Need help designing very large rockets

[ProbeIke]

I've been at it for the past four hours - designing rockets which can carry a large, three person lander to the moon. I've tried countless designs, and all have failed miserably, none even made it to Kerbin orbit. I made a mk1 lander yesterday, but can't replicate the design because it uses larger rockets in bottom stages and I don't have any ones larger for the mk2 capsule.

Please don't post your own moon rockets, but instead give design tips and methods for building rockets. Right now I've been trying to use the onion booster design, where boosters peel off, as my earlier rockets with stacked boosters weren't successful. Also, minimal brackets if you can, more than fifty tends to slow down the computer.

Please help. I'm begging you, I want to return to the moon with more than one man.

[Ziff]

I've been at it for the past four hours - designing rockets which can carry a large, three person lander to the moon. I've tried countless designs, and all have failed miserably, none even made it to Kerbin orbit. I made a mk1 lander yesterday, but can't replicate the design because it uses larger rockets in bottom stages and I don't have any ones larger for the mk2 capsule.

Please don't post your own moon rockets, but instead give design tips and methods for building rockets. Right now I've been trying to use the onion booster design, where boosters peel off, as my earlier rockets with stacked boosters weren't successful. Also, minimal brackets if you can, more than fifty tends to slow down the computer.

Please help. I'm begging you, I want to return to the moon with more than one man.

If you can post some photos of your designs, or even a .craft file, we would be in a much better position to give you some ideas on how to directly improve your craft. Pick the one you like the most that has gotten the closest to orbit.

Some general basics. Start with the smallest Mun lander you need. Larger landers require larger rockets which makes things complicated. When you fail to reach orbit, ask yourself why? Common problems are thrust to weight ratio too low at launch, inefficient engines, too little fuel in radial stages, heavy Mun landers..

[MaxMurder]

Remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) from your description it seems that you are building ungodly huge rockets. Unnecessarily big rockets tend to fail miserably as they are so heavy that they will crush themselves under their own weight. Having a lot of thrust will add to the problem as the G forces become more extreme. Start with the smallest design possible, try not to use full throttle if your rockets are exploding frequently (keep an eye on your g meter), don't add unessasary boosters (if its gaining velocity it has enough), plan your stages carefully (launch stage should get you out of the atomosphere, orbit stage should take you to orbit and TMI, lander stage for landing and an optional return stage) and always remember KISS!

[Vanamonde]

Guys, Mr. ProbeIke seems to have mistakenly created redundant threads, and this one is duplicating his http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/20437-Creating-large-stable-non-laggy-rockets-for-three-person-lunar-landing. It would be nice if a mod could merge these so the helpful info isn't scattered around.