Post your heavy lifters!

[musicpenguin]

Post and Share your heavy Lifers!! Lifting Capacity? What does it cargo? Include .craft file if you want.

Edited October 25, 2015 by musicpenguin

[Giggleplex777]

Here's my very efficient 40 ton lifter:

I'll post the .carft file later, but it requires a very good gravity turn to get it to orbit.

Edited April 23, 2013 by Giggleplex777

[Levelord]

My SSTO lifter that can lift a Rockomax tanker into orbit and return safely at KSC to be re-used.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Levelord

[Laggy]

I would very much be interested in some heavier lifters if people have them.

I'm currently trying to lift ~140 tons up, and my current lifter design has gotten into a stable orbit once, but I can't seem to replicated it. Anyone lifting things that heavy? I could do it in multiple lifts easily enough if I have to, but meh rendezvous's and docking is a pain

[DaveofDefeat]

[Sunsparc]

I would very much be interested in some heavier lifters if people have them.

I'm currently trying to lift ~140 tons up, and my current lifter design has gotten into a stable orbit once, but I can't seem to replicated it. Anyone lifting things that heavy? I could do it in multiple lifts easily enough if I have to, but meh rendezvous's and docking is a pain

Try the Zenith Family.

[sjwt]

This is not my best, but its the one I am currently working on.. my 343 family of lifters..

The 343-MkI-b is rated to 36+Tonnes to dock# with a station @ 70-200km LKO*

Craft file

Note that one of the Decouplers is replaced with an SAS module..

Decouple the one above the SAS before launch.

#Save RCS fuel for docking, please use only RCS units close to the center of mass or correctly spaced both ends.

*Orbit rating includes 60kms-210kms to allow catching up or falling behind stations within the rated limits.

As you are still within the atmosphere at 60km orbits, sparingly use fuel to stay at 60kms... 300-600 units of fuel is provided for this allowing 300 units for docking and return.

Flight plan...

Set course to HDG00 PITCH90, throttle to 100%, turn on SAS and launch, keep staging on empty tanks until you reach 300m/s (With 64 tones should be around 16kms)

@300m/s change course to HDG90 PITCH30, Hold this and keep staging until desired AP is reached than MECO, keep that PITCH30, this will be a long turn.

Reach AP then ride your AP out to circurlise..

[Akalaël]

And there we go : 155 tons in orbit, pretty unstable some times at launch

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/stock-enormus-refiuling-and-deep-space-ship/

[heavylifter]

My heavy (and, uh, large) stock launch vehicle puts 7 nearly full large orange tanks into 100km orbit.

It is surprisingly reliable (I've been happily surprised), especially given that it works without SAS.

I haven't yet asparagus staged it (it is a pain to get it working with how symmetry works right now)-- it is just "star" staged, nor have I tried to optimize the flight path.

Delta-v available after achieving 100km orbit is 13415 with the mainsail turned off, and 5735 with the mainsail on.

[John FX]

Try the Zenith Family.

Looks like the zenith family top out at 108T, if you want 140t+ I`d use the 281T launcher posted here. It`s pretty stable and at a push can launch 300T to 74Km. (MJ2 - 74Km orbit, start turn 5km end 65km 39% turn)

[888gamer888]

What i use is really basic. Basically i use an asparagus staging to lift my stuff. It's really efficient and has a lot of power. It has 133 parts and has 3 main lifting stages left when reaching an orbit. I had other designs with 3 nuclear engines on the central lifting stage but it takes quite a while to reach an orbit. It can go to moon and back on its own. Here is a picture of it:

[Temstar]

Looks like the zenith family top out at 108T, if you want 140t+ I`d use the 281T launcher posted here. It`s pretty stable and at a push can launch 300T to 74Km. (MJ2 - 74Km orbit, start turn 5km end 65km 39% turn)

Actually there is one bigger one, it's in the Zenith thread but on page 6:

Supernova SHLLV - 160 tons to LKO

[PolecatEZ]

I laugh at your puny baby-man rockets.

270 tons into orbit, 100% stock, with 1200dV left to return to Kerbin, or crash it on the Mun if you want. She picks up a bit of a spin, but it actually helps eject the stages, and she's rock solid again by the last 2 stages. Part count starts ~500, but quickly drops to 100 or so by the final stages, this is very manageable in the .20 version era.

Mechjeb settings 12km start, 70km end, 0 angle, 30% gradiant.

IMPORTANT: Tap Grp 0 to turn off gimbals on outer stages or face the consequences.

Also note, the game now insists on putting a kerbal in the ship, just EVA him before launch and all will be fine.

She isn't pretty, but like Big-Nosed Sally, this is a working girl and not there for looks.

Get'er here. [sTOCK]

Edited May 26, 2013 by PolecatEZ

[GusTurbo]

I've never seen that technique for clustering Mainsails before. That's awesome.

