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

[loknar]

About 50t, I refuse to use asparagus monsters or mods.

I agree but I respect their effort.

I think I don't like these monsters because they're not realistic. With real aerodynamic effects these would be almost impossible (drag effects, strain, stall). I restrict myself by using FAR aerodynamic realism mod. But I may be wrong and in any case I love to watch.

[Lojik]

I agree but I respect their effort.

I think I don't like these monsters because they're not realistic. With real aerodynamic effects these would be almost impossible (drag effects, strain, stall). I restrict myself by using FAR aerodynamic realism mod. But I may be wrong and in any case I love to watch.

without sounding disingenuous i feel that "if it can be done stock" it is within the realism of the "kerbal" universe

[totalitor]

533 t.

Ugly isn't it?

[Clouds]

My refueling station (which I have not yet even docked to... ) - 378 tons (counting leftover engines).

It still has some of its lifter attached because I overbuilt it and there wound up being a significant amount of fuel still in the leftover lifter tanks (about 2.5 orange tanks' worth, in addition to the 6 intended full tanks.)

The launch configuration basically has the station AS a "lift plate" for an asparagus cake.

[mellojoe]

I was happy when I got 150t straight into orbit. You guys ... some of these things are HUGE

[Hodo]

I agree but I respect their effort.

I think I don't like these monsters because they're not realistic. With real aerodynamic effects these would be almost impossible (drag effects, strain, stall). I restrict myself by using FAR aerodynamic realism mod. But I may be wrong and in any case I love to watch.

I also run FAR, but Asparagus launches are possible in real life. Just not to the extent some of these builders use. I have used it in FAR, but with only 6 SRBs, 3 on the first stage, and 3 on the second stage. It was to get the craft up to 10km alt, after that it relied on its liquid booster.

[allmhuran]

And with real solar radiation, life support requirements, weather, costs, and astronaut mortality rates (let alone the additional structural complexity in the rockets themselves... plumbing and other internal parts, shielding, redundancy, etc) about 95% of what people do in KSP would be almost impossible.

Good thing KSP is a game, and is subject only to the limitations that the game itself imposes.

[Hodo]

And with real solar radiation, life support requirements, weather, costs, and astronaut mortality rates (let alone the additional structural complexity in the rockets themselves... plumbing and other internal parts, shielding, redundancy, etc) about 95% of what people do in KSP would be almost impossible.

Good thing KSP is a game, and is subject only to the limitations that the game itself imposes.

With the Ioncross crew support plugin you can make it a bit closer.

If someone wants realism I can suggest 5 very good mods.

1- Farram Aerospace Research (FAR)

2- Arcturas Thrust Corrector

3- Deadly Re-Entry (DRE)

4- Ioncross Crew life support

5- Remote Tech communications

With those 5 getting to the Mun becomes a real challenge.

[mellojoe]

I agree but I respect their effort.

I think I don't like these monsters because they're not realistic. With real aerodynamic effects these would be almost impossible (drag effects, strain, stall). I restrict myself by using FAR aerodynamic realism mod. But I may be wrong and in any case I love to watch.

Real life crafts can toggle thrust of individual engines. For instance, the Delta-V Heavy uses a reduced thrust central engine for a portion of the main burn. This reduces fuel consumption overall. When the outer two tanks and engines are dropped, the central engine goes back to full power mode. This works somewhat similar to a 3 piece asparagus setup. The end result is a significant quantity of fuel left in the central stalk when the two outer boosters are dropped.

KSP can't model this exactly, but simple asparagus gets close.

[TheBladeRoden]

Got 468.66 tons with this. Might be able to take more, but it was touchy enough as it was

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Dingbat1967]

Around 200t in orbit in one go for me.

I'd like to vouch for Allmhuran's thrustplate technique -- it really works great. That's what I used to lift my "heavy interplanetary explorer" into LKO.

The thing has about 12 km/s of Delta-V with full tanks. I can go anywhere with this.

