Can you stage 2 docked items as 1 rocket?

[maceemiller]

Hi all! Ok so I've just managed to put my lander on Duna yesterday so now my head is asking questions. Having watched many videos all about KSP, my knowledge base is growing (its still very small though lol). Heres my question.....

My lander on Duna has no fuel left to get me into orbit, never mind get back home. So, if I was to repeat this mission, and send 2 parts of a rocket into orbit around Kerbin, dock them and get ready to return to Duna, is it possible for me to control the 2 parts of my rocket as 1? Can I stage the 2 of them just from the Space Bar or do I need to control each of them separately from an individual command pod?

I hope this question makes sense

Edited April 28, 2015 by maceemiller

[jake9039]

yes, you can stage with 2 rockets docket, just some notes

1: docking ports are wobly. (recommended) not to do any burns with them.

2: the game will mix up your staging a lot.

[Benaiah]

When you dock 2 things together, then are then treated like one ship until you undock them. All then engines and chutes and such as thrown together in the staging. If anything needs rearranged, you can do that after they dock just like you would in the VAB.

Hope that helps.

[Navy2k]

I had good results with pulling configurations, meaning the Engines for the transfer are arranged around the most forward part.

A little bit like this:

Greetings

Ben

[maceemiller]

Thank you to you that answered....my mind now is working more than what it was before I asked this question however ive taken from your answers so now my next Duna mission will be based on snippets of these....

Man this experience only gets better!

- - - Updated - - -

When you dock 2 things together, then are then treated like one ship until you undock them. All then engines and chutes and such as thrown together in the staging. If anything needs rearranged, you can do that after they dock just like you would in the VAB.

Hope that helps.

awesome answer......Thank you

[Claw]

My lander on Duna has no fuel left to get me into orbit, never mind get back home. So, if I was to repeat this mission, and send 2 parts of a rocket into orbit around Kerbin, dock them and get ready to return to Duna, is it possible for me to control the 2 parts of my rocket as 1? Can I stage the 2 of them just from the Space Bar or do I need to control each of them separately from an individual command pod?

When you dock the ships together, yes, you can control them as one ship. With the wobbly note as mentioned above...

For "Can I stage the 2 of them just from the Space Bar," yes you can. But something that should be noted is that when you dock two ships together, the staging orders get all jumbled together. So I highly recommend you go through the staging sequence after connecting the two ships, to make sure it's doing what you want.

Also, the Action Groups will become linked. So if you have things set up on both ships to respond to Action Group 1, everything will happen when you press 1.

Cheers,

~Claw

[maceemiller]

Old thread for me yes but just reading what Claw said....seems so obvious now  Just had a moment of "uuuurgh......why did I ask so many stupid questions", yet re-learnt that at the time I could hit a Mun orbit and, well, stay there due to a lack of knowledge (and dV ).

Community, forum, YouTube.......thats how we play, learn and unravel the mighty KSP