II made my lower stage a lot more powerful & efficient using the asparagus method, beefed up my second stage a bit, as well as the third. What I find though, is that by the time my lower stage is reduced to 1 booster (as opposed to 7, at the start), that is not enough thrust. Well, it sort of is, but it doesn't seem nearly efficient enough - I actually get into orbit faster if I just get rid of that 1 core, which is full of fuel, and move onto my 2nd stage. But that's a loss of a lot of fuel. Surely there is something that I'm missing or that can be done to my design to allow me to have a beefier 2nd stage while utilizing my asparagus design. Ideas? One thing I thought of was to make that central core very small. That way when I'm reduced to just that, I can just jettison it without a thought. But it seems like there's got to be a better way.
You have probably made your central booster stages too large. Your bottom central booster stage should be the same size or smaller than the side boosters. Each subsequent core stage should be half as big as the last or maybe a bit smaller than half. This is the way you maximize efficiency with your design, if you do this then you should have enough thrust.
Here's a diagram that shows what I mean:
Say I wanted to have 8 boosters around my core. Does that mean I need to stack 3 decouplers on top of eachother to make enough room?
You will have to use 2 or 3 decouplers stacked on top of each other. It depends on the specific radial decoupler you use. Try it with 2 and if that doesn't work add a 3rd.
As far as my space station/big ben module. Right now I just have that mounted on top of my cabin. It looks rather.. unwieldly.. Should I be covering that up with something, or.. something? Do I need a capsule? The way the system behaves when you try to remove it makes me think that you do, but.. It'd be nicer if I could just have my space station building blocks up there and no capsule.
There is no payload fairings/coverings yet, so there isn't anything you can currently add to make it look 'cleaner' right now without mods. However, if you just attach a TON of struts between the boosters, core booster and the station pieces, it will remain stable enough for use. The station core module that is pre-built in the game has a capsule on it called a 'lander can'. This is a two man capsule that is round like a tuna can instead of a tear-drop shape. It cannot survived much stress so it isn't great for some reentry scenarios, but is perfect for a space station.
You can't remove this capsule from the pre-built station core because it's the, uhm, central piece? If that makes any sense? After you have selected a capsule to start building your rocket, you can add or delete other capsules as necessary, but that first one cannot be removed. In this case, they used the round 'lander can' capsule as the central piece. You could rebuil the station from scratch using an unmanned space probe capsule, that will allow to send up an unnmanned central core.
Alternatively, you could attach another capsule to the pre-fabbed station core with it's own engines. Then, when on orbit, EVA your Kerbals and make them go to the return capsule, separate the two, then send them home.
I figure I need to learn how to dock with stuff, and if I succeed I have the building blocks for a space station. Then I can try going to the mun, since my rocket.. might have enough power for an attempt.. maybe? How big does my 2nd stage have to be if I want to have a lander (on the 3rd stage?)
Follow the guidelines I posted on stage size and you should be fine. A Mun rocket doesn't need to be huge, but a bigger one will give you more margin to play around with. A poodle or 2 NERVAS should be sufficient for the lander and both are pretty fuel efficient.
1. I could probably find the answer to this if I re-read last couple pages of the thread and a couple private messages, but.. I'll just ask.. During launch and attempt to get into orbit, I should be eventually moving laterally *opposite* to the spin of Kerbin.. right? How do I know which way to go?
No, that would be a retrograde orbit and will impose a big fuel penalty. Roll toward 90 degrees, this will send you in the prograde direction and you will pick up velocity from the planet's spin.
2. I know how to re-enter the atmosphere after being in orbit - but what's the most optimal way of landing? or does that depend on the scenario?
Cardgame and Antilogic covered this pretty well, if you need further clarification, just ask again.
In the tutorial I tried landing on the mun after I finished everything, but ended up I think coming in too fast laterally.. It was dark, I had problems figuring out which way to burn to best come in for a soft landing.. and in the end ended up crashing. That made me wonder about the couple times I've re-entered the atmosphere on Kerbin. I just burn, decrease my orbit, and make my way down without much thought. Should I be thinking about entry vectors or crap like that?
No, don't worry about entry vectors. When landing on an airless world, just burn retro over the spot you want to land at until your velocity goes to zero. You should then just drop almost straight down with little lateral movement. Also, always attach lights to the bottom of your capsule to help with night landings or only land on the day side.
It seems like the best way to land on the mun is to come down vertically somehow, since you can't use a parachute and need to make conditions as easy as possible for landing. How do I do that?
Burn retro until your velocity is zero, then you drop straight down.
edit: thinking about it, burning retrograde until I'm no longer moving laterally makes sense, but there's probably logistical issues I haven't thought of. Ah well, for now I've got other things to worry about
Nope, you got it.
This doesn't work, but I do have 2 attached boosters w/ 2 decouplers (top and bottom) all moving as a single unit.. So after I add the struts and turn on summetry, I should be able to just plop it all in and get what I want.
Hopefully that works (using symmetry in this way). Let me know, because if it does I'm going to start doing it too. I build my rockets the hard way.
edit: I'm using +/- on my numpad to zoom in and out. excellent
Cool beans. You can also google KSP key bindings to get a list of all the keys used in the game (some are not documented in the game).
I tried building a rocket using orange pieces and failed. It flies and gets me into orbit, but it's too inefficient. I'm going back to my old design and beefing that up instead.
I suspect this may have been due to not sizing the stages appropriately (see attached diagram) but I don't know. In any case, use what works.
