What is the Skipper good for?

[Ford_Prefect]

Really, what is it good for? Why not take a Mainsail?

Not considerating Career-mode.

[SirJodelstein]

Really, what is it good for? Why not take a Mainsail?

Not considerating Career-mode.

The Skipper is awesome. Perfectly fits the thrust-gap beween ~200kN and the Mainsail (1500kN). Vs the mainsail, it has a higher ISP(=better fuel efficiency), and less weight. I try to replace Mainsails with Skippers wherever the halved thrust does not hurt too much.

[leax256]

for that area where the mainsail is too much and the poodle not quite enough.

[Ford_Prefect]

Hm. Where do you encounter this area/situations usually?

[CaptRobau]

Its higher Isp makes it useful as a second stage engine for normal looking rockets (à la the RL Saturn V). Use the Mainsail to get to about 10km. Use the Skippers better Isp to move the rest of the rocket to an orbital insertion and/or circularizing and use the Poodle for stuff in outer space.

[rodion_herrera]

I like the Skipper for 2nd/3rd stage on my lifter for deep space vessels (which have LVNs as mains)...the nice final thrust to orbit get my vessels nicely to a high orbit (600+ km) so I can do max timewarps for those 150+ days waiting time for burn transfer windows.

Edited June 14, 2013 by rodion_herrera

[SirJodelstein]

Hm. Where do you encounter this area/situations usually?

My medium-sized launchers (up to 50t) dont use any Mainsails at all, some Skippers are enough for the first-stage push. For larger lifters, i tend to use a/some Skippers for the inner stages of an asparagus stack.

And (shameless plug for my inverted rocket challenge) for jib-arm-steering

[Fel]

If you want to optimize launches to use the least amount of weight (without having things like tri mounted LV's) then it is a necessity.

And while you can follow terminal velocity, maybe even save a bit of weight (I don't think you will, but I am confused on the matter as of late)... you're basically pushing an absurd amount of G force and holding the rocket together with what again? Let alone the "Deadly Rentry" would be in reverse and destroy the rocket anyways.

As CaptRobau indicated, it is a "decent heavy lifting second stage engine"

[AustralianFries]

I use it as a transfer/ejection stage when going to other bodies, although I do tri mount LV's alot.

[joppiesaus]

I love the Skipper. It is a mini-mainsail, it has higher Isp than the mainsail.

[Klajan]

I even used it on a Spaceplane once. Mostly because it had exactly the right weight for my VTOL to be balanced, but it also packs quite punch while still being lighter then clustered engines (and more reliable). I use it on mid sized launchers most of the time.

[Joe Shmoe]

I find it good for upper stages on large rockets. I mostly use the skipper to get satellites into orbit over Kerbin.

[WhiteWeasel]

I asparagus stage with mainsails and use the skipper in the center.

[M5000]

I've used the Skipper extensively. When it was part of KSPX, I didn't use it much (why? I have no idea) but really, the best use I've found is for the stage that usually gets the payload into orbit. "Second" stage if you will.

[Noticeably FAT]

It's great for pushing heavy payloads around the Kerbin system.

[rryy]

With how I design my lifters, I don't find the Skippers that useful. If I want high Isp but not too much thrust, I go with engine clusters. If I need a lot of thrust, I go with the Mainsail. I tried using them on smaller heavy lifters, but their TWR is too low to actually get a payload into orbit.

[soranno]

Not the most efficient way to do it, but there is just something so damned satisfying about this Mun rocket!

also I landed this thing right on the skipper to rescue the crew of the actual lander when their ascent stage failed! So all in all I`m pretty pleased with the ol` skipper so far.

[Tw1]

I've used it a fair bit on outer boosters for asparagus stages.Sometimes I don't need the thrust of a full mainsail, and can save weight.

Its KSPX equivalent was the main engine of the lifter stage of my one man Mun rescue rocket, as less weight = more delta V.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Tw1

[AmpsterMan]

Echoing just about everyone in this thread... I've used it on my orbital insertion stages.

[TheDarkStar]

I find that it's almost always easier to have a Asparagus-staged Mainsail group for getting off the ground, and then circularizing with a LV-N. I've only really used it to see how it is.

[ComradeGoat]

I'm increasingly building lifters that feature a single Mainsail under the orbital insertion stage to get the TWR, and then outer stages are all radially/asparagussed Skippers. A Skipper with a single orange tank lifts its own weight nicely and keeps the TWR in a nice envelope, while providing fuel for the mainsail. As they get shed, the TWR goes *up* (opposite of what usually happens with asparagus), which allows me to keep closer to terminal velocity as the atmosphere thins. If I get it right, the Mainsail burns out when I'm horizontal, in the upper atmosphere, doing around 2,000 metres per second or more.

The other nice thing about building launchers like this is that the lack of outer Mainsails makes the damn things considerably less prone to randomly blowing up in flight. Mainsails are annoying like that.

[UmbralRaptor]

The Skipper is not particularly good for anything. It's "useful" in that it fills a gap in thrust, and has thrust vectoring. That said, you get similar TWR and higher ÃŽâ€V out of 3 LV-T30s. (Or 2 LV-T30s and an LV-T45 if you need the TVC)

edit: The Skipper is also easier to use than a Mainsail in that a single orange tank is a reasonable amount of fuel, and it runs enough cooler to avoid the heat transfer bug.

[rdfox]

My standard heavy-lift booster is based around my Common Core Booster Fuselage (2xJumbo-64 with a 200-8 underneath, all "stapled" together with sixfold struts at the joints between tanks). I use a CCBF with a Skipper as a core/sustainer stage, then six CCBFs with Mainsails as strap-on boosters. This has gotten all but the heaviest payloads I can put together (that don't make the booster tumble/banana) into low orbit all by itself, usually with a few hundred m/s of d-V to spare. For the rare occasions when that's not enough, I put an upper stage powered by a Poodle on top, and SRBs if needed for initial TWR after that. (If THAT'S not enough, I break up the payload into multiple modules.)

Remember, once you've gotten past the initial loft (periapsis above about 20km), you don't NEED a high TWR, and the Skipper is almost perfect for getting the rest of the way out of the atmosphere, in that it has a good Isp. and enough thrust to keep air resistance and gravity from dragging you back down.

[Death Engineering]

I've had really good success with a Skipper on the bottom of a Jumbo-64 with 3 or four Mark 55 Radial Mount Liquid Engines strapped to it. Gives amazing gimbal control and burns forever.

[Aragosnat]

I like using skipper as it cuts down on the number of parts, have problems doing the tri-engine on orange tanks, and it is nice for crafts under 50 tons which is the heaviest I have made so far.