[Showcase] Non Asparagus Launch Vehicles

[bear67]

Getting a DEMV Mark2 fitted with a Kethane driller to Minmus. If you noticed the Pilot is two different Kerbal's. heh

The six outers feed the three Center.

The three center now feed the upper six outer.

The Four Corner's feed the two outer Orange Center.

The two outer center feed the center orange, and the two orange center outer feed the center orange.

The Fins got detached at same time as the last Orange tank. Coasting to Orbit.

[cardgame]

The smaller the better, IMO. I enjoy the smaller pieces. However, I refuse to use the gamey jet engines, so don't expect me to break any records.

This 39-ton rocket delivers a ~3.5t payload to LKO, not the greatest payload fraction of course, but that payload has nearly 4,000m/s d/v to play with, accomplishing the same as a much heavier LV-N equipped craft. It's also a lander, so a comparable LV-N design would be roughly triple the weight.

Edited June 16, 2013 by cardgame

[AmpsterMan]

The smaller the better, IMO. I enjoy the smaller pieces. However, I refuse to use the gamey jet engines, so don't expect me to break any records.

This 39-ton rocket delivers a ~3.5t payload to LKO, not the greatest payload fraction of course, but that payload has nearly 4,000m/s d/v to play with, accomplishing the same as a much heavier LV-N equipped craft. It's also a lander, so a comparable LV-N design would be roughly triple the weight.

-snip-

What mod is that? Btw, it is a nice looking rocket

[cardgame]

The new up-and-coming AIES pack

[Atanar]

I like to use jet boosters for small payloads and then directly to LV-N.

[M83]

Just curious, what are some of you using to control some of these parallel designs as I'm not seeing a lot of winglets.

[Tommygun]

Just curious, what are some of you using to control some of these parallel designs as I'm not seeing a lot of winglets.

When you go wider it can actually help the rocket stay up right.

So you don't necessarily need them.

[AmpsterMan]

Just curious, what are some of you using to control some of these parallel designs as I'm not seeing a lot of winglets.

I just strut the strap on boosters. In fact, I have found that once you have more than just one booster stack, the whole rocket becomes very wobbly and almost uncontrollable unless you turn off gimbal in the parallel boosters.

[redteddy23]

Agreed, that stuff is nasty.

Obviously doing it wrong. Try lightly steamed, so it still has a little bite and serve with mayonnaise!

[Sabor]

@Sabor, I looked at the flags in your signature, and , wow! Would there be a place to download them?

BTW, nice shuttle , I never seem to be able to make one like that.

P.S : Sorry for interrupting the thread. I just couldn't stop myself.

There's much larger versions in the Flag Thread that you can save into your flags folder and use straight from there, page 79

[cardgame]

Just curious, what are some of you using to control some of these parallel designs as I'm not seeing a lot of winglets.

Gimballing engines (preferably in the center of the stack) plus ASAS on the top of the ship usually does a fine job.

[AustralianFries]

Gimballing engines (preferably in the center of the stack) plus ASAS on the top of the ship usually does a fine job.

Pretty much what I do.

[P.S. Love your sig/avatar]

[trippytripp]

Obviously doing it wrong. Try lightly steamed, so it still has a little bite and serve with mayonnaise!

Hmm .. May have to try that ..

[Supernovy]

Last time I didn't post this:

The SRBs are there to provide TWR while the main tank empties. It was an exercise in trying to solve the low burn time problem in stock SRBs.

The second stage 'fairing' covers a 2x LVT45 cluster.

[Oggula]

Not sure why everybody hates asparagus quite so much. For my the game is all about designing the most capable rocket. The fun is in adapting between versions, not in making rockets look pretty. If you want to make a rocket look pretty, go to art school. I'm sure many new players are as infuriated as I am about the aesthetic replica junk cramming the spacecraft exchange these days.

[AustralianFries]

Not sure why everybody hates asparagus quite so much. For my the game is all about designing the most capable rocket. The fun is in adapting between versions, not in making rockets look pretty. If you want to make a rocket look pretty, go to art school. I'm sure many new players are as infuriated as I am about the aesthetic replica junk cramming the spacecraft exchange these days.

It's not that I hate the asparagus design, I just wanted to see more unique launch vehicles. I was just getting bored of constantly using asparagus over and over again.

Last time I didn't post this:

-snip-

The SRBs are there to provide TWR while the main tank empties. It was an exercise in trying to solve the low burn time problem in stock SRBs.

The second stage 'fairing' covers a 2x LVT45 cluster.

Thats a very cool design, you got there!

[rryy]

Not sure why everybody hates asparagus quite so much. For my the game is all about designing the most capable rocket. The fun is in adapting between versions, not in making rockets look pretty. If you want to make a rocket look pretty, go to art school. I'm sure many new players are as infuriated as I am about the aesthetic replica junk cramming the spacecraft exchange these days.

There is a balance between aesthetics and functionality. A flying asparagus pancake doesn't look good, and it isn't aerodynamic, either. Some people want things to look realistic, even if it isn't important in KSP. What would be the point of fairings if KSP doesn't model aerodynamics, using that logic?

[AmpsterMan]

Not sure why everybody hates asparagus quite so much. For my the game is all about designing the most capable rocket. The fun is in adapting between versions, not in making rockets look pretty. If you want to make a rocket look pretty, go to art school. I'm sure many new players are as infuriated as I am about the aesthetic replica junk cramming the spacecraft exchange these days.

I don't think people hate asparagus staging. It's just that this is a thread about Non-Asparagus rockets. If we were to go to one that has only asparagus staging, then people could ask "why does everyone hate Serial staging so much". I for one like seeing the aesthetic builds tbh, and I find the increased TWR of large first stages (that Serial staging leans heavily towards) helps to make launches go by faster.

