What is the unit of repulsion force of the decouplers?

[Sharpy]

The wiki Parts page says the unit is 10N*s. The page of given component presents the values in direct (1)N*s.

It's... very important to my research into a novel way of propulsion.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Sharpy

[Red Iron Crown]

I believe the parts page is correct, the unit is a decanewton-second. Which should make your propulsion method more feasible.

[nekogod]

Scott Manley did this he was able to launch a probe core from the launchpad to the water near the KSC using stack seperators.

[Sharpy]

Oh yes. Thank you very much!

The ISp of the decoupler propulsion seems to be a bit above 100s. Not very good, but the good part is that the dry mass is 100% payload. 24.5N of thrust per one stack of fuel, but this can be expanded in parallel. Now to find optimal profile of the rocket (when to double the stack width for consistent TWR...)

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Scott Manley did this he was able to launch a probe core from the launchpad to the water near the KSC using stack seperators.

Oh, yes, except stack separators provide 60000Ns of impulse per 450kg of weight, meaning exhaust speed of 133m/s. That's a pitiful 13.56s of ISp.

Radial decouplers provide 25000Ns of impulse per 25kg - 1000m/s of exhaust speed, for a whole 102s of ISp, and allow for easy multiplication of thrust as you can attach more decouplers below to a single decoupler above.

To keep a payload of 0.5kg at TWR>=2 on Kerbin, I'd need a stack of

10 layers of 5 decouplers

13 layers of 4 decouplers

16 layers of 3 decouplers

25 layers of 2 decouplers

30 layers of 1 decoupler.

That makes for 94 stages, assuming 1s per stage, 94s of acceleration, 922m/s lost to gravity, at the very least second that much gained to acceleration. I'll see how staging that many goes, but orbit is definitely possible.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Sharpy

[Streetwind]

The forum demands video.

[Sharpy]

Uh, bummer. The Wiki gives the values in Ns, not 10Ns. The power of the decoupler is actually ten times lower.

[Sharpy]

...and here's the thread with the video.