What kind of launch vehicles do you like to use?

[Corona688]

2 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Your images aren't working for me, maybe you should upload them to imgur or something? It seems like you're trying to just upload them directly from your computer, which doesn't work.

They work fine unless you're using a browser plugin that forces them all to https.  Or perhaps there's some network problem between you and my host.

Edited January 14, 2021 by Corona688

[Mikenike]

On 1/8/2021 at 2:26 PM, skrpt kddz said:

I'm just wondering what kind of launch vehicles different people use. I usually use a wide variety of spacecraft depending on my preferences and the mission, but its almost always an ssto and is usually expendable.

I hardly use SSTO's anymore, I use the typical rocket in either asparagus staging or with solids on the side.... I like to lift heavy payloads up to HKO, and then get a space tug to rendevous and dock to the payload (typically a station or a massive crew module/ lander so that I can bring my guys home and sub in a new crew). I hate the SSTO idea. I love the massive designs because money is no object. I launch a crew replenishment module every in game year, and it takes 3 months for them to go there, and come back. I refuse to make a lander with a lot of fuel for returns, and instead use a tug to take it from a 300x300 orbit to its destination over a target planet in a 150x150 orbit, where I detach the lander, deorbit the craft, and then land, replace the crew with the old one, and send it back up to that 150x150 where it rendevous with the tug to take it back to a 100x100 orbit, and I deorbit from there.

On 1/8/2021 at 2:48 PM, SkyRender said:

The refuel hybrid is generally an underbuilt asparagus staged rocket that can only just get to orbit, but it gets refueled while in low Kerbin orbit so it can reuse that launch stage to go elsewhere.

I use a similar concept for my tug refueling system. I like to bring them to a 100x100 orbit (the same orbit I use before I deorbit my crew modules), refuel them, and then put them back up in orbit, or rather, their starting orbit of 300x300. I then use the remaining fuel to deorbit the fuel "truck". What I will also do is I will send a refueling truck to a midpoint in a long journey, using a special lifter/ dual tug combo, where I still have enough fuel to refuel 3 tugs, so I dock 2 togs together and use one to transport the other and the remaining unneeded lifter back to LKO, where I deorbit all of them. I have two/three tugs a planet, two orbiting the sun, and 4 around Kerbin at any time.

[TitiKSP]

expendable and reusable rockets.

[Misguided Kerbal]

I use rockets and rockets only. The SSTOs I make are purely just for the sake of it, and don't have any real use other than to say I made an SSTO. I think a few pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some examples of my lifters:

Slap some boosters on, and it becomes the Heavy version:

Clustered cores can also become a Heavy version:

Once again, another 3-core heavy version:

Even the Saturn V can become a Heavy version:

There's always a basic light lifter:

 

I hope that helped  

[Rocket Witch]

Mainly a set of variously-sized expendable chemical rockets rated for certain tonnages to a 125x125 km orbit. Lower stages may be either entirely liquid-fuelled or entirely solid-fuelled. They usually each have a heavy variant with two common core boosters (same diameter/length/engine as the central lower stage). There may also be a semi-heavy variant with two medium-large SRBs different from the core.

Superheavy variants with four CC boosters have them placed along the same axis as the first two boosters, giving the vehicle the shape of a hand with its middle finger raised. The reason for this is entirely practical — adding so much mass to the rear of the craft makes it more unstable in flight, but with the craft aligned such that the boosters lie horizontally as it turns over, they essentially act like wings by producing a lot of body lift at the rear end, counteracting the instability. This lift increases in proportion to aerodynamic resistance, making it a very convenient and elegant arrangement despite appearances. Not potentially needing to push any spent boosters up away from the rest of the turned-over craft also makes stage separation very safe and clean.

To date I've not played a career/science save to the point where I have such options, but my ideal launch vehicle is something like the Liberty GCNR-HLLV thanks to the Kerbal Atomics mod. Around that point in technology I'd start taking winged SSTO designs seriously, too.

I'd also like to make a spaceplane (2STO using drop-tanks) for routine LKO transfers of crew, supplies, waste, etc., but I've never settled on a simple, robust design for a workhorse like that. It tends to end up with too much feature creep, like I want enough space for both a short 2.5m cargo stack and 6-10 Kerbals, ion-based OMS which starts filling that 2.5m cargo area with xenon and raises the electrical power requirement to the point where I'm like "should I install a reactor too?", and so on.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Rocket Witch

[MKI]

I lack imagination and use a mix of real life inspired launch systems in my "scienced-out" stock career game.

