Onion Staging, and you.

[xentaka]

I just happened to find a tutorial online about onion staging, and I must say.. wow!

I usually use up all of my first stage fuel just getting into orbit, but using this strategy I now have tons of fuel left after entering orbit thus allowing more mistakes on mun missions or beyond.

If you haven't tried it just look up onion staging on youtube, and there are a few tutorials on it.

[Slye_Fox]

Not heard of onion staging?
How is it compared to asparagus staging?

[Zarno]

Rockets are like ogres.

[haleisback]

This sounds like a scam lol

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

Originally posted by Slye_Fox:

Not heard of onion staging?
How is it compared to asparagus staging?

It's very similar. The difference is that you're drawing fuel from all your boosters at once and then discarding them once they're used up, as apposed to using and discarding them two at a time.

[Magoobleheimer]

I watched the video and I still think I can get a larger craft with more fuel left over with Asparagus Staging.

It's going to be a wake up call for all of us when in Career mode and we have to pay for all these parts. Your not going to be able to afford a rocket with 20 engines on it.

Food for thought.

[Fel]

Onion staging is also aimed at much larger rockets, where you have a secon layer uppon the first.

If use with only one layer, it's slightly less efficient than Asparagus, but way easier to realize, and with way less stages oveall, so it's easier not to mess it up too.

Basically, after reaching 8 rockets on the outer layer with Asparagus, you start to have problems adding more.
With With Onion staging, you just put an other layer of 8 (or 16) to form a new layer out, and only need to connect all the fuel lines to the tank they are connected to, and you can do it all in one go with the symetry tool.

Jusst be advised, making such large outer layers oess make the rocket unstable, and you will need a lot of struts and other structural parts in order to make it somewhar stable.

I personally wouldn't use such method for less than 100 tons payload, and only o it if your computer can handle the high part counts. The only time I had to do it, it reached a wooping 2500 parts, 1700 of those being the launcher.
Yeah, I might have gone a bit overkill that time, and my computer tanke pretty hard, so I'm not doing it again.

Then again, I always called that method "hive" instead (concentric hexagons, but close enough), so I might have misunderstood the Onion one.

[Naiba]

Onion's more powerful and takes a lot less time to set up. Gets you into orbit much quicker than 'sparagus at the expense of some fuel, but it's still a lot more efficient than having the radial stages separate from the central one.

http://imageshack.us/a/img41/1078/munlifter.png
This design's capable of getting a kerbal to the Mun and back with fuel to spare thanks to onion.

[Jackattack]

I always use 'Melon staging'.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=163374861

[TargetLost]

Originally posted by Fel:

Onion staging

Jusst be advised, making such large outer layers oess make the rocket unstable, and you will need a lot of struts and other structural parts in order to make it somewhar stable.

That's a bit strange. My experience is the oposite. As larger out I go or better as more I equalize the weight over a larger area as less struts I need.

In general for my heay my elements are in some sort of grid be it radial or regular in x and y are connected with 1 radial coupler and 2 struts.
radial coupler on top and the first strut below it at the other end of the element.
the other strutt on top also but at the side 90 degree to the radial decoupler.

Howver you have to be able to distribute your payload weight over this area too and that's a bit the tricky part. My payloads are mostly a flat area thing too anyway so it can be well done.

[Gestahl]

I've been playing with Asparagus staging, but had a hell of a time getting the thing not to spin after the first 2 boosters dropped. Then the forces involved with the spin caused other boosters to rip off and there were a few spectacular explosions :)

I was able to get my probe launched with some tricky throttle control and extra RCS but I'll probably switch to onion staging to save myself the stress in the future. Besides, having to down-throttle may have wasted the extra efficiency from Asparagus anyway..