Non-RO launch vehicles for RSS

[CFYL]

Let’s see how massive can rockets be when attempting to launch something from the earth, using parts intended for Kerbin, which are small and heavy concerning dead weight.

RO rockets not included for simplicity and...fun.

Share your entire rockets! Or spaceplanes! 

In RSS, using stock parts and some mods like NFT, or DLCs, and build rockets!

Here is a moon lander I built

see Moon Lander Launch Kit(For RSS) on KerbalX.com

[CFYL]

No one is currently responding to this thread but I'd like to say that I have a preference for RSS vessels without RO implemented.

Stock parts without Tweakscale is usually to small to lift heavy things but making history and third-party mods are providing enough thrust and fuel. So I'd also like to start a competition, to launch 20 tons of payload into GEO, with the following rankings and requirements:

Ranks:

Best Kerconomic Championship ------------------------------ use the least  to launch this payload, parts recovered after launch counts in the  as spent parts!

Current First 3:

1. @Laie 619,353 funds. So this time KSC isn’t going bankrupt.

2. @Pds314 1,342,191 funds. Did the space center got all this funds from the richest Jeb?

 

Best Launch-Pad-Friendly Championship  ------------------------------ use the least (starting) mass to launch this payload!

Current First 3:

1. @Laie M=2805t. Smart to use multiple high-Isp engines to maximize efficiency while not losing TWR.

2. @Pds314 M=6,001,416kg. Or, two Saturn-Vs. Really Helpful.

 

Best Accuracy Championship  ------------------------------ get the closest to i=0, e=0, T=23h, 56min, 4sec!

Current First 3:

1. @Pds314 i=0.010034, e=0.000014863, pe=35,792,356m, ap=35,793,420, period=23h, 56min, 3s. Close but not (so) perfect.

 

Best Kourage Championship ------------------------------ move the payload into GEO with the lease vacuum ΔV at launch!

Current First 3:

1. @Pds314 with 13495.2 m/s of launch (theoretical) ΔV. If counting LEO as 9400, and to GEO as an extra 3980, it would be 13380. Really with a lot of courage. I don't mean Jeb, he is over-courageous that he wanted to stuff himself in the ore tank.

Best (Kerbal) Stupidity Championship ------------------------------ Bill think we can launch something from the poles, and reach a GEO without inclination. Ignore the 20 degree in requirement 3. Instead, launch it from higher than 50 degrees, or the poles if you know how to edit coordinations in KSCSwitcher. 

 

Requirements:

1. KSP: 1.6 and onwards. (I'm using 1.8.1, you may need to find corresponding mods, I can say these mods are excellent.)

2. Parts allowed: Stock parts + DLC parts + NFT parts + You are welcome to submit other mods in your reply! Tweakscale can NOT be used on engines so create engine clusters if large-diameter tanks are required.

3. Other Mods Required: RSS of course, please launch at sites with latitudes higher than 20 degrees, north or south, for some challenge of plane transfers.

FAR and PersistentRotation are optional, you may think it's making it a bit harder. I like them, though.

4. Build Requirement: payload can be anything you like, either a huge ore tank or just something you'd like to use for your later missions, just have to be 20 tons for this challenge. However, the payload can only assist the launch by giving EC if solar panels are attached, and giving control and comment access. Reaction Wheels or RCS on the payload should be disabled until payload is deployed.

5. Flight Requirements: No MJ, no F12 cheats. Anything else is not limited, flight assistance is allowed as long as it’s not autopilot and it’s still up to you to hit the keys and control the vessel. 

I do hope someone would participate. Advice would really be helpful!

Edited May 28, 2020 by AllenLi

[bayesian_acolyte]

I hope this challenge takes off. It might be tough to get people to participate though, especially with requiring such a specific group of mods. I might DL these mods and whip up something later, but I'm not sure I want to be the first.

