Weekly Challenge #40: Cursed Rocket!

[Dakota]

Build your most cursed rocket! Space shuttles as side boosters? Sure! SLS core as upper stage? Why not! Launch Starliner on a Falcon 9? THAT... may just work actually...
Get weird, go nuts, unleash your inner Dr. Frankenstein! But whatever you build, it must 1. Get to orbit, and 2. Cause maximum discomfort to rocket nerds.

[The Aziz]

Ok look, shuttles as side boosters are a legit way of getting to orbit. 

Twice the cargo space plus perfect symmetry, unlike normal STS design. Tested and confirmed to work in ksp1

That is, unless they're used as expendable boosters and dropped halfway to space..

[Aeolica]

A practical super-heavy SSTO "Volcano" with a 900t LKO payload.  x19 "Mammoth II" engines provide 7170 tons of sea-level thrust. It can be recycled but the rocket must be selected as the upper stage.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Aeolica

[NexusHelium]

ohhhhh... I don't like that. How many frames were you getting?

Edited December 1, 2023 by NexusHelium

[Aeolica]

2 hours ago, NexusHelium said:

ohhhhh... I don't like that. How many frames were you getting?

10-12 by launching

Edited December 1, 2023 by Aeolica

[ItanMark]

What about creating similar challenge in the KSP 1 category? 

[yobehtmada]

Ok, hear me out. This ISN'T a pendulum rocket. Sort of.  The engines are still at the top, with fuel and potentially payload below them; but it's not for stability reasons.  
One uses Asparagus staging to drop dead weight during the launch, but you also drop useful weight in the form of engines. This design keeps the engines, but still drops the empty fuel tanks. Drop staging. 





As you see, the engines are at the top, and fuel tanks hand below them, otherwise bare save for a some struts and fuel lines. Fuel drains up from the bottom tank, and when it's empty, you decouple it. For the particular iteration, it has 12 drop tanks.  Earlier tests used more, smaller tanks, but the game won't load the craft if it has more than about 20 tanks. I imagine it has difficulty with the fuel flow calculations. 
It has about 4.6KM delta V with a 1.2 TWR via eight vector engines. A more traditional rocket with the same amount of fuel, engines and TWR only has 2.3km delta V. 





For this design, I dropped the tank whenever my fuel gauge fell by about 6 tons of CH4. 



Everything else proceeds more or less as normal.





Ok, we can skip a bit. Here is when I reached my target AP. Used Win+Shift+S to take the screenshots, which increased my throttle. Messed me up some, as you will see.






Below is proof of orbit. Flubbed it a bit. Was a tad unstable. Needs further design iterations, but hey, these are ugly rockets.



After I tidied up the orbit a little. Heh.



Could have made it uglier, but wanted to spend time with wife and son, so needed to be quick. Pain in the neck, but so is asparagus staging.

[NexusHelium]

I would like to present: Upside Down Bob! My eye was actively twitching when I made this.

Launch

And here it is in orbit. Took a second to get everything right (Surprisingly)

Orbit

I can finally get back to doing something sensible.

Edited December 3, 2023 by NexusHelium

[Mikki]

I have started a truely cursed probe, if i just knew earlier...

I`ve put two large comm dishes to a xenon driven probe with a nuclear powersource and some batteries, hence the high dV...

I launched before dawn, so my probe would leave the Kerbol system in a brachistochrone trajectory... i pointed straight up and watched it rising... After leaving Eeloo`s orbit the communication ended with the probe, what a failure... now it shoots away with close to 11 km/s without any control.

Spoiler

 

Farewell, farewell...

Edited December 3, 2023 by Mikki

[Poppa Wheelie]

16 hours ago, yobehtmada said:

I dropped the tank whenever my fuel gauge fell by about 6 tons of CH4

I think you threw away a lot of fuel.

Your 6 tons of fuel consumed was spread out among all remaining tanks.  Initially, with 12 drop tanks, when you reach the 6 total tons consumed, each drop tank has emptied 0.5 tons, but the remainder of each of those tanks is full.  With 9 drop tanks remaining, the 6 tons will be spread out as 2/3 ton per drop tank.  With 6 drop tanks left that will be 1 ton per tank.  Etc.

In order to make sure each drop tank is empty before dropping it, you'll need to transfer the remaining fuel out.

[mattihase]

1 hour ago, Poppa Wheelie said:

I think you threw away a lot of fuel.

Your 6 tons of fuel consumed was spread out among all remaining tanks.  Initially, with 12 drop tanks, when you reach the 6 total tons consumed, each drop tank has emptied 0.5 tons, but the remainder of each of those tanks is full.  With 9 drop tanks remaining, the 6 tons will be spread out as 2/3 ton per drop tank.  With 6 drop tanks left that will be 1 ton per tank.  Etc.

In order to make sure each drop tank is empty before dropping it, you'll need to transfer the remaining fuel out.

fuel lines and decoupler make fuel flow actually work from tank to tank depending on the direction of the fuel line. similar to ksp1 except without the manual fuel flow editor that got added in at some point after 1.0 (yet)

[Poppa Wheelie]

1 hour ago, mattihase said:

fuel lines and decoupler make fuel flow actually work from tank to tank depending on the direction of the fuel line. similar to ksp1 except without the manual fuel flow editor that got added in at some point after 1.0 (yet)

OK, great!  I didn't recognize any fuel lines in your screenshots.

[Kishmond]

I just randomly put some parts together until something worked, and ended up making a vary bad way to put an accidentally cool-looking satellite into orbit.

It almost looks like a carnival ride being sent into space.

Spoiler

Satellite was successfully put into a 200km orbit.

[Kishmond]

Accidentally pointed the wrong end to space? No problem! Just rotate your engines.

Spoiler

All the previous stages needed a little nudge.

Detour to the mun

Had to do a lot of rocket braking to slow down to a reasonable speed.

Accidentally put the landing legs on in the wrong direction.