Son_of_Rambo

So i must say I've been struggling to catch up on reading through this whole thread since my introduction to kerbal. Some amazing stuff i've seen for sure. SSTO's really pike my interest from the reusability aspect and potential for simplicity of deisgn (Vertical launch versions anyways). So after my first vertical SSTO worked but had way too many parts, I decided to slim down, start fresh and try to create a Super Heavy Lift SSTO. Challenge was to lift 6 x S3 - 14400 tanks (492 tonnes fully loaded) into stable orbit (75km circular). Basically trying to replace the need to dock together a Space Station... unless you have a super sized station fetish. Mods Used: Mechjeb & B9 Part Count: 153 (with payload & some stabilising struts) Total Payload: 492 tonnes Inital Weight: 909 tonnes Payload to Weight Ratio: 54.12% Initial TWR: 2.31 Design of SSTO: Central Top loaded payload. Makes it easy to balance and has some flexibility for shape of payload. Lifter comprises of 3 identical subsections (Engine "Cores") Each Core has 8 x SABRE engines, fed by 7,680 units of liquid fuel, 7920 of oxidiser, and 1 Sabre M & S Intake per engine (no clipping). Nothing against clipping, except i'm no good at it Each Core is designed to lift 164 tonnes to LKO. Numerous versions can be created based around 164 tonne increments (or the ability to put a lighter load into a higher orbit). Cost: $958k (inc. payload) So not the cheapest fellow to launch. So to the main point, does it work?? Worked a charm however... i forgot to put a docking port on the payload... no fuel for you or you... So i just deorbited the whole thing, but still had ~4000 delta v for the air breathing mode on the SABRES with that entire payload, so more than enough to find a flat patch of grass. Feel free to improve upon if you like. Planning to design a mammoth interplanetary load next to use this for... but have currently run out of funds, so need to do a few more orbit rescues first

So I gave this a quick shot, took a lot of slimming down for my super heavy lifter to get in under the 128 part limit. So i used some SABRE engines which i know there is some controversy around about so I placed some restrictions on their use. Air-breathing mode was only used between 700m - 25km, with a single air intake used for each engine. Rest of the time the engines were used as a traditional rocket setup. Cargo was a section for a future Jool Space Station, the section alone weighed in at 182.3 tonnes, cargo was left untouched on ascent (no fuel/engine use). The SSTO lifter combined the use of 16 SABRE engines to provide some heavy lifting (11,840 kN at liftoff) Weighing in at 1087.21 tonnes, not a light weight by any measure. Starting TWR of 1.1. Made an orbital delivery at 102km circular orbit and returned with less than 30 seconds of spare fuel. Normally I would reduce the amount of oxidiser I take up with me but needed to keep it on this time to get in under 1.1 TWR. Launch was assisted by MechJeb (edited ascent profile - still fiddling with this to find the optimal, seems to change with each payload anyways). Return was non-assisted, not enough SAS onboard for MechJeb to lock onto retrograde without the help of the thrusters, so manual intervention needed. Piloted the landing (with quicksaves luckily, first touchdown was at around 100m/s into unforseen hill). Haven't had the chance to test this on a RSS etc. mod, would need to lower the payload, but hoping it'd be up for >100 tonne lift with only a little modification. SABRE Grasshopper: http://imgur.com/a/1soHs At the very least this is a very useful super heavy lifter. Cost per launch is about $80k for fuel (provided you return to KSC). So cost-effective, little stumbling block of being $800k to put on the launchpad though. Very good incentive not to crash EDIT: *Fixed final cost of lifter (only)