Best Heavy Lifter?

[Tw!sted]

I am wondering what is the best Heavy lifter you ever made? Can you post pictures or write something about how much it can carry or hows it made. Thanks.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Tw!sted

[blizzy78]

I think the "best" heavy lifter (or rocket in general) is one that gets the job done. That said, I recently made a generic lifter that can bring up to 80 t into 100 km orbit around Kerbin. It's not the most powerful lifter I've ever made, though.

Also, it's rather easy to construct those once you know how many engines you need - there's less trial, error and tedium involved. See my signature for a calculator to produce engine layout configurations for a given payload mass.

[Monkeh]

My best lifter is this one:

It has 15 mainsails. Drops 8 on the first asparagus, 4 on the next and then the last 2. Don't know how much it can lift but it's quite a lot. I got it to build my Munbase though.

Hope that gives you some inspiration. I can add the .craft file when I get home later if you like?

[bsalis]

Well, this just lifts fuel. Classic pancake style. 3793 ton on the pad, including clamps, with 656 ton to LKO.

So... what makes this work?

The core has decent TWR using mainsails, so it lifts itself easily. The outer arms have many skippers with a jumbo on top. That way, the most shear force between tanks is only the force of a skipper pushing an empty jumbo. For a rocket this size, integrity is more important than other factors. Basically everything lifts itself with fuel fed inwards to payload that lifts itself.

On pad

LKO

[chrischambers]

i have found the Zenith Rockers Family the best to use, as it covers all the bases for me.

[Johnno]

There's plenty of threads about heavy lifters.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37059-How-to-build-non-asparagus-heavy-lifter

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34449-How-to-build-a-heavy-lifter-that-doesn-t-collapse

Here's one of mine as an example. 200T to orbit, but it was designed purely to lift a interplanetary transfer stage.

[Carraux]

I agree, the best lifter ist the one, which gets the job done. Design depends on the job, of course. So different needs create different types of lifters.

I wanted to build a space station at an orbit of 400km height. It should serve as a refueling base for further space missions, haven for a tugboat, escape pod and a debris removing vessel. The goal was to put 100t into 400km orbit. During space station assembly with a standard design lifter I came across two annoying problems:

1. Space station parts tend to be massive (not that problem) and either long in size or rather wobbly. Or worst: Both. I got serius trouble with center of mass or structural integrity. The solution was not to put the payload on top of the lifter but to build the lifter around the payload.

2. Each further part I assembled put me in trouble of how to disconnect the payload from the lifter without giving the half build space station a strong push from the decoupler. The result was often a spinning station or worse, it broke apart. The solution was not to eject the payload from the lifter but to eject the lifter from the payload. The lifter docks with the payload onto the station. Then, the weakest decoupler available comes into action along with a bunch of retro rockets to leave the station smoothly without interfering with it.

So the final design looked like this (uses asparagus, but not all stages are needed if the payload is lighter than 100t). For display reasons the lifter is showd without payload. Payload would be mounted in the center of the cage. Design is nearly finished (needs only some additional batteries and thrusters). Only stock parts where used (except MechJab).

[Tw!sted]

Thanks Guys for the help just one more thing. How do I Check the thread as [Answered] ?

[allmhuran]

Using a thrust plate design I put 750 tons into LKO (video and tutorial video in sig). The technique seems to have virtually no limitation, you'll start failing due to lag (part count) before you fail due to structural integrity problems. I found this out when I went for a megaton payload.

[AlamoVampire]

I dont have a picture of just my standard heavy lifter, BUT, its built like this: Central core consists of a single orange tank with its half size below it with a fuel line connecting the both, with a mainsail for power. on the outside set up with 6 IDENTICAL boosters to the central core set up 'asparagus' style. All mainsail powered of course. It really is a nice set up, it can launch just about anything into just about any orbit you want. Adjust your payload as you see fit with what ever transfer and cruise stages you like, it really is a good lifter. not sure its max capacity..

[NoMrBond]

Hrm, heaviest one I can remember the pictures for is my one-piece Munbase, ~2800 tons at liftoff

The heaviest was nearer 4000 tons, I can't even remember what I was launching with that

[scribbleheli]

I must just be really terrible at this game. I just had to build a 790+ part on launch rocket, to send my 3 kerbals, lander and 2 rovers (93t and 250+ parts itself) to duna.

