Do you use the LES?

[guitarxe]

I find it a very neat idea and even put it on as many flights as I can, but I've never actually had the need to use. Did anyone ever get into a situation where they had to make use of it in the game?

[KerbonautInTraining]

I remember a few occasions where I was playing with FAR and had to use one I made out of KW ullage motors.

The stock one should take inspiration from the real thing and pull the capsule up instead of throwing it to the side imho. 

[Jetski]

nope.  never used.

[Frank_G]

Nope, but not because i dont like or need it... its too weak to lift my custom capsules and bring them to a safe distance... I use customized LES towers.

[ArmchairGravy]

I have used the LES a grand total of zero times, but if I were playing without reverts I'd certainly consider using it.

[JacobT11]

Yep, every manned spacecraft in my career mode has some form of LES, sometimes the stock one, sometimes a custom one built with sepratrons, It's rare that I'll need to fire them, but it has happened a few times, more often in my early career. 

[SpacedCowboy]

Jeb says "No way, we don't need it, and it's too much weight!"

It's just so,,,"Unkerbal"

 

 

Edited April 17, 2016 by SpacedCowboy

[Skorpychan]

No. If it's a manned upper stage, then it's got enough thrust to get itself clear of an exploding stack once I pound the spacebar in panic. If it's unmanned, then I don't give a kerbal's ass what happens to it. It can explode with the rest of the stage.

The fact is, I need that top node for something USEFUL, and the LES is just more launch weight and something else to worry about on ascent; it's not got enough thrust to get itself clear of an accelerating first stage at altitude.

[tg626]

Yes.  In fact it troubles me we have no "ejection seat" ability for when I do aircraft and spaceplanes/shuttles.

[Vermil]

In my very early KSP career, when I built increasingly complex and unstable stacked rocket designs from primitive parts in efforts to go to the Mun, I actually had an improvised LES of a sort. I either simply used the top rocket part as attached to the pod or a minimal solid rocket to shoot the pod free from an accidentally crumbling and combusting card house. At that time I had no way of controlling my rockets as unmanned. I hadn't understood that SAS works even if I don't have that gyro-wheel (which was unavailable), neither did I know that <T> activated it. I didn't know what navigation nodes were. So I flew manually, all the way, constantly pointing the nose in the right direction, and burned blindly, just watching the blue trajectory line as it changed.

Anyway, yes I did have a number of occasions when I employed my homemade arraignment to shoot the pod away from the fiery fireball of a launch gone bad, to land safely with a parachute. I think I must have saved my Kerbal astronaut around 4 to 5 times in total, employing an emergency rocket propelled disconnect. But you asked about the LES. - No, I've never used that. It didn't exist when I needed it, and I'm kinda leaning towards that I don't like the actual implementation enough.

[cubinator]

I use it, sure, it even has a special keycode in the capsule to activate:

>Esc

>Revert to Vehicle Assembly

[cantab]

I try and always have *some* sort of abort contingency on Kerballed craft, but it's rarely the stock LES, mainly because I rarely use the stock 3-Kerbal pod because it's a freaking boat anchor. Often the abort contingency is "Bail out, hope no rocket parts hit you, and use the Vanguard EVA parachute."

[something]

I prefer to use the aforementioned LRS  - the Launch Revert System. ..

[Racescort666]

I've experimentally used it. But I found it makes a much better fin stabilized sounding rocket.

Note: "fin" autocorrected to "fun" when I first typed this out.

[zarakon]

No.  It's ridiculously rare for an in-flight failure to actually threaten the capsule, unless something happens so fast that you wouldn't be able to react and hit abort anyway.

[MaxxQ]

8 hours ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

I remember a few occasions where I was playing with FAR and had to use one I made out of KW ullage motors.

The stock one should take inspiration from the real thing and pull the capsule up instead of throwing it to the side imho. 

Actually, the LES used for Apollo DOES lift the capsule up and to the side.  The Apollo LES uses three solid rocket motors - the main motor has four nozzles (the propellant only goes up about two-thirds of the tube) and is used in an emergency.  The second motor is farther up (using a spherical solid propellant motor housing mounted just ahead of the main motor) and has two nozzles angled out and down, and is used for pulling the LES and BPC (Boost Protective Cover) away during normal flight.  The third motor is a sideways-pointing one (much like a sepratron in shape) used in conjunction with canards built into the nose cone to push the entire thing to one side during an emergency.

This is a 1/10 scale rocket I built of the Little Joe II (used for testing the Apollo LES): 

Look closely and you can see the simulated upper pair of nozzles (parachute for the "capsule" is up there, so I couldn't actually make them operate the way they should).  The sideways nozzle isn't visible in these images, and of course, the main motor nozzles are obvious.

Edited April 17, 2016 by MaxxQ

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I never use it because I'm amazing at rocketry and no mistakes are ever made*

 

 

*all those flights that I reverted technically never happened. 

[Archgeek]

From time to time.  I've even been known to use my own, like this one from before we had a stock LES:

[tg626]

Btw HGR has a nice one that's good for the 1 kerbal pod

[ag3nt108]

Never used it or even considered using it.  Reverting a launch is too convenient

[Brofessional]

The LES is never necessary because there are no random part failures or chain-reaction explosions in KSP.  Even in worst case scenarios like your boosters slamming into your core stage, the capsule remains unharmed 99.9% of the time.

[ibanix]

12 minutes ago, Brofessional said:

The LES is never necessary because there are no random part failures or chain-reaction explosions in KSP.  Even in worst case scenarios like your boosters slamming into your core stage, the capsule remains unharmed 99.9% of the time.

That's really it. If I was playing no-revert, with random failure, tho...

[Frank_G]

00.1% is risk enough... i try to save my kerbals all the time. Ok, in two years playing i used it 4 or 5 times in non testing situations, but i always start kerbaled flights with my finger on the abort key. They are not expendable (Especially in career mode).

[KerikBalm]

I use them on top of fleas(with fuel levels adjusted down for a short burn time), in symetry so that their torque is cancelled, as boosters. They have the higher TWR in the game...

0-150m/s  in a very short time... then I decoupled them and light my other engines... they parachute down and land before leaving the physics bubble for 100% recovery.

I made a craft that demonstrates this back in 1.02 or 1.04... I assume it still works fine.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zxv4728zhed0ol/SSTNope.craft?dl=0

The rocket itself is SSTO capable... but this gets it roughly another 150 m/s in orbit, and still gets 100% part recovery.

Due to KSPs physics bubble, a reusable system has to drop boosters very early for them to land before despawning... or you need to carry them high enough that you can circularize your orbit (or boost the orbital crafts apoapsis high enough that you can circularize it later) and switch back to it before it gets below 23km.. and in that case the recovery % isn't so great.

Thats why I sometimes use very short burn recoverable boosters, and the LES is great for these.

 

Hmmm, just realised that there's a problem with these stats:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Solid_rocket_booster

it lists the empty atmospheric TWR as the LES as higher than the sepratron... but that wouldn't be the case based on the given mass stats...

Still a LES has the thrust of like 50 sepratrons... so lower partcount boosters

[Cuky]

I have LES on my manned flights as soon as I research it in tech tree. Had to use it only a handful of times, but never the less it is always on the top, if anything else then because it looks cool