Single Stage to orbit - The Flying Brick

[dire]

This is the second iteration of the design, the first one got to orbit OK without the 6 extra side rockets, but I wanted a little more leeway in the design. The center rocket with 4 fuel tanks wasn\'t used at all. On my second launch, I got an apo of 1.2 mil before the first stage burned out, although escape velocity is probably feasible.

Also, all stock parts.

[millsw]

Nice rocket. Try A Pod, and 4 fuel tanks and an engine. That makes orbit

[dire]

Yeah, I know, bigger isn\'t better. But the rocket you described is the stage two of this rocket. I\'d rather launch it from 1.2 mil than sea level

[blurrr 2]

I use the same concept. My standard mun rocket gets into orbit with stage 1, and gets to the mun and back with stage 2 (four tanks and an engine).

[dire]

And here\'s my first mun landing, using the flying brick to lift off. Since I added fuel lines from the outer rockets to the inner ones, and jettison them at about 20k after liftoff, it wasn\'t really a \'single stage to orbit\'.

The charred spot in the picture is because I jetted a 4-tank stage when it still had a full tank at about 2km above munar surface (Note the almost-full tank for the return trip) 8)

[Kryten]

The charred spot in the picture is because I jetted a 4-tank stage when it still had a full tank at about 2km above munar surface

KSP doesn\'t change terrain textures like that; that\'s actually the shadow of Kerbin (i.e. an eclipse), which appears as a ciricle due to the limited draw distance for shadows.

[dire]

Ah. Then I guess I landed in an eclipse.

Lost in space, ran out of fuel with a perikerb of 5.5 mil on the return trip. Still getting the hang of it.

[NovaSilisko]

SSTO is hilariously easy with vanilla KSP, I hope that changes in the future. Still, we need more real rockets that are flying bricks or other unwieldy objects!

[Tim_Barrett]

SSTO is hilariously easy with vanilla KSP, I hope that changes in the future. Still, we need more real rockets that are flying bricks or other unwieldy objects!

Agreed, because the engines are heavier than they should be, whilst the tanks are alot lighter, proving staging less essential in rockets these days with stock.