Do you use the launch escape system?

[Franklin]

Unfortunately the game's yet to give us a reason to practice safety and recycle our parts. Until the budget/income/value system is implemented the part will go unused.

[Joe8]

I actually experimented using Launch Escape System to eject top-mounted drop tanks. Not very efficient, as it adds over 6 tons, but it looks pretty cool.

[CaptainArchmage]

Since it arrived, I’ve been using it a lot. It has been a standard feature on all the recent crewed launches since I first tried it, though I might opt to use one of the upper stages as an escape system in the future though instead.

[Boomerang]

Still on .23, but any crewed craft must have some sort of safety system. Detachable cockpit & parachutes for planes, and my own LES for rockets. Made it look pretty nice thanks to pfairings.

[merendel]

Neat concept but otherwise its needless weight. I testlaunch rockets with empty modules to make sure its not going to blow up within the first 30s of launch. If it takes more than 30s for a problem to show up I've either got plenty of time to stage off the remaining rockets and engage parachutes or the the disaster is going to be something with a near instant kaboom with no opportunity to eject. Normaly a single seperatron on the side of the capsule will tumble it off an uncontrollable, runaway rocket well enough if I built tall instead of wide. heck I've riden a runaway stage into orbit a few times, or at least near orbit.

[problemecium]

TECHNICALLY I never use it, but only because I haven't built a ship I felt had a use for it yet. For one thing, I'm one of those who makes use of the totally legal and non-cheaty "Revert to Vehicle Assembly" and quicksave features, and for another I generally build safe rockets and test them well before putting any Kerbals at risk. I love the idea of it though, and intend to use it sometime soon when I have a big, fat rocket to launch.

[Pecan]

I have now I've made an Apollo-style Mun mission using ARM parts.

[KerbMav]

Should I ever roleplay a permadeath career with limited numbers of "simulations" before the "real" launch, than I might think again - but as of now I do not bother with it.

Might be handy as a disposable-parachute/re-entry-control device for landings on bodies with an atmosphere though.

[kerbonaut101]

I only use it when im testing new launchers

[NecroBones]

I've never used it, even once. If I have a failure during launch, I revert to VAB and fix the problem. It's that simple.

[Highlad]

I use my LES for my space station shuttle, I pretty much ignore it for everything else unless I'm going to be using the craft repeatedly.

[TheRealRocket]

I only use it if I have a EAS command seat rover waiting to be piloted. I have a crew pod, a probe core, and the escape system. I get the Kerbal out, switch to the "probe", and activate the escape system. Gets rid of it like a charm!

[Norpo]

I just slap on radial parachutes and a way to decouple the capsule, nothing else needed, really.

[klgraham1013]

I made my own before, I make my own now. Though, now that I think on it, most of my manned missions now-a-days are SSTO jet based.

[Madrias]

I'm back (still flying planes, mostly) and I still don't use the LES. I make my own on my rockets. (I-Beam, 6 sepratrons, four radial mount parachutes) Decouple and fire the sepratrons with 7. Open parachutes with 8.

As for detaching once I'm out of the atmosphere... Nope. It contains emergency fuel and some parachutes. It's saved my butt a number of times when I've gotten stuck in orbit, unable to make my aerobraking burn. Point retrograde, decide (based on size of ship) whether to decouple or drag it all down with you, fire the decoupler (if decided you can't make it with the delta-V of 6 sepratrons), fire the rockets, drop into the atmosphere, and then you go through the usual routine for landing on Kerbin.

[Barefoot Friar]

No; it just adds expense and weight. Seriously, by the time we unlock it, I've got enough MJ unlocked that it no longer matters. Plus, I revert to VAB and fix the problem.

If parts were somewhat unreliable and I were playing a no-reverts game, I might consider it, but I'd tinker with what node it unlocks on so that my earliest flights could have one.

[tater]

I'm not a revert person for legitimate failures (I will do so when, say, SRBs that should separate with radial decouplers don't do what they claim). ANy of my unplanned disassemblies have resulted in the capsule surviving anyway. I'm not sure any situations exist in KSP where they are needed.

[Torquemadus]

I use piloted fly-back boosters. A big drawback of that is that in the case of a crewed mission, I'm actually launching two crewed spacecraft linked together. A LES would only save the crew from the upper stage.

