two open ends) in a future version, using stock parts or to make a specific allowance for special multi-decouplers. Oooorrrr, instead of multi-decouplers, integrate that function into upside down versions of the 1-to-n adapters - making them n-to-1 adapters. That would open the way to N-to-n and n-to-N adapters, where the upper and lower case N represents a larger or smaller number of attachments.

My original Big Light Booster 4 was horribly bad. I got the Stretchy Tanks addon and decided I'd try a really tall rocket with a Mainsail in the middle and four small engines around the sides. Then I stacked up 13 levels of the 400 size tank on top of each of the small engines, with decouplers and separatons to dump each level as they emptied. TWR was very poor. It would fly and the quickly dropping weight of the spent tanks improved it, but not enough to make it too much better. No rigidity problems with every tank level strutted to the center tank, and one long stretchy simply does not flex. I flew it a few times, don't recall if it ever made orbit. I used the same top down tank staging on BLB 3 which worked pretty well so I figured I may as well go big, really big. ;-) On a shorter rocket, with more engines around, it might work better.

Hadn't thought about a ring of small hardpoints. Hmmmm.

If you have an engine between stages of the same diameter and don't have something out to the sides to put in a bunch of angled struts to brace above the engine, it'll wobble like a Weeble, and break apart if you have too much thrust, no matter how many struts you put straight across the engine. Put a Rockomax 64 on top of a Mainsail, a decoupler, a second Rockomax 64 and Mainsail, under that, then a whole bunch of struts across the gap between the tanks. Still too weak. Have to have other tanks and engines out to the sides or spanning the core stage gaps to strut to for stability. The only mods I have installed are the root selector plugin, MechJeb, Stretchy Tanks, Procedural Fairings and ReStock. (That's the order I installed them.) I installed the fairings because I didn't like my satellite sitting out in the wind on its Snafu series launcher. http://partsbyemc.com/pub/AARP-Kerbal-Space-rockets.zip BLB-3 in there is my first success at getting the thing to not break apart between the big orange tanks. (It really should have been revision 5 or 6 but AARP's chief engineer decreed that it was going to be 3 no matter how many redesigns it took to come up with one that wouldn't break.) I first tried 8 struts across, didn't work. The small tanks stage off the towers as they empty but I had to leave the 2nd from bottom riding along as dead weight so it wouldn't come apart going through the gravity turn. Since that worked I took off the struts straight between the big tanks since they weren't adding anything but weight. BLB-3 is the first appearance of the AARP stock lander, which I've been trying to put a rocket under that can get it to Mun without using any of the lander's fuel until after it de-orbits the Mun. *Then* I'm hoping it'll have enough fuel left to leave Mun SOI and fall back to Kerbin and land. There's two big failures in there, RD-BLB and RD-BLB-FAIL. RD-BLB was supposed to be a "Reduced Diameter" rocket - reduced by using a slim core flanked by boosters. Well it doesn't work too well. It likes to lose fuel pipes during staging. It would often pop some just sitting on the pad so I put in some extras for backup. When it manages to get through the lower half without incident, the upper half doesn't have enough TWR so it slowly loses altitude. I gave up on it but saved it then wasted a bunch of time trying to build a lower half that could get the upper high enough it could keep going. RD-BLB-DR sort of succeeds at it but gave up all pretense of being reduced anything. Gave up on the slim core design completely. I have a nuclear engine in the middle and nowhere to put angled struts to brace above it so I just put several straight across and it wobbles around. Fortunately RCS keeps it under control. It also has 16 large SRBs to get it off the pad before the big engines kick in, otherwise it'll break in half. RD-BLB-FAIL is FAIL. MechJeb seems to fly it different every time. I just did and the throttle bouncing up and down wasn't as violent as the last time I tried (after which it became FAIL). It's probably workable manually flown but is also saddled with the slim core upper half that doesn't work. I kept it because during it's first test in its current form it made me laugh at how MechJeb was whanging the throttle up and down - I was waiting for it to fall apart but it didn't - at least not before I aborted the flight and started the DR design. The 70K variant just sets the AARP lander on top of the DR lower half - the sole object is to kick it up to a 70K orbit for eventual use for crew exchange of stations in LKO. Should work as long as there's fuel up there to top off the lander tanks if it has to climb higher than 70K. BLB originally stood for Big Light Booster as I figured it might be possible to stack up a few Rockomax 64 tanks and engines. Big and relatively lightweight for its size. AARP's chief janitor and test pilot says the Light in the name now stands for the blinding glare of the massive amounts of fire coming out the bottom end.

