Nose cones

[TheReaper]

Hello there, a quick short question, does nose cones work? in the patch notes of .22 , it says they increse stabilty within atmosphere, while wiki does warn that its affects are neither explained nor understood by the community, and from what i can see they still do add lots of mass and drag,

if anyone experimented and or understood the currect .22 mechanic of nose cones, can you tell me if i should use them or not? esthetic reasons arent valid

Edited October 20, 2013 by TheReaper

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

This is still a mysterium about the new update. People have tested Rockets with or without nosecones but with the same result as before 0.22 that the rockets without cones go higher than those without.

This need to be explained by the devs I guess.

[TheReaper]

the rockets without connes go higher than thoes with cones rigth?

[Johnno]

Increased stability implies an easier to control rocket, has nothing to do with altitudes rockets will reach. The nosecones still add drag and mass as far as I've seen tested (haven't bothered to look into it much myself).

If you don't care about stability or your rocket is easy enough to control, you won't need nosecones.

[TheReaper]

well large rocketse i build usualy comes with several sas modules, winglets and vectoring engines, so i guess nose cones are still useless

thanks for reponses

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Well.... as a Rocketeer that cares for asthetics, they are pretty usefull for me

[KerbMav]

Does anything speak against the use of FAR in .22 right now and especially career mode?

Would probably want to add ProcFairings as well.

[PlasmaticInc]

apparently, their drag is lower than fuel tanks now, so the center of lift is farther back, making it more stable.

[cannedcreamcorn]

With some of my more complex asparagus-staged monstrosities that were build in 21.1 I found that launching was more difficult. Once I put nose cones on all the blunt fuel tanks it did make the rocket more stable to fly. I tried this with both manual launches and Mechjeb, but MJ might be different as it needed a new DLL file. I'd run more tests but I've been having too much fun with career mode!