In the mean time, you might be interested in some of the relatively low cost and low tech launchers I built for my RSS career with all stock parts and no contracts. For example on the last mission I planted a flag on every moon of Jupiter and Saturn with under 400k launch cost with this ship:

You can read more about it here:  

 

[CFYL]

1 hour ago, bayesian_acolyte said:

I hope this challenge takes off. It might be tough to get people to participate though, especially with requiring such a specific group of mods. I might DL these mods and whip up something later, but I'm not sure I want to be the first.

In the mean time, you might be interested in some of the relatively low cost and low tech launchers I built for my RSS career with all stock parts and no contracts. For example on the last mission I planted a flag on every moon of Jupiter and Saturn with under 400k launch cost with this ship:

You can read more about it here:  

 

Thank you!

I'll make sure that I can make it feasible, but I think the 2 mods are small enough to download though they change the stock files. I wanted it to be fair so I may move it to the optional list. Maybe I can enhance it on the way!

[CFYL]

BTW, I saw that you have been to each planet and moon in the system. Did you do all these in a single launch for a mission? I kinda feel it hard even to reach the moon and back with one launch just using stock parts.

[moar ssto]

I created some stock part and semi stock(contains merged stock tanks for part count reasons.) ssto, one of them carries 3400m/s of vacuum dv after reaching LEO and capable of isru and taking off from Titan using dlc rotors. However, it requires an elongated runway made by kerbal konstruct since it has 66t takeoff mass per rapier with fairly high wing load and requires autopilot for pitch and roll control, also all parts are heavily clipped for aerodynamic reasons.

Edited May 16, 2020 by moar ssto

[Pds314]

Downloading. I think the reason nobody was messing with this was in crafts not challenges.

9K delta-V shouldn't be THAT huge for basic satellites. RSS Mun missions might require some NERV abuse to keep sane partcounts lol.

(Not that the NERV is particularly overpowered, it's just not way underpowered (or rather, overweight, the ISP is for the most part ok to good) like the chemical rockets).

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Alright.. let's see if I can get this to start... I installed FAR so the souposphere should be somewhat less soupified.

19 hours ago, AllenLi said:

No one is currently responding to this thread but I'd like to say that I have a preference for RSS vessels without RO implemented.

Stock parts without Tweakscale is usually to small to lift heavy things but making history and third-party mods are providing enough thrust and fuel. So I'd also like to start a competition, to launch 20 tons of payload into GEO, with the following rankings and requirements:

 

Best Kerconomic Championship ------------------------------ use the least  to launch this payload, parts recovered after launch counts in the  as spent parts!

Current First 3:

 

Best Launch-Pad-Friendly Championship  ------------------------------ use the least (starting) mass to launch this payload!

Current First 3:

 

Best Accuracy Championship  ------------------------------ get the closest to i=0, e=0, T=23h, 56min, 4sec!

Current First 3:

 

Best Kourage Championship ------------------------------ move the payload into GEO with the lease vacuum ΔV at launch!

Current First 3:

 

Requirements:

KSP: 1.6 and onwards. (I'm using 1.8.1, you may need to find corresponding mods, I can say these mods are excellent.)

Parts allowed: Stock parts + DLC parts + NFT parts + You are welcome to submit other mods in your reply! Tweakscale can NOT be used on engines so create engine clusters if large-diameter tanks are required.

Other Mods Required: RSS of course, please launch at sites no more than 10 degrees away from 30^oN or 30^oS, for some challenge of plane transfers.

FAR and PersistentRotation are optional. I like them, though.

I do hope someone would participate. Advice would really be helpful!

Can we do above 40 degrees latitude? Obviously it's to no benefit but is it ok?

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[Flying dutchman]

4 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Alright.. let's see if I can get this to start... I installed FAR so the souposphere should be somewhat less soupified.

I second this. I don't know if the challenge allows for this but it really should.

[Pds314]

15 minutes ago, Flying dutchman said:

I second this. I don't know if the challenge allows for this but it really should.

OP said it did.

