Build the cheapest fully reusable heavy lifter with 3 cores (Falcon Heavy and Delta IV Heavy style) that's capable of 50t of payload to LKO

[QF9E]

Correction: I forgot to subtract the cost of the payload from the cost of the rocket. The payload cost $9450 (three 2.5m ore tanks + 2.5m nose cone), so the revised score is 230 * 1000 / (80005 - 9450) = 3.260.

[camacju]

Not going to submit right now, but I suspect that a Rapier+Nerv plane will actually be very viable in this challenge.

Here's a design I had lying around:

This plane can actually deliver over twice its own mass to orbit. Here it is with a payload...

And here it is without the payload. 70K funds to deliver just over 75 tons to orbit.

This is the same craft but downscaled for the payload to be 50 tons.

And here it is without the payload, for 65k funds.

Note that this value can probably be improved by converting this into a three cores design. Have the Rapier engines on the outer cores and have the Nerv engines on the center core, and drop the Rapiers when they run out. This should be able to reduce cost further.

The reason this is so low cost is because of the insane payload fraction possible with Rapier and Nerv. And with recovery cost included as well, this is even better.

[swjr-swis]

31 minutes ago, camacju said:

Not going to submit right now, but I suspect that a Rapier+Nerv plane will actually be very viable in this challenge.

 

Except:

On 5/9/2022 at 8:00 PM, Thundrevv said:

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4. Must not be an SSTO;

[camacju]

48 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Except:

 

1 hour ago, camacju said:

Note that this value can probably be improved by converting this into a three cores design. Have the Rapier engines on the outer cores and have the Nerv engines on the center core, and drop the Rapiers when they run out. This should be able to reduce cost further.

 

[QF9E]

Question: how many points do I get if I use both wings and parachutes to land my boosters? The idea is to fly the boosters to the droneship as a glider, then open the parachutes when flying over the droneship and land under parachutes. Would this count as a parachute (droneship) landing for 175 points?