[Showcase] Non Asparagus Launch Vehicles

[mellojoe]

Here's my Titan V. Inspired and modeled after the Titan launch vehicle of the American space program's Gemini missions, the ones that preceeded Apollo.

Mission Report here --> The Titan Missions: an education in space

[Giggleplex777]

0.5 staging FTW!

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[CleverClothe]

That's onion staging. Asparagus staging requires that one set of radials feed into another set. Going to the center just peels off layers, like an ogre onion.

Same category, different names. Onion staging is a synonym.

Though I have also seen onion in reference to serial staging that is laterally layed out.

[Xeldrak]

I never heard "onion staging" before, but it'd differentiate between the style it describes and aspargus. When aspargussing you try to seperate as fast as possible, i.e. when you have burned enough fuel to empty two tanks, you drop em.

Anyways, here is my contribution, the Kerpollo D - 912.17 metric tons at liftof, capable of a rather extensive duna mission.

[Geschosskopf]

Big Clyde:

4 double stacks of KW Rocketry big tanks with 4-barreled engines under them all firing at once in a single, massive ascent stage. Payload starts at 177 tons, consisting of 5x big nuke engines, 5x X200-48 KSPX tanks, 5x RCS tanks, a docking port, a probe core, and 2 RTGS. Without SRBs, it gets to apoapis at 90km but the payload doesn't have enough thrust to finish the orbit. The 8x Thor SRBs save 600 dV in the KWR tanks so that can do most of the apoapsis burn, leaving the nuke engines to clean up. They burn 10 tons of fuel doing this, leaving 167 tons delivered to 90km LKO.

[Supernovy]

I've decided to post my first couple 0.21 designs:

The Snatlas 2. It can SSLV small payloads, like the pictured capsule. Otherwise, the payload has to make orbit by itself.

The Prokon-C (although I think I'm up to Prokon-D now). The result of me trying to replicate the russian Proton HLV, but I'm not trying that again. Russian spacecraft have way too many stages.

[Rune]

I've been working on stage-and-a-half designs, and they work beautifully. You know, boosters and a sustainer, no pesky fuel lines and the payload circularizes to comply with the clean space act:

That one even has a stock retractable gantry.

Rune. I like the "Soyuz" flavour.

[ixolate industries]

I recently designed a large rocked (by my standards) to complete a mun mission Apollo style.

This is my biggest non asparagus rocket the only part that actually failed was the lander.

On the pad

Second stage in orbit

[Globox]

PheNix 01 Launch Vehicle, my workhorse for heavy LKO operations, station building and Mun landings

Quite simple design, gets the job done

Edited August 4, 2013 by Globox

[Maserdom]

Well, I must admit I registered an account just to post.

After way too many tries with a friend of mine (who, by chance, is an engineer, and sped up the designing stages by a lot), we managed to create a couple of spacecrafts that actually worked and didn't feel like blowing up mid-cruise.

This is the rocket we designed to send into Kerbin orbit a full space station, albeit a small one: we still don't even remotely understand how the Maneuvers tooltips work, so docking and other amenities areb out of our league. Getting this baby into orbit was a pain, due to the station's hilariously placed weight (I'll let you guess which side the rocket was always leaning to - the SAS had a field day). Too bad it looked too cool to be changed, so we just had to find a design capable of pushing that small monster into orbit.

Here we have our rocket for the Mun rover. I'm absolutely sure it is inefficient to the extreme, yet it was the first design that worked, and so it stayed that way. None of use would dare change even a single strut line.

Please remember that we don't use the help windows with thrust, payload's weight and so on. Everything's done by trial and error. The moment we see an improvement, we build different sections around the last working design, till it works. That's why you'll point out in a moment some ridiculous fallacies in our spacecrafts

Please note that in both cases we used lots of solid boosters (I don't understand why people never use them)

[Sauron]

My brand new light launch vehicle for my .21 playthrough, the India 4b LLV (I name all my rockets using the NATO phonetic alphabet starting from echo and my SSTOs [shape]).

There are some fuel-routing quirks, but they might be a feature rather than a bug (the LV-T30 in the center of the stack will cut out before the 909s do, so TWR will briefly drop below 2. I actually managed to get 4 SRBs under it without destroying the engines on decoupling, but I never managed to repeat it, so I'm chalking it up to dumb luck.

Edited August 5, 2013 by Sauron

[GusTurbo]

My brand new light launch vehicle for my .21 playthrough, the India 4b LLV (I name all my rockets using the NATO phonetic alphabet starting from echo and my SSTOs [shape]).

There are some fuel-routing quirks, but they might be a feature rather than a bug (the LV-T30 in the center of the stack will cut out before the 909s do, so TWR will briefly drop below 2. I actually managed to get 4 SRBs under it without destroying the engines on decoupling, but I never managed to repeat it, so I'm chalking it up to dumb luck.

Wow, that's a very attractive little rocket!

Here's something I'm working on right now

Edited August 17, 2013 by GusTurbo

[Dispatcher]

Some of you must be eating asparagus out of a can. There's nothing wrong with real asparagus. :-)

I do agree that variety is what is fun to do in KSP. If you want to try something different, use a central stack of stages and all different kinds of boosters: solid, liquid and jets on one craft.