Hmmm.. I'm gonna go with no... I didn't do it right. Considering I just managed to escape Kerbin, not Earth, in a Kerbal X, with 2.5k Delta-V to spare.... (sidenote, what are these things even for? They seem really overpowered considering I didn't even drop side boosters at the right times). Mun landings? Minmus landings? Duna landings? I just don't sea how you could need so much DV after reaching your destination...

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Aha! For once, having two different versions of module manager is a good thing. I am not even gonna look at whatever cursed madness might be going on in the debug logs with this...

Oh... ok. No. It's not a good thing. It's incredibly cursed.

"Cape Canaveral." Now I'm no expert, but this doesn't look like Florida to me. If I had to guess where we are it would be Kerbin. If I had to guess somewhere on Earth it might be... gee... I dunno. Maybe a really lush part of northern India or maybe British Columbia or somewhere in the European alps? I don't think this terrain exists on Earth.

[Pds314]

Hmm... yes... this is perfectly normal. Rocket launch sites in DPRK just sort of float in mid air. Truly magnificent. You can now tumble off the side of the runway with the speed of Chollima.



Time to reinstall Kopernicus... and get rid of the modern version of MFI...

No... that didn't help anything...

Ok... it looks like the version of Kopernicus that's linked in RSS is not the right version to install. Install the one for your version of KSP. I'm gonna try 1.7.3 because RSS is meant to work with it.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Ok... how to make it work:
Download correct version of Kopernicus.
Don't used the newest module manager. Use exactly the one that comes in that specific version of Kopernicus.
Use the ModuleFlightIntegrator that comes with Kopernicus.

[Flying dutchman]

59 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Ok... how to make it work:
Download correct version of Kopernicus.
Don't used the newest module manager. Use exactly the one that comes in that specific version of Kopernicus.
Use the ModuleFlightIntegrator that comes with Kopernicus.

always a beatiful sight when the earth finally loads after many attempts!

 

i can reccomend the VaNnadin's 16K RSS texture pack btw, it looks very beautiful and i can still load it with no problems on my laptop with just 8gb ram using ksp 1.8.1.

[Pds314]

Alright. I have launched a tiny spec of debris into a haphazardly-chosen low orbit as a test payload using a poorly-designed 3-stage launcher. And I DIDN'T EVEN LAND THE DEBRIS ON JAPAN. Obviously this is far cry from 20 tonnes to equatorial GEO. But it is a successful satellite.

And we are launching from Sohae, DPRK. For some reason we're in the western part of the country but I'm not gonna question it. Hope we don't crash into Wonsan.


Normally I would be worried about raining failed boosters down on the hapless civilians below. But between our clearly superior rocket technology with the utmost certainty of success, and the fact that seeing successful rocket launches overhead will undoubtedly improve my reputation both with Marshal Kim and the people, and we almost certainly don't have the Delta-V to launch south and go around the US-occupation zone the Republic of Korea. Clearly overflying ourselves is the best, most patriotic option.


We're already over 65 km high by first stage burnout.


Second stage launch. With an absolutely anemic TWR.


As I mentioned, it is very safe to overfly our fatherland because we can land the boosters in the sea.


Hmm... we are not going up anymore... that could be an issue.


Stage 2 is nearly out of fuel and we appear to be re-entering. Fortunately second stage will definitely clear Japan.


And the third stage is ready to fix the mess we've put ourselves in continue on our beautiful trajectory to orbit.


First step... the Apogee should be ahead of us please...


Close enough.


We are now ascending again.


And we shut engines off just past Japan and wait for our Apogee kick.


Confirmation that we will not be dropping rocket stages on Japan today.


Time to burn and increase our periapsis so we're in orbit.


And.. orbit achieved. With 292 m/s of Delta-V, which should be enough to deorbit.


Our orbit.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Surprisingly, nothing broke on reentry after our deorbit. I think this vehicle is just so light when empty that it burns off speed slowly and quite high in the atmosphere where its Reynolds number is like 3. Not 10^3. Just 3. Thus, already lost 3 km/s by this point.


