What's the highest mass you've ever put into Kerbin orbit with a single ship?

[Spatzimaus]

I just launched my biggest ever vessel: 1.4675 tons. It's an ion-propelled probe intended to fly to Bop. Here it is, still attached to a 2634-ton booster (11846 tons at launch) in a nice circular Kerbin orbit:

It's sarcasm, of course. The Brick-41 booster (41 linked stacks of 3.75m rockets) is the biggest thing I've ever launched, and I was using that tiny probe as a test. The booster is an SSTO, and is in a stable 87x82km orbit with just over 1000m/s of delta-V remaining, a small part of which I used to safely de-orbit it afterward. (It launches with 5583m/s of delta-V and a TWR of 1.73.) With no payload, it reached orbit with about 1300 tons of fuel remaining, for a weight of 2634 tons. It can safely handle a payload of 800-900 tons and still reach a circular orbit with almost dry tanks (~1300 tons), but at a part count of 741 parts (plus whatever struts you need to connect to the payload), I'll only use it for my giant space stations. The thing is so large that steering it with flywheels drains about 30 energy per second from the batteries, and it takes about 5 minutes to turn itself around for the de-orbit burn if I use only those flywheels. (The turn rate is much higher when the engines are on, because it gimbals the engines; when I steer, I usually turn the engines to low power so that it doesn't take nearly so long.)

To give you a size reference, here it is just after leaving the launch pad:

Next up would be the Brick-49, at 13000 tons launch weight, but right now I have nothing to use it for. In theory I could keep going even further, but I'm already pretty much out of room in the VAB and have to use various tricks to get around that.

[Neutrality]

2100 tons, all stock, no cheats/mods.

A lander to get a kerbal to plant a flag on Eve and return to Eve orbit, with a single craft. Had to use fuel from the lander to get it into orbit, so it's not fully fueled (lots of refueling missions next).

First stage:

120 mainsails pancake staged

Second stage was 78 mainsails

Third stage with 54, this is the part that will land on Eve once it's refuelled

Finally in orbit, only a few tanks still have fuel

View from above

Poor ol' Jeb's stuck at the bottom, next to all those loud engines

At 1556 parts and 14,146 tons, it's not for the faint of heart (or processor power) http://www./download/33y4hgtdypuk2y7/_G_Eve+Lander+1.craft

[NecroBones]

My largest now is an 1100-ton payload (about 1500 tons total mass to orbit). It was about 7500 tons on the pad.

[CalculusWarrior]

I believe my record is 'only' about 100 tonnes, which I created a super-heavy asparagused lifter for the task. I haven't tried building heavy lifters with the new parts yet though, I'm sure I could go higher!

[problemecium]

16,777.2 tons, via HyperEdit.

OHHHH you meant WITHOUT cheating! ;P

Does a 1000 ton SSTO count?

[cantab]

Since I saw this thread, I decided for laughs to throw a few hundred tons of xenon gas into orbit.

No fancy fuel lines, just two stages to orbit with the ARM parts. The xenon depot is 315 tons, of which 175 is xenon, using Near Future Propulsion's octo-girder tanks. That's 1.75 million units of xenon, or the equivalent of 2,500 stock xenon tanks, or enough to run a single PB-ION for 42 days straight.

[michaelhester07]

My current record is my Antares Titan 2 Kethane station at just over 100 tons. I have plans (in my mind) for a 400 ton kethane station. Wanna drain one of those 400 point fields on Minmus in a single landing.

[Rarity]

No pics, but probably around 400-500 tons. The current lifter I've been using on my latest save is probably the strongest one I've ever made, and it easily throws 250 tons into LKO and will still have enough fuel to transfer you half way to Duna without using nukes. If I replace the central engine with a cluster of nukes, then the lifter itself can also act as a transfer stage with around 9k delta-v depending on the payload.

[michaelhester07]

Javascript is disabled. View full album

After some extensive research into custom radial engines (and a fairly annoying glitch) I managed to throw 500 tons of rocket into orbit on what could have been a SSTO. That album shows the end result.

[Whackjob]

My most recent one, but only a picture of it going up:

One point four million liquid fuel on the pad.

Edited May 20, 2014 by Whackjob

[pauix]

My most recent one, but only a picture of it going up:

http://i.imgur.com/UE3eINL.png

One point four million liquid fuel on the pad.

What are you gonna do with this ship? Lift the VAB into orbit?

[mobius_One6]

My most recent one, but only a picture of it going up:

http://i.imgur.com/UE3eINL.png

One point four million liquid fuel on the pad.

Is this an SSTO?

