Staging Groups

[Poppa Wheelie]

I realize that it may be awhile before KSA provides an ability to perform staging, or to assign staging actions during build, or to rearrange staging actions during flight. The KSA team may even do something completely different with staging. But, if the staging functionality ends up working in a comparable fashion to what we're familiar with with KSP, then I offer the following thoughts and suggestions.

Very Short Version:

• Most of the time, I'm only interested in a handful of stages at the very bottom of the stack. Everything else is "payload" at that point.
• For large portions of each particular mission, I don't need or use the staging stack at all. In flight, I would like to be able to hide the staging stack, and lock staging while the stack is hidden.

Longer Version:

I offered some initial thoughts on the KSP forums, here.

Since then, I've thought about this issue a little bit more. Here's my latest list, followed by some mockup screenshots.

My Wish List:

• Group any number of consecutive Stages into a Staging Group
• Ability to name each Staging Group, and to name each individual Stage
• Staging Groups can be "opened" to see the individual stages contained within, or "closed" to see only the Staging Group details
• Individual Stages can also be "opened" to see additional detail, such as TWR, Burn Time, etc., as is done currently in KSP
• Options to calculate and display dV and TWR should be available for each Stage
• Edits in the VAB will only impact an "open" Staging Group. This would prevent new parts added to the top of the vehicle from ending up on the bottom of the staging stack
• Any part with assignable Actions can have an action included in a Stage, or excluded from staging

Mockup: (6 images)

(Disclaimer: All of the dV numbers for this vehicle fit well within the dV Map values. I only tested the Duna lander back to Duna orbit. I feel pretty confident that the whole thing will work, but I haven't tested it all the way through. Doesn't really matter for the purposes of this Staging Group discussion, however.)

Here's how the staging stack for a Duna mission might look in the VAB (or sitting on the launch pad) when ready to launch. The Launch to Orbit and LKO to Low Duna dV numbers have been calculated for Kerbin vacuum, and the Duna to Kerbin number is calculated for Duna Sea Level (although I probably should have done that one at Duna vacuum).


Here we've "opened" the Launch to Orbit Staging Group, which includes the booster engine, the fairing, and the decoupler for the rest of the payload. This is really all I care about during the launch to orbit, so that's all that's included in this Staging Group.


Once we stage the nuclear engine, I would be done with staging until I was ready to detach the lander. I would like to be able to hide the entire staging stack at that point, and to disable staging while the stack is hidden.


The Duna Landing staging group contains 3 stages: a decoupler to separate the lander, the parachutes, and more decouplers to separate the Duna landing parachutes once landed.


After landing on Duna, and detaching the landing parachutes, this is what the staging would look like. We would stage this one engine to get from the Duna surface to Duna orbit, and then to transfer to Kerbin. Once initially staged, however, I would again want to hide the staging stack and disable staging.


Finally, as I approached Kerbin, I would unhide the staging stack, decouple everything below the heat shield, and orient retrograde. At the appropriate times, I would deploy the landing parachutes, and detach the heat shield.

 

[notthebobo]

Nicely thought out.

In one sense, you're defining the first requirement for a mission planner: be able to define the distinct phases of your mission, lock out unintended actions during the distinct phases of the mission, and track the progress through that mission by having completed phases be hidden or disabled (activated stages in your case). Additionally, be able to define which body and environment the phase will occur so you can see more accurate deltaV and TWR.

As an example of what else such a mission planner might provide, I could see wanting to allow activating/deactivating specific action groups with specific phases as well, if such a mission planner were available.