Asparagus staging in real life?

[(An Original Name)]

Now, we know that asparagus staging in KSP maximizes the d/v you can get out of a rocket design with boosters... But is it used in real life? Like on the Soyuz rocket, why isn't there some sort of fuel line between the boosters and the core stage? Wouldn't using asparagus staging improve the rocket? What reasons are there to not use asparagus staging in real life, or is it even technically feasible? Maybe I'm just missing something obvious here

[drakesdoom]

Their are two issues first pumping fuel around is much harder in real life, and second drag is more dependent on your nose profile in real life than your total parts in ksp.

[Tangent]

See here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28374-Asparagus-Staging-in-Real-Life

and here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25803-Asparagus-Staging

Search is your friend.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Two main reasons:

Firstly in real life the dry weight of stages is much less than in KSP, this means that asparagus simply doesn't help as much.

Secondly, it introduces much more complexity into the design. You need additional fuel lines and very reliable valves (but probably not pumps), you need more staging events (which can go horribly wrong) and you need more parallel stages - which can cuase aerodynamic headaches.

Thats said, the Falcon Heavy will use propellent crossfeed (simplified asparagus), and this was also examined for the Delta IV heavy (but they thought it wasn't worth it).

[Eric S]

I recently learned that someone actually proposed asparagus staging in real life about 15 years ago, so it wasn't invented here like some think. Then again, it took over 65 years for propellant crossfeed to make it into a heavy lift vehicle (first envisioned in 1947, and the Falcon Heavy is the first to really use it that way), so saying that it's not used currently in real life isn't a sure bet that it will never be used in real life, though there are issues and less benefits to it, as discussed in the other threads.

[Jokurr]

While not asparagus style staging as we know it in KSP, the N1 rocket had 30 rocket engines in its first stage, and it was a tremendous difficulty to get all 30 engines working together properly. From a reliability standpoint, it is much better to reduce the number of moving parts on any type of rocket design, which the N1 failed to do when compared to the Saturn V. Any slight variations in fuel fed to each of the engines can be catastrophic. Having such a complex system to feed all 30 engines of the N1 was part of the reason why it was ultimately a failure.