Heavy Lift Rocket Troubles

[WafflesofMassDeliciousnes]

I hate having to admit defeat, but this time I'm left scratching my head. I've got a heavy payload, more or less the core structure of a space station that I'm trying to get into orbit. The lifter tends to break apart in odd ways each time and despite my best efforts I can't alter it enough to prevent it from randomly happening during ascent.

Here's the contraption, with gratuitous use of struts to keep it from wobbling. I use a set of 2x2 panels as a pusher plate to keep the engines from causing any problems with the top half (the station itself).

It's got a total of 5750 Delta-V and it uses asparagus staging to drop the orange tanks in sets of 4 as it lifts. I'm normally not a fan of asparagus staging but to get something this heavy into orbit I don't seem to have much of a choice.

Any idea why this thing breaks apart seemingly at random, and what might I do to get this beast into orbit safely? I've attempted a total of 25 launches now of which only 2 succeeded, but then ran into design problems that caused me to abandon them and launch another.

Edited October 17, 2013 by WafflesofMassDeliciousnes
Problem solved, great suggestions from the community as usual.

[toomuchbrew]

did you try turning off the gimbal on your mainsail outboard engines?

[capi3101]

Toomuchbrew's given you some good advice there. What exactly is the mass of your payload?

Another thing you might want to do is watch your gee meter as you go up. If it goes out of the green, throttle back.

[WafflesofMassDeliciousnes]

Good advice. Turning off the outboard gimbals and transferring fuel from the top orange tank into my bottom center orange tank during flight was enough to get it into orbit where the atomic engines could take over and finish out. Granted it's now out of fuel but no big deal, I can send a tanker up easily.

The vessel mass was 55.32 tons once it dropped all of its stages.

Here's a picture of it finally in orbit. He's one of the last pieces in my 12 ship convoy that is heading to Duna to explore and establish a permanent outpost. About 17 days until the window opens.

[capi3101]

55.3 tonnes....yeah, going by Temstar's asparagus design principles you had too much thrust and not enough fuel (rather, not enough fuel for the amount of thrust you were using). As long as it got into orbit, though, that doesn't really matter much.