How reliable are your rockets?

[Ravenchant]

Once the design is finished, stuff generally works every time, except for the -not that rare- occasion of structural failure on the launchpad. Up to that point, well...fire and chaos describes it pretty well.

My current lifter family (shameless plug here) is actually tried and tested to the point of having become boring. Will have to make some heavier stuff

Edited February 4, 2014 by Ravenchant

[Finwolf]

I allways doublecheck my staging and press f3 on the launchpad after physics take effect. That way I don't get that much problems.

[Levelord]

This reliable.

[1812overture]

http://imgur.com/a/xKgSl

[/1812overture]

After seeing that gallery I decided to make this in your honor.

[possum]

In the testing phase, ~70%, post testing phase ~98%. That is why everything has a 100% reliable launch escape system.

[Finwolf]

Nothing in KSP is 100% reliable

[Whackjob]

After seeing that gallery I decided to make this in your honor.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16683090/KSP/whackjob.png

I'm gonna cherish that. Thank you!

[panzerknoef]

Nothing in KSP is 100% reliable

No, you're wrong! My CDS has a 100% safety record with 0 crashes on 20+ launches!!

But most of my other rockets explode mid-air :s

[Capt. Hunt]

oddly enough, I'll have rockets that work fine and suddenly, after dozens of successful launches, they start exploding randomly mid-flight or collapsing on the pad for no apparent reason.

[MockKnizzle]

Pretty darn reliable. It's hard to mess up if you do the math beforehand. Whether or not I'm reliable as a pilot is another thing, however after playing since .17 I've gotten to be fairly good at flying.

[Finwolf]

No, you're wrong! My CDS has a 100% safety record with 0 crashes on 20+ launches!!

But most of my other rockets explode mid-air :s

I was taking pilot errors into account. Also there are times when even the best crafts suffer a unintended rapid disassembly. Happened to me on a craft I had launched approx. 50 times.

EDIT: With 0 failures before that. And it was not a pilot error.

[Rickenbacker]

Pretty reliable. The one problem I have is that, even though I use MechJeb for Dv calculations, I sometimes do a less than perfect transfer and end up with too little fuel to make it home. But I always send a rescue mission!

[fireflower]

ROTFL Whackjob, the one with 100+ mainsails and X200-8 fuel tanks that looks like it's folding into itself is pure awesomeness! Something similar happened to me recently when I was trying to make a 270 ton lifter.

Testing superheavy lifters is always filled with nuclear-tier explosions. I have a 900-part beast that can get 270 tonnes to heliocentric orbit. The Kerbal spaceport was like World War III for awhile there. Finally I got the design down from "will probably explode sooner rather than later" to "will probably not explode if you remember to X and to never Y." The winning design almost survived its first test-flight.

[Padishar]

The newest version eliminates the side boosters and is designed explicitly for launching this crew transport vehicle:

Why so much RCS fuel? You could probably dock with just what is in the capsule if you're careful. That is more like an "RCS refuelling tanker" for a moderate sized station...

As for the OP question, I tend to stick a probe core on almost everything so it can still be controlled after the crew have EVAd and this also enables launch testing to iron out any structural problems before risking crew. I used to have to run several tests on each design, adding struts etc to stop wobble and breakages but I've got pretty good at appropriate reinforcement now and my rockets usually hold together first time. I have many more issues due to forgetting to add important parts nowadays, e.g. I'm in the process of building a large station and yesterday I was trying to launch 6 boom sections for it into orbit. The main body of the rocket was 3 orange tanks, a large ASAS and a mainsail and the 6 bits of payload were hanging from 6 docking ports radially around the central core. Then each of the bits of payload had another orange tank and mainsail under it and the whole thing was strutted together. The 6 bottom tanks made up the first stage and the central core would push it the rest of the way. I use KER so I knew it had plenty of dV to do the job (a little over 5000) though the TWR of the central core was a bit low. The sequence of launches went like this:

1. Forgot launch clamps. 1 orange tank and mailsail snapped off on the pad when physics kicked in.

2. Launch successful. Rocket holding together well. After starting gravity turn rocket started rolling faster than the SAS could compensate for which made the rest of the gravity turn quite awkward. Got AP to 90 km and then ran out of power during the coast to AP.

3. Added battery and small panels to each bit of payload and removed and reseated various parts. Launch ok, roll on gravity turn much less, managed to get to stable 90km orbit. Began deploying payload sections for assembly and discovered they didn't have probe cores.

4. Added probe cores to payload. Launch fine, get to orbit, undock each payload section and dock them all together (RCS a little unbalanced and I needed to be accurate so it took a while). Return to lifter to deorbit it and find it has run out of power because I only put batteries and panels on the payload. Decided to not go through it all again and will include a dockable reserve power module on the next launch to revive it for deorbit.

