I need a little help on my lifter design.

[Quaiden]

So I have constructed a lifter to put a satellite in space using a main central rocket and 8 radial jet engines. When using this design I completely loose control of the craft when the jet engines shut down due to lack of air at the rising altitudes. I have seen people put together lifters using jet engines before but I am not sure how they are remaining in control when the jet engines burn out.

I guess my questions are: Is it possible to use jet engines and remain in control after they burn out? Is there a way to have them power down automatically before they burn out?

I do not want to stage them to detach as I am trying to make the lifter re-usable. Any and all suggestions would be welcome.

Different topic, how do I add images without hosting them online somewhere?

[Vanamonde]

The jet engines will not run out of air at the same time. That's built into the software, so there's no way to prevent it, and it means they will apply uneven thrust and send the rocket tumbling. So the thing to do is set them to toggle on/off with an action group. Do a test flight and see when they fail, and the next time you launch, turn them off in a controlled way with the action group just before fail altitude. And currently, the attachment system isn't working, so external hosting is the *only* way to post images.

[Read have Read]

You can watch your Air intake drop like you would total fuel or mono-propellent with the Resources tab in the top right corner. Using that and the Atmosphere gauge you can judge when to shut the jets off.

[RoboRay]

You can even set your jet engines to two action groups, so that half of them shut down with one group, as you get close to the flameout point. This leaves enough air for the remaining engines to keep working a little while longer, until you need to shut them down with the other action group.

You may want to go ahead and start your rocket motor when you shut down the first set of jets, if their thrust is insufficient for you to continue accelerating upwards.

Imgur is a very painless way to host images for free.

Edited April 25, 2013 by RoboRay

[Korbat]

I can conclude from this you're trying to make a lifter design looking like the re-usable lifter Scott Manley is using in his re-usable spaceprogram on youtube (http://tinyurl.com/br5ts47).

If you don't want to decouple the radial engines the best thing to do is make an action group that disables your radial engines and at the same time activates your liquid fuel engine(s).

Just do a test flight and look for the altitude your engines burn out. In the following launches just activate the action group (which disables your engines and activates your liquid fuel engine) 1 km before you hit the burn out altitude.

[Flixxbeatz]

Action groups are your friend.

[dr_jt]

Kerbals are not well understood

Edited June 6, 2013 by dr_jt