How many Stages do you use?

[Streetwind]

Define "stage". Do you mean "number of times pressing the spacebar"? Would a ring of boosters dropped in rapid succession asparagus style count as one stage or four? Does ejecting fairings when flying with FAR make something a new stage?

In any case though, a typical Mun mission of mine would have:

1.) A liftoff stage

2.) An orbital insertion stage

3.) A transfer stage, possibly involved in assisting the landing

4.) One or more return-capable landing craft (my favorite rocket carried a set of three)

[KerikBalm]

I would define a stage as disconnecting mass followed by a change in velocity.

Ie when mass is discarded so that there is less mass to move.

Rapid succession = rapidly staging.

[xtoro]

To plant flags and return from all moons and planets, I did multiple launches, total of 21 stages.

[Nicholander]

For a Manned Mun mission? Let's see here...

1.) A lot like the first stage of the Saturn V, it gets me off the ground into the upper atmosphere.

2.) Gets me from the upper atmosphere into a 75 - 80 Km orbit, and thus like the first 10-50 M/s of the TMI.

3.) Does the TMI, Munar Orbit Insertion, landing, take off into Mun orbit, TKI and landing back at Kerbin.

So 3 stages.

[Godot]

I would define a stage as disconnecting mass followed by a change in velocity.

Ie when mass is discarded so that there is less mass to move.

Rapid succession = rapidly staging.

So, to clarify:

By this definition even a stage that ejects a single radial decoupler (with nothing hanging on it) would be a stage as, despite the mass being rather small (50 kg), it would still result in the rocket losing mass (similarly would the ejection of fairings count as stage, as they have mass)

A stage in which you just ignite an engine however wouldn´t count as stage (no lost mass) and neither would be the disconnection of rocket parts during aerobraking upon return count as stage (no increase in velocity)

(in my case this would increase the stage count for orbiting Kerbin from 1-2 to 3-4 (as I have 1-2 stages for ejecting fairings [playing with FAR and procedural fairings]) and for interplanetary flight from 1-2 to 2-3 [1 stage for ejection of fairings that protected the lander], bringing the total number of stages into the 7-8 range [from formerly 5-6])

[KerikBalm]

Yes, of course, if you want to make useless stages, you can jack up the stage number as much as you want.

And lighting up an engine is not a stage to me, its not like when you switch from jets to rockets in an SSTO, you call it a 2 stage to orbit.

Nor is there much point in splitting a ship up upon reentry.

BTW, aerobraking is a change in velocity, you just don't need to spend onboard reaction mass to acheive it.

[Fiddlestyx]

Basically, I don't have time to stage as the fuel never runs out of my rockets. Reason is they don't survive long enough...

This one is going places. Not to the Mun, but places.

[RizzoTheRat]

I don't plan particularly efficiently either and tend to be of the "add more boosters" school of thought. Ideally I'd use 2 stages to orbit, one to transfer, and then one to land and return to Kerbin. I don't find there's the need to save on weight/cost so tend to over engineer things at the moment.

Having started a new game with 0.25 and FAR so far I've only done 1 mission to Mun, with 2 capsules and 12 materials labs/goo canisters, etc. Not got the full tech tree yet so even if I planned better it still wouldn't be that efficient.

Stage 1 - Lots of boosters and a skipper for steerage

Stage 2 - Drop the boosters and fire up several LVT-45s, keeping the skipper running to LKO

Stage 3 - Dump the LV-T's and use the Skipper to get to Mun

Stage 4 - Separate lander with 6 materials labs to do 2 landing/sample/eva/flag planting and enough fuel to get back to Kerbin.

Stage 5 - Remaining orbiter dumps the transfer stage, does high and low altitude science and then heads home with it's own engines.

[Las-pen]

My missions are more like one way trips, but lets see. Pretty much goes like

One for getting up

Another to get orbit / Out of Kerbin SOI

Third one for getting out of Kerbin SOI / Interplanetary travel

Another for achieving orbit around target

Lander for achieving orbit/landing

[Stratzenblitz75]

Hmm, simple plant flag and return mission... Haven't done one of those in a long time, however, I am pretty sure I could do a mun/minmus mission in 1-3 stages. Maybe more for an interplanetary mission, depends on the payload (and/or if I use ion engines or turbojets).

My last big mission used 6 stages (if you don't count all the other stuff attached to it), 3 were used for liftoff and 3 were drop tanks that were jettisoned over the course of the mission.

