Show your improvements!

[cy-one]

Heya,

I built a new family of launch vehicles (to 100km LKO) after really being sick of my old design.

The old design used heavy asparagus staging (19 mainsails), was ridiculously efficient (payload maximum somewhere above 175t, I didn't bother testing above that), but ugly as sin.

And it always felt kind of... cheaty.

This is my old rocket, the KSP-LVII

After familiarizing myself with KW Rocketry, I came up with the following three-stage-design. It's quite simple an way less efficient. But it's a drawback I am really willing to take for the better looks

Doesn't use asparagus staging.

First Stage (launch to gravity turn, give or take): Boosters (6x ST-37 + Griffon XX)

Second Stage (gravity turn to high atmosphere): SC-4 + Griffon XX

Third Stage (high atmosphere to stable orbit): SC-2 + Wildcat-XR

I placed one of the boosters of the old rocket into the payload fairings for size comparison.

The new rocket only lifts around 135 tons, but it looks sooo sexy when doing that

I did also make some smaller rockets on the same basic design (10, 35 and 75 tons), but one screenshot is enough

Which of your own designs did your improve? Why did you improve them and if the new design has drawbacks, which ones? And why are you fine with them?

Post your own stuff But please provide old and new screenshots of it.

[Dakitess]

Well, this is true, what a magnificient improvement ! Well done, this is damn simple and looks really reliable and efficient in the same time.

[700NitroXpress]

Here first design for my Atlas I air lifter. It uses jet engines to lift the craft up through Kerban atmosphere, then the jet engines detach and the main engine burns to either get a heavy craft into orbit or get a light craft anywhere in the solar system. This first model got the pod out to Jool and the lander visited all of the moons and crashed on Lythe. This first design doesn't use asparagus staging, instead, all of the engines run out of fuel at the same time.

For the improvements on the design, I got rid of the jet fuel and attached the engines to radial decouplers around a main powerful engine. The jet engines draw fuel from the extra fuel in the main engine so the Jet engines don't waste fuel when they decouple. They also automatically shut down when they're ejected because they get fuel deprived. Then the main engines burn and push the craft through the rest of the atmosphere and allow you to achieve your desired altitude. Next, the smaller 215 power engines fire and allow you to achieve orbit with fuel to spare for fine tuning and inclination changes. The next big improvement is that you can then undock the small engines from the main vessel. You then send up whatever engine you want using the same air lifter and dock it to the vessel. One double-long grey fuel tank with a nuclear engine on each of the five ports had more than enough power and fuel to get this Duna Command Center all the way to Duna, do the fine tuning, and assist with landing.

Here is the base on Duna after parachute repacking and deployment.

So the drawbacks of the lifter are: limited size and weight that they can lift into orbit, limited configurations.

Pros: efficient for the max payload, easy to get large surface area vessels into orbit for assembly, easy to build and set up, one size fits all in most situations, fewer stages, 0% failure rate on craft under 100 tons.

This method can be used to lift craft in excess of 800 tons into orbit, it's very effective for getting full sized orbital fuel stations into orbit and transferring them to other planets using the attachment engines.