[Geschosskopf]

Not sure why everybody hates asparagus quite so much. For my the game is all about designing the most capable rocket. The fun is in adapting between versions, not in making rockets look pretty. If you want to make a rocket look pretty, go to art school. I'm sure many new players are as infuriated as I am about the aesthetic replica junk cramming the spacecraft exchange these days.

Well, AFAIK, there's a reason why in real life "asparagus staging" isn't used. Probably has something to do with the fact that liquid rocket fuel isn't like gasoline, as in liquid at ambient conditions. Instead, it's an ambient gas that is unwillingly forced to be a liquid thanks to cryogenics and high pressure. Thus, in all tanks, the fuel is wanting to go back to being a gas, which means it really wants to expand from its penned-in, high-pressure condition to a roomier, lower-pressure condition.

So now think about what's happening in asparagus staging. The outer tanks are losing pressure faster than the center tank because they're feeding 2 outlets, their engines and the fuel lines, whereas the center tank is feeding only its own engine. In fact, the idea is that the center tank's pressure doesn't decrease at all thanks to the fuel coming in from the outer tanks. Thus, from the moment the outer engines fire, in reality the center tank's fuel will be trying to push out into the lower pressure of the outer tanks, and the less fuel remaining in the outer tanks, the harder the center fuel pushes out. Thus, to make asparagus work in real life, you'd have to pump from the outer tanks against the pressure of the center tank at a rate equal to the current pressure difference PLUS the burn rate of the center engine. And the longer you burn, the harder you have to pump because the pressure difference increases.

I'm pretty sure the pump required to do this would need a couple of inconveniently large buildings to carry it around it, and would probably consume more energy than needed to lift the rest of the rocket itself. I mean, remembering from the shuttle program, it took them a full day or 2 to fill the orange tank on the ground, where they could have as big a land-based pump as they wanted feeding into huge storage tanks with even more pressure than what would end up in the rocket's tanks. Thus, having an essentially weightless and totally powerless yellow pipe do this work to me is extremely gamey.

So that's why I don't like asparagus staging. But this is KSP, not the real world. Maybe the Kerbals have liquid rocket fuel that's liquid at ambient conditions and can be moved around as easily as gasoline. That's the only way the "fuel duct" part could work. Do I use it? Yes. Do I worry too much about it? No. I mean, if I was totally into realism, I'd play Orbiter instead of KSP. I find KSP a lot more fun, especially because you can build your own ships and watch them fail spectacularly . But asparagus staging does nag at the engineer buried deep in my mind, so I try to avoid it if I don't really need it.

And as others have pointed, asparagus doesn't make THAT much difference in the outcome. Hell, if you use FAR, not only do you not really need it, but your rockets fly better when they're long and tall as opposed to short and fat. So I use FAR, which I also think makes airplanes fly better, too.

As to aesthetics, haven't you ever heard of craftsmanship? Regardless of whether your atmosphere is vanilla or FAR, you still have to option of brute-forcing your way through to LKO by just strapping more SRBs and/or tanks on the sides. It's crude, inelegant, but you don't have to pay for all those the parts (yet) and it gets the job done, so why worry about anything else? Any bonobo can do this. But it takes a craftsman to build something that does the job more efficiently (whether you're talking the actual rocketry, less cost/mass/parts, or the limitations of your computer), looks nice, AND flies nice. Recognizing this, I really appreciate designs of elegant simplicity that can, when properly flown, do the same jobs as the brute-force method.

NOTE: I apologize to bonobos for blaming ugly rockets on them. Bonobos are fine craftsmen. I've been flintknapping for 4 or 5 years and I'm not yet as good as Kanzi at it .

[AustralianFries]

-snip-

Wow, that was a very informative post. Thank you for that. This post really drives the point of the thread home. (I'm the OP, by the way, not Oggula.)

[espm400]

While there may not be the real life equivalent of a KSP 'pancake' in use IRL, there actually are two real-life rockets that I know of that do fuel cross-feeding. NASA's SLS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System ), and the currently in development Falcon Heavy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy ). So it is theoretically possible with current technology. The reason we don't use them is that it just adds a lot of complexity, more things to go wrong. I also read something somewhere (don't remember where) about the aerodynamics of the separating stages at rocket velocities that could cause a lot of problems (It was a bit over my head...)

Anywho, that aside, I figured I'd show the trio of lifters that I use for the vast majority of launches. They're more or less the same with the exception of size.

Lira:

Mizar:

Hadar:

Can you tell I have a certain affinity for KW Rocketry? Other than that, the RCS tanks on the Mizar and Hadar are from Kosmos, and the ASAS/SAS are from H.O.M.E.

Edited June 17, 2013 by espm400

[AustralianFries]

-snip-

Those are some pretty cool designs. Thanks for sharing!

[NoMrBond]

I made one which had a central 'thrust-plate' with all the engines, and almost all the fuel was hanging between/underneath, or off the side connected by docking ports with piping all over the show, and all the empty tanks were dropped off using action groups on the docking ports (undocking would also pop the struts).

It was an entirely bizarre experiment, super wide too.

[flowen8]

Oops, i accidentally posted and asparagus launcher.

Edited June 17, 2013 by flowen8
words and stuff

[Festivefire]

Not sure why everybody hates asparagus quite so much. For my the game is all about designing the most capable rocket. The fun is in adapting between versions, not in making rockets look pretty. If you want to make a rocket look pretty, go to art school. I'm sure many new players are as infuriated as I am about the aesthetic replica junk cramming the spacecraft exchange these days.

I don't like it because i think it is an un-necessary amount of work for a little extra delta v. you really don't need it unless you are launching really heavy payloads, as well as it being unrealistic. in real life, fuel flowing like that would have torqued a rocket apart with the shifting center of mass