Heavy Lifter Designs

[freibuis]

Honestly? Because it\'s not a very good design. There\'s not very much thrust on your lower stage, so you\'re wasting a ton of your delta-v in the atmosphere. Also remember that fuel and engines are mass that need to be lifted too, simply adding fuel tanks will increase the amount of fuel you need to burn, and a heavier rocket with the same amount of thrust won\'t climb out of the atmosphere as fast, so you\'re gonna have to burn more fuel to offset drag. I would actually try *removing* fuel tanks from that rocket, swapping out some of those engines for the higher thrust ones, and revising your staging to drop unneeded engines and empty fuel tanks at optimal moments in your liftoff. Oh, and use crossfeeding to make it so that when you drop stages, the fuel tanks on the remaining stages are full.

You wanna make a real heavy lifter, you have to pay a lot of attention to what you are spending vehicle weight on, and try and optimize your staging so you are dropping parts off your rocket at times that are going to actually be helpful to you.

I would like to remind you its not about efficiency its about raw lifting capicty. which means alot of engines. alot of engines means moar fuel. moar fuel means moar weight.

So yes I could make it more stream lined. its about the engines under it. if there was a better way to drop empty fuel tanks I would. atm any method of droping fuel tanks ends up colliding with the lower parts of the rocket. this is because the ejection doesn\'t eject outward far enough any more

I am currently designing an 81 First stage engine. and because of this the game is unusable. so much so I broke from my rule 'only stock parts' and added only Mech jeb is allowed. This is because I can not control the game when it runs at 1 frame every 2 seconds. One side effect of have mech jeb I have now have stats. drag, start weight end weight etc. ;D we all love stats dont we.

I have a goal of getting 120 tonnes landed on the mun

[Analogy]

A focus on efficiency will deliver better lifting capacity. If you\'re running into framerate issues with the rocket you\'re building right now, you\'re running up against the limit of what you can just throw more engines and fuel at. At this point, making your rocket work smarter, not harder, is going to be what increases your payload capacity.

The rocket you screenshotted has 26 tanks of fuel on its base stage, and like 20-25 mass worth of stuff on top of it, and you say you can\'t get it to the Mun... My Hercules II has 26 tanks on its base stage, uses no SRBs, and can *easily* deliver a 25 mass payload to the Mun. 45 into orbit. Just gotta build it right.

[noneyabidnis]

A focus on efficiency will deliver better lifting capacity. If you\'re running into framerate issues with the rocket you\'re building right now, you\'re running up against the limit of what you can just throw more engines and fuel at. At this point, making your rocket work smarter, not harder, is going to be what increases your payload capacity.

The rocket you screenshotted has 26 tanks of fuel on its base stage, and like 20-25 mass worth of stuff on top of it, and you say you can\'t get it to the Mun... My Hercules II has 26 tanks on its base stage, uses no SRBs, and can *easily* deliver a 25 mass payload to the Mun. 45 into orbit. Just gotta build it right.

I agree. Hercules II has become my go to lifter for everything.

[freibuis]

A focus on efficiency will deliver better lifting capacity. If you\'re running into framerate issues with the rocket you\'re building right now, you\'re running up against the limit of what you can just throw more engines and fuel at. At this point, making your rocket work smarter, not harder, is going to be what increases your payload capacity.

The rocket you screenshotted has 26 tanks of fuel on its base stage, and like 20-25 mass worth of stuff on top of it, and you say you can\'t get it to the Mun... My Hercules II has 26 tanks on its base stage, uses no SRBs, and can *easily* deliver a 25 mass payload to the Mun. 45 into orbit. Just gotta build it right.

oh I can get to the moon and its over kill. again not the point

I have very efficient lifters infact I am currently lifting 30 tons to the moon with tons of fuel left. my goal is landing 120tons on the mum/minuns soon. but I need. so with that math I am going to need at least 80tons for the trans stage. I think I could get the lifting stage to about 400tons. this would mean 600 tons in total.

The orignal lifter was a proof of concept in lifting with large amount of engines. my latest version has 90 engines I will be posting this soon when I can get a decent frame rate to take a screen shot.

btw below is one of my effient desgins that can send 30 tons to the mum