Initial thoughts – RCS and airbags

[CCKinnison]

Following my first Mun landing, I’ve designed a second, larger craft which carries 3. The problem I’m having is that I can’t seem to get enough fuel to get this larger beast to the moon. No matter how large and how many rockets I put on, I am running out of fuel after burning into Kerbin’s orbit, and having to use my lander engine to burn to the Mun! I tried adding another stage but that required more fuel and it seems to be a horrible cycle I’m in of adding more fuel and rockets. What am I doing wrong?

Staging is tricky. Add the weights of everything, and calculate the Thrust to weight ratio of each stage. there's more information on this on the wiki, but each "lower" stage should have a higher TWR than the stage above it, with the launch stage having 2.2-2.5 (more than that is a waste, but pretty). Asparagus staging can also help, but it can be tricky to get right the first few tries.

Basically, if you add weight to an upper stage, you MUST increase the size of each stage below it... and usually in a greater-than proportional amount. So if you're adding a full new stage yto your design, add it at the bottom, and make it bigger than any of the others.

[Synapse]

Special thanks to Kinnison with your top-to-bottom advice, really helped.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Synapse