Jaekelopterus Heavy Lifter

[Corona688]

What's a Jaekelopterus? The biggest bug there ever was.

I confess I've generally tried to take the high road here. Designed for efficiency and cheapness, kept things small and safe and on-the-level, rejecting unfair mods whose parts could survive nosediving in the ocean and don't even like mainsails that much. It's worked well enough for me... I've sent Jeb to Duna and back and a one-way trip to Moho on the small. I said I could keep small forever and resist the temptation to build something big and unreasonable. Well I lied.

Six FULL orange tanks to orbit! I love how its shadow is visible two klicks away. It has a radio-tower spine which holds it together and hides most of the struts. When all the stages are thrown away the spine remains, becoming a docking area.

It is staged and flown very traditionally; hit space whenever a stage runs out of fuel, turn over to 45 degrees at 15,000m or so, etc, etc. The only 'funny' stage is the second-last one, where four main rockets run out of fuel but two don't, you can eject the four dead ones and complete your orbit with the remaining two.

It has the same escape arrangement I put in all my rockets these days, a 1-man pod with four legs, a little fuel to deorbit, some solar, and little else.

Ship File

Edited November 11, 2013 by Corona688

[barrenwaste]

Doesn't the tail hanging off it make it unstable?

[Febin]

Impressive, it has a nice look.

Can you give us a part count?

[Corona688]

Actually no. The tail is quite light, not to mention hidden completely inside for most of the flight. It also has four six RCS thrusters in the tip for manuevering once in orbit -- not needed on the way up since every engine is a vectored mainsail.

376 parts, 18 of which are launch towers!

The clean look is because I mostly gave up on fancy asparagus staging and just stacked stage on top of stage in traditional fashion.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Corona688

[Sirine]

You can cut down you part count a lot. And nosecone are still....useless.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Sirine

[Corona688]

That's 12 parts down, what else can I remove? The amounts of fuel in each stage are quite carefully tuned, I can't just replace the last stage with all oranges.

And the struts+core are probably necessary, frankly. It's a BIG rocket and would flop around like noodles without them.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Corona688

[Sirine]

The...fins? Since you drop them early, and they are not really doing anything?

Disabling the gimbal at the outer layer of the Mainsail, so the craft don't "rolling-up"?

The second last stage..'funny' stage, replace them all (6 of them) with 'skipper' sound better?

[Corona688]

The...fins? Since you drop them early, and they are not really doing anything?

They sure do do things. They stop the craft from spinning hard enough bits fly off. They're ditched early because they become useless early.

Disabling the gimbal at the outer layer of the Mainsail, so the craft don't "rolling-up"?

OK, that makes sense, and lets me ditch the fins.

The second last stage..'funny' stage, replace them all (6 of them) with 'skipper' sound better?

My earlier designs with skippers in the top stage didn't have enough oomph to orbit -- barely 1g of thrust couldn't catch up with apogee. But maybe worth a shot now that the bottom stages are so enormous.

It doesn't exactly shrink the part count though! Maybe I can get away with fewer mainsails instead. Except... No, that'd make the rocket weaker, by leaving holes in it. Six engines it is.

[Sirine]

@Corona688

I'll have to say, a job well done. I admit that I can't bring a single orange-tank to LKO in my early KSP career. There are great potential in you.

In my early KSP, the maximum that I can go is like haft the Orange tank.

Now?

200 tons no problem. It just my computer thats having problem.

[Corona688]

Heh. I've been playing this game since long before the pay version existed, but thanks. I've done one, two, three tankers, but have a war of one-upmanship with a friend I'd been steadily losing for a long time. This should put me back in the green, for a while at least!

[Sirine]

Heh. I've been playing this game since long before the pay version existed, but thanks. I've done one, two, three tankers, but have a war of one-upmanship with a friend I'd been steadily losing for a long time. This should put me back in the green, for a while at least!

Opps...Sound little awkward myself, sorry man. I should check on your 'join date'. 2011, wow, you been playing awhile now.

[Corona688]

No problem. Anyway...

Nosecones -- gone.

Skipper engines -- a no-go. Not enough oomph to orbit in time.

Reducing the number of tanks -- a no-go. Increasing fuel in a later stage hurts early delta-v far too much.

Gimbal switching -- it almost hurts more than it helps in the first stage -- six mainsails is barely enough to maintain control. In the second stage it only reduces some spin.

Fins -- absolutely necessary, gimbal or not. I even moved them up a stage.

I made the spine shorter and reduced the number of struts and RCS thrusters, which brings it down to 328 parts. It's a more unstable and tempermental beast for it, I doubt I can get rid of many more.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Corona688

[700NitroXpress]

So is 216 tons the max payload then?

[Corona688]

Pretty much.

[Corona688]

Introducing the J3, which looks like a can of orange soda on the ground and a stubby bomb in orbit.

j3.craft

It lifts 237 tons of cargo into LKO or 219 into higher orbits, and includes better amenities like heavy SAS, batteries, large RCS tank and illumination with over 125 fewer parts than the original J1. RCS thrusters are no longer included since they're not actually needed to maneuver anymore. A few breakthroughs made this possible:

1) Putting more fuel into the station section so everything behind it can use orange tanks.

2) Asparagusing everything. (You heard it here first, asparagus as a verb!) Far less engine waste and a shorter, stronger rocket.

3) Ditching the spine. No longer necessary.

Edited November 17, 2013 by Corona688

[Jeb Cubed]

There are the people who can't get into orbit. Then there's the people who take six orange tanks to orbit.

[Giggleplex777]

How many part does the launcher have?

[BigD145]

Craft file link throws a 404 error.

[Corona688]

Whoops, craft link is now fixed.

The J3 has 249 parts, vs the J1's 376.