Is the Orange Tank still your standard "yard stick"?

[PTNLemay]

While it was never official, we've all seen the orange tank used as somewhat of a standard unit of measurement. At least where Big-Freaking-Rockets were concerned. Usually involving getting a full orange tank to a certain point as a kind of achievement. Space plane with full orange tank to orbit, sometimes an SSTO to do the same, etc. Or even "my space station can hold X orange tanks worth of fuel."

Now there's the new heavy weight fuel tank, but... it just doesn't feel the same. For one thing it's lacking a cute short nickname ("Kerbodyne S3-14400" doesn't exactly roll of the tongue) or any kind of distinct appearance that could inspire a nickname, aside for it's huge mass. Secondly, it is so huge that performing achieves may be a lot more difficult with it. Though the new engines may help with that, I already saw a 3.75 m aircraft in the KSP TV streams.

So yeah, is the "S3-14400" your new yard stick, and do you have a nickname for it? Personally I'll probably stick to using standard OTMs (Orange Tank Masses).

EDIT: Hmmm, I should have probably made this a poll.

Edited April 7, 2014 by sal_vager

[Killerdude8]

Orange Tank is the Standard Unit of Measurement, The new SLS tank is the Mile to our Yard.

[regex]

For pure stock I'd say the grey "half-orange" tank is more my "yard stick", but I really stopped having one once I started using Stretchy SRB/Procedural Parts.

[generalguy26]

[deleted]

Edited March 21, 2023 by generalguy26

[nadreck]

Why not call her Bertha (of course my first ship that put one of these nearly full into orbit was called Big Bertha).

Orange Tanks may still be a optimal design point since the mass ratio on the new ones is a little lower than on the older tanks (8.2 vs 9)

[jmiki8]

I still measure stuff in orange tanks, even if my newest 0.23.5 stations got the new giant tanks.

[merendel]

Personaly I run KW rocketry. KW has an upsized orange tank for the size 3 class so I can still use my jumbo oranges as a extralarge yardstick

[Superfluous J]

"Orange Tank" is far easier to say than "The largest of the new SLS tanks"

So yeah, I still use it as a unit of fuel or mass.

[PTNLemay]

I'm pretty sure the orange tank has the same length as the other big tank, it is just smaller in diameter.

It's usually meant as a unit of mass or volume, not of length. Hence "half an orange tank's worth of fuel" or "2 whole orange tanks on this station".

It's a shame the S3-14400 isn't a nice clean multiple of the orange tank, then we could just call it a double orange. Though even that doesn't sound quite right...

[6.forty]

They should have named it the BFT-14K. That would have gotten it a couple of nicknames pretty quick.

[mivanit]

Ive started to just count my fuel in thousands of liters or whatever the resource tab counts in

[_Aramchek_]

It never was, so no, it isn't now either.

I never actually found it to be that useful tbh.

[ArmchairGravy]

For pure stock I'd say the grey "half-orange" tank is more my "yard stick", but I really stopped having one once I started using Stretchy SRB/Procedural Parts.

Yeah, one "oil barrel" is my standard as well. I only have a three designs that don't utilize them. My initial orbiter, the one I use to orbit Mun & Minmus, and the asteroid interceptor are the only things I have that don't use an oil barrel somewhere in them.

[problemecium]

I still use orange tanks as yardsticks for testing purposes, although now that I've gotten a bit better at KSP and recently had <strike>overpowered</strike> awesome new engines to play with I've started to just measure payload capacities in tons.

[yaur]

For whatever reason, its always been the Big Orange Barrel to me and the #BOBs is still the yard stick for me.

[Superfluous J]

For whatever reason, its always been the Big Orange Barrel to me and the #BOBs is still the yard stick for me.

Where were you six months ago when I was subconsciously deciding on names for things? I want to just think of orange tanks as BOBs now.

[bsalis]

For pure stock I'd say the grey "half-orange" tank is more my "yard stick", but I really stopped having one once I started using Stretchy SRB/Procedural Parts.

Same here. Though I think of the grey tank as a Large Regular, with the orange tank a Large Double, and the smaller white tank a Large Half. Same naming for the 1m parts, but Small instead of Large.

Meanwhile in engine land, the Mainsail is no longer the King of engines. Bit sad really. The times they are a changin.

[cantab]

Well "a fourteen four hundred" isn't much harder to remember than "an orange tank". But I reckon the orange tank is going to stick. Not least because its better fuel:tankage ratio may keep it as the tank of choice for putting fuel into LKO

[Moar Boosters]

In my mind I've already started to refer to the new biggest fuel tank as the "giant tank."

IMO it needs a new name simply because the new tanks don't scale very well with the old ones. If they were double the size of the big orange then it'd be okay, but they're 2.25x the size, so for rockets that use them, it's easier to count them up separately.

I suspect we might see another fuel tank in the new largest size, as we don't yet have the equivalent of the orange tank. The 1 and 2m parts both have 4 sizes, but they only gave us 3 new 3.75m tanks, so it's possible there's a new bigger tank still to come.

[Spartwo]

I measure in meters.

[Dispatcher]

I'm used to using "an orange tank" as my "meter stick". Its the unit of comparison in a column of my (edit: old) engine comparison chart (see my sig line). I'm currently in the process of testing engines and updating the chart (and some graphs) to reflect the new ARM stock engines and tanks.

As I wrote, I've been using the previously largest tank as the unit of full tank mass. However, for my new chart revision, I had already converted to the new largest tank as a standard unit of tankage. Thus the orange tank became approximately 0.444 tanks. I did this as a means of showing the contrast between the largest and smallest tankage/ mass.

However, after reading this thread, I'll be converting back to the "orange tank" standard for five reasons:

First, because the majority (so far) favors using the orange tank.

Second, because the orange tank is ... orange, while all the others are predominantly white.

Third, 3 Radial 55 engines can barely lift one orange tank.

Fourth, the new LFB combo twin engines and tank holds, IIRC, 1 orange tank mass of fuel/ oxidizer.

Fifth, the average for the maximum number of (orange) tanks an engine or stock cluster (or set of radial engines) can lift from Kerbin's surface is just shy of 1 orange tank.

Thanks for giving me reasons to revert back to my old "standard"!

Edited April 5, 2014 by Dispatcher
Added a fifth reason to revert to orange.

[PTNLemay]

They should have named it the BFT-14K.

Oh, I like that one... Yeah, BFT isn't bad.

It never was, so no, it isn't now either.

Fair enough, I find nicknames are just good fun.

Meanwhile in engine land, the Mainsail is no longer the King of engines. Bit sad really. The times they are a changin.

I know right? It was a good while it lasted. But his successor does look pretty amazing.

[Superfluous J]

Well "a fourteen four hundred" isn't much harder to remember than "an orange tank". But I reckon the orange tank is going to stick. Not least because its better fuel:tankage ratio may keep it as the tank of choice for putting fuel into LKO

Back in the day, modems with bit rates of 14,400 per second were all the rage. People talked about upgrading to "a fourteen-four"

I may give that term a try here and see how it sticks.

"My ship is sick. It can lift a dozen 14.4's to LKO and land back at KSP with fuel to spare."

[Merinsan]

This new giant tank confuses me. I can't work out how much fuel it has, because it's not a multiple of orange tanks....is it a bug?

I think the reason the orange tank was the yardstick was simply because it was orange. That plus every other tank was a factor of the orange tank.

I will build a new station with X Giant tanks, and have no idea how to say what it's fuel capacity is now.

[Dispatcher]

The new largest tank is equal to 2.25 orange tanks.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Dispatcher
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