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Uneven flameout on rockets??


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Been playing for yearsnyears, and I've never seen this before. I've got a rather standard asparagus staged lifter, and the first two (out of three) stages run out of fuel just a bit out of sync, so that my rocket rotates maybe 20 degrees in the second between when one engine quits and when its partner does. I have to bring it back to prograde before I can detach the empty stage.

Anybody else seeing this in 1.0.2?

Thanks!

Edited by Perry Apsis
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That's odd, haven't seen it myself. I've launched both 3-stage and 4-stage asparagus in 1.0.2 and never had an issue. The only time I have issues with asparagus is when I get careless or distracted and do something stupid with the fuel lines (e.g. forget to put one in, or put in one too many), but in that case it's pretty obvious pretty quickly that something is amiss :), doesn't sound like your problem.

I'm curious, just as an experiment, suppose you let one of those out-of-sync stages burn about halfway through (not all the way to flameout), kill throttle, and then examine the tank contents to compare the relative amounts-- will they be the same, or out of sync? (in other words, is this a fuel-tank problem or an engine problem?)

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I had some weirdness, in a simple 4x symmetry fuel feed into a central tank and engine. The outer engine/tanks drained un-evenly; One of the outer four was full and not draining, but its engine was firing normally. I did a manual fuel transfer between two tanks to level that out. But of course the drain rate problem continued, and engines quit at slightly different times, causing minor problems ;)

I could tell something was not quite right, when I decoupled the finally empty outer engine/tanks: one of the engines of those four, drifted away from its tank like the node attachment was made of chewing gum. Which is possibly a rare, but legit "Kerbal" building material ;)

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There have been a couple of threads that I've noticed, but not much comment. I keep meaning to post my own experiences with landers that drain symmetrically-mounted tanks unevenly for no apparent reason, but haven't got around to it yet :(

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I've been told that this is an occasional glitch somehow caused by fuel lines. Going to the VAB and stripping off the fuel lines, and then putting new ones on should fix it, even if you put the new ones right where the original ones were. What's important is to replace them, to reset things. It worked for me, anyway.

Edited by Vanamonde
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You all got it wrong! Hah!

The problem, as it turns out, was between the earphones. I had drained out some fuel to increase my TWR, and I hadn't done it quite evenly. Then I forgot I had done it. While I'm somewhat proud of having stumped the panel, I must give at least some credit to the fact that I have the attention span of a squirrel.

Thank you all for your excellent suggestions.

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