does anybody use stage speration rockets?

[xtremeqg]

Never use em, just slap a radial separator (I usually pick the largest one) on the very top of the second stack with some struts holding the bottom. The force of the separation will push away the stack from the rest of your craft and unless you are flying really wonky you should have no problem clearing the debris. Kinda wished that radial separators wouldn't leave mounting points on my main rocket but guess we can't have everything.

[Travisfv]

I've just recently began working with space planes. I actually put a set of four small decoupler with two separations each. During the cruise down the runway, at 100 m/s I activate the separations and they boost the plane up to 200 m/s and then the plane shoots up almost vertical and begins it climb to 25000m. What I plan on trying next with .23 is building a short takeoff/landing cargo plane for transporting pilots to a new air defense wing I'm going to build on the small island off the coast.

On a side note, is anyone else excited to line the area near the runway with a wing of space planes just to add to the life and scenery? Imagine being able to refuel and select each plane, load it with its crew and cargo, and launch it into space. Land, refuel and do it ll over again. KAS has never been more needed than now for me.

And thinking about flying over the island base and seeing a wing of fighters just sounds cool to me.

[Vanamonde]

I almost never use them. I find that if the ship is under thrust, spent radial stages fall mostly straight back (from the ship's perspective), and the only problem is if they rotate quickly enough to bring one end around to collide with the ship. But as I said, that happens so rarely that it's almost never a problem.

[Gargamel]

All the time. Asparagus setups (for me) require them. And I like to have them on my ascent stage, firing retrograde, so it will clear the main payload and not collide when I attempt a manuever.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

All the Time

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[rpayne88]

I use them primarily to separate upper core from lower core stages. For parallel cores, I use parachutes and get the bonus of recovering them.

[r4pt0r]

x8 symetery on my lighter munar landers for taking off from the munar surface. those 8 get me halfway to escape velocity from mun.

[alacrity]

I use them for seperating the srb's for my initial stages... I places them paired and pushing away from the center of mass of what I am separating away. First time I ever used them I place them at the top counting on the radial mounts to have enough push to balance the throw... IWAS WRONG... don't judge me

ALacrity

[Superfluous J]

I very rarely use them. Generally I use the decouplers that stick out a bit and even though my tanks drop straight when I decouple, they almost never cause a problem.

When they do cause a problem, then I consider sepratrons as a possible solution.

[MatzahMan]

I used to not use them because they show up in the staging bar and they are a pain to organize. Before using them I was always vaguely concerned about huge tanks dropping inches away from my main rocket stack. Then one mission I did my routine staging and all of a sudden my rocket started leaning to the side. I instantly made sure my SAS was toggled on, but that wasn't the problem. As I fought for control of my craft, I was looking desperately on the upper end of my rocket to see if anything fell off/was destroyed/etc. Finding nothing wrong, I found pressing the "D" key constantly and turning on my RCS approximately canceled out the craft leaning to the left. I managed to get into orbit, and when I decoupled that stage, I took a short trip around it for one last check. I found that one of my four LV-T45 custer was gone (career mode, only I only had unlocked skippers not mainsails). I guess I had a little Apollo 13 moment there. Ever since then, I use sepratons a lot.

[Reddragon]

It helps you have less orbital debris from LKO launches.

[chuangatronic]

I've been designing away the use of separation boosters as much as possible to keep part count down as long as simplify my launch profile. You can avoid problems with running just through simple design changes and spacing. (I've been losing launch efficiency recently because I've been getting into more serial staging, but I've been enjoying speedier launches due to the lower part counts)

[arq]

Very useful for safely removing radial stages. I flip them near the top of the stack with the rockets facing upwards and they help to spin and push them away until my rocket can clear them (they often hit each other a ways behind me, but that doesn't bother me).

[Thorbane]

If I have a radial booster bigger than 1.25 meters it usually gets sepratrons or the higher thrust version from KW, especially if it's a 3.75 or 5 meter stack. I hate getting halfway through a launch only to have the last tank on my center stack smashed by an errant booster.

