Lightest Eve Launcher

[herbal space program]

7 hours ago, clems said:

I meant: my solution, which is more traditional than using a kraken drive.

Although what I find interesting about my design is the fact that it is using only a single rocket engine. That is located in the top section and the exhaust goes through the donut tanks. So these tanks can be jettisoned one by one when empty while the engine stays. Makes for a pretty efficient multi-stage rocket.

Your problem is that you did such a good job on this challenge yourself that nobody else wants to try to beat you!

[clems]

On 1/2/2020 at 4:28 PM, The Minmus Derp said:

Wow! That is so clever! But when I last checked, the donut tanks didn't have holes in the collision box for kerbals/engine exhaust to fall through. Is that a new thing in 1.8?

It was already in 1.7 I think.
My pilot (Valentina) sits in a command seat inside the top 2 donut tanks.

What's even better: the decouplers are also hollow. So for weight reasons I used the smallest ones. I think the optimum is at putting a decoupler between every second tank.
Actually it might be an interesting task to test or calculate how the ideal tank/decoupler distribution would look like. Might not even be linear.

21 hours ago, herbal space program said:

Your problem is that you did such a good job on this challenge yourself that nobody else wants to try to beat you!

Thanks for the compliment, but I don't believe that. There are a lot of more talented/nerdy designers out there.

I try to find out, how to upload a craft-file for anybody interested in the design.

[sevenperforce]

On 1/3/2020 at 1:39 PM, clems said:

What's even better: the decouplers are also hollow. So for weight reasons I used the smallest ones. I think the optimum is at putting a decoupler between every second tank.
Actually it might be an interesting task to test or calculate how the ideal tank/decoupler distribution would look like. Might not even be linear.

I am sure it is not. My guess is that the spacing decreases as you go up. So the first three decouplers are between each tank, the next few between every second, the next few between every third, and so forth.

[EveMaster]

I've built a traditional rocket for this challenge. No use of rotors, mod- or dlc parts. KER is the only used mod.

This rocket uses a kerbal in a command seat. Weight including kerbal at launch is 34.103 tons.

It has no controll surfaces and no electrical systems. Steering is done using engine gimal. At liftoff the engine gimbal of the vector engine is reduced to avoid oscillation.

Full throttle at liftoff until a speed of 180m/s is reached, then throttling down to keep the TWR at around 1.3 as long as the vector engine is used. Then again full throttle until an apoapsis of 100km is reached. Coasting to apoapsis and circularization.

No jetpack usage is required. 423m/s are remaining once the 100km x 103km orbit is reached.

Gallery with screenshots of the ascent: https://imgur.com/gallery/jvvo7Cx

Edited February 7, 2020 by EveMaster