Minimalist Lifter Challenge, a new take on lifting challenges.

[Naten]

This challenge is about using the lightest lifter, delivering the heaviest payload.

Like I said. The launcher is judged, not the challenger, so one challenger may submit multiple launchers.

NOTE: ALL CHALLENGERS' LAUNCHERS MUST NOT USE ANY FUELS OR ANY OTHER RESOURCES FROM THE PAYLOAD, EXCLUDING ELECTRICITYCHARGE.

This is how your score is calculated.

NOTE: YOUR (THE CHALLENGERS') LIFTERS MUST HAVE A MASS OF LESS THAN 50 TONS TO BE ELIGIBLE.

YOUR GOAL should be to lift mass into LKO with the lightest lifter possible. You can find out how much your lifter weighs by launching an empty one, and clicking the button on the middle-right of the Map screen and checking the vessel's info. You must be in Map mode (obviously, just wanted to clarify that ) and focused on your Lifter in Map Mode. You are scored like this:

x=launcher mass.

z=payload mass.

Round (x) to the nearest whole number. (x) is now (p).

50-p=m.

m*z=score.

OP's attempt:

Vessel: "IDK LOL"

Picture album on Imgur:

Click me.

Sorry, three pics, put URL there to an album instead of inserting the pictures directly.

My score...

a rounded 1 ton(s) of payload,

and a rounded 4-ton launcher.

x rounded is 4, so 4 is p.

50-p=46.

46=m.

m*z is 46*1=46.

46 POINTS! MISSION IDK LOL IS A SUCESS!

RULES: READ THESE FIRST!

-No bug abuse. Don't spam intakes too much. No more than a 10:1 intake:jet ratio.

-No debug cheats, including part clipping. Yes, you MAY use part clipping in case you must attach Advanced Canards, which are nearly impossible to attach. Just DON'T clip MULTIPLE PARTS INTO ONE.

-No. I repeat, NO mechanical Jeb autopilots. Only orbital info, smart A.S.S., etc.

-No fuels. That means NO RESOURCES OF ANY KIND from the PAYLOAD may be used.

-Mods you can use:

KW Rocketry

NovaPunch

MechJeb

Bac9 (B9) Aerospace

KSPX

Stockalike

Stock Improvement Project

(if these mods were pure, that means you did not edit them WHATSOEVER.)

Leaderboards:

1.Minilift-o-Matic

flown by dracklen

Score: 405 POINTS!

2.NoMrBond's Craft

flown by NoMrBond

Score: 142 points!

3.LOL WUT

flown by NATEN

Score: 46 Points.

4.Keriane VI

flown by Baenki

Score: 30 Points.

5.Keriane VI Advanced

flown by Baenki

Score: 29 Points.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Edited July 13, 2013 by Naten

[Pbhead]

how do you meansure payload? do you have to decouple something?

Is this final vs initial? Can I just launch an orange tank and a mainsail here, and call the empty orange tank my payload?

[soranno]

but this has been done so many times I don`t even...

[Naten]

how do you meansure payload? do you have to decouple something?

Is this final vs initial? Can I just launch an orange tank and a mainsail here, and call the empty orange tank my payload?

The rules state that no fuels may be used from the Payload. The Payload must be DELIVERED TO LOW-KERBIN ORBIT which should be at least 100x100 kilometers.

Please, read the rules.

[Naten]

but this has been done so many times I don`t even...

Yep.

I am going to change the challenge a bit to a minimalism lifting challenge.

This is not your average

"uuh, get oringe taynks to orbet mowst taynks wins"

challenge.

This is about minimalism now, I need to edit this...

[Baenki]

Keriane VI (concept)

Mass p: 35 tons

Payload z: 2.005 tons

m=50-p=15

m*z=30.075 points

Note this rocket uses SRBs as its 1st and 2nd stage.

Keriane VI Advanced (concept)

Mass p: 36tons

Payload z: 2.05 tons

m=50-p=14

m*z=28.7 points

Same as Keriane VI (concept) with an enhanced upper stage to enable KEO.

Keriane VI (concept) and Keriane VI Advanced (concept) are part of the Minimalist Keriane Bundle

Edited July 12, 2013 by Baenki

[Naten]

Keriane VI (concept)

Mass p: 35 tons

Payload z: 2.005 tons

m=50-p=15

m*z=30.075 points

Note this rocket uses SRBs as its 1st and 2nd stage.

Keriane VI Advanced (concept)

Mass p: 36tons

Payload z: 2.05 tons

m=50-p=14

m*z=28.7 points

Same as Keriane VI (concept) with an enhanced upper stage to enable KEO.