Well... through the atmosphere anyway. The same cannot be said about entering the hydrosphere.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[moar ssto]

3 hours ago, Pds314 said:

Downloading. I think the reason nobody was messing with this was in crafts not challenges.

9K delta-V shouldn't be THAT huge for basic satellites. RSS Mun missions might require some NERV abuse to keep sane partcounts lol.

(Not that the NERV is particularly overpowered, it's just not way underpowered (or rather, overweight, the ISP is for the most part ok to good) like the chemical rockets).

For lunar landing, just use an ionchair, and you will have a rocket of less than 100t on lauchpad, and if using jet powered first stage, the mass can be further reduced..

[Pds314]

1 hour ago, moar ssto said:

For lunar landing, just use an ionchair, and you will have a rocket of less than 100t on lauchpad, and if using jet powered first stage, the mass can be further reduced..

Oh true. Ion vehicles can be extremely light. That being said, this current challenge is not a Mun landing but 20 tonnes to equatorial GEO. So while ions might be useful, they're definitely not a magic wand. Especially if you're concerned about cost. 1 ion thruster costs 8000, and every single kg of Xenon costs 40 .

That's not insignificant. If you want, say, 4 km/s of Delta-V in ions, you'll be using the better part of 100000 in fuel. and you'll probably want engines and something to power them. Call that 9500 each. So with one engine, your TWR is 0.01 at best. That's an 11-hour burn. Probably 13 or 14 in reality.

So then we need several engines to do things quickly unless we want to wait for hours in physics warp. 8 engines cuts our burn time down to something at least resembling a manageable burn. Well under 2 hours. Which is 30 minutes in 4x physics warp.

But now we're dealing with 170000 or so for an orbital tug, and it weighs like 6 tonnes (remember, power sources aren't weightless. Nor is xenon tankage).

The question then becomes, what sort of launch vehicle increase in capacity can you get for 170000?

I think it's still slightly in favor of ions over liquid (at least if nobody brings up the nuclear option) but still just slightly. And I wouldn't be so sure about beating solid fuel motors either for cost. That's about the cost of:

9 Clydesdales.

19 Thoroughbreds.

28 Polluxes.

63 Kickbacks.

200 Thumpers.

425 Hammers.

850 Fleas.

1133 Shrimps.

2267 Mites or Sepratrons.

 

As long as you don't choose 2000 Mites or sepratrons, that's gonna be over a kiloton of MOAR BOOSTERS. It's all gonna be in the first stage, and subsequent stages won't be especially heavy or costly. So I'm not totally convinced that ions are the way to go. Especially if we can get anything like reasonable payload fractions.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[moar ssto]

23 hours ago, AllenLi said:

No one is currently responding to this thread but I'd like to say that I have a preference for RSS vessels without RO implemented.

Stock parts without Tweakscale is usually to small to lift heavy things but making history and third-party mods are providing enough thrust and fuel. So I'd also like to start a competition, to launch 20 tons of payload into GEO, with the following rankings and requirements:

 

Best Kerconomic Championship ------------------------------ use the least  to launch this payload, parts recovered after launch counts in the  as spent parts!

Current First 3:

 

Best Launch-Pad-Friendly Championship  ------------------------------ use the least (starting) mass to launch this payload!

Current First 3:

 

Best Accuracy Championship  ------------------------------ get the closest to i=0, e=0, T=23h, 56min, 4sec!

Current First 3:

 

Best Kourage Championship ------------------------------ move the payload into GEO with the lease vacuum ΔV at launch!

Current First 3:

 

Requirements:

KSP: 1.6 and onwards. (I'm using 1.8.1, you may need to find corresponding mods, I can say these mods are excellent.)

Parts allowed: Stock parts + DLC parts + NFT parts + You are welcome to submit other mods in your reply! Tweakscale can NOT be used on engines so create engine clusters if large-diameter tanks are required.

Other Mods Required: RSS of course, please launch at sites no more than 10 degrees away from 30^oN or 30^oS, for some challenge of plane transfers.

FAR and PersistentRotation are optional. I like them, though.

