500 part, 205 ton guided rocket battlecruiser, so... How to get it in orbit?

[Guest]

I have been building this bad boy and now I want to get it in orbit. Thanks to the 500 parts (300 struts ) it is very sturdy, so it can take a punch, but how the hell do I lift 205 tons without to many extra parts (max 300 extra, 800 is about what my pc takes without unplayable framerate)? The highest I got was about 12000 meters with 22 jumbo tanks and 14 mainsails under it.

Appreciate your answers.

[alacrity]

Not to rain on your parade, but the sheer mass of that thing and the parts limitation may make it unliftable. At least as a single unit.

I think your option are limited to

A) redesign it to be segmented and take it up and 2 or 3 sections (I know I know... lots of reworking and prolly crying... I have been there more than once) and the rendevous would be nightmarish

Hyperedit that beast into orbit.

Alacrity

[Tyren]

Novapunch provides giant-ish propulsions. If i see that correct, you Need about 4100 kn just for that beast to push it up. I think the 5m Propulsion parts could provide enough for your purposes. Else, have a look in the "heavy lifter" thread, maybe there is what you Need.

[Guest]

Not to rain on your parade, but the sheer mass of that thing and the parts limitation may make it unliftable. At least as a single unit.

I think your option are limited to

A) redesign it to be segmented and take it up and 2 or 3 sections (I know I know... lots of reworking and prolly crying... I have been there more than once) and the rendevous would be nightmarish

Hyperedit that beast into orbit.

Alacrity

If you've been there you know that for my self respect I cannot do that.

[Guest]

Novapunch provides giant-ish propulsions. If i see that correct, you Need about 4100 kn just for that beast to push it up. I think the 5m Propulsion parts could provide enough for your purposes. Else, have a look in the "heavy lifter" thread, maybe there is what you Need.

I already looked there, but since it is more space-planish then rocketish I didn't get much wiser there.

[annallia]

NovaPunch does indeed provide giant-ish propulsions, though I am not sure even that could do it...

You could get orbital construction mod. Then you would only have to build a space station (could be a small one) with enough parts tanks to build your ship and fill the parts, then slap their little gizmo on your ship and put it in space that way.

[Tyren]

Hmm NP provides a 7500 kn bundle engine for the 5m Diameter parts...slap some Boosters in Asparagus on it (2,5m with mainsails) and you have somewhat 12-17kn thrust with enough Punch (intended ) to get into LKO. I just concerning about wobbling between payload and carrierpack

[annallia]

I've used those... the problem aside from wobble (which is considerable) is that 1, the big 5m tanks don't quite want to stay attached and those 5m engines burn through fuel at a crazy crazy rate. That said it could be done, though honestly if I were going to go for mods to get it into orbit I would go orbital construction, get the fun of building a station and don't have to try and fly a 205 ton brick.

[Guest]

I just had a nice setup for it with to rockets next to the 6 atomic engines staged in a cubical fashion. 18 mainsails get it up pretty well. But at 15000 meters it collapsed. I'll keep you guys posted if it works.

[Beerkeg]

Maybe debug Hack Gravity, get to 100km, speed up, and at a reasonable orbit speed Unhack Gravity

[1of6Billion]

Considered nukes?

[Guest]

I'm now at this point. I'm quite pleased with the result of this setup. It just needs to hold it's mainsail stage a bit longer.

She is a beauty

And my setup as of now:

I've added beams at the large decouplers in the circles. Now it won't tear itself apart and as you can see, it works. Just needs a bit more to get in orbit.

I could post the save file if anyone wants this thing btw. Part count currently at 754...

Edited August 14, 2013 by Guest

[Tyren]

A stage below the mainsails with aerospikes could do it...well, part Count will raise...quite a alot

[alacrity]

I often use the multi launch model with docking the beast together, but I have never built one of those "Kerbals at War" missile bargages. Not even sure how you could seperate them into launchable parts that could be reconnected.

As far as super heavy launchers I don't have a lot to add.... every time I try to build one bits fall off or the whole thing collapses on itself at around 8k altitude.

Alacrity

[rpayne88]

The orbital construction mod may work. It lets you ferry "spare parts" up to an orbiting station. Once you have enough spare parts, you can spawn your ship in orbit. I don't consider it cheating, since you are still hauling the same mass (actually, 1.25 times more) into orbit.

