Heavy lift spaceplanes

[foamyesque]

Okay so, lots of people can make spaceplanes these days; there's plenty of tutorials, good parts, and so on. But in general those planes can't carry as much mass into orbit as some guy who slapped some stuff on top of a Mammoth, for various reasons. This leads to a lot of "put an orange tank into orbit" challenges and the like. I'm tired of them...

 

So here's a challenge to build spaceplanes that can carry the biggest, heaviest payloads into orbit. The rules are as follows:

 

1. Horizontal takeoff;

2. No decoupling (or undocking, or explosive staging), with the exceptions of deploying the payload or jettisoning fairing covers;

3. Payloads must be a single unit that doesn't contribute to the vehicle's flight (i.e. no thrust or fuel can be consumed from it; electricity and reaction wheels are acceptable);

4. The craft must be able to land, intact, on Kerbin after payload deployment (landing at KSC not required, landing need not be horizontal);

5. The payload must be deployed into at least a 100x100km orbit around Kerbin;

6. Payloads cannot include ore (empty ore tanks are acceptable, but not ones with anything in them);

7. For purposes of fairness, only stock craft are legal, but flight info and autopilots (e.g. KER, MechJeb) are fair game.

8. No refuelling of the vehicle is allowed;

9. FAR users get a separate result table.

 

There will be two kinds of scoring:

A. Raw tonnage to the 100x100km orbit;

B. The per-payload-tonne cost of all consumables used during the full flight (i.e., until the vehicle is landed on Kerbin). The minimum payload to be listed here is 100 tonnes.

 

Happy launching

Edited January 9, 2017 by foamyesque

[qzgy]

So you say there will be two kinds of scoring. How will the two scores be accounted to in a final score? Also, say entry A does very well in scoring system A, but entry B has the advantage in the other scoring system. What happens then? Or is it that the scoring is dependent on how the person entering wants the score to be calculated?

[foamyesque]

5 minutes ago, qzgy said:

So you say there will be two kinds of scoring. How will the two scores be accounted to in a final score? Also, say entry A does very well in scoring system A, but entry B has the advantage in the other scoring system. What happens then? Or is it that the scoring is dependent on how the person entering wants the score to be calculated?

They're independent lists; that's why the second one has a minimum payload requirement. So if A were to enter one thing with 110ts to orbit and an operating cost of 100 funds/tonne-to-orbit, B launched one with 200ts to orbit and an operating cost of 120 funds/tonne, and C made something that put 50t in orbit at 80 funds/tonne, the lists would look like so:

 

MAX TONNES:

1. B (Jumbo 8, 200t)

2. A (Try Harder 4, 110t)

3. C (MIssing The Point, 50t)

 

EFFICIENCY:

1. A (Try Harder 4, 100 f/t)

2. B (Jumbo 8, 120f/t)

 

 

Make sense?

 

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by foamyesque

[qzgy]

Ahh, ok. Makes sense.

[Thor Wotansen]

I made this not too long ago, entirely unrelated to this challenge.

There are 2 tanks under the fairing weighing 101.25t combined, and while it is not in the required orbit for your challenge, it certainly has the fuel to get there without tapping the payload.  I'm not sure how much bigger you could go without breaking the runway on landing.

 

[NoobTool]

I was happy to see this challenge. I was toying with the idea of creating a similar challenge myself. I would like to make an argument for ore as cargo though. Many people raise objections regarding the utility of lifting ore to orbit, and while I tend to agree in most circumstances, I think cargo spaceplanes present one scenario where lifting ore could have merits. If you have a craft using cargo bays, and said craft is capable of lifting more mass than the amount of fuel that can be crammed into the bays, then it makes sense to use ore lifted to an orbital refinery when using the craft as a tanker. This allows for the maximum amount of fuel to be lifted in a single flight. There is also something to be said for the versatility of using ore as a storage medium in an orbital refueling station. Raw ore can be converted to varying combinations of fuel, allowing for different types of craft to be refueled at the same station without any of the storage space having been wasted. In truth, I'm only making these arguments to benefit my own entries, which weren't designed for this challenge, but were the inspiration for my intended challenge. They also have multiple cargo bays, which means that the cargo is carried up in 2 pieces (not sure if this is rule breaking), but I dock them together for deployment.

Submission the first:

Czar Galactica Mk4

 https://kerbalx.com/NoobTool/Czar-Galactica-Mk-4

http://imgur.com/a/5fKEk

Capable of lifting 301.8 tons to the required 100km orbit, then returning to land at the runway.

The second submission I will add later. I haven't uploaded any images of that one yet, but the Mk5 is capable of lifting 450.8 tons to the required orbit and again returning to the runway. Ore being excluded, both are limited to the 8 orange tanks that can fit into the cargo bays (approximately 288 tons).

I haven't worked out the funds/ton operating cost for either flight, but I think these craft are more suited for the max tonnage portion of the challenge anyway. They are ridiculously over-engined, and not very efficient in terms of design (although the Mk 5 manages better than 35% payload mass fraction, which I'm reasonably happy with).

Edited January 13, 2017 by NoobTool

[Eidahlil]

429.78 tons to a 100x100 orbit, at the cost of 85.8595 funds per ton (used 39431 * 0.8 LF and 29755 * 0.18 OX, for a total cost of 36900.7). That makes the payload fraction 46%. 159 parts without the payload. Name is Minetoug Tres.

Pretty sure it could also transport a fairing balloon with whatever is in it, but the score is probably better with fuel. Also, empty it glides forever, so I got bored of trying to hit the runway, and landed on the grass.