Complex Staging Nomenclature

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JAL3

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I want to pose a hypothetical.

Imagine a rocket in three levels, lower booster, upper booster and sustainer. Imagine further that at each level there are multile parallel stages. I'm talking about real drop off parallel stages, not just a cluster of motors. In the hypothetical rocket, the bottom level would have a cluster of 5 motors in the central stage. Then there are 4 parallel boosters surrounding this bottomost level. In the middle level imagine a cluster of 2 in the central stage and then a pair of strap on boosters. In the sustainer lets keep things simple(?) and just say there is a single motor and a pair of strap ons.

Needless to say, I just made up the above configuration and I know of nothing that resembles it. I made it up so that I could hopefully learn the correct way of reffering to the various stages. What are they called?

In the Saturn V type of system I learned as a child, it was easy. There was a first, second and third stage, each on top of the previous stage. I didn't even know there was such a thing as parallel staging.

In something like I described I have no idea how the various parts are referenced. Is there any standard for parallel stages at all?

For some reason, this has bothered me for a couple of days. Can anyone help out?
 
well if you are looking for something that uses parallel staging here is a picture of the Navaho Missile which used a booster rocket then the actual missile was stage parallel to that...

hope this clarifies anything...


Matt

Navaho Missile.jpg
 
well if you are looking for something that uses parallel staging here is a picture of the Navaho Missile which used a booster rocket then the actual missile was stage parallel to that...

hope this clarifies anything...


Matt

Thanks for trying but that's not what I was looking for. I have seen examples of parallel staging (though I can't think of any examples that use it on multiple levels as I described above). What I am looking for is the naming convention for referring to the individual stages, especially in a complex system as I described.

Cool example, by the way. I was not familiar with that one.
 
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?t=10010

I HAD A Tread on this;) but im not quite sure if its what you were looking for

That is, to a degree, something like what I asked about but in that thread, the upper stages are just clustered. I am talking about an upper stage that may be clustered AND have strap on boosters. I am looking for the correct naming convention of the parts, assuming there is one.
 
Stage 1, Stage 1 Parallels, Stage 2, Stage 2 Parallels, etc?

-Kevin
 
JAL3,

I don't think I have ever seen a naming "system" for what you are talking about. I believe you may be the trailblazer here and you should just go ahead and work it out. If you have a logical basis and names that can be understood, publish it.

Troy has some good suggestions already. I doubt it makes much difference whether you call them parallel stages, strap-ons, inboard/outboards or anything else as long as it is descriptive and makes sense.

I know that the standing convention is to call the motor that gets ignited at launch the "first stage" and to move up the rocket from there. It always struck me as odd that if you launch a three-stage rocket using all the parts that the top stage is the third stage, but if you only use the top two stages on another launch the same top stage becomes the second stage. (Probably just me who thinks of these things.)
 
In the Atlas ICBM, both stages were ignited on the pad. Talk about further obfuscating the issue! :eek:

Doesn't the Delta II have multiple stages as well as a set of strap-on boosters arranged around the first stage?

I would call the core sections "stages." I would call the parallel boosters on the first stage "strap-on boosters" and I would call the parallel boosters on the second stage "air-start boosters" or "delayed-start boosters." You might also call them "phased-start boosters." In any event, I would reserve the word "stage" for any one of the core sections, and "booster" for any one of the strap-on parallel rockets. This seems to be the nomenclature that is used by NASA; the SRBs on the Space Shuttle, for instance, are called boosters, not stages.

Mark K.
 
In the Atlas ICBM, both stages were ignited on the pad. Talk about further obfuscating the issue! :eek:

Doesn't the Delta II have multiple stages as well as a set of strap-on boosters arranged around the first stage?

I would call the core sections "stages." I would call the parallel boosters on the first stage "strap-on boosters" and I would call the parallel boosters on the second stage "air-start boosters" or "delayed-start boosters." You might also call them "phased-start boosters." In any event, I would reserve the word "stage" for any one of the core sections, and "booster" for any one of the strap-on parallel rockets. This seems to be the nomenclature that is used by NASA; the SRBs on the Space Shuttle, for instance, are called boosters, not stages.