The main workhorse has been a somewhat economical Space Shuttle stack for general cargo, crew transportation, station building, in orbit retrieval, or a mix all in the same mission. Besides some flat spin issues, its pretty nice to fly. Lately its been busy building a mission for Dres in orbit with the help of space tugs, and building a LKO fuel dump.

The heavier lifter is an SLS block 1 expendable launcher, with the larger blocks for the rarer heavier missions. Usually its used for either long distance missions or larger cargo that wont fit nicely in the orbiter's cargo bay.

For the largest payloads that don't fit on the SLS block 2B (rip), I just grab a Saturn 5 replica and potentially slap on SLS boosters if it gets that insane.

Earlier in career when I had limited funds and needed more daring missions, I mainly relied on Delta-like launch vehicles sending up Gemini+Apollo missions to grind Kerbin moons. 

I have a few small-scale SSTO's, but I personally am a fan of the Shuttle and use that the most with a multi-goal mission as often as possible. 

PS. I'll add some pictures later, at least for my dear shuttle.

Shuttle stack:

On its way to the fuel dump:

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by MKI
add images

[Slam_Jones]

Been running RSS lately, so I've been using the typical 2-stage to orbit rockets we are most familiar with.  I tend to shy away from asparagus or onion staging in favor of a more streamlined rocket shape.

As this is RSS, each stage needs approximately 4.7km/s of dv, so the stages are quite large.  My current largest launcher can put 84t into Low Earth Orbit, and costs 2.5mil kerbucks (most of the cost is the massive engines).  Working on recovery, I am able to recover about 50% of the cost of the first stage on most launches.

Back in the day in the stock game I did some SSTO/spaceplane stuff, even built a station with only SSTO-supplied modules, but I was never really satisfied with the payload fraction, the time it took to get to orbit, or the busywork of returning the spaceplane to KSC.

So generally I prefer a 2-stage to orbit, regular-looking rocket.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Slam_Jones

[Kernel Kraken]

Big ones. Usually just a lot of fuel tanks with a lot of mammoth thrusters. I can save time by designing one overbuilt lifter because they can launch big things and be re-used for small things if I tone down the thrust.

[Davi SDF]

Most of the time expendable BIG rockets (so big i tend to make new """"engines"""" using fairings), for me, it's go big or go home!

[AviosAdku]

At the moment, my Launch vehicles are typically "Stage and a Half" affairs with a large core stage with a decently efficient (but atmospheric capable) core stage that burns all the way to orbit (vacuum upper stages are primarily used for deep space work and as such are considered part of the payload) with boosters (usually SRB's) to make up the needed TWR at liftoff. This may be related to the fact that my first orbit mission in career is usually an SSTO with the LV-T30/45 (whatever they're called now, the old name is pretty ingrained as they are my favorites) and I like to base my launchers around it as the idea of a family of launchers is appealing to me.

For bulky or similarly aerodynamically awkward payloads (like spacegliders), I usually go for multiple core stages wrapped around the payload, booster style although I don't remember if these are boosted as the only thing I've built like that vaguely recently had a built in rocket stage that made it into the second stage.

AviosAdku

[jimmymcgoochie]

On 1/25/2021 at 10:13 PM, Slam_Jones said:

As this is RSS, each stage needs approximately 4.7km/s of dv, so the stages are quite large.  My current largest launcher can put 84kt into Low Earth Orbit

Sorry, did you just say 84 kilotons!?

 

I seem to have taken the stock mantra of “Moar Boosters!” and applied it to RP-1, and amazingly it actually works- going from two first stage boosters to six on the same rocket increased the payload capacity enough that I could go from barely putting probes in geostationary orbit of the Earth or a very elliptical orbit of the Moon to actually landing an essentially identical probe on the Moon (which needed about 2km/s more delta-V in total) and doing interplanetary flyby missions from Mercury to Jupiter and everything in between.