I do hope someone would participate. Advice would really be helpful!

Must the payload be innert mass?

[moar ssto]

1 hour ago, Pds314 said:

Oh true. Ion vehicles can be extremely light. That being said, this current challenge is not a Mun landing but 20 tonnes to equatorial GEO. So while ions might be useful, they're definitely not a magic wand. Especially if you're concerned about cost. 1 ion thruster costs 8000, and every single kg of Xenon costs 40 .

That's not insignificant. If you want, say, 4 km/s of Delta-V in ions, you'll be using the better part of 100000 in fuel. and you'll probably want engines and something to power them. Call that 9500 each. So with one engine, your TWR is 0.01 at best. That's an 11-hour burn. Probably 13 or 14 in reality.

So then we need several engines to do things quickly unless we want to wait for hours in physics warp. 8 engines cuts our burn time down to something at least resembling a manageable burn. Well under 2 hours. Which is 30 minutes in 4x physics warp.

But now we're dealing with 170000 or so for an orbital tug, and it weighs like 6 tonnes (remember, power sources aren't weightless. Nor is xenon tankage).

The question then becomes, what sort of launch vehicle increase in capacity can you get for 170000?

I think it's still slightly in favor of ions over liquid (at least if nobody brings up the nuclear option) but still just slightly. And I wouldn't be so sure about beating solid fuel motors either for cost.

Assuming using chemical rockest for lauch if using my usual leo payload fraction of 2%, a ion powered option will have a takeoff mass of around 1100-1300t, while a nuclear powered option will have a takeoff mas of around 2000-2100t, and probably not less than 4300t for apurely chemical option. There are exotic options that can cut the booster mass a lot, such as a rapier-nerv ssto or rapier-nerv asparagus in a fairing rocket, but those will have superhigh lauch costs and will have unworkable part counts(unless using merged parts, since even part welding can't save you from the lag created by thousands of meshes). 

Edited May 16, 2020 by moar ssto

[Pds314]

30 minutes ago, moar ssto said:

Assuming using chemical rockest for lauch if using my usual leo payload fraction of 2%, a ion powered option will have a takeoff mass of around 1100-1300t, while a nuclear powered option will have a takeoff mas of around 2000-2100t, and probably not less than 4300t for apurely chemical option. There are exotic options that can cut the booster mass a lot, such as a rapier-nerv ssto or rapier-nerv asparagus in a fairing rocket, but those will have superhigh lauch costs and will have unworkable part counts(unless using merged parts, since even part welding can't save you from the lag created by thousands of meshes). 

So it looks like then ion and nuclear are both better than chemical most-likely. Although going back to my estimate, I think I was being a bit generous with ion delta-V requirements. Seeing as having anything like a decent TWR would cost quite a lot and add non-trivial amounts of weight, and NOT having a good TWR means an increased DV requirement.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[moar ssto]

I assumed single staged tug, I am not sure how much you can get the tug lighter for the chemcial desing if you split the tug into two stages for the chemical approach. But I guess the launch mass is still something more than 3500t.

Edited May 16, 2020 by moar ssto

[Pds314]

3 minutes ago, moar ssto said:

I assumed single staged tug, I am not sure how much you can get the tug lighter for the chemcial desing if you split the tug into two stages for the chemical approach.

How heavy is your single staged LF tug? I feel like the answer is gonna be something really big because KSP LF parts really struggle to do 4km/s in one stage with anything like a reasonable TWR and payload efficiency.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314

[moar ssto]

About 67t, assuming using single wolfhoud. Though for chemical stages I usually never do one with 2000m/s of dv(my rss conventional rockest are all heavily asparagus-staged.)

Edited May 16, 2020 by moar ssto

[Pds314]

4 minutes ago, moar ssto said:

About 67t, assuming using single wolfhoud.

Ok yeah that's believable. Hmm.. if we keep the single wolfhound but make drop tanks, that might reduce it a little... I'm not at my computer right now and don't really want to do the math by hand.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pds314