Quote:
Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey
This is the entire launch vehicle, total delta-V is ~11600m/s. 5 main stages; the outer SRB's, 6 liquid mainsails, 1 central mainsail, 1 poodle, and then the 4 lander engines on final stage. As I recall I still had the 4th stage attached doing my braking maneuver to orbit Duna, and then was on final stage coming down to the surface.
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BTW Austin... I can't tell in the picture of your lander launch vehicle... are you chaining your fuel tanks with fuel pipes?
The idea is that you can run all your liquid motors right at launch, but you use fuel from the outboard tanks first. You drain the outboard tanks faster, but when you drop them away, the center tank is still 100% full, even though the center motor has been firing the whole time.
Once you do that, you can get a bit more delta-V out of the same launch weight. Also, you'll stop using solid boosters for anything since they can't contribute their fuel to the inboard tank(s). The KSP community is calling it "asparagusing" when you chain multiple layers of outboard tanks together.
Here's Scott Manley's tutorial:
I don't have a picture up anywhere, but my heavy launch vehicle has a single large tank (same diameter as the orange tanks, but longer, from the KW Rocketry pack), then 3 of the orange tanks around it, so that's 4 mainsail motors. Plus for a little extra delta-V I strap on one more outer layer of the FL-T800/FL-T400 tanks, and the LV-T30 motors. The outer-most stage burns out at only 1000 km altitude, but it still gives me an extra ~400 km/s delta-V, which is the difference between orbit and not when lifting like 5-6000 lbs.