In other words it's not really possible to build a proper inline staged rocket with clustered engines like a Saturn V, not without some workarounds, trickery etc, or having to settle for one large core and fake it with strap on boosters on upper stages. It would be so useful to flip those 1 to n adapters upside down. How about some procedural girder struts that work just like the existing struts but are not at all elastic? Slap them upside the gaps across stages and eliminate the wobbly hula dancing that the struts we have can't eliminate.

Yesterday I tried a design with a Rockomax tank with a 4x adapter, four tanks and engines stuck under that, then a second 4x adapter flipped upside down with 4 decouplers to connect to an adapter to the huge tank size from the ReStock parts addon, which had the really large adapter for 9 engines (4 of the Mainsail/Skipper/Poodle and 5 small) under it. I kicked it off with a bunch of SRBs which staged off around 2000 meters then the main engines kicked in (IIRC just four Skippers and 4 of the small vevtoring ones) and it collapsed at the stage fairings. Such interstage fairings on real rockets don't need to be stapled together with a ton of struts and they certainly don't hula dance around until the rocket falls apart. The automatic fairings in KSP need to be a lot stronger and more rigid - especially since putting a ton of struts, both straight and angled, across the gap doesn't do much for stiffness. The struts work better when there's a size difference between stages so they can angle outwards. Going straight across an engine between equal size stages all the struts seem to do is make the parts hold together a little better while still allowing things to flap back and forth. Struts seem to be quite elastic, but somewhat variable in that property. I've had them break in cases where there ought not to be any reason for it and I have a rocket that might be manually flyable but MechJeb just slams the throttle up and down while the rocket does an impression of a slinky on fire - without one strut breaking. What is there besides the too flexible struts for holding two stages *rigidly* together, which will also pop off like struts when staging? I just made a rocket yesterday using procedural fairings, which help to some extent but the top end doesn't seem to actually be "bolted" to the stage above. I had to add angled struts from the tank above down to the fairing base, which quite unrealistically penetrate the fairing panels. It all holds together but still wobbles about a bit under thrust.

Archive updated with new ships. Some need the ReStock addon. I just could not get the RD-BLB upper stages to quit doing the hula so a complete redesign produced the RD-BLB-DR buuuut nothing about it is "reduced diameter" now. It still hulas a bit and needs RCS on from launch because sometimes it wants to get a bit tippy. 16 big SRBs get it up to a bit over 2000 meters before the big engines kick in. It could lift without those using careful manual flying. It does have the nuke engine so it *could* take that long cruise to the Mun and other places but getting back... RD-BLB-70K is simply the AARP lander atop a giant ReStock booster. It'll get up to a 70KM orbit and that's about it. Might be able to go some higher but not too high unless you have a way to refuel in orbit. Should work for visiting space stations for crew exchange. RD-BLB-FAIL is, as the name implies, a big, fat, FAIL of a rocket, at least when trying to fly it with MechJeb. I have no idea how the thing stays together as MJ slams the throttle up and down rapidly so hard I can see space between all the parts. How are the struts holding up to that abuse when I've had them snap many times on other rockets just getting off the pad? The Mainsail is just one #%@#% difficult engine to use, especially with MechJeb. Would be nice if MJ had an "Oh, hey, this stage has one or more Mainsail engines! Use SLOW throttle changes!" automatic function.

Yes! The ThunderMax adapter is just what I needed. Add to the wish list, engine droppers that hold onto the engines really well so they don't get left behind on launch. That would make stage and a half designs like the original Atlas (which launched with three engines running from the same tank then dropped two) much easier to build.