I can even "stage" by decoupling the rear thrustplate assembly and releasing the 3 outer tanks (they all feed into the central one) which probably kicks up the delta-v a bit.

I used the same rocket to build my long range heavy "tug" and my EVE return lander:

I could see myself going even bigger using the thrustplate technique but at a handfull of frames per second, it becomes painfall. This will suffice for me

-- Dingbat

[Awass]

So as for the second part of my post, why don't I have permission to post attachments?

[Diazo]

@Awass: No one has permission to post attachements, SQUAD has disabled that forums wide for reasons I don't know.

@Thread topic: I'm currently working on lifting a full Large Orbital Warehouse (from the Orbital Construction Mod) that will be the first part of my construction station in LKO. Clocks in at 418 tons. I'm slowly scaling up a launcher that will get me to LKO, only about 800Dv short now. Note that I have no rocketry packs installed, except for the Warehouse, every part on my ship is stock.

D.

[Javster]

Trying to remember how much I got into orbit with this bad boy.

It transported the equivalent of 4 orange tanks plus 6 empties so that's at least 250 tons. I don't particularly like massive lifters because it "feels less realistic" to me. The only reason why it was launched in this way was because the payload (the core assembly there) was a Tylo/Laythe lander with a transport ship below it, and at the time large docking ports were not available stock yet, so it had to be well-strapped in onto a single 1.5m port.

Were large docking ports available, this would've been two launches, both with dry fuel tanks, and then locked with four large docking ports. In the future I don't plan to ever have launchers of size greater than this unless I'm intentionally being redonkulous, and even then, I've got a long way to go before I impress myself again, considering this forum...

It scrolls the fuel indicators in sync with the mouse wheel

[Awass]

@Awass: No one has permission to post attachements, SQUAD has disabled that forums wide for reasons I don't know.

@Thread topic: I'm currently working on lifting a full Large Orbital Warehouse (from the Orbital Construction Mod) that will be the first part of my construction station in LKO. Clocks in at 418 tons. I'm slowly scaling up a launcher that will get me to LKO, only about 800Dv short now. Note that I have no rocketry packs installed, except for the Warehouse, every part on my ship is stock.

D.

So how do people post pics then. And btw, that is impressive.

[Wait- Was That Important?]

So how do people post pics then. And btw, that is impressive.

Use Imgur to upload things for free.

My record, with this KW monster, was 134.552 tons as measured by Engineer.

I think it was something like 50,000 liquid fuel to launch this. Yay sandbox mode!

It was the second ship in a now-defunct program to go directly to Jool without passing GO or collecting $200.

I'd love to know how to insert Albums here as well.

[Spatzimaus]

Just under 500 tons, using my 4000-ton SSTO booster.

A slightly out-of-date picture of the orbital part:

The version shown here is a bit older and smaller, only 440 tons. It's a mobile Kethane refinery, with built-in lander; I've now got 11 of the things in my game and counting. They're very handy, since it meant I could do a Grand Tour with refueling stops as necessary, and I've used the lander to rescue stranded vessels a couple times as well.

The more recent version, which I don't have a picture for at the moment, has a bigger lander, better engines, and extra docking ports on the tanker.

Here's the 4000-ton booster:

Yes, it's an SSTO, even though it looks like an asparagus design. The "Bucket" is a U-shaped design that holds the cargo in the center using a lot of struts, and once in orbit the cargo detaches and drives itself out the open end. It has just enough fuel to put the cargo in a circular orbit and then safely de-orbit itself, or I can launch vertically to get a tanker almost completely out of Kerbin's SOI before separation (at which point the Bucket crashes back down). Either way, no debris.