Keriane VI (concept) and Keriane VI Advanced (concept) are part of the Minimalist Keriane Bundle

Awesome job!

I'll add the Keriane VI Advanced and VI separately.

[Baenki]

Awesome job!

I'll add the Keriane VI Advanced and VI separately.

Thank you. The rest of the bundle is sadly to heavy to meet the criteria of the contest

[dracklen]

I've been playing around with Nova lately and wanted to try something like this, to try to improve my efficiency at getting the Odin into orbit. I always seem to have issues with with getting something with weight on it into orbital speeds with just jets, so I'm sure theres alot of improvements to be made, and I usually don't have the probe core on the main lifter, but seeing as how the spirit of the challenge was to have an independent lifter craft, I broke it up in the middle. I believe it fits all your rules, and I'm only using Jeb for the display information on this run:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

If my maths ok, thats 50-9.55 = 40.45 for the lifter

and 10 ton load => 404.5 score

Edit: Forgot to name it! Lets call it the minilift-o-matic 3.0

Edited July 13, 2013 by dracklen

[Naten]

405 for the score, we round things. Adding score soon!

[NoMrBond]

First try, playing around with a single B9 SABRE for everything

Javascript is disabled. View full album

10.29t lifter with 3.57t payload for [39.71*3.57] ~141.7?

[Naten]

First try, playing around with a single B9 SABRE for everything

-nope.avi-

10.29t lifter with 3.57t payload for [39.71*3.57] ~141.7?

Got it up! We round our numbers here, so 141.7 equals 142.

[Galacticruler]

Never thought to do probe deployment that way....perhaps this is a good use for my 36mx24m wings.

[NoMrBond]

I'd been toying with this sort of self-pegasus sat-launcher for a while, they'd just always gotten into the air and immediately done a backflip pancake before this one, nice challenge push to iron it out

Not really sure how to scale this one up (lift) and down (weight), the lifter is already 10t+ with just the one small 1.5t SABRE engine, dracklen already got 4 (3 jets + 1 insertion rocket, is it the orbit achiever 3 or something out of novapunch?) on his lifter and it was only 9.55 with 4.25t of engines!

Will have to take another look at it when I get home, being stuck at work on a Sunday morning is pants.

[dracklen]

I don't have too many ways to improve the design aside from making it more jet-based. I pretty much burn 70%+ of the jet fuel on a good ascent to get up to about 50+ km with 1800 m/s, and coast up a bit. Need the three jets to get off the ground at a decent speed, too. Not sure how the SABRE compares, but it seems like it might be losing some efficiency by not being able to drop the used jet tanks and intakes, as the orbital stage I used was using a .65t engine, and not much else.

The payload was the NovaPunch Odin part of their Odin-Thor lander package. Its nice because its really compact so things weren't too wobbly when I tried to lift them, it has SAS on it, and a decoupler (plus they're fun to mess around with once you get them to orbit). Also used their Orbital Achievement device engine, which is sort of a slightly bigger lv-909, although I think I could have gotten by using the lv-909 with a perfect run on the jets. The orbital stage is pretty minimal, and has the Nova 3.6 ton fuel tank, which is maybe a little bit overkill, but I couldn't quite do an orbit on the stock 2.25 ton fuel tank.

I think that someone could pull off a better designed jet stage with closer to the 10:1 intake ratio that could probably get a larger payload up and be going fast enough that it doesn't need a larger orbital stage. I can never seem to design a craft well enough to pull off the orbital speeds I've seen others do off just jets, though. Always seems to be too finicky if I use more than one central engine.

[Pbhead]

Well, after carefully reading the rules...

and realizing that something akin to my planned engine module for my grand tour might work well here...

I have not done my best, the optimal launcher would weigh 25 tons. My launcher did not weight 25 tons. Too bothered with lag to make it bigger at this time.

I have exactly a 10:1 ratio on intakes to jet engines.

You see. The rules prohibit fuel from the payload being used. it does not prohibit fuel from the lifter going to the payload.

Thus I present the "Perfectly Legal"

No mods used, except kerbal engineer (removed before take-off, of course) here to show you payload and launcher weights:

Payload:

Payload+launcher:

and here we are in orbit:

The payload with a last little bit of the launcher:

So, the payload is 47 tons, the launcher is 54-47= 7 tons...

so that is 43*47= 2021 Points.

That's a... 87% payload ratio I think.

Edited July 14, 2013 by Pbhead

[Naten]

I will add your score soon, exceptional job!