asparagus staging: current variants?

[SpiritRetro]

hi just got fuel systems and playing with some designs and i wanted to know what variants there are for asparagus staging, i got a design atm which is bit like asparagus staging overclocked and wanted to know what variables there are in the asparagus staging and any variable designs people have come up with, to try and design my own innovatins to the staging

[El Rushbo]

My main differences with asparagus staging depends on what I'm lifting. They would range from having four tanks and engines or six. I usually have four feeding the two on the sides, and they would feed the center. To get the extra boost for this orange tank I made for launching I lined the sides with SRBs to supplement the other engines through the thickest part of the atmosphere.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=234538758

[SpiritRetro]

wow thats... thats quite a rocket ya got there

[El Rushbo]

I designed it so I could refuel things while in space. It'll make it to Minmus with 3/4 fuel remaining.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239420259

[Die Zahl]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245058300

[El Rushbo]

Originally posted by Die Zahl:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245058300

Clearly I need to rethink my rocket design.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245468503
Dementia 1 is not living up to its potential.

[IronSides]

Since new engines came out I haven't needed much asparagus. The largest KW solid boosters + new engines can get pretty much NE thing out to where you need it.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=252564207
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=249155879

SUPER HEAVY loads still need it though.....14 med tanks full to orbit in ONE trip all arrived 100% full. 16 KW orange equivalent tanks asparagus, plus the center stages which are even larger diameter, so YEAH MASSIVE fuel used to get 14 tanks in orbit full.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=236942608
PLUS that final stage is near full too.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=236942763

Here is a sat launcher that uses 2 booster stages then 2 engine stages. BUT I stacked them instead of radially.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=249121087

Then there is 4 boosters 4 tanks radially then 2 more tanks stages.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239331349

No boosters but less overall stages..... Realistically prob too costly
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=248360980

if you stock Asparagus prob still the best.... OLD image prob .18
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=151924994

Early career 2 man and 4 man KW launchers.... when I still one had the one man only pods.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=247863520
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=246847618

Basically it depends on what you are lifting and your tech LVL (if doing career)
I know you asked for asparagus set-ups but you MAY not need them if you are creative
a lot of times the outer engines you attach have so much power that you DONT need the center engine to fire until you stage so no fuel lines needed, But I'm not sure if its better to have around 2 TWR or much higher to get through the atmos faster.

Lately I find the fuel lines far more usefull for landers and wierd set-ups like Sky-Cranes.

[coreRoss]

Ive done a quick tutorial on what Asparagus Staging is if anyone dosnt know
http://youtu.be/2nlT7XmfhSw

[Skyhigh]

Since I started using KW Rocketry and the newest update with the couple new large engines I really don't use asparagus anymore personally. Its certainly easy to lift a large city now with so much thrust on the 3m parts but it kills the vibe in my opinion. Then again thats why they added those parts was to encourage more authentic launches, or at least I remember reading that from one of the devs somewhere.

[SpiritRetro]

i love my variant of the asaparagus staging, "jericho staging" got a guide for it if you guys would like to test it out and give feed back, personally? i find the performance gets me to places better

[Trehek]

Originally posted by Amatsukami Meibatsu:

i love my variant of the asaparagus staging, "jericho staging" got a guide for it if you guys would like to test it out and give feed back, personally? i find the performance gets me to places better

By all means, if you have screenshots or instructions, let us know what you have. I've seen plenty of variants of onion and asparagus, staging which thinks it's better than asparagus, or thinks it's asparagus or onion but is actually something else. Some work, some don't, and some work better than others in a certain kind of rocket. Hard to say without details. I always like to take a look at other people's ideas.

[SpiritRetro]

well the guides already published just search Jericho in the guides section, i know it aint the most efficient thing and im sure theres gonna be things people are gonna know how to do better so i would love for input, i'll follo9w this up with a link

[SpiritRetro]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254210357&searchtext=jericho

[SpiritRetro]

all i know is, i find it easier and better to get to kerbins moons with jericho staging than traditional asparagus staging

[Trehek]

I realised that you saying "got a guide" might mean it's on your profile and indeed it was. Let's take a look...

EDIT: I see you had time to post it here while I did this testing. Ninjaed!

First, your staging has the payload on top, and then a stage with a tri-coupler, fuel tanks and three engines. Here I'd like to note that it doesn't matter too much if you use three stacks with a tri-coupler or a single stack. As long as you have the same mass in fuel, the same mass, power and efficiency in engines, and the same mass in other parts. Take a look at the two following rockets. They are almost the same:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254584586

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254584638

Stats for the lift-off stages are as follows:
Variant A - TWR 1.90, 4308 delta-v, 645 thrust, 320/370 Isp
Variant B - TWR 1.91, 4031 delta-v, 650 thrust, 300/350 Isp

The only difference is that the Skipper has lower fuel efficiency than the T-series. If they had the same Isp, the rockets would be equal in both TWR and delta-v. The rockets have a mass difference of 0.25, which is negligible. This is nice to note, because sometimes it might be nice to use another engine instead of a crappier one, so switching to tri-stack or single stack might be useful.

Moving on. You say from here on you continue with asparagus staging, using symmetry to drop three radial stacks at a time instead of the traditional two. Let's take a rocket and try different setups. Because Variant B is easy to attach 6-way symmetry on, I'll continue with that (what the center stage is doesn't really affect our comparison anyway) and attach a 6-way symmetry of radial stages to it. Fuel worth two T-800 tanks and one T-45 engine on each. I attached a Kerbal Engineer part on the command pod to show stats on the rockets.

First is onion staging. Every radial stack flows to the middle, all six fall at once. You know the drill:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254584863

6405 total delta-v for the stages we are looking at. Next we add one more stage by making it asparagus. We drop three tanks in the first stage and the other three next:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254584946

6598 total delta-v for the stages we are looking at. Not surprisingly, there's some increase compared to onion. Let's try adding one more stage and drop stacks in pairs:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=254585003

6662 total delta-v. A smaller difference, but a difference nonetheless. We are dropping tanks more often, carrying less mass in empty tanks and engines before they're dumped. If you look at the TWR readings in the rockets, they're pretty stable around 2.0 in each stage in every rocket, but the Max values show that TWR rises much higher in the first two rockets before stages (and their engines) get dumped. Max values: Onion - 3.9; 3-way - 3.0; 2-way 2.75. The extra TWR is unnecessary for us, since we already have enough at 2.0, and losing the engine mass is more beneficial.

To sum it up, if you take a rocket which uses 3-way symmetrical asparagus and change it so you have a new rocket with an equal amount of fuel and engines, but drop stacks in 2-way symmetry, your rocket should be slightly better. And the reason is that you lose unnecessary mass quicker.

[SpiritRetro]

well i just unlocked the bigger size tanks so at the time of writing the guide i was using tri couple exclusively hence why each parent rcoket only had three boosters to it instead of the normal six if it was traditional asparagus