[mellojoe]

I made a replica of the Delta II launch vehicle. Works surprisingly well. Can get about 15t to LKO.

A central core Mainsail surrounded by 9 solid rocket boosters. The central core plus 6 SRB's fire at liftoff.

Then when the 6 SRB's run out, the other 3 are ignited to continue the burn.

Those drop and the Mainsail is throttled to maximum for the final push.

Payload into LKO.

This is a simple 2 stage central core. The 2nd stage basically pushes the payload from sub-orbital to orbit at any altitude you wish, from 80x80 all the way up to 250x250. This rocket is ready for commercial use, so put your orders in today.

The Delta II can hold two standard sizes of payload using the "Common Payload Interface."

((edit))

Here's the reference model. If only I could paint my orange tanks blue...

Mine is all stock except for Procedural Fairings, one of the best mods available.

Edited August 21, 2013 by mellojoe

[KerbMav]

snip

The ASAS module between the two orange tanks survives? I once tried this to test if it lessens the wobbliness but it got crushed ...

Playing around with FAR I returned to stacking and boosting - works actually quite good - is this only because of the different drag model of FAR?

Might want to dig up some of my oldest ( ... from 0.20 ...) rockets to test them again.

[mellojoe]

The ASAS module between the two orange tanks survives? I once tried this to test if it lessens the wobbliness but it got crushed ...

Struts. I use "stitch welding" with struts. Basically, you put struts from the orange tank to the SAS, and then more struts from the SAS to the next orange tank. Essentially I use short struts (3x symmetry, or 4x symmetry) across every seam in a stack.

[Eric S]

Playing around with FAR I returned to stacking and boosting - works actually quite good - is this only because of the different drag model of FAR?

As I understand it, yes, the reduced drag is why reasonably aerodynamic rockets work better with FAR installed. I've seen launches use as little as 3300 delta-v to achieve LKO.

[Wayfare]

I'm your Huckleberry:

Three launchers in the Munshine family, rated for 22, 55 and 75 tons to 100x100km orbits, serially staged without any boosters or fuel lines whatsoever.

[Drunkrobot]

This is my favourite method of reaching orbit:

Remember kids-it's the most important meal of the day!

In all seriousness, I would swap out the brutal efficiency of asparagus for the simplicity and low part count of serial any day.

[Francesco]

Struts. I use "stitch welding" with struts. Basically, you put struts from the orange tank to the SAS, and then more struts from the SAS to the next orange tank. Essentially I use short struts (3x symmetry, or 4x symmetry) across every seam in a stack.

and what type of symmetry did you use to place the SRBs?

three times 3x?

[mellojoe]

and what type of symmetry did you use to place the SRBs?

three times 3x?

Yes. I turned off the snap-to-alignment otherwise they crash into each other. Place the first set of 3x SRB. Then place the 2nd and 3rd. Then go back and adjust them so they are evenly spaced.

Normal launch profile. Launch, then throttle back as you reach terminal velocity, gravity turn at 10km.

[camulus777]

I'm taping another episode from today till probably Wednesday and want your help with some of your cool designs. Here is a link to the page explaining whats to come. If you don't have a design for the featured topic but have one that you would like in a future show send that one too.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/46669-KSP-Ship-Submitions

[Captain Sierra]

Check out this monstrosity!

It was built to orbit this payload, which weighs 40 tons.

That is a comm sat, a probe lander, and an asparagus interplanetary drive with something like 15,000 dV without payload. This particular mission is bound for Eeloo.

The rocket uses onion staging and originally used 1 mainsail and 6 skippers. The mainsail couldn't be changed because then the TWR would be less than 1 after booster separation. Since 7 Mainsails was overkill and, according to MechJeb, to inefficient to make orbit on that fuel and have enough left for the part of the ejection burn, I opted for cluster staging.

Look at that engine setup! At a modest 177 parts, this thing still lags but not by part count, because cluster staging is more physics taxing. All that gimballing (theres something like 13 LV-T45s there) and the 31 thrust points is much more physics taxing than 31 other non-engine parts. This thing lags some on launch even though I can put a 200+ part count rocket in orbit lag free with asparagus.

The ascent:

FPS destroying engine particle effects, yay!

Gravity turn

Stage separation. It was a night launch so you can't see it well. In light, it would have looked awesome.

On the light side of kerbin with the payload, I deploy the cruise stage solar arrays.

I still have just over 1 full orange tank with about 1000 dV which is 2/3 of the Eeloo transfer burn according to ksp.olex.biz.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Captain Sierra

[Dooz]

I use 2 launchers one is my 75 ton it has an a asparagus look but i drop all the tanks at once at 20km sooo no asparagus here plus asparagus is hard to pipe all fuel and thingsss Also can Preform 2 stage to Eve or duna

Edited September 10, 2013 by Dooz

[Captain Sierra]

So you use onion too? Onion staging: breaking all boosters off at once as opposed to dropping in pairs.