Favorite staging maneuver?

[Hyperspace Industries]

It could be anything, from the Korolev cross, to the sls booster backflip, the stratolaunch drop to something you came up with yourself, lets see your favorite staging! 

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

It could be anything, from the Korolev cross, to the sls booster backflip, the stratolaunch drop to something you came up with yourself, lets see your favorite staging! 

Does the satellite deployment from the Shuttle payload bay count? Stuff like the Hubble launch, or even more probes that used the IUS like galileo

[Hyperspace Industries]

42 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Does the satellite deployment from the Shuttle payload bay count? Stuff like the Hubble launch, or even more probes that used the IUS like galileo

Um? I'm not sure if it should, but I make (some of) the rules, and I say, Yes. 

[.50calBMG]

Flip and burn from the falcon heavy side boosters when they have an RTLS landing. All that complex choreography between them and the core, plus the exhaust plume interaction afterward. 

[kerbiloid]

Dropping ballast on the event horizon of a galactic supermassive blackhole.

[MKI]

2 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

It could be anything

Never staging because its an SSTA ;D

[Beccab]

Just now, MKI said:

Never staging because its an SSTA ;D

Single Stage To Australia? That can be impressive or not only depending on your starting point. Rocketlab wouldn't be very impressive, Ariane 5 on the other hand...

[benzman]

My favourite is when the Apollo capsule separated from the third stage,  turned around, docked with the lunar lander and extracted it.  That took nerves, skill and steady hands.

[cubinator]

I like a good radial booster separation.

[kerbiloid]

Tsiolkovsky's proposal of the multistage rocket train. Actually, it can be reusable.

(And yes, that's what he was actually suggesting, not a multistage rocket itself.)

Launch things to LEO by keeping them on rails, and boosting by rocket engines.
A train of rocket carriages (tank+engine) is puLLing the carriage with payload, being ignited one by one.

Once the current carriage gets out of fuel, it detaches, accelerates, moves forward, and turns to a side railroad to free the way for the rest of the train.
The next carriage ignites and repeats.

This way, by letting all stages accelerate the train a little more and redirecting the spent carriages/stages to the side railroadS, the train finally accelerates the rear carriage with payload to orbital speed.

Much better than all those fancy backflights. Just add more struts rails.

Edited August 31, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Shpaget]

Anything involing yo-yo de-spin. Magnets are magic, but yo-yos are next level.

[kerbiloid]

The yoyo staging is traditionally used to slow a satellite or a re-entry capsule rotation.

Three or four weights are attached at the rear end of the capsule or satellite.
They are attached to metal bands which are spirally placed inside.

The capsule/satellite is rotating fast for gyroscopic stabilization after staging from the rocket/orbiter. But too fast for reentry/work.

The weights get unlocked and start getting away by centrifugal force, pulling out the metal bands and extending them like roulettes,

When the band reaches its end, it gets cut by a mechanical cutter, so the weights fly away carrying most part of the angular momentum, while the payload keeps rotating but much more slowly.

Edited August 31, 2021 by kerbiloid

[spacehex]

I really liked the strange display caused after the staging manoeuvre between the Falcon 9's booster and the upper stage with their nozzles pointing at each other and lighting up the gases in vacuum from the CRS-23 mission the other day:

[DDE]

13 hours ago, benzman said:

My favourite is when the Apollo capsule separated from the third stage,  turned around, docked with the lunar lander and extracted it.  That took nerves, skill and steady hands.

Roscosmos is apparently planning to do a reenactment to fetch a slightly spruced-up Soyuz OM to use as a caravan during a Lunar flight.

16 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

It could be anything, from the Korolev cross, to the sls booster backflip, the stratolaunch drop to something you came up with yourself, lets see your favorite staging! 

Tight squeeze.

[SBKerman]

The half-stage of the old Atlas where it drops the booster engines.

[wumpus]

KSP staging:

Explosive staging because the couplers are three times the cost of the [original] solid boosters and you are feeling cheap.  Or back when career mode let you get to space/orbit that way and you hadn't unlocked couplers.

Bamboo staging with the last stage.  Note this isn't "real" bamboo staging as that is unstable, but involves putting a stage (or two) on top of the capsule and magically transferring the fuel to the working engine.  Note that while in real life, the RL-10 is extremely expensive (supposedly redesigned to be cheaper to make, but ULA probably bought Rocketdyne to get the budget for the Starliner launch undercontrol), the LV-909 is pretty  cheap (and light) making this a marginal improvement.  Still one of my favorite tricks for getting a ton of Isp out of the last stage.

[DDE]

On 9/3/2021 at 5:31 PM, wumpus said:

Note this isn't "real" bamboo staging as that is unstable, but involves putting a stage (or two) on top of the capsule and magically transferring the fuel to the working engine.

 "Tractor"-style engine mounting works well enough for ATGMs.

On 9/3/2021 at 5:31 PM, wumpus said:

Note this isn't "real" bamboo staging as that is unstable, but involves putting a stage (or two) on top of the capsule and magically transferring the fuel to the working engine. 

It's not that improbable. Upper-stage engines don't have crazy mass flow, so a duct around the payload isn't impossible.

And on that note, let's mention the closest thing to the above IRL: the donut from the Naryad ASAT program!

[Nuke]

something involving a medieval catapult as a second stage. 

[StrandedonEarth]

Favourite staging maneuver? A successful one!

Although I must say that venting residual LOX ullage to push the Soyuz boosters away is an elegant solution. 

[SpaceFace545]

Probably the S-II staging when it drops the interstage, I also quite like the booster separations on Atlas V and Delta II where the boosters split off at different intervals.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[Maria Sirona]

Definitely the Korolev cross. Hot straging takes the second place.

[benzman]

This video is quite beautiful and includes what must be one of the luckiest remote camera shots ever.

 

[RCgothic]

I think the Apollo transposition docking and extraction manoeuvre is pretty cool.