Mark K.

In order to differentiate the boosters, why not just call them 1st stage boosters, second stage boosters, etc.?
 
Doesn't the Delta II have multiple stages as well as a set of strap-on boosters arranged around the first stage?

Yes, as did the Delta III, and the Delta IV has the same arrangement.

The main body has two stages; the type and number of boosters used varies depending on the payload weight and orbit desired.

-Kevin
 
Thingy1-2....:D

Just call it Super Cool Component #1. S.C.C. #2 ect.
-----------

On HotRod Nitro Fireball we referred to the clustered-main rocket as the "Mother ship".

The six parallel upper stages (that actually fired while the Mother ship was under thrust not really an upper stage...) just called them upper stages.

I think if you want proper names for this sort of thing your going to have to make it up.

More importantly, I want pictures or diagrams! Sounds like my sort of madness!

.

Photo by "DELTA22" Katan

.

IMG_4301.jpg
 
I've never seen an actual prototype that has parallel stages except on the first stage. I've always seen such "strap-ons" referred to as "Stage 0."
 
Its begining to look something as I expected. There is no real standard for what I describe.

So if the lowest of three stages is called the FIRST stage and it had 4 strap ons arranged radially, would it be reasonable to call the central portion stage 1a and then name the strap-ons 1b-1e?

Assuming such a beast were built and had a second level with a pair of strap-ons arranged in a line, would it be reasonable to call the central one 2a and then name the other two as 2b and 2c?

Is this making any sense?
 
Its begining to look something as I expected. There is no real standard for what I describe.

So if the lowest of three stages is called the FIRST stage and it had 4 strap ons arranged radially, would it be reasonable to call the central portion stage 1a and then name the strap-ons 1b-1e?

Assuming such a beast were built and had a second level with a pair of strap-ons arranged in a line, would it be reasonable to call the central one 2a and then name the other two as 2b and 2c?

Is this making any sense?
I guess that as long as you can keep them all straight in your mind and know which is which, you can call them anything you want.

Mark K.
 
I guess that as long as you can keep them all straight in your mind and know which is which, you can call them anything you want.

Mark K.

I was looking to either learn the "correct" way or to develop a rational and usable system. This is as a programming exercise. I am trying to develop a felixble data structure that is usable and will handle common as well as oddball situations.

I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER and am relying on what I learned about Pascal, PL/1 and LISP loooooooong ago.
---
edit: I forgot that I dabbled briefly in 2 other obscure languages, Snobol and Prolog and remember even less about them except that Prolog was interesting for being so different from any else I was familiar with.
 
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In that case, I still think it would make sense to use one term to use in labeling all of the external parallel stages, and a different term to label the core stages. Keep the two types in separate classes with each class having a distinctive name.

For instance, you could label the three core stages as C-1, C-2 and C-3. (Core stage 1, etc.) If each core stage had a cluster of motors, you could identify each motor by giving them labels such as c1a, c1b, c1c, etc. Thus if you saw a listing for c1e, you would know at a glance that it was the fifth motor in the first core stage.

You could then label the parallel boosters with a naming scheme that also indicated which core stage the particular booster was attached to.

For instance core stage 1 (C-1)'s parallel boosters could be called P1A, P1B, P1C, etc.

The parallel booster for C-2 could then be called P2A, P2B, P2C, etc.

Using this scheme, if you were looking at a parallel booster that was labeled as P2E, for example, you would know at a glance that it was the booster in position E on the second stage. P1G would be the parallel booster in position G on the first stage.

Note that in designating individual motors, I used lower-case letters and in designating individual parallel stages, I used upper-case letters. At a glance you can tell by the case of the letter if the item is a core stage motor or if it is a parallel stage booster. You would be able to see that a label ending in x1c refers to a motor in the first stage, while something else with a label ending with x1D refers to a parallel booster attached to the first stage.

Does this make sense?

Mark K.

P.S. Or you could just bar-code everything. :D
 
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Its begining to look something as I expected. There is no real standard for what I describe.
I don't think there's a standard. I'd call them 'first stage core, first stage strap-ons, second stage core, second stage strap-ons, and third stage.
 
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