Update: Design and Research

I'm going to get right into this with the video of what I would consider the most ridiculous rocket ever created:

If that video doesn't work, a Youtube mirror be here.
It started off pretty serious (I will be using part of it for the next design), but eventually I got kind of tired and decided to throw caution to the wind. This ridiculous monstrosity is the result. The first one isn't even worth mentioning.

I did actually learn something else pretty important, which I will be employing for my final rocket design. I found a forum posting that explains it way better than I ever could, here.
I'll be explaining it, and some background, anyway; the concept was originally created sometime in the 20th century, but it isn't seen very often in real life (I'm under the impression only rocket has used it ever so far at all, and one is planned to be used?) because of how complicated fuel transference is. It's really good but not good enough to be worth all that work.

I'll be referring to this as I explain asparagus staging.

Something I just realized that maybe you don't know much about is staging itself. Since rockets attempt to be efficient, and since sometimes things run out of fuel, rockets use staging to order and plan what to get rid of when. So, if we look at the no crossfeeding diagram, and see (S1) around (S2)s, you can see what stages each engine is. All S2 circles, or engines, will be gotten rid of at the same time.
Next let's look at the lines. those lines show us which direction the fuel will be flowing. So, for the first diagram, not fuel is flowing anywhere, in the second, all to the first stage, and for the bottom one they are also all going to the first stage.

Moving onto what the asparagus staging does specifically, since all the fuel is flowing through a bunch of engines and into the first stage they are all sharing, effectively, the same fuel. However, since the fourth stages connect to the third and the third to the second and so on, we can get rid of the fourth stage and still have a full third stage; not only that but we'll have massively decreased our mass (I say massively but at that point it's not usually to massive) so that the delta-v goes up.
I'll get you a more specific example when I finish my next rocket (which will be quite serious), likely tomorrow.

As promised last week, however, I scanned the charts for all of the Time To Fly rockets. It's not a diagram or anything, but if you're interested you can see the data for each of the stages and how I record it.

It's so fancy isn't it?

I say 'payload' and I guess it could technically be considered one, but I'd say it's more part of the rocket than anything. This was right around where I was beginning to understand specific impulse and delta-v I think. If I remember correctly I really started to get it in between II and III, but who knows.

For whatever reason the rockets don't save anymore, so I won't be able to give them to you (unless you want me to explain how to build it from scratch, but that'll take too long and I'm pretty sure only Trevor has this).
Speaking of, thanks Trevor for showing the simulation today in Afternoon block. Although he showed the plane aspect of it all, it made the class more entertaining and also helped to show what I was doing a bit more, I think.