What do your launch stages look like?

[bigyihsuan]

Obviously, pics are needed, maybe tonnage to orbit, and a .craft file if possible so that I can steal your designs look for reliable launcher ideas.

Also, note whether or not it contains mods.

[problemecium]

Mine are generally a mixture of gray, white, and orange and are shaped like rockets.

[Superfluous J]

In a word: Abominations.

In my current save I am using ELP so I don't actually lift much off Kerbin anymore. And most of the stuff I was lifting was fuel tanks and I refused to not make them work for their passage, so they were actually part of the fuel supply of the lifter. Turns out that lifting an orange tank and support structures for a base into orbit doesn't take much more than the fuel in the tank, so a lot of my lifters were just small tanks with Skippers or Mainsails attached to them, stuck to the sides of my bases by radial decopulers. Very weird stuff.

I don't think, since I unlocked orange tanks, I've needed a standard lifter. That will change when I restart and do more "normal" type missions.

[Jouni]

Currently I prefer the somewhat realistic approach of having two boosters and a two-stage core. With the addition of the new SLS parts, designs like that are powerful enough for almost all payloads, so I don't have to bother with more boosters or wide rockets.

The Medium– design is my favorite, as it works like a real rocket: boosters do the heavy lifting, while the first stage of the core is more like a second stage with a lot of extra fuel.

Recently I also used a vertically staged rocket for going to Moho Apollo-style. The two lowest stages are probably about as capable as the heavy design above, while the third stage is more lika a Kerbin escape stage.

My final design is the lightest of them all: just a core stage and two SRBs.

[Ravenchant]

My Kerbals don't do a lot of heavy lifting, so these four designs get used the most. The left one lifts 8 tons, the right one about 38. Some are asparagus staged, some are onions. The subassemblies are a bit broken though.

I'm also currently working on a series of launchers with fairings and without fuel lines. But part counts are through the roof, especially if you want to put in some details to make the launching less boring...