Skipper Engine Stinks

[OopsThatNotWork]

Haha skipper great. It is the engine i use on every one of my final stages.

For freight transfer vehicles anyhow. , not using it for lander stages.

[King Arthur]

My primary go-to heavy launcher (which has lifted in excess of 60t~80t at times) is composed of a core comprising 1x Skipper + 6x LV-T30s and six asparagus boosters comprising 1x Skipper and 3x LV-T30s. The Skipper is flat out amazing.

[Anton P. Nym]

Its useful for the orbital insertion stage. That last kick needed to get into orbit after dropping the first mainsail stage. Poodles and nukes are too weak to achieve orbit before falling back into the atmosphere, and another mainsail would just be too heavy/eat all the fuel.

Agreed. The Skipper is my go-to for Size 2 orbital insertion stages, and I often use it for a Munar/Minmar transfer stage too. It's the right kick-to-thrift ratio for that role.

-- Steve

[GusTurbo]

On the launch stage, no less! What am I doing wrong?!

That's the second stage.

This is the launch stage:

Maybe if you could show a screenshot I could tell you what's going wrong.

Edited August 9, 2013 by GusTurbo

[DChurchill]

Its useful for the orbital insertion stage. That last kick needed to get into orbit after dropping the first mainsail stage. Poodles and nukes are too weak to achieve orbit before falling back into the atmosphere, and another mainsail would just be too heavy/eat all the fuel.

This is exactly where I use the Skipper. It's good for trans-Munar insertion, too, if you have an Apollo style mission where your front end is heavier.

Edited August 9, 2013 by DChurchill

[zarakon]

The Skipper is useful in that it fills in a thrust gap between the the LV-T30 (or *shudder* Poodle) and the Mainsail, as well as providing niceties like electricity and TVC. That said, its actual performance is utterly meh. 3x LV-T30s get you essentially the same thrust and better Isp for less mass.

Yeah, it would be nice if the Skipper had a better T/W ratio to compete with clusters. It does have the advantage of lower part count and simpler inter-stage design though. Trying to put an engine cluster in the middle of a vertical stack is a pain. It's a nice looking engine, and a convenient one, but not optimal if you're looking for efficiency.

[lazarus1024]

I often use Skippers as my mid stage, or if I have a design that is moderate in weight and I don't feel like going all asparagusy, I'll go skippers for the initial stage.

My usual designs are 4+1 orange rockomax tanks with mainsails with a grey larger rockomax with a skipper on top and the final payload on top of that. Sometimes it is a large 1.5m tank with LV-T30 on top of that. Of course not including anything needed once the sucker is in orbit. I'll run two of the first stage rockomax tanks in to the other side tanks and then the last side tanks in to the center for better staging efficiency. If I don't need quite that much dV then I'll often times drop back to all 5 rockomax orange tanks on the 1st stage using skippers instead of mainsails. It isn't as much staging effiency, and the thrust is a lot lower, but the lower weight of the skippers makes up for some of the stagging efficiency, and the loss in thrust is often not a big problem since I am lofting somewhat lower payloads (even with really heavy payloads, I am ususally throttling the mainsails to between 50-70% thrust anyway through 10,000m anyway to keep aerodynamic efficiency up and keep max Q low enough it doesn't break apart my rocket).

Skippers are also great as a "booster" for interplanetary ships. I usually run my interplanetary jobs on NERVAs, but if I don't feel like several orbits of boosting out of Kerbins SOI, I often attach a skipper engine with large grey tank to the back of my interplanetary ship to boost it out of Kerbins SOI on the start of its journey. It has the thrust of...what? Around 12 NERVAs? For about 1/8th the weight of 12 NERVAs IIRC. Some of my bigger ship designs I use a bunch of NERVAs because I need the thrust, but I ususally don't go with more than 4 at the most, so pretty low thrust designs. I occasionally go with more than that, but I'll generally aparagus my interplanetary ship, with anything over 4 NERVAs attached to booster tanks, which I'll drop off somewhere along the mission to reduce the weight of the ship, both by lossing the NERVAs and the fuel tanks.

[lazarus1024]

I do sometimes cluster 4 LV-T30s on the center orange tank with 4 oranges and mainsails around it and asparagus stage it, but it is too much of a pain to do clusters higher up the ship, unless they are on side "boosters" or engine pods.

[-RanZ-]

The Skipper was a great addition to the game

[rryy]

I am probably the only person that doesn't like to use the Skipper because it has a lower TWR and Isp than the LV-T30. All of the lifters I made in 0.21 use engine clusters for boosters and the first stage, and the upper stage uses the Poodle. The Skipper doesn't have the TWR to be useful on the first stage and too much to be used on the upper stage.

[The Jedi Master]

I am probably the only person that doesn't like to use the Skipper because it has a lower TWR and Isp than the LV-T30. All of the lifters I made in 0.21 use engine clusters for boosters and the first stage, and the upper stage uses the Poodle. The Skipper doesn't have the TWR to be useful on the first stage and too much to be used on the upper stage.

That would explain it. I've been using them on my launch stage, thinking they might be useful as a side booster...

[Whackjob]

Quad skippers is the Arkingthaad lander's BFF.