Also attach them to an Octagonal strut on to of the novapunch LES tower to separate the tower. I turned the insane decoupler force on the tower down to something reasonable when it kept breaking my docking port.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Thorbane

[Godot]

Yep, I use them in cases where tests revealed, that separated stages may cause havoc on the remaining spacecraft,

but I also use them for launch escape systems (and in these regards they already saved the lives of numeous Kerbals)

[el_coyoto]

Oh yes!

Half my rocket designs are asparagus monstrosities, with boosters kept VERY close the core stage.

Although it can be fun to see a booster being burned to nothingness by the remaining engines (happened on one of my designs) or being randomly obliterated by another part, I love seeing a booster staging and clearing away nicely at hypersonic speed thanks to a bunch strategically placed sepatrons. I find beauty in this deadly dance...

I consider a design safe if I can grav turn WHILE staging...

I also love to use them to deorbit and crash/burn in the atmosphere spent injection stages.

For placement, I guess where the booster CoM will be once fuel has depleted (guess work usually works fine, remember engines are very heavy), and place 2 pairs of sepatrons (for symmetry) on each side of the booster, angling them so that they pull the booster AWAY and DOWN from the rocket.

Bigger (and heavier) boosters receive 2 more pairs of sepatrons, still placed according to the depleted booster CoM.

It's too bad that I don't have pictures of this (not at home), because I feel like ANY picture would be better than my above laughable attempt at describing how I place sepatrons on my rockets with words.

[LethalDose]

There are freaking amazing ideas on this thread, particularly:

De-orbiting launch stages

De-orbiting probes

Retro burns on landing

I srsly can't wait to try these!!!

[jwenting]

They sure add to the awesomeness, but other then that I don't find them particularly useful since the decouplers often have the force required.

not if your core is 2 orange fuel tanks long and the boosters you're detaching are 3 (which I've done at times)

[el_coyoto]

There are freaking amazing ideas on this thread, particularly:

De-orbiting launch stages

De-orbiting probes

Retro burns on landing

I srsly can't wait to try these!!!

Retro burns on landing are fun : they must be timed perfectly, are staging error prone and rely on a glorified firecracker to save a ship from certain doom.

So Kerbal!

[LethalDose]

Retro burns on landing are fun : they must be timed perfectly, are staging error prone and rely on a glorified firecracker to save a ship from certain doom.

So Kerbal!

Okay, I'm not gonna use them during a suicide burn (at least not at the end), but to de-orbit, or slow the descent for landing they'd be great.

And yes, tres Kerbal

[Madrias]

Oh, just remembered another one I do: Rocket Assisted Take Off. Two to Six Sepratrons on the back of a spaceplane, ignite and pull up quick. Great ways to get heavy, overburdened craft off the runway before running the risk of ending up off the end of the runway.

Also used for Rocket Assisted Landing Brakes. Why use airbrakes and parachutes? Just came in from your deorbit burn and now you're hurtling toward Kerbin at 3000m/s? No problem, pop the Sepratrons (and, if you're like me, yell "Party Poppers!" as you do it, if anyone catches the reference), and watch your forward velocity magically start disappearing. Look like you're gonna miss the runway at 300m/s and end up in the mountains with a long walk to KSC? Pop the sepratrons and enjoy landing on the runway without running over the numbers.

[ZedNova]

For ejection seats and a hundred other things they aren't meant for.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

For ejection seats and a hundred other things they aren't meant for.

This plus another 100

[Der Kosmos]

They make my parallel staged rockets 100% safer, before I used them the boosters would sometimes smack into the center stage on separation, I had to rotate the rocket to make sure they would fall off sideways, now I have positive separation without having to do anything, just by putting one on the tip of each stage. It's kind of annoying to make sure the staging is correct though.

[boolybooly]

They are a mixed blessing, the rocket output certainly used to be able to break fuel pipes and struts. So I use them in pairs on asparagus which wont drop straight, I set them on the outside of the stack, about 45° apart, symmetrical about the outermost point on the circumference of the stack at the approx center of mass of the empty stack to point towards the core stack but deflected out so they dont harm any struts or pipes as they drop and fire. You then have to get them coordinated with the right decoupler which can be a pain, but once you have it set up right they can make separations a lot easier.

An alternative to this is to spin the rocket so separations fly away.