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by eunoia 929 days ago
Serious question: do any rocket launch schemes actually use asparagus staging?

I vaguely remember hearing it adds too much complexity for a real world launch. Great in KSP though.

2 comments

Technically the Space Shuttle, if you really stretch the definition.

I'm not aware of any others. The crossfeed is just too much of a failure risk.

Falcon Heavy was supposed to, in early designs, but they abandoned this idea due to the complexity involved - fuel would need to be pumped, which means complex flow dynamics + extra hardware that could fail (and catastrophically so).

Outside of KSP and some rocketry books, I haven't seen it.