Giggleplex777

10/10 So much rep.

I've been busy wasting my time building launch vehicles lately, and I want to see what you guys come up with. Please include the payload capacity and other stats (e.g. part count) if possible. A brief description and .craft file would be nice too. I'll start with some of my own: Neptune X The Neptune X is part of the Neptune LV family, which are Saturn V derived rockets (evident in the five engine core stage). It's the biggest rocket in my "Budget" mode (Career mode with all parts unlocked) fleet. The second stage is powered by a KR-2L and is designed to deorbit itself with leftover fuel, like my other upper stages. The fairing is 5.5m in diameter and can fit 3 S3-14400 tanks or even an entire Kerbal X with room to spare. No fuel crossfeeding from the boosters; just tried-and-true parallel staging. Payload capacity: 135t to 80km orbit Part count: 177 Cost: 336 993 Height: 66.7m Fueled mass (w/o payload): 765.7t Total thrust at liftoff: 12 250kN Liftoff TWR (w/ 135t payload): 1.38 Subassembly: http://www./download/0o39phlcyqpjq7q/Neptune+X.craft Jettison the fairings at 40km Antares I really like this one. It has a unique first stage setup that is powered by four Mailsails in the core stage which are fueled by the central tank and two external tanks with fixed boosters. The boosters are tweaked so that they burnout at the same time as the external tanks are drained, eliminating the need to the decouple the boosters separately. The second stage engines come in two different configurations: a composite version made up of a Mainsail and four LV-T45s and another with one KR-2L. The KR-2L increases the payload capacity to 105t to 80km while also reducing the part count (it's a pretty OP engine). It uses the same 5.5m fairing as the Neptune X, although a smaller fairing is shown in this picture. 95t to 80km orbit 184 parts Polaris The Polaris launch vehicle was derived from the launcher for my MPCV (the leftmost one in this picture: http://i.imgur.com/xzOoPyx.png). I later replaced the original launcher of the MPCV with the Polaris to improve performance and for a more standardized rocket family. 8t to 100km orbit 95 parts

Uh oh...

No need now that subassemblies are vanilla, but I did appreciate your help in the previous versions. I'll see if I still have them. Nevertheless, I have to rebuild the Ariane 5 anyways.

Which one(s)?

Yes, I noticed the that your fairings were bigger than mine and thus was inspired to make bigger fairings. It's based of my four panel fairings. As for your fairings, I find that the cubic struts are extraneous; 1 tonne of I-beams would do the trick. Nah, sgt_flyer has been way ahead of my game for a while now. Here's a nice and compact one: Beware though, they're very heavy and you'll need a lot of lift to takeoff at low speeds..

I'm more proud of its rigidity and low part count than its size. You're right, it's not hard to make a big fairing, but it takes skill to keep the part count low. I also have a 210t lifter in the works: 210 parts, too.

I think I've mastered stock fairings. What's inside? A Kerbal X! Fits with room to spare. It can fit 3 S3-14400 tanks and is about 5.5m in diameter. The fairing consists of 102 parts and weighs 8.7 tonnes.

Are there any more details? Are they going with the RP-1 and LOX with liquid fueled boosters or LH2 and LOX with solid boosters? Or LH2 and LOX with liquid fueled boosters?

Here you go:

Which fairing do you guys think is better? Splits in two Splits in four ^Maybe rotate it 45° to look like an X.

I'm 95% sure the second stage interstage does not separate from the second stage. Sgt_flyer and I did extensive research of this while we were building our own replicas and we found no official evidence that it was jettisoned. The engines are so close to the interstage that if the interstage was detachable, it would have less than 30cm clearance from the engine bells. Furthermore, the video isn't completely accurate; it's just an artist's impression.

You're lucky you discovered this early in the mission; imagine this happening when you're on Ike. Did you land the rocket afterwards?

I believe the second stage interstage stays attached to the second stage. It should go like this: Second stage ignition (the engines start while the first stage engines are still firing) First stage cutoff First stage separation Source: http://www.ilslaunch.com/sites/default/files/pdf/PMPG%20Section%202.pdf General Proton M info: http://www.ilslaunch.com/sites/default/files/pdf/PMPG%20Section%20A.pdf

For rockets with liquid fuelled engines, I ignite them at 30% throttle on the pad and then throttle up to 100% with the shift key. I like doing this to emulate a real launch where the engine has to rev up on the pad before taking off. My rockets usually have a TWR of 1.2-1.5, so 100% throttle is necessary. It's the same with rockets with solid rocket boosters, except this time I ignite the boosters (and detach launch clamps, if there are some) after the main engines are at 100%. The core stages always have a TWR >1, and with boosters the TWR is usually about 1.5. This makes the boosters actually useful as a thrust argumenter rather than just adding a bit to the delta-v.

I've used the roll 90° technique with my vtols before. You know how pointing the wings perpendicular to the windstream nullifies lift, right? Just roll and pitch (yaw, actually) up and land it with the main engine like a tailsitter. That's one less engine to worry about!

You can build a pretty decent desktop for that much. I'm not sure about laptops, but as long as it has a good graphics card it should be fine (preferably an Nvidia one; they feature Physx acceleration, which will dramatically improve performance).

It took me two days before actually reached space. It was a challenge just to reach 30 000m. I remember trying to get to the Mun by flying straight up, and when I finally got in the Mun's SOI (there was not patched conics back then so it was mostly guesswork), I was traveling way too fast to slow down. It probably took me a month before I finally landed on the Mun, and, well, let's just say they didn't/couldn't get back. Took me another day to realize what the retrograde maker was for. Fast forward to today: I just landed the third ship at my Mun base and I definitely didn't have to quickload because misjudged when I was supposed to fire the engines... Okay maybe I did. I'm a wiz when it comes to orbital maneuvers, but not so much when it comes to landing.

I like to keep my space program as realistic as possible, so I only use fuel crossfeed if it is from an external tank without engines. It's funny if you think about it, actually. When you first play the game, you build big serial staged rockets to launch small payloads. As you progress, your rockets get smaller and smaller thanks to asparagus staging, and ultimately you reach the peak of LV efficiency. And it's all downhill from there: you realize that asparagus is unrealistic and you return to building serial staged rockets like you did when you began (albeit more efficient).

I lost another shuttle: Block V launch record: Missions: 2 Successful launches: 1 Successful re-entries: 0 ^Not very good.

STS-2 suffered an in-flight anomaly: This is the second hull-lose incident of the Odysseus Block V program.

Congrats, Sal! This is the second time reached 10K posts, isn't it?

I remember when our planes would blow up on the runway if you clipped a part. And the launch tower with that yellow protruding thing that we always crashed into. Good times. ^Hardcore lurker

The translation gizmo and the re-root gizmo's going to be very useful. As for the rotation gizmo, if it allows you to rotate to any angle (instead of snapping to every 5 degrees), it may replace PAD. The fact that the part is always attached when using the gizmos can make complex build a lot easier. Say for example you want to shift a wing a bit, but it is clipped into mess of parts. Instead of having to take every part off just to move the wing, you can just use the gizmo. I wonder if you can just place a part out side of a complex assembly and then translate it into position. Imagine to possibilities!