True or false, is asparagus staging the best staging style?

[Titan Space Agency]

Sorry about any spelling mistakes.

I was wondering if asparagus was actualy the most efficient way to do things so i set up a test. I made an asparagus piped thing of 5 tanks and i made a standerd fuel crossfeed piping with the same engines and fuel tanks and i burned them to see witch burned longer. And it turns out the asparugus burned longer than the other one , But it only burned 45 seconds longer than the crosfeed way. Well if you think about it that is considered much more efficient but lets think. You loss thust and drag, it reduces your drag a lot so that is a bonus, but what if you can not lift the payload with only 2 boosters then you need to hang on to the 3rd and 4th boosters longer for that extra thrust. Some might say "just add more fuel" but that is a problem with that, the more fuel you have, the more thrust you need to lift it. That means you will need more powerful and less eficient rocket engines. And if you might be at sqaure one, needing more fuel. I say acording to this information asparagus is still the most eficient way to do things but i want to know what you think so leave a coment below and tell me what you think.

[NGTOne]

In KSP, under ideal circumstances, yes. The theory is, you drop boosters as you don't need to fight gravity/atmospheric drag as much. This becomes especially useful when you start your grav-turn, where your TWR becomes less important. And, if you want the whole story, just install MechJeb or Kerbal Engineer - it'll give you a full stage-over-stage delta-V readout for your spacecraft, and should settle this for you.

Welcome to KSP, by the way!

[Whirligig Girl]

In space, it would work most efficiently. I'd imagine future engineers using Antimatter-fuel rockets would use asparagus staging to get the best bang for their buck. On Earth, in the atmosphere, no, at least, not the way KSP does it. You see, the way KSP does boosters, is that each booster would have to take up a column of air, this is aerodynamically inefficient. However, he same logic is true for regular onion style or parallel-stlyle boosters, which do exist in real life, on the Soyuz. Regardless of what people say, you actually can have a relatively efficient asparagus staged vehicle if you use boosters with the same form as the soyuz uses.

[metaphor]

If by asparagus you mean using fuel lines and dropping empty tanks, it is the most efficient way for any ship in KSP. The reason is that you're not carrying unneeded mass (empty boosters/engines), so you always have more delta-v than if you were carrying it.

In real life it's not really used. One reason is because fuel lines introduce all kinds of problems like unbalanced angular momentum and needing a big pump for the large volumes of fuel moving. Another reason is that real-life empty tanks weigh much less than KSP ones (something like 20:1 full to empty mass ratio), so the penalty for carrying them is not that much of a hit on delta-v.

[Nibb31]

Define "best"

[Themohawkninja]

While yes, you are right that the more fuel you have, the more thrust you need to lift it, in reality, that extra weight is lost as the fuel is used up, so if you add more fuel, as long as you can take off, than the extra fuel will get to farther.

Asparagus staging is probably the best, because it does a good job at maximizing the rocket equation, whereby you get higher thrust to weight ratio as fuel tanks are used up, greatly increasing your dV.

[magnemoe]

If by asparagus you mean using fuel lines and dropping empty tanks, it is the most efficient way for any ship in KSP. The reason is that you're not carrying unneeded mass (empty boosters/engines), so you always have more delta-v than if you were carrying it.

In real life it's not really used. One reason is because fuel lines introduce all kinds of problems like unbalanced angular momentum and needing a big pump for the large volumes of fuel moving. Another reason is that real-life empty tanks weigh much less than KSP ones (something like 20:1 full to empty mass ratio), so the penalty for carrying them is not that much of a hit on delta-v.

Probably more important than tanks, engines are far heavier, mainsail who has best twr is 25, real world is 75 to 150. Falcon heavy plans to use if for heavy loads however they does not earn as much as we do in KSP

[Naten]

The biggest problem is the aerodynamic affect of having so many radially-mounted boosters. Even the R-7 Semyorka is a farfetched idea just because of its boosters on its sides, and making them sleek doesn't fix everything.

[Fox62]

Probably more important than tanks, engines are far heavier, mainsail who has best twr is 25, real world is 75 to 150. Falcon heavy plans to use if for heavy loads however they does not earn as much as we do in KSP

They aren't using asparagus staging so much as simply feeding fuel into the main stage to add a stage without making it much taller.

[UmbralRaptor]

Again with the increased-drag canard. Asparagus staging works so well in KSP and is essentially unused in real life because of the differences in our rockets. In KSP, plumbing is easy while TWR and low mass fraction tanks are hard. In real life, it's the opposite.