[MarvinKitFox]

For a simple boots-n-flags mission to Mun?

3 stages

1 is booster that takes me to almost-LKO, then lands itself on runway after one orbit

2 will circularize orbit, boost to Mun, circularize there. Initiate descent burn, then decouple and suicide. usually with << 100m/s left before landing

3 is the lander. Final descent. Mission. ascent. return to kerbin. Braking burn. More braking burn! (i use DRE and FAR). pinpoint landing on runway.

Note that #2 is very often implemented as an engineless droptank, using the lander engine(s) for propulsion. This leads to a very low expended mission cost.

A trip to Eve, Duna, Dres, Eeloo would have one more kicker stage for interplanetary transfer. Again, very likely in form of a droptank. So 4 stages (2 engined)

A trip to MoHo, or to the Jool system would likely have two further stages, to deal with either the ludicrous delta-v of a MoHo trip, or to allow for multiple actions within Jool system. 6 stages, 4-5 of them engined.

On more complex missions, the stage count goes up.

Drastically.

My most recent low-solar-orbit (apogee... aposol? is under 2000 *meters*) consisted of 28 distinct stages, with 72 staging events. Yes, it launched that way! slowly!

[eataTREE]

I seem to use a lot more stages than most people. If I'm not leaving significant mass behind at every step in the mission plan, I feel like I'm wasting delta-V. Also, the flight tracker looks so pretty with all those circles on it, when I enable debris display!

A typical mission of mine has 12-15 stages in the "stage stack" before launch, and the mission proceeds like so:

1) Lower stage plus multiple booster groups ignite.

2) Separate primary SRBs (RT10's).

3) Separate secondary boosters (medium/large SRBs).

4) Lower liquid stage separates, intermediate stage ignites. If flight is going according to plan, we are now at gravity turn altitude, 8-10km.

5) Sometimes I use boosters on the intermediate stage too! These separate somewhere between 10 and 20km.

6) Intermediate stage expended, light the "final push to orbit" stage. We are at 25-35km.

7) LKO reached, final orbital stage empty or near-empty. Plot transfer maneuver, light interplanetary transfer stage. Any excess delta-V left in the orbital stage can be used to help the trans-destination injection burn.

8) Orbit reached, perform braking burn/aerobrake, then, either we detach the lander, or we discard the stage that got us here, which action will make the craft landing-capable.

9) If there is atmo here, there will be chutes, which will be a separate stage. Also, there is often a re-ascent stage that separates from the landed vehicle.

10) If a lander was used, we re-ascend and rendezvous with our CMS, then Jeb pulls the science data and jetpacks back to the main ship. The lander is abandoned in orbit, why waste delta-V taking it home?

11) Sometimes I even have a dedicated "come home again" stage. This will be used both for the return burn and to de-orbit Kerbin.

12) Re-entering atmo; it is time to separate everything that isn't the return capsule.

13) Final stage: 'chutes.

So, yeah, 12 to 15 stages. I'm not sure that all this staging yields an actual benefit so much as I think I just like building things that are complicated.

[Aragosnat]

For me depends on the place and the tech used. Mun I think I can do it in 3-5 stages at my current tech... Anywhere else IT will likely be 5 stages + the stages of the re-fuelers to refuel the craft before leaving. Gotta make sure we can get there and back.

[Superfluous J]

This question is very hard to answer. To very broadly wave a hand a it I'd say it's usually a stage or two to the upper atmosphere, another to almost orbit that is dropped to eventually "burn up" in the atmosphere (or actually if I'm using DRE), and for mun/minmus one stage to get there and land and another to come home. For further objects, it's usually one stage to eject, two more to slow down and land (if airless, otherwise that's free) and one or two to come home (usually 1. I think I'd only use 2 from Moho).

I'm too lazy to add those up

[ArmchairGravy]

Four stages for me:

Outer onion-shed at 10k

Inner onion- shed as orbit is obtained

Transfer/deorbit/deceleration-shed right before landing

Lander returns and I pop chutes.

This is for Mun and Minmus. My interplanetary missions are assembled from launching a drive/habitat module and a lander then docking those together. Duna mission is 6 stages to assemble and a chute pop on either end for 8 total stages. 3-way Skipper onions are cheap, easy, and put decent tonnage into orbit without wasting a bunch of fuel.

[nine_iron]

Loads, usually a complicated mix of transfers, descent only, ascent only, command pods...

Its more fun to do it the Kerbal way, totally over the top an so inefficient its efficient.