most efficient fuel run

[BullseyeP90]

Was wondering, how much fuel can you take to kerbin's orbit? Best I've managed was to take just a little over 2880 fuel (a full jumbo-64 tank) to my space station 350km high around kerbin

[SargeRho]

From Kerbin's surface? No idea. I get all of my fuel for refueling stations from Minmus and Ike using Kethane. There the most I've managed is 4 full jumbo tanks.

[1greywind]

Building 250-300 ton capable launch vehicle using cross-feed or asparagus design is trivial. I routinely launch 5x36 ton fuel deports to orbit and then (using separate interplanetary tug) to Jool system.

[SRV Ron]

Stock reusable fuel can launcher. A pair of Mainsails on the last asparagus stage found the sweet spot for flight efficiency.

In orbit

Returning booster

With Mods;

Edited February 19, 2014 by SRV Ron

[leax256]

something like this

[mellojoe]

I have a ready-to-launch refueller that gets a single orange tank plus a large RCS tank straight into orbit. Its got a couple docking ports and several RCS thrusters. Its main mission was as part of creating an orbital space station, but it ended up becomming a fantastic mobile refuel depot.

[Greenspan]

I posted a thread last week for advice helping me with my personal challenge of getting 5 to orbit. Got some good advice from the community:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/69854-Launching-Multiple-Orange-Tanks

This is what I ended up with. Looks like hell but after some tweaking it's pretty bullet proof:

Made some final mods and I get 5 Orange in a 2x2 asparagus config, 4 FL-T800, 4 NERVAs and 4 LVT-30s, and misc batteries/probecores/RCS/docking ports/etc to orbit, I think the final weight in orbit is somewhere around 220. Gives me ~13k delta-v @ 0.5 TWR. I plan to use this as my standard refueler/interplanetary booster.

I'm sure other people have come up with more elegant designs that can lift a lot more but for me "It's gold, Jerry! Gold!"

Edited February 19, 2014 by Greenspan

[Gravitas Shortfall]

I've got a non-asparagus that can do 8 orange tanks. Not the most efficient from a fuel perspective, but there's something to be said for simple staging.

[SkyHook]

Well Minmus really is the best way to get fuel into orbit. It's a stupidly small about of Delta-V (~300) if you mine the kethane on Minmus and aerobrake into Kerbin's orbit. I don't refuel in orbit, however. As a result, I cannot give personal examples.

[Merinsan]

I've heard of someone doing 10 orange tanks before. I've done 5 orange tanks myself.

But my go to fuel ship does about 2.5 orange tanks. The tanks detach to provide fuel storage tanks for fuel depots. I used it to stock my HKO station (orbit outside Minmus orbit) with fuel for interplanetary missions. The final stage has 2 nukes which feed off the 2 tanks, so it is capable of going interplanetary, which it did recently to Dres to set up a mining operation there.

[Mr.Rocket]

I've gotten 5 to orbit along with 5 of the half orange fuel tank (the grey ones) in one launch. Did have to use some of the fuel though to complete the orbit

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[theend3r]

About 6-7 full Jumbo tanks. I use that to refuel my interplanetary motherships.

The bottom 5 Jumbos were full in orbit and the remaining four still had some fuel in them. The lander was docked additionally.

Edited February 19, 2014 by theend3r

[SkyRender]

I seem to recall Whackjob managed to get something absolutely absurd like 20 full orange tanks into orbit once, but it's hardly a surprise when he pulls something like that off any longer. Myself, I rarely have much need of more than 2 orange tanks' worth in orbit at a given time, so I don't tend to design lifters that can bring up more than that. Certainly I could, but what would I do with all of that fuel?

[PolecatEZ]

Pure stock I've done 7 orange tanks with the Mammoth series, but there have been a lot of stability improvements to the game since then. A lot more should be do-able. The trick is to get something that doesn't just look like a giant bundled block to launch the tanks.

[merendel]

My best stock launcher I rated at 120 ton payload into LKO and it tended to have a bit left in the last booster for some orbital manuvers to facilitate docking. It could push up to 150 with a perfect accent profile but frequently it was about 100 dV short to circularize at that point. about 4 orange tanks as a pratical limit or 5 if I added an extra orbital stage. I could have built something able to push more but by that point I'd rather just do an additional launch or two and send whatever it is up in pieces. My few attempts at a 200+ launcher were not only laggy but nearly impossible to controll. Had to fly that one manualy every time while the 120 I could just slap a mechjeb on it and go get some food while it got to orbit.