I play on very hardcore custom difficulty, but I still have revert and quicksave enabled because of the ever present risk of bugs, which can and do wipe out my missions from time to time. Reverts allow me to try out simulated launch mishaps, where I deliberately cause a failure and then see if there's a way to save the crew. Even if I deliberately try to screw up the launch, both piloted spacecraft almost always survive. However, I can't land both craft safely while they're still linked. This wouldn't be a problem if I could somehow separate them and fly them down individually, after all, both spacecraft have a competent pilot at the controls. This is partially a drawback of KSP and partially a drawback of the way I design my launch vehicles.

I've had a number of real launch mishaps, caused by mistakes during the design of new launch vehicles (sooner or later you have to launch the thing and see if it works). I'm currently trying to phase in a new heavy lifter, and it's given me some trouble keeping the thing on course during ascent as it drains fuel. So far, my mishaps have resulted in wildly sub-optimal ascents that have resulted in a number of successful aborts to orbit. Because of the difficulty settings I use, it takes me quite a while to earn back enough money to cover the cost of a failed heavy lift launch, so I play through the scenario long enough to confirm that all crew members successfully aborted to orbit and would have recovered safely to the KSC runway in due course had I not reloaded.

I could decide to be ultra hardcore and earn back enough money to cover the cost of a launch failure. This is completely achievable on the difficulty settings I use, and could be seen as a fitting punishment for failure. I use difficulty settings where completing a contract earns back enough funds to cover the cost of the launch, but only if my launch vehicle design is very efficient. I earn my money by launching extreme capability missions that can complete contract after contract from a single launch. There's no denying that playing KSP in it's current form on extreme difficulty is grindy, but it's not impossible. I'm playing extreme custom difficulty to explore ways to overcome the engineering challenges it imposes. I could grind funds to rebuild after a successful abort to orbit, but doing so would be time spent for the sake of spending time.

[Lhathron the Elf]

The escape tower only adds weight, and you only need it when things go wrong anyhow. That won't happen right?

If it does though, any Kerbal made of the Right Stuff would rather bail and aim to land helmet first to bounce to a soft touchdown.

Very true. I never really need launch escape towers, and it would look weird on some of my ships if I did use it...

[Taki117]

I may not use the LES but I do use an LES.

[PlonioFludrasco]

Sometimes, only when I use the 2.5m capsule. No point in using it with mk I pod or spaceplane cockpits.

[Wallygator]

The LES assumes that something might go wrong. There is no reliability component in Stock KSP, so except for player design issues, there is no use for the LES - its just eye candy.

[Liowen]

I have been using it as part of my new chute landing device, as well as an abort system. For landing on Eve I use them and some girders with chutes attached for the landing, and once on the ground I decouple them and fire the rockets on the towers to get them clear of the craft. This gives me the chutes I need for landing with the added benefit of losing their dead weight once I am off the ground and awaiting liftoff from the surface.

[Newt]

The LES assumes that something might go wrong. There is no reliability component in Stock KSP, so except for player design issues, there is no use for the LES - its just eye candy.

Or in the case of strange computer errors (as from too many parts), piloting errors (improper staging activation, or failing to point the right directions), et cetera. The LES has value, you might not need it on some craft, but it still has value.

[Brotoro]

KSP does not have the kind of random hardware failures that can cause real-world rockets to suddenly transform into a rapidly expanding fireball that the capsule needs to be yanked away from. Once my launcher design is debugged and tested, there isn't much chance of it failing.

This was not always the case in KSP. Back when Mainsails would shake a rocket apart, I often had to abort...but generally cutting the throttle and a flurry of rapid spacebar presses would bring the capsule safely out of the mess. And when I was a newbie, I'd occasionally accidentally stage too early, resulting in thrusting side-boosters ramming up into the stack, which certainly threatened to my kerbals...but I don't do that anymore. And back before the stability system got to be good and reliable, my rockets would sometimes tumble out of control...but even then, that was another case where X-space-space-space-space... was sufficient.

Plus, I almost always launch my kerbals to orbit on SSTO rockets nowadays, so cutting the throttle and popping the chutes works fine as an escape system because there aren't lots of stages flying around in the case of a failure.