Launching first ~4.5 tons (with two boosters) and then 10 tons (with six) to LEO with the first stage core burning from the pad right into orbit is probably not the way you’re meant to do it, but when every engine has a maximum burn duration before the failure chance skyrockets and the upper stage engines available can only be started once you have to adopt some unconventional techniques to make the most of every engine and every stage.

My next design, which I’ve been working on over the last couple of days, is a bit more conventional with two stages and can put 25 tons in LEO in testing, enough to attempt a crewed Lunar flyby in one launch or an orbital mission with two I reckon.

[paul_c]

If even the bigger/biggest engines are underpowered, its time to join fuselage sections side by side and have multiple (sets of) engines burning at once to produce the necessary thrust. 

[Slam_Jones]

16 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Sorry, did you just say 84 kilotons!?

Erm oops no that should have been regular tons!  My bad.

[Guest]

I enjoy small, simple rockets that are aerodynamically stable and have close to optimal TWR so they pretty much fly themselves to orbit once I start the gravity turn, just hitting the spacebar on the way. 

I also enjoy small but stupidly over-tuned spaceplanes that take days to get right, but are really enjoyable to take up there and back again.

Conversely, I do not enjoy large vehicles of pretty much any description. They feel ungainly, and also I feel that I'm doing something wrong if I need something that large to start with. By "large" I mean about 80 tons take-off weight for spaceplanes, and a core over over 2.5 m for rockets.  I sometimes do use 3.75 and even 5 m parts when I have to, but I find it a chore rather than something that's enjoyable in its own right.

[Daedalus3000]

Before I left my stock career to play the beyond home planet pack I started using a launcher that used SRBs to lift the rocket to about 20km and then a rhino core stage to orbit. This way I could use the Rhino’s high isp on the first stage without having to deal with its performance drop at sea level. 

[theJesuit]

I'm use rockets only with a max tier 2, less than 140 ton launchpad.  Also using the Simplex Propulsion  mod so that .7 efficiency at sea level on kerbin,  needing two stages to get to orbit.

Simplex Propulsion in stock should be about equivalent to a 2.5ish scaled system like JNSQ without engine nerfs.

I also alwasy play career mode, and so need to update the game and start again befor getting too far.

So, a typical style is non asparagus 4 skippers on first stage, 1 on second and I can get 21ishton to orbit with 2.5m tanks.

The next step I think I can replace the 4 skippers with 2 mainsails for the same mass but much more power.  Ideally i want to hit 25-27ton to orbit, if not 30!

Peace

[BigStar Aerospace]

I use gigantic multi-hundred ton SSTO rockets that are fully recoverable and often cause lag on my PS4 but I use them to say that I lifted a 0.50 ton payload with a 17,000 ton rocket, of course that is metric tons. Also quick question, has anyone here just launched a rocket with out planning the orbit and then accidentally run into a satellite going 2km/s that technically hit you?

Edit: I forgot to add that fact that the 17,000 ton rocket can launch 2 Starships in full config to Duna, I couldn't land the Superheavy with Starship on top.

Edited February 15, 2021 by BigStar Aerospace

[Apelsin]

I haven't been terribly successful at heavy cargo SSTOs, so I tend to make reusable single or multi-stage rockets (using StageRecovery mod). Today I sucessfully tested my heaviest one yet. It uses 5 Deliverance nuclear gas-core aerospikes to deliver 260 tons of cargo to low orbit in a single stage, an then has plenty dV to land.

Spoiler

Because I'm using SystemHeat, the engines produce a lot of heat whenever they're active, so in order to avoid having to put non-aerodynamic radiators all over this thing, I have to use around 20 internal coolant tanks. These slow the heating down enough for it not to be a problem until after I leave the atmosphere, where I can deploy extendible radiators.

Spoiler

 

[SOXBLOX]

I use rockets that are waaaay overbuilt for the little tiny probes I launch on them.

Reusable and SSTO's are for sissies.

[camacju]

For lighter payloads I use a SSTO unless I'm feeling really lazy in which case I use a conventional rocket. For heavier payloads I always use a conventional rocket.

My conventional rocket designs aren't very mass efficient but they're usually pretty cheap. A stage of solid rockets, then a liquid rocket stage, is usually sufficient to get into orbit for pretty low cost.

[Leopard]

I tend to use basic, but overengineered launchers, I like elegant ones, I end up with clumsy ones