the "upside-down rocket"

[jaxson25]

while watching a video by Scott Manley, he brought up a problem where the 3-man pod had the aerodynamic property of the airplane pods where it wants to be facing the direction of movement, causing his rocket, while landing, to flip upside-down when the SAS was off. I thought about how this could be fixed and came up with this little idea, the "Upside-Down Rocket". It's pretty self-explanatory, instead of placing the Command pod on top, you place it on the bottom of the rocket, on top you place the SAS, RCS, and a few fuel tanks. because these are on top the parachutes go on the sides of the pod. then you branch off a other fuel tanks from the center and connect them with fuel ducts. then on the bottom of the outside pods you place the engines. From my experiments, I find that the Aerospike engine doesn't work very well with this design because it burns down onto the pod, killing the kerbals. of course you can find ways to work around this on your own. here are some picture of the test vehicle I made. If you ask I can provide a .craft file.

P.S. I also just noticed that if there was a structural failure in one of the pods, instead of them flying up and hitting the pods, killing the kerbals, they just fly away harmlessly

NOTE: this design is made for powered landings on bodies with atmospheres, so this really has no advantage over a normal rocket if your going to the mun or minmus, but if your landing on another planets (when 0.17 comes out) this will keep you orientated right during landing.

Edited August 26, 2012 by jaxson25
adding a note.

[_Aramchek_]

I made something like that a while back too, with a one man pod though.

I placed an rcs tank and thrusters on it so I could detach it and fly around the Mun a bit.

[Tommygun]

Unique idea, I hope they have really great air conditioning in that capsule though.