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Care to look over a newbies rocket?


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(Sorry if this belongs in the Spaceship Exchange forum!)

My rocket that I\'ve attached keeps blowing up when I fire the second stage thrusters after detaching the first stage. According to the Ship Log this is because the fuel tanks are blowing up due to heat, but I don\'t see how they could be doing so since there\'s no fuel in them (which is why I\'m detaching them in the first place) and I\'m no chemist but I\'m pretty sure super-heating metal would just make it melt.

Thanks in advance! (and you may want to turn the volume down because by god this thing makes a lot of noise)

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It\'s hard to work out, but I think there\'s a structural weakpoint somewhere. Decoupling with the engines off and throttling up slowly keeps it from exploding.

That said, you do know that you can stack multiple fuel tanks on top of eachother, right?

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Yes, but I don\'t know what the most efficient Decoupler:Fuel Tank:Thruster ratio is.

I tried three flights.

The first flight the tanks blew up like a bomb when I hit full thrust right after decouple.

The second flight I coasted a little bit, but the tanks still blew up like a bomb.

One the third flight I coasted longer and the tanks did not blow, but the falling tanks did take damage. I was able to get to a 175k/125k orbit and bring them back for a landing.

I guess the tanks are considered to have fumes inside and are vulnerable to heat.

I usually use 3 or 4 tanks per engine/decoupler with the last stage usually getting two tanks along with the RCS, ASAS, etc. The shorter seems better as a long stage with SAS to control it doesn\'t seem stable. I\'m too impatient for math and Jeb is fearless. Take all the above with a grain of salt as I\'m not a rocket scientist and the parts are not rated for use in real rockets. ;)

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I also remembered this morning that I did make one change to the stages. Look at stage 5 and you will see one engine with the decouplers. Move that engine up one stage, so when you decouple the first set of tanks, you don\'t immediately get hot exhaust on them. Sorry about that, I forgot to add that to the post above.

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I also remembered this morning that I did make one change to the stages. Look at stage 5 and you will see one engine with the decouplers. Move that engine up one stage, so when you decouple the first set of tanks, you don\'t immediately get hot exhaust on them. Sorry about that, I forgot to add that to the post above.

That is what I do, but the game seems to insist on moving that engine back into stage 5 every time I go back to the hangar.

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That is what I do, but the game seems to insist on moving that engine back into stage 5 every time I go back to the hangar.

I\'m not sure why it would do that. We have two computers (and I\'m on the second one), so I downloaded the ship again. I moved the engine to stage 4 and saved it. I launched it and then after no boom today (boom tomorrow, there is always a boom tomorrow), I went back to the VAB. The engine was still in stage 4 where I had put it.

I have a similar problem with my Saturn I ship. The Munar Lander at the top has three radial decouplers on the Fuel Tank Landing Legs. (I wish I could find the youtube video where this lander design was built. But I spent too many hours that day wandering around KSP vids, that I can\'t find my way back.) The VAB techs keep wanting to put those three decouplers with the ML engine in stage 4 whenever I modify the ship. So whenever I go to the VAB to launch the Saturn I, I check the decoupler placement before I launch. I have the demo version, so I do not know if this was fixed in later versions.

p.s. Yes, I have a Mercury and Gemini series. :)

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Yes, but I don\'t know what the most efficient Decoupler:Fuel Tank:Thruster ratio is.

For a relatively low number of stages (also asparagus staging or cases where each stage is much larger than the ones above it), 3-5 tanks per engine is good.
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