Booster Rockets Always Swing into Center

[Kinryu]

I haven't played this game in a long time so I whipped up a rocket with solid boosters and attached them with radial decouplers. It was working fine for a few runs. Now, no matter how I attach the boosters it results in two things. The booster swings toward the midsection and demolishes it or the nozzle end swings into the bottom and demolishes it. I've tried using different radial decouplers, B9 solid fuel boosters, more struts, going to maximum thrust as I jettison them. NOTHING is working. Someone in this thread experienced the same thing but his solution didn't work either. This is incredibly frustrating.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/19763-keep-my-radial-rockets-from-colliding-with-the-core-stage-during-staging/page2

Thanks in advance if you can help!

Edited November 13, 2014 by Kinryu

[MockKnizzle]

Use some sepratrons to give your boosters a boost away from your rocket as you jettison them.

[Zylark]

Slap on some Sepatrons. Use two pairs, one pair near the bottom one pair near the top. Make sure the nozzles of the Sepatrons don't aim straight for your central fuel tank, so set them up in a V configuration. Then stage them together with your radial decouplers. If using a mod like Stage Recovery or DebRefund, also slap on some parachutes that deploy with the decouplers and Sepatrons.

[Kinryu]

Huh thank you, I'll give a try. I don't see why it would be needed, it doesn't make any physical sense for them to suddenly twist like this. Is this how all jettisonable components work? Sepatrons could add a lot of extra weight if you use a lot of boosters.

[RizzoTheRat]

The problem is your decoupler isn't on the boosters CoM, so you're pushing one end which causes it to rotate. I sometimes use 2 radial decouplers, the the booster will only be attached to one of them but if if its resting against the other, with one above and one below the CoM they'll push the whole booster away much straighter.

[MarvinKitFox]

Centrifuge them off!

If you are rotating when releasing side-mounted boosters, they fall OUT not IN

[Jouni]

It's a known bug with radial decouplers that was introduced in the 0.24.1 patch. It used to be that radial decouplers worked perfectly, and you never needed sepratrons for anything except silly contraptions, but that's a thing of past for now.

Common workarounds include using sepratrons when detaching boosters, and using bigger boosters that last until you're flying faster than 750 m/s.

[LethalDose]

Claw has posted an unofficial fix for the decoupler bug here.

[Vigelius]

I like to use two pairs of sepratrons, one at the bottom of the booster and the other at the top. The bottom pair fires in the same direction as the whole rocket, the top one is firing a few degrees outboard. That way the booster 'unhooks' and peels away safely without any unpredictable pivoting

[Kryxal]

Often enough, I find a single sepratron mounted on the bottom, pointing straight up, does the job pretty well ... it accelerates the detached part clear sooner, and gives some rotation to counter the force from the radial decoupler ... and if the rotation should happen to be somewhat too much, it's going to also end up pulling outward as it spins.

[Norcalplanner]

Claw has posted an unofficial fix for the decoupler bug here.

This. The fact that Squad has stickied Claw's stock bug fix thread says something. My recent Eve Challenge Rocks craft had 30 (!) of the big S1 SRBs. With the stock bug fix mod installed, all of them separated cleanly without any sepratrons or centrifuge action.

[Kinryu]

Thanks for all the replies guys, I found using a pair of sepratrons above center and placed diagonally on the booster has worked so far. Claw's patch makes decouplers work perfectly, but at least I explored a part I wouldn't normally use.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Kinryu
fixed