Preferred First Rocket Stage in Contracts Mode

[NecroBones]

I've done jets for some of my atmospheric test platforms. Haven't frequently used them in lifter stages though.

[Russoft]

This design does not work at all in KSP

Yeah, I play stock and I tried this. I was disappointed. I couldn't bring myself to downgrade the design to a single man pod as I wanted the launch escape tower on top so I ended up using a 1 large to 3 small adapter and used multiple SRBs.

[DocMoriarty]

No rocket stages at all. I prefer space planes even for heavy payloads.

[TimePeriod]

I tend to mix liquid/SRB. Get the best of both.

[Col_Jessep]

One or two stages with SRBs, a reaction wheel or three for stability (cheaper than winglets), a LOF stage for getting into orbit and then the payload. SRBs are just nice because they give you some decent thrust to get of the pad and you don't have to bother with recovering them.

[Teutooni]

For ordinarily shaped rockets with reasonable weight, fin stabilized SRB. If I need to lift something excessively heavy or oddly shaped, I break it into parts that fit said reasonable limits. I use FAR so can't make silly pancake rockets. Because asparagus staging hasn't been to my knowledge demonstrated to work IRL, I tend not to use it - Also drag.

[nadreck]

When I get back to my home computer I will grab a picture, I have a 5 orange tank all liquid booster that either gets about 3/4s of an orange tank 2nd stage into orbit while the first stage is in a long enough sub orbital arc that I can transfer control back to it after I circularize the upper stages orbit. It will put a lander into orbit as well in SSTO mode. Cost recovery if I splash it down is about 50% of it's launch cost. As someone mentioned, getting funds does not seem to be a problem right now for me in the game, my balance is $2.5M and I have two probes in Kerbol orbit, a Minmus lander on a hyperbolic trajectory to Minmus with a 22hour flight time for my first Minmus contract, I have returned my first Munar contract ship, and my LV-N powered Duna/Ike contract explorer is in orbit waiting a kerbonaut and a flight plan to get it there as fast as possible on the fuel available (1.5 orange tanks in the transfer vehicle). My clock has not ticked over into the 2nd 24hour Kerbal day yet.

[nadreck]

As promised, though a little later than promised. The arrangement below has me recovering the booster stage in the ocean. But some configurations are SSTO and I am building a fuel depot/station with two of these boost stages.

[StrandedonEarth]

Based on an onion design (called Goliath) I used in .23 which I noted could put the whole core into orbit, but never seriously tried to recover. I later converted it to a super-heavy asparagus lifter. Now with budgets I dusted off the design and replaced the outer ring of 12 Jumbo+Mainsails with 30 of the big SRBs (expendable) and slapped on a bunch of 'chutes. This was the first landing attempt (successful!), before I had the tech for heavy legs or long girders. The second core launched was crashed (pilot eye-dee-ten-T error) during the landing attempt (the first two landings required a power assist; needed more 'chutes).

Now that I have more tech I also have more 'chutes and landing legs, and can put 70 tons in LKO (Jool probe 6-pack, 623k to launch) with plenty of F/O to spare. The last landing was flawless. The screens are from the first launch, which cost about 375k (Minmus lab + lander). I shall dub it the G7R, with apologies to Mr. Musk.

Edited August 2, 2014 by StrandedonEarth

[Monger]

Interesting... now that I am a little further in the tech tree, the balance between SRBs and fuel seems to switch again. The more advanced fuel drives are powerful enough to get into orbit within the first stage. No sane SRB configuration has so much power, i.e. fuel efficiency becomes a more prominent factor.

I think SQUAD balanced the parts really well. We now have similar rules like in real life: SRBs cheap but with lots of other shortcomings, fuel engines are amazingly efficient and versatile, but require a lot of technology to be fully usable.

[ArmchairGravy]

It really depends on what I'm lifting and where it's going. I use SRB's for high mass or dv missions. Otherwise I just use liquid.

[Sleepy_Steve]

For me I've been using a core of a skipper or mainsail with between 1 and 1.75 orange tanks on top, and using between 6 and 10 BACC SRB's with T800 tanks on top feeding into the core's tanks. The SRB's are throttled back to something like 60%-65%. Handles small/medium payloads, easy to fly and relatively cheap; more so if i can start recovering the core where most of the cost lies. Eventually I want to standardize these based on payload capacity and get the core's recoverable for cost savings later on in my program.

For my Duna mission, the lifter currently costs $53k and gets me ALMOST to orbit with a 30 ton payload. The transfer stage has to contribute 400m/s to circularize the orbit. It's not perfect, but it accomplishes the mission goals. It could probably be trimmed down further in cost if I made the transfer stage smaller.

I don't think it's ideal but it finds the right balance I want to have as I play through this new career save.

[WafflesToo]

My favorite light-payload lifter is a fin-stabilized BACC first stage and a LV909/FL-T200 second stage. Reliably gets 1.5t into orbit for very little cost.

Bigger stuff I use a mix of LFO and Solid booster rockets. I've almost advanced the tech tree enough to allow some stock reusable 2STO designs I've been wanting to try that are full LFO powered and should be good for around 20t to orbit. And of course SSTO spaceplanes are right around the corner to take over the light-duty ferrying.

Though I have to laugh at myself; I'm literally making money faster than I can spend it so it seems silly to be such a scrooge with the funds

(FAR and DRE are both installed on this playthrough)

[Thomas988]

I use a ton of NASA parts for my launch stages. In the middle I have two of the biggest tanks and sometimes, depending on the load, an eighth-sized Kerbodyne tank too. I then use a 25x4 liquid engine cluster for the central engine. All around I have eight of the biggest SRBs. It's a very simple launch stage, and it can get almost anything into orbit.

EDIT: Woops. Look like I should've read the title.

I basically do the same thing in career, but with 2.5 meter parts and smaller SRBs.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Thomas988
I'm bad at grammar sometimes.

[Kasuha]

I use this. Costs a lot but can be safely returned to KSC so it only comes with fuel costs. If I don't screw up.