Pushing boosters away from main craft

[WatchDragon]

I can\'t find the forum post that explained this, but when i am in space and i want to kick stages away from my main ship, how do i do it? Right now at the stages detach, they either damage the main booster or nudge my ship and mess up its course.

[Nibb31]

Several ways:

- Put the decouplers in the same stage as the next stage engine. When you press space, this should decouple the old stage and start the new stage in one go, which should cause a correct separation.

- Add retro rockets to your spent stage and fire them on the same stage as the decoupler. There are some in various mod packs, such as NovaSilisko\'s SE or NovaPunch.

- Edit the .cfg files of your decouplers to modify the EjectionForce value. Set it to something like 500.

[ForumHelper]

Add boosters to your boosters so that they can fly away and leave your craft safe.

[Crass]

Also struts. If you have a large stack attached to the main body at a high point with a decoupler, use a strut on the lower end. Without one, the expulsion force of the decoupler will often cause the stack to rotate inward at the lower point. The strut will prevent that.

Also maybe post a picture of the rocket design in question?

Edit: Also spinning the craft with Q or E before decoupling will also help in casting off the part.

[WatchDragon]

Would that be an RCS thruster? if so i have no idea how to make those things work

[leopardenthusiast]

Would that be an RCS thruster? if so i have no idea how to make those things work

You need to add an RCS fuel tank somewhere on your vessel. It can be anywhere, as long as the fuel tank isn\'t ejected before the RCS thrusters are.

[WatchDragon]

So if i put the RCS thrusters and an RCS fuel tank on my stage, when i hit space, the thrusters should come on and stay on?

Makes me wonder if they will add some kind of programming language much like mind rover had so you can delay burns that are no longer attached to your main craft.

[Nibb31]

No, thrusters are not for stage separation. They are for manoeuvering your craft.

There are small retro rockets in some of the addon packs. There aren\'t any in the stock parts.

[sal_vager]

Hmmm no actually apart from a very few addon parts there isn\'t much that can push your spent stages away, RCS tanks and thrusters can puch your craft away from the spent stages, activate them with the 'R' key and use the 'H' key to thrust away, or just use your main engines.

There are some packs with retro rockets that will push spent stages rearwards, reducing the chance they hit your upper stage, I\'m sure NovaPunch has some as does the DownUnder pack, these tiny rocket motors will fire even when decoupled.

Decouplers themselves are far weaker now that they used to be, as now the physics are calculated more accurately, you could try finding more powerful decouplers, like the ones for the Failcan.

Other than that, try to wait till after the lower stage runs out of fuel, or hit 'X' to shut down the engines before you activate the next stage, this is usually enough when in space but when you are in an atmosphere excessively tall boosters can be a liability.

For side mounted boosters, where you put the decoupler has an effect as well, too low and the top will pivot round and take your engines off, too high and the boosters engines might clip your center stage.

Radial decouplers top and bottom can help push boosters away more evenly, they still won\'t go far though because of the physics updates.

Beaten by Nibb31