Anyone noticing something odd about Radial decouplers?

[Pbhead]

Is it just me or do the tt-70 radial decouplers not quite seem to act. as i would expect.

I noticed oddities when i swapped up to .2 from my .19 craft files, so i thought id try to rebuild from scratch. and that happened.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

Heh, I haven't tried them yet, but struts?...

[legodragonxp]

I've only used them with the large SRBs so far, but without struts they held fine. Thing I am noticing in your screen shots is the placement of the launch stabilizers, seems weird, I usually put them on the outside.

-Lego

[Pbhead]

well. ya. struts. but. none of the bonds "break" in the way they usually do until after the rockets have flipped upside down.

It is just wierd, because usually it takes a second ring of asparagus before things get funky on the launch pad, and usually then it is just failure between rockmaxx 32 and 64, and then collisions which delete a stack.

and it is just the inner ring of launch stabalizers, I put more on the outside on the outer rings of asparagus, when i place the outer rings of asparagus.

Its just weird is all, but i am still preety newbish here. but i like to minimize struts if at all possible, and i am wondering if this means, even more struts.

Edited May 23, 2013 by Pbhead

[Kurile]

There are 2 answers:

More Engines

More Struts

[Deadweasel]

well. ya. struts. but. none of the bonds "break" in the way they usually do until after the rockets have flipped upside down.

It is just wierd, because usually it takes a second ring of asparagus before things get funky on the launch pad, and usually then it is just failure between rockmaxx 32 and 64, and then collisions which delete a stack.

and it is just the inner ring of launch stabalizers, I put more on the outside on the outer rings of asparagus, when i place the outer rings of asparagus.

Its just weird is all, but i am still preety newbish here. but i like to minimize struts if at all possible, and i am wondering if this means, even more struts.

I thought that was the axiom of KSP?

"If it flies apart, you need more struts. If it flies correct and completes its mission, be thankful for your luck and use more struts anyway. MOAR STRUTS!!"

[magnemoe]

If your decoplers was on the middle of orange tanks of the boosters they would be above the center of mass, the decopler force would push the boosters out but also rotate them around the center of mass so the engines would rotate inward. However you will always use struts on large boosters and struts cancel out the decopler force, also during launch you are accelerating so the boosters will fall behind faster.

[Brotoro]

Do we know if the struts-kill-decoupler-force bug still exists in version 0.20?

[NeoMorph]

One word... SEPATRONS.

I think the OP doesn't realise that the radial decouplers are made to release that way to force them away from the main vehicle on separation. I've tried all ways but using struts and sepatrons are the way to go. I even tried putting parachutes on the spent stages to increase their drag away from the rest of the rocket and to lower them to the ground. It's a pity you can't set up delayed deployment of the chutes after you detach the tanks. You HAVE to deploy them while they are still attached to the main vehicle.

[Pbhead]

umm. in the screenshots, i was not decoupling. no spacebar pressed. they were not supposed to be decoupling at all. and infact they are not. nothing is breaking until tanks are doing quite well at being in the the same location at the same time.