Honorable mention goes to my Gateway-class space stations, 310 tons lifted on a single asparagus stack:

[a humble lich]

I think the biggest I put into orbit was my attempt at a skyhook. Basically, a smaller brother to the space elevator, it is a long rotating tether to boost craft into a higher orbit without using fuel. While it is currently on hold until I get better at docking, I did launch the first bit. At only 176 tons it was not too heavy, rather the launch was problematic because it was so tall and wobbly. Initial launches would shake enough to fling mainsails at full thrust backwards.

[Bishop149]

I just redesigned my heavy lifter to use these fancy things like asparagus staging I'd been hearing about:

7 Mainsails, lifts about 85 tons to orbit.

All the small FLT-800 tanks are asparagus staged to the orange one they are attached too.

Three of the 6 mainsail / orange tank bits are further asparagus staged to to the other 3.

Final 3 are onion staged to the central tank / engine.

I also made the below which can lift about a much using less than half the fuel. . . . Jet power baby!!

Gets to 20km up before even igniting the rockets (and ditching all the jets). . . but its a bit silly.

[Astrotropie]

I think the biggest I put into orbit was my attempt at a skyhook...

From where do you get the mass needed to keep the thing rotating? There aren't tiny asteroids which you can move to your skyhook ingame, isn't it?

[a humble lich]

From where do you get the mass needed to keep the thing rotating? There aren't tiny asteroids which you can move to your skyhook ingame, isn't it?

An asteroid isn't needed for a skyhook, you can use it for some space elevator designs. And from a practical perspective, this is completely pointless. In theory, a real skyhook could regain orbital energy by running current through the tether and work against the Earth's magnetic field. Since you can't do this in KSP (does Kerbal even have a magnetic field?) the station will loose a little energy every time it launches something. And you are getting very little extra boost. Being able to go from a 80 km orbit to a 82 km orbit isn't really that big of a help. Making the thing longer would be better, but the longest you can launch in one shot is about 200 m (I think, I forget the exact height), so a 2 km tether already involves 10 launches. And at some point I suspect KSP will have problems with structures that are too long. I decided I will return to the project after my docking skills are better. The whole thing was just a exercise to prove it was possible.

I also made the below which can lift about a much using less than half the fuel. . . . Jet power baby!!

Gets to 20km up before even igniting the rockets (and ditching all the jets). . . but its a bit silly.

I don't understand why more people don't do this. Jet engines are awesome for the first stage of rockets. Although admittedly they are a little silly, are they really more silly than the Kerbalesque asparagus staged rockets that are made?

[Bishop149]

I don't understand why more people don't do this. Jet engines are awesome for the first stage of rockets. Although admittedly they are a little silly, are they really more silly than the Kerbalesque asparagus staged rockets that are made?

They do work exceptionally well.

The main reason I think its silly is because if it worked that well then we'd be doing it in real life right? So I did some digging.

The 2 SRB's used to lift the shuttle up most of the hard bit produce between them 24,000 KN of thrust

The largest Jet engine ever made produces 514 kN

So it would take 47ish very large jet engines to match up. . . which as a number isn't a million miles off what I have on my silly rocket.

I'm stuggling to come up with a reason why they don't do it in real life now. . . inability to build MASSIVE jets (having 47 would be rather unwieldy)? Efficiency factor I am unaware off?

[Moon Goddess]

I think the heaviest thing I've ever placed in orbit is my interplanetary drive.

It's basically an orange tank, a nuclear engine, big solar and a docking port.

[rodion]

Probably not more than 45-50,000kg at this time. A 75,000kg N1-tier lifter (and probably exhibiting the same reliability characteristics) doesn't sound like too bad of an idea for future missions, actually.

Edit: smashed this just now. Second stage of a testbed for a scaled-up serial-staged hulk put itself into orbit, 7 Skippers plus 5600 units of fuel, many tanks and other launcher sundries adds up to a little over 100,000kg, I think.

Edited October 11, 2013 by rodion

[Neotician]

Are we talking modded or not? If we're talking modded, stock shouldn't even be mentioned

Anyhow, i only do stock, so my heaviest craft was 150 tons after all stages had separated.