I.P. Ship Breakings Maneiuvers

[Kethevin]

I'm still learning so forgive me if it's a silly question. :-)

I'm building a fairly long ship to travel the planets. Rather than have it rotate for breaking maneuvers, I'm going to have breaking engines installed.

My question: As the main engines thrust I assume stress is put on the connections, kind of a push stress from the back to the front. If the breaking thrusters are at the back, it would become a pull stress (sorry, not scientific sounding). Will that make a difference? Is there anything special I need to plan for in that situation?

EDIT: Marked answered. Thanks. :-)

Edited September 2, 2013 by Kethevin

[Lazro]

In short, yes. However, look out for your ship pulling apart if the segments docked together are extremely heavy. This may not, in fact, be a good idea though, because if you add enough reaction wheels, you could ditch the ultra-heavy engines and extra fuel and just use those to turn it round...albeit very carefully.

[Sauron]

What Lazro said. If your ship is strong enough to survive the braking thrusters it's probably also strong enough to turn around with a few extra reaction wheels--this will be much more efficient.

[Kethevin]

I've never used reaction wheels, sounds like a good time to learn about them. :-) Would putting the docking struts (those after launch) on it help at all?

Thanks for your time. :-)

[Dangerous_Beans]

I've never used reaction wheels, sounds like a good time to learn about them. :-) Would putting the docking struts (those after launch) on it help at all?

Docking struts would help.

my current interplanetary ship, which has a few problems, is about 4 jumbo tanks long. it can be flipped over quite easily using the RCS thrusters on each section, though it does take a few minutes. small corrections using SAS modules are possible too, though either approach will make it wobble like mad.

the main problem is that if i accelerate at over 4m/s the engine section pops off the fuel section

so my advice would be to ensure that all modules have balanced RCS placement (probably just using linear ports, you aren't going to be docking with it so you don't need forward/back control) so you can flip it end over end, rather than taking even more engines. provided you plan ahead and make sure everything is balanced, you can take a fair bit of time to flip over, and it weighs less than another engine pack.