Can I see my center of mass/thrust for different stages without disassembly?

[cephalo]

I'm trying to launch an enormous, football(American) shaped object into orbit. Half of the volume of this rocket is a giant fairing. It looks ridiculous, but almost actually works. TWR and dV are adequate. The problem is that I lose stability as I shed staging, and I believe it's because I can't get a great read on my center of mass and thrust.

For one thing, some of the rockets on my payload stage lander inside the fairing point sideways (It's like a schoolbus with thrusters at the bottom, being launched vertically.) and this confuses the center of thrust UI to point off center even though that stage is not used on the way up.

Another thing is that I have a complex radial booster subassembly that is already all hooked up with struts and fuel lines. If I take those off they don't usually go back on the way they came off. I'd rather not spend a half hour hooking all that stuff back up and risking additional orphaned parts adding weight and drag for no benefit.

I'm using Kerbal Engineer Redux and that gives a torque reading per stage which is useful, but it doesn't give much help in correcting a high number in that field.

Is there an easier way to eliminate stages from the CoM and CoT markers?

Edited May 26, 2015 by cephalo

[justidutch]

I suppose you could try saving the ship under a different name, so you can disassemble that one to check out each stage's CoM, etc.

[DancesWithSquirrels]

Save it first - use a scratch copy if you want to really be safe. Then go ahead and pull stages with CoG and CoT active to look at what's left. To restore, use Control-Z to undo the last action. (Control-Y is Redo if you go too far)

I've on rare occasion had problems with this, but one or more Undo's generally works very well.

[Orbital Vagabond]

It's not the answer you're looking for, but an alternative method could be to save each stage as a sub-assembly (I usually mount mine on a decoupler root part). Balance each stage like that, then assemble them all in a new craft.

[cephalo]

It's not the answer you're looking for, but an alternative method could be to save each stage as a sub-assembly (I usually mount mine on a decoupler root part). Balance each stage like that, then assemble them all in a new craft.

Sure, if all the stages are balanced individually, it should all come together. What caught me this time, is that my last stage is mounted sideways on the rocket throwing off everything. I can do this, I just have to start over. Maybe I can put some drop tanks on the other side (top) of my lander or some kind of something useful.