Fuel routing question

[Steve-S]

I'm trying to manage some odd fuel routing. I've replicated a kethane miner I saw in the Kethane miner thread and am building a stack underneath it.

I'm trying to use the fuel from the 3 outer tanks on top while not emptying the center top tank (which feeds to each of the 3 outer top tanks) at the same time. I'm not sure this will work as I think it will drain the center tank and then the outer two. I suppose I could pop the stack separators when the outer tanks are at 1/3 or would I be better using all the fuel up top 1st and then re-fueling with anything left in the center bottom tank through transfer? Wondering if this is an exercise in futility.

Thoughts?

Edited October 15, 2013 by Steve-S
Answered

[Depth]

Right click the centre top tank before take-off and disable the fuel feed

[Steve-S]

Right click the centre top tank before take-off and disable the fuel feed

Derp. Thanks for pointing out the obvious for me Depth. I was obviously out of my depth.

That will eliminate 3 Radial Decouplers and 6 Sepratrons. 9 fewer parts might keep it from crashing when I try to put it on The Pad.

[Steve-S]

WooHoo. Got it into orbit on the 1s.... 2nd try. Do NOT leave the outer gimbals active nor activate them in flight. Trust me. It was drifting off a bit South and tried to use the gimbals to bring it back inline. Wrong. Put it into an 80x80 orbit with about 260/350 fuel left in the center bottom bit to xfer back to the top outer 3. Not sure if what's left is enough to get to Minmus and land or not but I'm betting it is. 12 Nukes should do that well enough. Anyways, Thanks again for the help.