[Whackjob]

What are you gonna do with this ship? Lift the VAB into orbit?

Well, gotta finish building it first. Then I'll find something for it to do.

[Jr6150x]

My most recent one, but only a picture of it going up:

http://i.imgur.com/UE3eINL.png

One point four million liquid fuel on the pad.

I felt the need to say this.

HOLY CRAP

You sir, are amazing

[Temeter]

I think my biggest ship was around 1600 tons, using the 3.75m KWRocketry-stuff (afair no asparagus after first stage). Most of the time, there is just no reason to lift heavier weights. You might have a potential 2000ton ship, but bringing it into orbit with full tanks is just a hassle. Make it 1.2k and refuel it in orbit. Or just land it on the moon and mine kethane. And then it sits there because playing with 5fps isn't fun in the long run.

[von Ziegendorf]

Not really a stock rocket (Joint Reinforcement used) but here is my heaviest RSS launch vehicle:

Capable of lifting about 200 tons to Earth orbit

[michaelhester07]

Since I started posting here I've launched much bigger rockets. My current record is below

The Spacedock (above) is easily 800 tons on orbit. It was SSTO launch too as there was no room for boosters.

[LaytheAerospace]

My "standard" heavy lifter carries 300t of payload to Jool. Not sure what it will take to LKO. Maybe 500t? I have an "ultra-heavy" that I wasn't able to find an upper limit on, that was used to send a ~500t payload to Eve. Tried putting bigger payloads on to test it, but the rocket started exploding on launch before I found the limit.

[ximrm]

how the hell did you get that monsterstation into space?

[Barney]

Oh you boys with your big engines, here is a 100t to 100km orbit with only LV-T30's... I haven't even tried to use the big ones yet. Someday when i have time i will do some test launches.

A block is 48 LV-T30's with 10320kn thrust, B block is 30 LV-T's with 6450kn and C block is 14 LV-T's with 3010kn. And failed the orbital burn a little so not perfect 100x100...

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/9fHLG/embed"></iframe>

[michaelhester07]

how the hell did you get that monsterstation into space?

If you're talkin about mine it's the magic of custom radial engines. I'll do a small tutorial on it when I get home before I get rolling on the orbital construction.

[Quiana]

I haven't tried launching severely massive payloads into space, but after an accident with a save file I had to relaunch a challenge vessel into orbit. Being oddly shaped as well as having the lazy-bone kick in, I figured I'd launch the entire vessel pre-assembled into space. Only 109 tons, but there was an interesting catch due to the design of the craft, as seen below.

This is also using stupid_chris' stock rebalance files, where the ARM NASA parts are rebalanced closer to the other traditional stock engines. It makes it more challenging as well as having a unique limit due to my design. Apparently, that lander at the bottom of the central part of my core ship looses its radial tanks due to FAR stress if I achieve 1.7 TWR before reaching 10k in height.

I didn't want to over-engineer a design with liquid rockets, so I used the larger NASA-styled SRBs that Chris upscales and tweaked them down where they achieve a rather wonderful curve from 1.05 to 1.67 right at 10k. The SRBs actually carried that thing up to 33k~ by themselves before the ascent engines were fired. It could have easily achieved a 100k+ orbit, though I jettisoned the ascent stage when it was just shallow enough to still return for burn-up (as per 'no debris' policies I inflict on myself as much as I can).

PS: Yes the only thing holding those two separate stacks together is three struts and the upper core vessel itself. I was surprised at how stable it was without any joint reinforcement mods/etc.

Edited May 21, 2014 by Quiana

[Vector]

I just had a breakthrough: how to keep vessel roll from getting out of control on large vessels. Reaction wheels and RCS by themselves are too weak but RCS on a torsion rod that steers a large engine appears to work in some cases.

13,103 tons on the pad, 725 parts, 3 stages, third stage in orbit is 2300 tons:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Craft file here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25339567/KSP%20Craft%20Files/Big%2045c6.craft

I had problems with going bigger, because the physics behaves differently with larger part counts, and what "should" be stable tends to spontaneously explode.

[Bekiekutmoar]

Wow. Much craft. Very gigantic. My biggest rockets masses somewhere between 220 and 250 tons on the launchpad and are able to deliver up to 30-40 tons to LKO. Absolutely tiny compared to most creations I see here ... !

[technicalfool]

About this much:

Although this was before the new SLS parts, and I was straining my CPU to manage it. Whole bunch of probes with enough fuel to get to Jool without nuke engines (or at least, with only a single nuke as the final stage). I think it was about half a kiloton all told.

I should try beating this, now that 3.75m parts are standard. Shouldn't be too tricky.