Asparagus efficiency

[Macko939]

Is asparagus design still as strong as it used to be?

 

I haven't played in ages (It'd be like a year now) and I am wondering if it's still the best way to build your rocket.  

[Evanitis]

As far as I know, drag got tougher, so it's not nearly as viable in the atmo as it was before. It of course saves the same amount of dV in vacuum.

[Snark]

Asparagus is still viable, it's just not the panacea that it used to be.  Important things to know about life in the new aero:

• You really want tall, skinny, pointy rockets, in order to minimize drag.  Asparagus hurts you there, because it's fatter and therefore draggier.
• For most "normal" ship designs, gravity losses are considerably higher than aero losses, so compared with pre-1.0, you generally want to go for a fast takeoff even if it means breaking Mach 1 early and generating some scary-looking mach effects (and, as you get higher and faster, flames).  Don't go nuts, but generally you want to go faster and shallower on ascent than you did pre-1.0.
• Note that aero becomes relatively less important, the bigger your ship is, because of square-cube issues.  So if you're launching a really big ship, it notices drag much less than a smaller ship does.  Therefore, big ships are one area where asparagus can make sense (since the drag penalty you incur becomes relatively less of an issue).
• If you do use asparagus, try to minimize the extra drag hit that you're going to take.  In other words, make sure you have nosecones on your radial boosters in order to reduce drag.  You want everything pointy and streamlined, as much as possible.

 

[Jakalth]

Yes, as Snark says.  Asparagus staging is still viable and can be more efficient then normal staging.  The difference is more noticeable the larger the vessel is.  From what I have seen it tends to be no more then a hundred or so delta-V difference for a launch vehicle.  Or in simpler terms, a few more seconds of burn time.  What asparagus staging gives you though is one advantage over all: THRUST.  Using asparagus staging means your running all engines at once, making it easier to have the thrust to haul your payload to orbit.  It also means your boosters can hold extra fuel and use slightly more efficient engines at the same time.

 

Downfall of asparagus staging is that indeed, your rocket is going to be wider and produce more drag.  But in larger rockets this can be minimized by careful placement of the fuel tanks, using narrower fuel tanks for the boosters, and by being clever in how you place the aerodynamic nose cones.  Or simply using the mantra of "Moar Boosters", which simply means loading it with more fuel then it would normally need to get to orbit and just thrust your way through the extra drag.

[Norcalplanner]

There was a similar thread a while ago.  Here's a link to a post where I describe how to build a 10 km/s Mun rocket: No Asparagus Rocket.  I also did an imgur album (below) showing what this rocket looks like:

 

[GoSlash27]

Derp! Sorry, wrong thread!

Edited February 4, 2016 by GoSlash27