A problem I'm having with a rocket using these are engines falling off. It has a TVR-400L with 4 engines. I first tried to tie it on with 8 struts between the quad adapter and the stretchy tank but upon hitting the coast phase the engines and adapter went sailing away. I finally had to resort to sticking a X200-8 between the stretchy tank and the quad adapter and using 12 struts to staple it in place. (With the version prior to 0.2.1, haven't tried the ship without those struts with the current version of Stretchy Tanks.) The rocket is BLB-5 in this small archive http://partsbyemc.com/pub/AARP-Kerbal-Space-rockets.zip Kerbals apparently use something like blu-tack to attach some parts. ;-)

Or at least the mostly successful ones. A couple need the stretchy tanks. One needs procedural fairings. http://partsbyemc.com/pub/AARP-Kerbal-Space-rockets.zip RD-BLB shows how hard it is to get a decent payload to orbit using only smaller diameter engines. RD for Reduced Diameter. I was trying to reduce the footprint from what the BLB series has using big engines. RD-BLB can barely make a 70KM orbit, but can do it without tapping the tank for the nuclear engine, which is a first time use for AARP. (Alan Aerospace, Recycling & Packaging) The one named Jebs Dream really should be Jeb's Nightmare Fuel. I think it began as one of the Snafu series and things kept getting added to the bottom, somewhat at random. It actually does pretty well. The MJ version was the first rocket I flew with MechJeb. The Snafu 1b-crossfuel trio were tests to see which way of running fuel among the tanks would reach the highest altitude going straight up, no MechJeb. Surprisingly, it's the one with the makeshift central engine dropper. Note the use of a Small hardpoint and two pipes to get fuel past the stack separator. OrbaLifter puts the stock orbiter/lander that comes with KSP into orbit, with a swap out for more powerful engines on the lander so it can land on Kerbin. Many *many* fails during that design. AARP-stock-lander-1 is AARP's 'parachutes are for wimps' landing vehicle. It can land from at least a 200KM Kerbin orbit and still have about half a tank of fuel left. It was developed as part of the BLB series in AARP's Munshot program. Record to date, one Mun impact and one near hit that somehow ended up in solar orbit after failing to transition to Munar orbit or getting on a path back to Kerbin. But that was with the BLB-3b! Once a more powerful lower section is built for RD-BLB (with Mainsails) to make it the RD-BLB-DR (for Done Right) a Mun landing and return should be possible.

+10K for Outlaw Star image.

Yeah, problem with that is four of the highest thrust engines that fit the quad adapter don't have the power of one mainsail. I found that out early on in my testing on the Big Light Booster, which ain't so light anymore. Launch and, oh, hey, the rocket is kinda skidding sideways while slowly tipping over. I have three test rockets (which I'll have to look at to see their configuration) with the same engine configuration and different ways of crossfeeding the fuel among them. Turned out that what got the highest altitude was (IIRC) letting the four side mounted engines vampire from the central 64 tank then dropping the mainsail engine to shed its weight. Feeding fuel the other way then dropping the side engines or feeding both ways so all five engines ran out at the same time got less altitude straight up at burnout. That's where I ran into leaving the mainsail on the pad, the kick from lighting up the side engines with a stack separator (no fuel crossfeed option, boooo!) between the big engine and the tank would knock it loose. Piping fuel over a stack separator to an engine directly attached to the separator (apparently with the Kerbin version of blu-tack) can't be done directly for some reason. The end of the pipe refuses to cross over and stick to the engine. I had to resort to sticking a Small Hardpoint to the separator then run a fuel pipe to the hardpoint and another from the hardpoint to the engine. Tada! A staged engine dropper. I don't even want to guess at what MechJeb would do with it.