[Varyon]

Odd. Every time I build Mainsail stacks like that, the engines just shake themselves off, or they crush the center tank once the fuel runs out. I need to vivisect that rocket if yours...

[PolecatEZ]

Those aren't Mainsails mostly, just the very center. Skippers for the surrounding 3. Also, strutting them inside the tank together helps, as well as turning off the gimballing on the mainsail.

My main problem with these designs is that an upper orange fuel tank will randomly go poof in the middle of the flight regardless of the number of struts bracing it. Very annoying, took 20 launches or so to iron out that problem, and changing the load size by +/- 10 tons can bring the issue back. Theoretically I could push this thing to 275 tons payload, but that fuel tank problem is killing me.

Its the exact fuel tank every time, its been plaguing me since 220 tons, and continues to plague me at the 270 or so seen here.

*Update*

Got the 270 tons into orbit with 30dV to spare. Just took some extra struts to distribute the load to the very outer stages.

Edited May 26, 2013 by PolecatEZ

[sgt_flyer]

here's a heavy lifter not here for efficiency, but for the looks (soyouz style lifter )

it's still able to send 54 tons to a 100x100 LKO with fuel to spare , it was derived from the last version of my kliper's launch rocket - all details and downloads here.

note : the heavy lifter is not the 944 parts monstrosity this one is not able to be converted for heavylifting (i tried, it collapses under the payload's weight ) ^^

[Colonel_Panic]

I have a few fantastically efficient lifters rated for 100 and 150-200 ton payloads.. the 100-ton one is solid as a rock, but 150 is unstable and tends to break apart if you attach it to anything toward the upper end of its capability (it has the TWR and dv to lift 200 tons, but for some reason the weight of the payload will cause it to disintegrate mid-ascent when you get close to the 200-ton mark. No amount of struts or reinforcements at the points of failure will help, so I suspect there's an upper limit to the mass the physics engine can handle before joint failure occurs.)

It's interesting because the same lifter will perform perfectly fine on a 150-ton payload and reach orbit with 100+ tons of fuel to spare in the final 2 stages.... but with 200 tons, it just breaks apart and no amount of tweaking will ever make it reliable... only way to get it in space is to keep re-trying the launch over and over again until it randomly works.

I'll post a .craft once subassembly loader is working again, since I can't access my pre-built lifters right now.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Colonel_Panic

[GusTurbo]

I've done some preliminary testing and this engine cluster might be effective for heavy lifting purposes. It has 10 more thrust than a single mainsail and is much more efficient (I haven't done the ISP calculation, but the LV-T30 and the Skipper both have higher ISP than the Mainsail).

I was able to lift 100 tons to 100x100 orbit without asparagus staging, just six boosters feeding into the core stage and dropping all at once.

Edited May 26, 2013 by GusTurbo

[PolecatEZ]

I have a few fantastically efficient lifters rated for 100 and 150-200 ton payloads.. the 100-ton one is solid as a rock, but 150 is unstable and tends to break apart if you attach it to anything toward the upper end of its capability (it has the TWR and dv to lift 200 tons, but for some reason the weight of the payload will cause it to disintegrate mid-ascent when you get close to the 200-ton mark. No amount of struts or reinforcements at the points of failure will help, so I suspect there's an upper limit to the mass the physics engine can handle before joint failure occurs.)

It's interesting because the same lifter will perform perfectly fine on a 150-ton payload and reach orbit with 100+ tons of fuel to spare in the final 2 stages.... but with 200 tons, it just breaks apart and no amount of tweaking will ever make it reliable... only way to get it in space is to keep re-trying the launch over and over again until it randomly works.

I'll post a .craft once subassembly loader is working again, since I can't access my pre-built lifters right now.

I spent more hours than is healthy trying to figure it out, and what I eventually got was that the load needs to be distributed as evenly as possible across the entire lifter, as flat as possible. Easier to do than explain. The main idea is that on each of your "core" boosters in your main stack, you must have struts going in such a way that the weight distribution from the payload spreads over it evenly. Anything uneven will eventually create shearing that will disintigrate fuel tanks randomly (see pic above). The upper limit on a compact load is more like 400-450 tons if you distribute it to six core booster stacks. So far I've gotten to 315 tons distributing it 75%x3 and 25%x3 and will probably hit 400 with a little more tweaking. TWR becomes a major issue the higher you go.

[ouion]

My heavy lifter

[Supernovy]

Here is my station part lifter.

[M5000]

Forget this post.

Edited May 27, 2013 by M5000
Not stock, yo.

[ixolate industries]

that's not stock but doesn't look to bad

[M5000]

You know what? I completely didn't even comprehend the [stock] tag. Like I read the title 5 times and my brain had entirely convinced me that it was not there. Apologies, I should edit it out.