I just made it, But my rovers are literately lost in space. I think I cam out of time warp. Quicksaved and come back to it and they are gone....

[Sigma88]

All those answers you already have up here are good

Or, you could watch Scott put a flag on every Jool moon using only an orange tank

not really heavy lifting tho

[GoSlash27]

My "heavy lifter" is light for most folks; 20 tonnes to LKO. I just haven't had a need to launch huge payloads.

http://s52.photobucket.com/user/GoSlash27/slideshow/KSP/Lifter-Ception/Flight

The lifter is a fully recoverable SSTO that weighs less fully fueled than it's payload.

Operating cost is right around $43/ tonne.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited February 3, 2015 by GoSlash27

[-Velocity-]

For my VERY heavy lifters I longed used asparagus staging, with six stalks surrounding a central stalk. However, due to fuel flow problems I had to switch to vertical staging for my biggest lifter- it's almost impossible to get the stalks all draining correctly when there are multiple main-stalk tanks and nacelle tanks.

Anyway, I'll post screenshots if/when I remember, but I got a vertically-staged 8,000+ ton (sans the payload) heavy lifter working without too much difficulty, once I finally abandoned asparagus staging. It could put about 2000 tons into LKO if I remember correctly (so the total liftoff weight was in excess of 10k tons). If you're wondering what the heck such a huge rocket could be good for, I used it for launching an "interstellar" probe that ended up with a final anti-solar velocity of like 120 km/s, don't remember exactly. I do remember that I could do a little bit better than this- I put way too many solar panels on it- so, 140 km/s or more is probably possible.

This was stock, except for Mech Jeb.

Edited February 3, 2015 by |Velocity|

[cicatrix]

Define 'best', please, and 'heavy'.

What criteria to use: payload mass, payload fraction, price, time to orbit, orbit height, reusability, or maybe blast awesomeness?

You can look in the challenges section. I think there is a competition of sorts concerning payload mass to 70 km LKO and payload fraction.

[OhioBob]

I am wondering what is the best Heavy lifter you ever made?

How heavy is "heavy"? Since I prefer small payloads, the biggest thing that I've every launched had a lift capacity of 80 t, which is small by many people's standards. I tend to favor simple 2-stage or 2-stage + SRBs designs. My 80 t lifter was just two stages yet, considering its simple design, it had a fairly impressive 0.175 payload fraction. I would have to consider it my best heavy lifter, though I usually use far smaller rockets. I operate under the premise that miniaturization is key to good spacecraft engineering. If I have to build a behemoth rocket to lift my payload, then I consider that a failure in payload design. Below is my 80 t lifter (shown without payload).

Edited February 3, 2015 by OhioBob

[Pecan]

Has anyone replying to this thread, especially to the OP, noticed that it's 18 months old?

[GoSlash27]

Has anyone replying to this thread, especially to the OP, noticed that it's 18 months old?

haha nope!

I got necro- trolled!

-Slashy

[WuphonsReach]

It also depends on the dry/wet mass ratio of the fuel tanks that you use. The 2.5m Rockomax tanks are all 1:9 (dry:wet) ratio, some (all?) of the smaller 1.25m tanks are 1:8 (or thereabouts). Most of the KW 1.25 and 2.5m tanks are 1:10 ratio, while the unpainted KW tank (1.2x the capacity of the Jumbo-64) is around a 1:22 ratio.

[-Velocity-]

Also, the "best" heavy lifter is now greatly influenced by the cost, since funds at higher campaign difficulties are much more limited. I'm finding I'm using a heck of a lot more SRBs now. In fact, my latest "medium" lifter used SOLELY SRBs (29 of the biggest ones...) for the first two stages! I found out how much harder big rockets are to control when you don't have thrust vectoring! I am appreciating how the campaign is forcing us to do things we'd never considered doing before

[panzer1b]

I tend to stick to 2 types of lifters, depending on what in particular im trying to lift.