[allmhuran]

In my signature is a link to a 750 ton to LKO launch, stock parts only. Following that video on my channel is a brief tutorial video on how it was done.

[Troberg]

Both Orion and Novapunch will lift a 200 ton payload into orbit, no problem. You'll probably need to use a bunch of Quantum struts to keep things from collapsing, though.

[Spyritdragon]

As a Dutch-speaking person, i must say your names are quite creative.

Also, if you just want to get it to orbit and don't mind how its done, you can use infinite fuel and/or zero gravity on the debug menu :-).

Else, as stated before, use some of the heavy-duty engines and tanks from Orion, Novapunch etc. Either that, or add a few more mainsails and endure the lag for a minute or two untill you can drop the first stage.

[Redshift OTF]

I would probably use tons and tons of jet engines to get that thing really high and use orange tanks and mainsails to finish off the orbit.

[Guest]

Sorry for the quiety thing from my part, but it actually worked, with only stock parts. I only had to take the fighter off for balance and had to use RCS to finish my orbit . Now it's fully tanked and I did a rendevouz with the fighter so it's ready go to war.

Used an unorthodox staging. Kept all my mainsails, and used fuel ducts to make random loose tanks go empty and decouple those, so gradually I lost a lot of weight, and no thrust. The first 10K meters was a bitch, but after that it went surprisingly well. Because I connected the atomic engine fuel to the mainsails, it had just enough time to reach a decaying orbit, which I could finish with RCS. I had a lot more deltaV if I used my atomic engines, but they just don't give enough trust.

[capi3101]

Lessee...you'd need somewhere between 21,450-22,800 kN of thrust at liftoff. 5360-5700 in the center and 2015-2140 on the outboards assuming eight boosters in an asparagus staged setup. To keep it simple, a quad of mainsails plus eight quads of skippers...that'd be 36 more parts just for engines. You could then combine that with those Procedural Fuel Tanks the admins featured a week or two ago - that'd be another nine parts, plus a few extra to attach engines outboard.

The necessary struts on top of that would of course be another ten to twenty thousand parts...

Only other options I can think of to get that beast into space without substantially raising the part count are hacking gravity and hyperediting, if those are in the realm of options for you.

EDIT: You might be able to mount a quad of boosters on the port and starboard aft section. Put four mainsails on each booster. Again go with the Procedural Fuel Tanks. You do it right, you might wind up with an SSTO...I've done it myself with a ninety tonne payload lately...

Edited August 27, 2013 by capi3101

[M5000]

OP, replace all the SRBs on your "current setup" with an orange tank with a mainsail attached (and a small baby-sized tank to prevent overheating between the mainsail and the orange tank) have those feed in via fuel lines to the tank they're connected to, and set up staging appropriately. I think that might do it, you just need more power. If that doesn't do it, attach the SRBs on the outsides of those new orange tanks/mainsails. Visually speaking that doesn't look like it could attain orbit because the payload simply looks too large for the rocket.

Yes, I've been doing this long enough to be able to just look at a rocket and make a pretty good prediction on whether or not it will work.

[magnemoe]

How much of your 200 ton is fuel, I guess 100-150 ton.

The far easiest solution is to use this fuel to get you into orbit and refuel in orbit. now you only have to lift 100 ton.

You would need some extra fuel as your ship would not be ssto, but this simplify the process a lot. I would put the booster mainsails at the circles in the image above, that way you could actually keep the mainsails as high boost engines and part of the design. If not you need to connect them with the flat 360 liter tanks on decouplers.

You would have to connect the mainsail or their tanks to the same fuel system as the nuclear engines. Use oscar tanks on small struts and fuel pipe inn and out to create bends.

Your ship would not be an SSTO so you need booster however not much, 4 mainsails with one and an half orange tank each should work.

This 230 ton ship was lifted to orbit with 4 mainsails and 6-8 orange tanks. needed two orange tanks to refuel in orbit as the side boosters was empty.

http://i.imgur.com/lpLq3sw.png

The 50 ton eve lander on top and some minor stuff was added in orbit so it was not 276 ton on pad.