Aesthetics or Pancakes?

[MedwedianPresident]

Well; do you prefer your rockets to look good and aerodynamic or do you prefer using pancake asparagus staging and other unrealistic techniques to get the most out of your spacecraft? Tell here.

I personally NEVER use asparagus staging when in atmosphere - everything has to look aerodynamic and has to have nosecones and have a sleek shape. Whatever is unaerodynamic must be covered in fairings.

[merendel]

I'm runing FAR so I prety much dont have a choice. Sure I probably could still get a pancake to fly with far if I ran it very very slowly(20m/s or so) and was willing to burn off an extra 5-10k dV fighting gravity all the way up but why bother.

Personaly I go 1 central core with 2 side boosters draining into the core for the first stage. I'll go up to 4 boosters for extream lifters but no higher.

[Superfluous J]

When the game enforces it, I'll do it.

Right now the game punishes adding things like nosecones (they don't lower drag and instead increase mass. Brilliant!) so adding them for any reason other than personal taste is counter productive. In fact, adding them for personal taste is also counter productive but at least you have a reason for it

[Galacticruler]

Depends on lots of things:

1. Payload size/mass

2. Payload shape

3. Lifter size/mass

4. Engine ISP/Thrust

5. T/W R

6. Can mechjeb fly it normally?

7. time

8. stability

9. lifter hight

etc...

[Comrade Jenkens]

I build my rockets for aesthetics and I'll always add nosecones.

[Scotius]

Whatever works best. And well built asparagus does have certain functional beauty. I'm always pleased when my rockets effortlessly climb to orbit - flight is stable, nothing explodes or falls off on the way up. Payload is delivered safely to its destination, usually with fuel to spare. Sometimes i watch YT clips where people sweat and curse building tall, sleek spires - yes, they do look pretty on the launchpad. But then they launch, and much wobbling and stability issues ensue. Usually followed with explosions or aborts.

No thanks - i will keep my ugly and unrealistic, but safe and efficient pancakes.

[gutza1]

If you prefer aesthetics, use FAR. Stock KSP's unrealistic aerodynamics makes pancake rockets more efficient.

[montyben101]

I NEVER use asparagus staging. I only ever have 4 or 2 boosters that feed fuel into a center stage (they do that in real life with the falcon heavy)

[Elthy]

The only craft woth real asparagus staging is my Eve lander, but that is due to another rule i gave myself: Everything has to fit in a fairing...

[NecroBones]

I go back and forth. For some of my larger interplanetary vehicles, I felt like I had no choice but to use wide asparagus-style staging. When I started doing smaller satellites again, I had the option of doing simpler vertical stacking and using nose-cones again.

[WaveFunctionP]

Most of my spacecraft are single stage now with interstellar, even without using beamed power. I make most of them capable of both powered take off and landing. With or without parachute assist. This tends to make them all look like landing craft. I try to make them look nice though, but I'm mostly stuck around a similar design. I would like to make a large cruiser type spacecraft capable of vtol, but it adds so much weight and/or complexity to the design without precision building tools and flight/stability controls.

Edited March 16, 2014 by WaveFunctionP

[JiWint]

If I build a rocket for fun,everything goes to style.

[Kasuha]

Well; do you prefer your rockets to look good and aerodynamic or do you prefer using pancake asparagus staging and other unrealistic techniques to get the most out of your spacecraft?

These techniques are perfectly realistic within the game physics.

Real life rockets are not meeting any aesthetics criteria with anything but their paint. Everything else on them is made to achieve maximum effectiveness in real physics.

Asparagus staging is the same approach applied to KSP physics. Effective KSP rockets look different from real life rockets, because physics are different.

[GusTurbo]

Aesthetics first, function second.

[SkyRender]

Ideally I try to get a good mix of aesthetics and function. Ferram Aerospace helps a lot with that, and the larger parts in 0.23.1 will also help. I despise relying on part clipping.

[LethalDose]

I prefer to build tall, aerodynamic-ish rockets and keep the design as realistic (or at least, realistically reasonable) as possible. I use parallel staging justified by the fact that the Falcon Heavy uses similar cross-feed systems, just with two boosters. I don't use asparagus-staging.

I use FAR currently, but played this way before I started with mods. This isn't so much as an issue of aesthetics, as it is self-imposed challenge rules. It's just my opinion, but the asparagus staging/pancake rockets feel exploit-y to me, so I choose not to play that way. I don't think there's anything wrong with that play-style for players who prefer it, I just simply prefer to not play that way.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Vanamonde
No need to be cranky.

[Hodo]

But I like you play with FAR, and now the Realism Overhall which forces my stuff to look decent because it has to function in a realistic environment, not in the KSP stock soup environment.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Hodo
stop putting assanine comments when you edit my posts, k thanks.

[cantab]

So far most of my rockets have been early career mode. Without radial decouplers building wide would be tricky, and without fuel lines building asparagus is impossible. A central 1.25m stack with one "layer" of radial stacks is the most I've been able to keep control of.

Some of the other kludges and jerry-rigs I've used do give ugly results mind. Like the landing legs made from girders and empty fuel tanks.

[Taki117]

I would much rather build aerodynamically (Even without FAR though I do play with it) There's just something about making a rocket look realistic that appeals to me. I'm not going to go out of my way with clipping or structural panel fairings to achieve this, but I try to design realistically.

[Vanamonde]

Please restrict the discussion to the subject of the thread, and avoid commenting on nature of each other's characters.

[Nemrav]

for me function is a first, asthetics are second, aka, double or triple layer asparagus, station in a single launch-ish thing..

[ayana]

thanks to FAR, neither, I just have to make my payload fit the fairing and not snap the rocket during the gravity turn. that puts some very hard limits on what I can do in a launch anyways.

[Skorpychan]

Practicality comes first. However, I do prefer my rockets to be long and thin, though, but aesthetics are secondary.

I'd like to put nosecones on things, but my need to have Sr docking ports on things kind of prevents that.

Maybe I can just dock a nosecone to them, though, and add some sepratrons to it.

[ArmchairGravy]

I like rockets that work. If it looks like a real world rocket, great. If I need a pancake to lift the payload, hand me the Bisquick.

[Motokid600]

Something about the sight of a rocket performing a proper gravity turn at 300m instead of 10,000 just looks.. right. That was my first reason to use FAR.