I've not had any structural failures with my standard lifters for at least the last 20 launches. The last one I remember was an orange tank and mainsail breaking off and rising through the rocket even though the join that broke was well strutted. The exact same design has since made 11 launches without incident.

[Xacktar]

Reliable? My ships are ALWAYS reliable. I can rely on them to always entertain me.

[Whackjob]

Advising the top booster cluster: If you put a medium truss atop each, then run struts between them, they'll actually hold it together nicely! Will still be some flex, but it should be operable.

[Xacktar]

Advising the top booster cluster: If you put a medium truss atop each, then run struts between them, they'll actually hold it together nicely! Will still be some flex, but it should be operable.

Like this?

No worries, I can fly. I just like messin' about sometimes.

[LethalDose]

After my rockets get out of the atmosphere, we're usually golden (remember once get to orbit, you're half-way to anywhere in the system). What's usually unreliable for my designs is the lifting stage is insufficient, and it takes some work reducing payload and increasing lower stages. It usually takes 2-4 test launches before I get that part right.

[Boris_T_Roach]

How reliable are my rockets?

Well, thats a hard question to answer, they are all 100% reliable in that I've never had one fall apart on me* and that they have all got at least 100 meters off the ground** and every one has made it into orbit without problem***

Boris

*in the VAB

** Because I use launch support legs at least that tall

***after several unexpected design modifications

[TimePeriod]

Bill : Uhh did we add missiles to this rocket Jeb?

Jeb: ...yes?

Bill: Then what is the boosters...?

Jeb:

[SkyRender]

I engineer my rockets carefully, pretty much going over a mental checklist as I do to make sure that everything is in place and then double-checking TWR/dV requirements with Kerbal Engineer Redux. It helps that I know just where to put struts for the greatest effect, of course... The end result is that the main culprit of rocket failure is not spontaneous unplanned disassembly, but rather my flying outside of tolerances. Never go above 1.8 TWR when a central part of the stack involves Clamp-o-Tron Sr. ports. Just a ProTip for you there.

[Sabreur]

My rockets are very reliable! With one tiny problem.

Barrel Rolls.

I don't know what the exact issue is. Maybe I forgot to add a strut somewhere, maybe the thrust is just a tiny bit off center, something. Whatever it is, my rockets spin the entire way up. Extra SAS modules slow the spin down a bit, but never eliminate it. The spin is relatively slow - the rocket is still controllable, nothing flies off, and it makes it to orbit with plenty of delta-V remaining. It's just... odd. I suspect the problem is due to the massive cluster of engines I have at the bottom - I've been experimenting with replacing my usual mainsails with large groups of smaller engines to see if I can achieve roughly the same TWR with greater fuel efficiency. I'm going to try strutting the engine clusters together and disabling the gimbals on most of the engines to see if that has an effect. Until then, the DABR (Do A Barrel Roll) Mk II remains in service with a perfect record.

[SkyRender]

My rockets are very reliable! With one tiny problem.

Barrel Rolls.

I don't know what the exact issue is. Maybe I forgot to add a strut somewhere, maybe the thrust is just a tiny bit off center, something. Whatever it is, my rockets spin the entire way up. Extra SAS modules slow the spin down a bit, but never eliminate it. The spin is relatively slow - the rocket is still controllable, nothing flies off, and it makes it to orbit with plenty of delta-V remaining. It's just... odd. I suspect the problem is due to the massive cluster of engines I have at the bottom - I've been experimenting with replacing my usual mainsails with large groups of smaller engines to see if I can achieve roughly the same TWR with greater fuel efficiency. I'm going to try strutting the engine clusters together and disabling the gimbals on most of the engines to see if that has an effect. Until then, the DABR (Do A Barrel Roll) Mk II remains in service with a perfect record.

Absurd rotation like that is usually caused by having thrust vectoring enabled on all engines, especially if you're using asparagus staging. Try shutting it off for all but the central stack's engine. Of course, that will make it marginally harder to steer too...

[goldenpeach]

My design(during development and even after) are quite reliable: most of the crashs happen when physic kick in and most of the time, only radials fuel tanks falls of the rocket.

When the whole rocket crumble under it's own weight(happen some time, but not every time, with most of my manned designs) I have a LES to keep the crew alive.

[Jouni]

The end result is that the main culprit of rocket failure is not spontaneous unplanned disassembly, but rather my flying outside of tolerances. Never go above 1.8 TWR when a central part of the stack involves Clamp-o-Tron Sr. ports. Just a ProTip for you there.

That's why I prefer attaching docking ports to decouplers or even random parts for the launch. The connection is much more rigid than between two docking ports. Some of my lifters routinely reach TWR 3.5 to 4.0 just before booster separation, if used with lighter than nominal payloads, but they never have any problems with docking ports attached to decouplers.

[flyin_ruski]

My lifters are very reliable. It's the payload that's attached that gets sketchy. By sketchy I mean explodes, falls off violently, turns into epic fireworks.