![]() Oh and to prove that even if you think you know what you are doing here's a video of me testing the launcher prior to launch and it goes, badly wrong The payload on that flight was around 150tons if I remember correctly. It shows the Stage 3 separation, if you look at the fuel loads left in the left hand column you'll see as Stage 3 detaches the fuel loads go from almost empty to suddenly full. ![]() Here's a quick video of my Project Unity launch You fire all the stage engines at the start and then as the fuel tanks run out you detach the stages leaving you with full fuel tanks at each stage start. For example you have a 3 stage launcher, stage 1 would be the outer most tanks, they would be attached by fuel lines to the Stage 2 fuel tanks and these in turn would be attached to the Stage 3 tanks (centre most) by fuel lines. Watch Scott Manley's videos he's godly at the game.Ĭlick to expand.Still less efficient than Asparagus staging though it does have the advantage of being a tad more stable though.Īsparagus staging works by attaching the outer fuel tanks to the next closest tank inner tank by fuel lines. Ion engines are really only useable on small probes and have very small tanks, but Nuclear engines can be used on any interplanetary voyage, and are all but required for the longer ones. Ion engines and Nuclear Engines have fabulous fuel efficiency but terrible thrust, and have very low efficiency in atmosphere, so don't use them for landings. Use Solid Boosters but don't rely on them, and if you've got rings of engines make sure you put struts in place as they tend to snap the decouplers, which can send what is essentially a ballistic missile straight into your command module. Also work out what half of the predicted burn time is, and begin you burn that long before the node so that it evens out.Īs mentioned above, Onion or 'Asparagus' staging is the easiest way to lift large payloads into orbit. Begin burning eastwards (towards the sea) at about 45 degrees until your apoapsis is between 80 and 90 kilometers, then make a maneuver node to circularize your orbit. The atmosphere thins out around that point which makes it a lot more fuel efficient. Once you've sorted out staging, the trick to getting into orbit is to begin your gravity turn around 13 kilometers up. The other thing I'd recommend is modding - there are lots of useful ones out there, including ones that will do some of the math for you to help you figure out if you have enough fuel/thrust for your mass, as well as MechJeb which is an autopilot mod if you're having trouble figuring out how certain types of maneuver should be performed (like how to do transfers or docking).Īlso, ion engines are awesome once in vacuum, but utterly worthless in atmo. A dozen+ mainsail in that kind of config can get some fairly obscene things into orbit. The same technique works for however many engines you want to use, and you can even build a second ring of engines farther out, though keeping the fuel lines straight gets more complicated at that point from a practical perspective. ![]() So, essentially you run all the engines off tanks 1/9 (because they are the farthest accessible), then drop them and their engines weight and repeat until you are pretty high up and have only one liquid engine and a single full fuel tank. You power it up and launch it, then as soon as a pair of tanks runs dry, you decouple those tanks and their engines. You fire all the engines in the first stage, then rig 1 and 9 to decouple together, 2 and 8 to decouple together, 3 and 7 to decouple together, and finally 4 and 6 to decouple together. Imagine these are liquid fuel tanks with engines underneath, and all but #5 are attached to 5 with radial decouplers, with your payload attached to 5. I'll describe it below.įor example, draw out a 3x3 grid, and number the blocks 1-9, going top left to bottom right. You can use a concept often called "onion staging" to maximize your fuel/engine power/mass to take advantage of this. Once you understand staging, here's an important trick:įuel lines go in one direction, and engines always pull fuel from the farthest fuel tank possible.
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