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

[Giggleplex777]

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

The heaviest payload that I've ever bothered to put in orbit weighed 160 tons. I did it with a non-asparagus-staged rocket.

It was basically a scaled up version of my 110 ton lifter:

[MaverickSawyer]

Probably north of 50 tons, not sure. Need to go back and grab the info, but I'm (looks at KSP) 45 minutes from being able to switch ships.

Stupid Ion engines and no time warp...

[earth]

you can burn the ions with a 4x time warp, you just need to force warp with alt + warp key (which is ; if i recall right)

[Moar Boosters]

The heaviest payload that I've ever bothered to put in orbit weighed 160 tons. I did it with a non-asparagus-staged rocket.

It was basically a scaled up version of my 110 ton lifter:

Real men don't use asparagus.

This gets nearly 500t into orbit.

[Ravyne]

I think mine was max 50t, and that took several shots at it because of the shape of the payload. Wiggling's a painful thing.

[Whackjob]

This gets nearly 500t into orbit.

I'm halfway inclined to see how big I can go with straight pancake staging.

[Moar Boosters]

I'm halfway inclined to see how big I can go with straight pancake staging.

Its a fun challenge. I got kinda fed up of building things that look like flying office blocks, so now I'm building big apollo style rockets to reach the harder-to-get-to places using just pancake staging and non-atomic engines. I'm working on a design to get 750 tons into orbit for a mission to Moho. It's probably way more than needed, but I'm not a very good navigator, so need plenty of extra fuel.

[GoDores]

306.35t to LKO. 7 full orange tanks, 12 LV-Ns, and various other bits, for a heavy interplanetary transfer stage (12km/s dV by itself). Used the thrust plate design. 955 parts and a little over 2200t on the pad, and 131 engines firing on launch.

On the pad:

Payload in orbit:

[Stengord]

Not sure how much this thing weighs.... 400tons maybe?

It was lifted apollo style, with only pakcake staging. I've built a few giant asparagus designs that get way more into orbit, but they're ugly and aren't fun to build.

This is the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes upon.

[wolfedg]

These screenshots make my Pluto V M (my largest launch vehicle) look small

[minerman30]

Use (img)file.ext(/img) only using [ and ] instead of ( and )

How much does that monster weigh?

[Whackjob]

How much does that monster weigh?

Haven't the foggiest idea. I can check for you when I get home, though.

[cantorobriar]

Well, legitly or non-legitly. Well, legitly, I once got a 450 ton battlecruiser into space. Non-legitly, I made a 2000 ton spacecraft, hit the launch button, saw it on the launch pad, and it bounced up to space at 200000 m/s, then somehow got on an escape trajectory. It is now peacefully orbiting Eeloo. If I click "Switch To", the lag will be so bad i can't do anything to it, so no pics, sorry. There are 2 kerbals stuck on it, by the way.

[Diazo]

Yes! I made it!

The core for my orbital construction station (from the Orbital Construction Mod) is in orbit!

That's a 418 ton core lifted with stock parts only!

Here's the core in it's 150km orbit:

That's not an Orange Tank, that is the Large Orbital Warehouse from the Orbital Construction mod. Holding 16,000 rocket parts it weights in at 400 tons, the other stuff I've attached takes it up to 418 tons.

On the pad:

It only clocks in at 979 part count, 400 tons in the space of an orange tank requires a lot of struts....

The orbital warehouse is hiding in the center stack. That's an asparagus staging supported by 12 of the large SRBs. The 7 center engines (first ring and the center) are Mainsails and the 2 outer rings are skippers.

The 7 mainsails are actually enough thrust to get lift off, but they left me significantly short of fuel. I could actually reach orbital height but I was in the range of 1000Dv short to circularize.

The 12 skippers are along simply to lift the fuel stacks for the mainsails.

Even then, this setup only reached a 150Ap/130Pe orbit, I circularized to an even 150km orbit on my RCS thrusters.

This is with FAR installed also, hence the nose-cones.

It's touch and go starting a gravity turn at only 8km with that monster, but my total Dv was low enough that I don't think I could reach orbit if I did not start below 10k or so.

Now to get the rest of the station up.

D.

Edited October 13, 2013 by Diazo

[Driosenth]

Heaviest object I ever got into orbit was 2.850 kT

Only object mod used was MechJeb for control and monitoring

I used editor tools to make the damn thing

I used dynamic warp so my computer didn't commit seppuku on the object count

It started at 16.988 kt with 108 stages,

and ended with 37 mainsail engines and 74 nearly full orange tanks in a 100km circular orbit

Edited October 31, 2013 by Driosenth
grammar error

[Whackjob]

I like how it only has one or two or three docking clamps and somehow still doesn't buckle under the weight.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

that's the most kerbal thing ever

[Driosenth]

It had only one docking clamp and oh did it buckle. I had to launch it the moment it loaded or it would topple like a lightweight freshman at his first frat party.

[AmpsterMan]

So here I was, going to post saying the highest I have ever gotten to orbit is like 60 tons. You know, not much, but it is quite a bit considering. And then I see all your creations... and then I cry...

Nice one. Really great crafts all around

[Lazro]

Since I don't like asparagus, I've only managed...er...

50 tons.

shame on me

[ZodiusInfuser]

No where near the scale of all your contraptions, but the heaviest thing I managed to get into orbit was this 208t (803 part) space station.

And here's what a "simulated" re-entry looks like

[allmhuran]

It started at 16.988 kt with 108 stages

Where are all the launch clamps?

Edit: Oh, I see you said it only has one. So yeah... not possible without debug menu or part editing.

Edited October 31, 2013 by allmhuran

[Spatzimaus]

My biggest normal construct is the Bucket:

It's a 4000-ton U-shaped SSTO booster (no asparagus) carrying a 450-ton payload into orbit. That picture's slightly out of date, the more recent version carries about 500 tons. Yes, I said SSTO; the entire thing flies up, delivers its payload into a nice, circular 80km orbit, then safely de-orbits itself. No debris whatsoever, and no need for massive engines on the payload. I've launched about two dozen of the things to date, delivering space stations and fuel depots to eight different planets and moons.

The typical payload, for reference:

It's a mobile Kethane refinery and fuel depot. A 400-ton orbital tanker, paired with a 50-ton lander with onboard Kethane refinery.

The simple fact is, beyond a certain point there's no downside to going bigger. I could easily double the size of the Bucket and it'd still fly just as well. As long as your basic design is sound, you won't even end up with insane clusters of struts or anything.

[allmhuran]

Indeed, as I recall someone posted a ship that put 1000 tons into orbit SSTO. Also, of course, using a completely different set of parts than those of us who have to tweak for days to get several hundred tons up. Such things are totally incomparable.

[Godot]

310t ... for my spaceship that allows me manned operations + science/sample returns almost anywhere in the Kerbol-System

(with around 11-15+ km/s dV for interplanetary travel ... depending on the fuel used to get to the target location [as the payload of the interplanetary part gets a lot lighter for the return trip] and 3.9 km/s dV for the lander)

Edited November 2, 2013 by Godot