OK, posted a pic on the pad and one at liftoff. BLB3 came to nearly this configuration before I set a manned pod on, added ladders and lights. The lander engine is a Poodle. I flipped the couplers upside down for BLB3b so they'd go with the upper tank sections to drop more weight. The four liquids daisy chain the fuel top to bottom and the top two levels get tossed as they empty. The small liquids on the bottom drop quickly. Later the topmost tanks drop followed immediately by the big solids, partway into the gravity turn. Those tanks are structurally important,with their struts they keep it from coming apart between the Rokomax 64s. I'd like to be able to also toss the second from the bottom tank sections but there are struts from them to the bottom of the top 64. Lose those and it goes to pieces in the turn. There's still one glitch with it in MechJeb. It doesn't like to stage off the upper 64 automatically. The deorbit burn from a 200KM, zero incline orbit takes *exactly* the amount of fuel left in the upper 64. I should just let it go and see if autoland will pop it off or crash it. P.S. The rifle is a .303 Savage, model 1899. This example was made in 1910 so it's 103 years old. The light sabers I made in 2005. Took me a few hours each, designing as I went. I made them using pieces of electrical conduit as the core. Those beefy ones like the originals built on a flash holder are just way too large, completely unlike a proper sword handle size. Don't have the sabers, sold them back then at the art show and sale at Fandemonium.

Symmetry to place the separators and the solid boosters.

Take a cue from Earth tractors and build a ROPS aka Roll Over Protection System or in English - a rollbar.

I tried a simple rocket with one orange tank with a mainsail on the bottom for the second stage and four solids for the first stage. Nothing else but a nosecone and an RGU. It'd leave the mainsail on the pad, just fall right off when the solids light up. Kerbals must either buy their bolts from the supplier who undercut the lowest bidder or perhaps it's... http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/

Parachutes are for wimps. Or. Stuck the landing by smashing a Skipper. http://www.flickr.com/photos/27748767@N08/9550456375/ I thought for sure there was no way there was enough fuel in that tank to come down from 100 kilometers... I haven't yet tried dropping from 200KM without manually staging the tank. It just keeps coming down and not dropping it with the little bit of fuel left. That's a several revisions past version of BLB3 or Big Light Booster 3. By now it should be BLB5 or BLB6. Stacking two of the orange tanks with a mainsail on the bottom and a skipper in the middle requires some inventive design to keep the rocket together through shock of launch then the gravity turn. After that the thing will stay together. I finally decided BLB3 was Kerbal-rated and it'll go to at least a 200KM orbit with fuel left in the upper orange tank, with a three Kerbal pod and associated accessories. I'll post a launchpad pic of it here later. BLB1 and BLB2 were tests to see what could be done, trying to make a large yet fairly lightweight booster. The answer? Not without a much stronger automatically created coupling between the stack separator and between the skipper engine and the tank above it. Try it without struts and it falls apart on launch. Even with struts it folds in half about half the time in the gravity turn. Struts just don't seem to cross over engines from one tank to another very well.

Elon Musk has this crazy 1950's era idea that every part of a spaceship that goes up should come back down in reusable condition... ;-) It would be a better concept than continuing to lob people and payloads into space atop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

http://www.space.com/22379-spacex-grasshopper-rocket-sideways-flight-video.html The new video shows SpaceX's Grasshopper launching to an altitude of 820 feet (250 meters). The rocket then went into a hover mode, moved 328 feet (100 m) sideways, and then returned back to the center of its launch pad. From launch to landing, the flight lasted just over one minute. Anyone made a rocket like this in KSP?

...at a distance of 347 miles. Halfway there but only 347 miles away? It's because of the multiple orbit gravity assist flight path it's taking. http://www.gizmag.com/juno-halfway/28664/ The probe looks like it was designed in KSP. ;-)

Not missing a thing. Part of the game in a rocket drag race is guessing what the other player is using for motor because you don't want to go higher. I see the Drag Race is still in the current edition of the NAR Pink Book. http://www.nar.org/pinkbook/61_DR.html A method to do multiplayer competitions with timing in KSP would be to synchronize the in-game clocks on two or more computers, and to be able to get that time data for exact liftoff and touchdown times. Rockets ready? Spacebars ready? Three! Two! One! Launch! Compare data afterwards to determine the winner.

Rockets, or at least vertical takeoff only. Keeping with the original model rocketry theme, all fuel has to be expended prior to landing. Instead of parachutes could use a lot of high drag attachments to make it like a dandelion seed.

I dunno if anyone still does it, but in model rocketry there were drag races. Drag being the aerodynamic type. ;-) The object was to be first off the pad, reach the lowest altitude and hit the ground last. Penalties were assessed for damage to the rocket. Since KSP doesn't have multiplayer for being first off the pad, I suppose one could try for the lowest altitude and longest flight duration.