For general purpose payloads, i make a asparagus, and since i prefer lower part count, it is usually not as efficient and has 7 engines. Most payloads are lifted with a stack of 7 1 high jombo64s with either skipper or mainsial depending on weight. the next step up increases teh center tank by 2 and adds another stage ontop of that (for heavier payloads). For really heavy lifting its 7 mainsails, and 14 J64 tanks 2 each atop 1 engine, staged so that it dumps 2 tanks at a time. Then if i really need to lift mass, i switch to 3.5ms, which are generally for 100T minimum payloads. And ofc i follow a very similar procedure, except i alsmot always add a smaller stage between that and the payload. My biggest rocket ive ever actually needed (due to limiting myself to a 300 part ship MAX) is 14 of those 14400 tanks, and 7 of the 3200kn thrust quads. Ive never actually needed any more then this sofar, and anything bigger becomes overly complex staging, laggy, and just hard to strut properly. Only time i build bigger rockets then this is when i rarely use B9 for those capital ship parts, there i need those OP engines they come with to get em orbital.

The other type of rocket i use alot is a vertically staged puller. I dont know what the term is, but sometimes i need the launcher to be ABOVE the payload (any ship with alot of wings needs such a lifter to not flip over). This becomes alot harder to achieve, and sofar the heaviest capital ship that uses wings for armor plate ive managed is 100t, but with the quad super heavy engines, you can usually pull it off. These are also much more annoying to make, as each lifter needs to be 100% custom made for every capital ship, some even as complex and having a lower stage as well as fuel tanks above the ship, those really look and work odd. Anyways, my most recent friggate i sent into orbit used one of these dual rockets, i had a small booster system underneath, which blasted me above 3K, then that dropped off, and i continued on the upper engines that also were running full power the whole time. And that one took probably 100 strusts to keep it from breaking apart or tearing the payload (frigate ship) apart.

There is 1 final type ive actually began to mess with, for extremely heavy payloads, is top fuel tank dumping. As in i decouple a fuel tank atop a stack of 2-3 and then separatron it away. this lets me essentially lets me dump fuel tanks 2 by 2, instead of having to wait for a full stack to drain out. Its rather tough to pull off, as the separatrons dont exactly work that well with heavy stuff being pushed up by the main craft, but when it works i can get much better efficiency without resorting to pancake rockets (which i avoid as they are both unrealistic, annoying to stage, and with the upcoming aerodynamics, it looks like taller will be far more effective).

but anyways, one main tip ive learned is to not go too much on thrust, and also not go too little either. Your rocket should more or less fly around 120 or so near the ground, if its much faster you have too much thrust, if its much lower you need more, and anything in between isnt horribly inefficient. You should also be using from 100-90% throttle the whole way up as well, as when your throttle is lower, it means you arent using the max engine power, and perhaps a smaller lighter engine would suit the rocket better. Basically a hard rule i have, if im throttling down below 2/3, i need to cut down either on the number of engines, or swap them for weaker ones. But i still try to keep throttle around 1005 without going too slow or too fast.

[Jouni]

It's interesting to see how rocket design has evolved in KSP. Back in the old bad days, anything bigger than an orange tank was a heavy payload, because the joints were so weak, and we didn't even have 3.75 m parts. Now you can lift hundreds of tonnes to orbit with minimal strutting, and even simple rockets have similar payload fractions as the old asparagus monsters had.

These days my favorite heavy lifter is a slight variation of the rocket I used to launch my Jool-5 ship:

It can deliver around 200 tonnes to a low Tylo orbit, and probably around 600 tonnes to LKO (in FAR). The SRBs are attached directly to the boosters, because the original rocket was built in tier-2 VAB, and I couldn't afford spending 36 parts (12 decouplers, struts, and sepratrons) to make them separable. Now I don't have the limitation anymore, but the rocket looks better this way.

[-Velocity-]

This was my gigantic heavy lifter. The top part is a ~1800 ton test payload.

Test payload in orbit-

I'd load some pictures of it launching my interestellar probe, but it takes the game 10 minutes to load it on the launch pad, and half the time the game just locks up and crashes. The probe had too many parts for the memory allocation scheme to easily handle. If only they'd make some bigger xenon tanks...

Edited February 3, 2015 by |Velocity|