What is the most expensive thing you've built in the new career mode?

[NecroBones]

We've talked about being budget conscious, and whether or not funds are affecting your build style. But what is the MOST expensive thing you've built and launched in the new career mode? Have you thrown caution to the wind and just built something the eats through funds?

To start:

So far I've been careful to recover most of my craft, and keep designs small. Then I decided I need to go to Moho. So, I need delta-V, and lots of fuel. So then I need a big lifter.

I spent a couple of hours building the lifter as cheaply as I could (first screenshot), with fine-tuning the TWR and dV to get to LKO, with an asparagus system with a few SRBs in the mix. It worked, but was slightly wobbly, and took too long to assemble and test. So I made a second variant (second screenshot) using just 3.75m parts. It doubled the launch price, but made it more stable and reliable too, and only the outer ring of 6 boosters needs a mod for recovery (StageRecovery), with the inner bundle of 7 being just one huge piece that I can land back at KSC.

I probably could build something in between, with cheaper outer boosters, but this was easy to design.

Sticking with the latter design, it costs over 1.4M on the pad, but nearly everything is recoverable (when you consider using a mod for the outer onion ring), excluding fuel, a few drop tanks that the mission vehicles have, and two small probes that will be left behind. I recover probably over 600k before my escape burn. And of course the interplanetary stage is recoverable too. Even with all the recovery, it's an expensive mission.

So what's your most expensive career launch to date?

[EdFred]

I think that's double (ok, maybe not double) the size of my Moho vehicle, and I know I wasn't close to 1million.

3 quad clusters plus a KR-advanced, and 9 of the new SRBs is what I went with to get Moho Transfer and Lander. into orbit.

3x3 nukes with 6 Rockomax 32's for the Kerbin-Moho-Kerbin transfer with a hitch hiker module.

2 man lander can with 3 48-7s engines and 675 units of fuel.

1 science jr+goo+therm+italian dinner+seismo on the lander, and 3 more on the transfer ship.

Of course, I'm discarding the lifter stage, and the KR-advanced also does a lot of the ejection burn.

It is however in the test stage (sandbox) as I haven't left the Kerbin system yet in career. So my most expensive actually built to date in my career is about 85k for my Mun vehicles. I'm still waiting for the first transfer window to arrive to go, well, anywhere.

Edited July 31, 2014 by EdFred

[Richy teh space man]

One of my space planes cost 1.2 million to launch a space station into orbit, but most of that is recoverable.

[sardaukar11]

so far one of my mun rocket, 140k \F

[Yarrula]

The most I've spend is about 335K on a Minmus mission, complete with orbital lab, lander and return to Kerbin orbit. None of it was recovered, but the lab and lander/return ship are capable of being resused. As I've been playing with the no revert/no quicksave option for this career, it was quite nerve wracking to hit the launch button on something that large and untested. The launcher had some serious wobbles to it, but the rest of it worked like a charm.

Here is the resusable ship. It was a bit underpowered, and horribly overengineered. 10/10, would fly again. I'm planning a larger, 3 or 4 engine version for bigger trips.

[Bean]

I'm at 1 million so far for my Duna Satellite network, 12 satellites for comms and scanning, plus 2 science landers (unmanned), the launch vehicle is 100% landable at KSC after launch though, so I'll get around 500k back for that.

[Vicomt]

The biggest thing I've launched so far is my Eve sample/return probe. 1700 tons on the launchpad, around 600k bucks. I don't know if it works yet as I'm waiting for the window, however I know it goes to orbit and has enough DV to insert the lander into Eve's atmosphere.

I only play slightly hardcore. I allow reverts for anything until it leaves Kerbin's SOI. after that, it's final. I just hope that the ascent vehicle can make it.

[mythic_fci]

Hmm, has to be my multipurpose interplanetary orbiter. It has about 7500dv with a single nuke engine and 4 drop tanks, and can reach the orbits of Duna, Eve, Moho, and possibly even Jool.

[Xacktar]

919k for this monster. It put landers on Laythe, Vall, Bop and Pol, then parked the Mastership over Tylo.

[Aragosnat]

Single launch happens to be 250k around. Plus been putting the game off as I have not felt like unlocking the parts I need to make my interplanetry ship design I'm thinking of trying to make. Multiple smaller 70-100k launches to help refuel ships in orbit will make it cost more.

[Russoft]

Yikes! I've only spent about 400,000 on my priciest launch for a Duna mission which used the SLS parts for stage 1 & 2, and a nuclear rocket transfer stage.

[SkyRender]

Probably my Jool system science expedition.

Seeing as it was able to visit every single moon of Jool (as well as make a sacrificial dive into Jool for one of the probes) and obtain surface data plus have an orbital probe for each, I'd say it was worth it.

[LaytheAerospace]

I think my spacedocks are around 1M each. My Mun missions cost about 30k each.

[NecroBones]

I spent a couple of hours building the lifter as cheaply as I could (first screenshot), with fine-tuning the TWR and dV to get to LKO, with an asparagus system with a few SRBs in the mix. It worked, but was slightly wobbly, and took too long to assemble and test. So I made a second variant (second screenshot) using just 3.75m parts. It doubled the launch price, but made it more stable and reliable too, and only the outer ring of 6 boosters needs a mod for recovery (StageRecovery), with the inner bundle of 7 being just one huge piece that I can land back at KSC.

I probably could build something in between, with cheaper outer boosters, but this was easy to design.

Sticking with the latter design, it costs over 1.4M on the pad, but nearly everything is recoverable (when you consider using a mod for the outer onion ring), excluding fuel, a few drop tanks that the mission vehicles have, and two small probes that will be left behind. I recover probably over 600k before my escape burn. And of course the interplanetary stage is recoverable too. Even with all the recovery, it's an expensive mission.

http://www.necrobones.net/screenshots/KSP/KSP%202014-07-30%2021-23-51-48.jpg

http://www.necrobones.net/screenshots/KSP/KSP%202014-07-30%2022-15-00-50.jpg

Something that's easy to neglect, is that sometimes a lower TWR can (seemingly paradoxically) give you a more fuel efficient launch to LKO. I was reminded of this in another thread, so I'm trying a third iteration of this lifter. Over the last version, it saves about 300k in costs, but should achieve pretty much the same result. Cost is about 1.1M.

Edited July 31, 2014 by NecroBones

[Teutooni]

My most expensive ship has to be an abandoned grand tour project ship (land on every landable body before returning to kerbin). Fully self sustaining life support loop, total weight of 700-1000 tons, depending on how much supplies it has for spare parts etc. Don't know the exact cost, but I estimate it was between 2 and 3 million. I used many small and highly cost-effective SRB based launches with around 50k each. The most expensive part was the engine and fuel, at 250+ tons weight and total cost of around a million. I abandoned the project because of how slow and unstable the game was with that much stuff loaded at once. Every rendezvous froze the game for around 10 seconds to load the ship. >_>

[DasValdez]

$1.02m per launch for the Epic5 Automated Fuel Drone. 4 full Kerbodyne S3's delivered to LKO++. The entire top half of the vehicle on the pad is the drone.

Maybe it's a bit of a misnomer when the fuel "drone" shows up and is the size of the station it's supplying, but hey, time is money.