What is your cheapest flight to LKO?

[katateochi]

Since the addition of the tortuously difficult funds system we've all been forced to built ultra efficient craft. So what I want to know is;

After recovery of the craft, what is the cost of your cheapest flight to take a Kerbal to a 100km circular orbit and bring him home again.

'course this depends a bit on career settings and strategies;

I'm playing on moderate with the craft recovery strategy on full and so far my cheapest manned flight to LKO costs me just under 1500 after recovering the craft. view / DL craft on KerbalX

That craft has some excess dV and safety features, so I know it could be done more efficiently.....Lets see your most efficient craft.

[pauldbk99]

Shouldn't this be posted under challenges?

[UmbralRaptor]

It probably should. That said, why a 100 km circular orbit? 70 km would be better as a parking orbit or sweeping out biome science from LKO (high orbital science can be grabbed in the process of a mun/minmus mission). An up/down suborbital mission can fullfil 3 of the 4 initial contracts and the repeatable science from Kerbin space until you get the panels for a station.

[Dizzle]

Edit: Disregard, I dun goofed.

[Spatzimaus]

Not exactly your challenge, but close:

The Dinky Weasel, a 9-ton spaceplane designed to haul 2-ton cargoes to a 75km orbit. Without the cargo it could easily do your 100km orbit, I'm sure, although the only times I launch it sans cargo are on Kerbonaut recovery missions. Costs 30.5k, of which you get back about 29k upon a runway landing, so ~1500 net.

Basically, any similarly sized spaceplane will have about the same net cost, so I don't see this challenge going much further.

[Alshain]

My cheapest flight is an FLT800 + 2 oscar B's worth of fuel in an SSTO that lands back on the runway for 100% recovery. I could probably do smaller and cheaper, but I needed enough to rendezvous with stranded kerbals.

[Duke23]

This little guy does most of my Kerbal Rescue missions and small satellite deployments (up to about .7t) in LKO, recently brought out of the experimental designation and codenamed Raptor. It's so simple it's stupid, but it flies nicely and can make it out to ~150km orbit with a light payload and come back home. There's another version without docking capabilities that has a bit better range, but this one also gets used to bring KAS containers and other forgotten things up to interplanetary transfer ships already in orbit that I inevitably forget something on. I want to say it only costs me about 400 funds in fuel if I bring it back bone dry, but some of the posts above seem to say 1500 is the norm? Maybe I have a weird setting somewhere.

[Norcalplanner]

Over in the Laythe Capitalism Challenge, I was able to get Kerbals to Laythe and back for 589 funds per head. Some of the guys really optimized their craft, and got it below 100 funds per Kerbal. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86427-Laythe-Capitalism!

[Tw1]

*Whistles innocently*

Can't remember cost.. wasn't much.

Modified version with seat and parachute means potentially 100% recovery

Edited October 29, 2014 by Tw1

[Cirocco]

Depends on exactly what you mean. You said after recovery, so if you're just referring to fuel costs: my go-to kerbal rescue craft is a small 2-seater SSTO spaceplane which can make a 100km orbit, do some orbital manouvring and come back on about 300 to 500 funds.

inital build/launch cost comes in at about 25 000 though.

I posted a pic of it on the "what did you do in KSP today" thread a while back, I'll see if I can find it again.

EDIT: found it: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=1480307&viewfull=1#post1480307

Edited October 29, 2014 by Cirocco

[bsalis]

I just checked my small one-seater SSTO spaceplane, which also has VTOL ability....

449 funds

Fueled = 27,753 funds

Recovered / Empty = 27,304 funds

Only 46 parts!

[Cirocco]

I just checked my small one-seater SSTO spaceplane, which also has VTOL ability....

449 funds

Fueled = 27,753 funds

Recovered / Empty = 27,304 funds

Only 46 parts!

Impressive. that's my target to beat right there . I know my Sparrow can do orbit and come back on less than 300, but that wasn't a 100km orbit. I'll check when I get home from work how she performs exactly.

[GoSlash27]

*whistles innocently*

Yeah, I hear ya. My 1 man k-drive infiniglider can takeoff from KSC, make a round trip to Eve surface and back in a week, and land back on the runway at KSC for free.

More realistically, I have a 15 ton SSTO freight lifter that orbits payload at $72 a ton but I never put kerbals on it. I also have a 6 kerbal SSTO shuttle that operates very cheaply. I'll crunch the numbers and update this post with a figure a little later.

*EDIT* It goes through 2.2t of fuel, 1.1t of O2, and 10L of monopropellant on an average mission. That works out to $436, or $73 a head.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited October 29, 2014 by GoSlash27

[SRV Ron]

As this was designed and flown before 0.25, I don't have a cost. It is about the cheapest probe you can build if you use a single Oxstat panel in place of the more expensive one. It is a SSTO with a Too Hot thermometer and is designed to fulfill contracts for data returned from orbit.

[Spatzimaus]

As this was designed and flown before 0.25, I don't have a cost

The OP specified carrying a Kerbal to orbit, so unmanned designs don't count. Cockpits are kind of heavy, which is part of what makes this so challenging. And, he specified a net (post-recovery) cost, so you have to be capable of landing it back at/near KSC, which adds more weight. A design that stays in orbit is an entirely sunk cost.

Anyway, back to the previous posters. Yes, I could see getting it down to 400-500 if you made a design with no bells and whistles, just the bare minimum of spaceplane parts. Hmm, I wonder what an ion-powered spaceplane would do for this...

[Cirocco]

Hmm, I wonder what an ion-powered spaceplane would do for this...

oooooh, now THIS I find intriguing. I've never tried ion-based spaceplanes before... I do foresee some structural difficulties in putting several ion thrusters in a cluster. And possibly electricity problems when having to manouver/de-orbit on the darkside of Kerbin, but ion-spaceplanes may prove as an interesting method of cheap travel to orbit and back.

[Bill Zarr]

Built this STTO a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't designed explicitly to get to 100km, doing a rendezvous at ~90km might be roughly comparable in terms of fuel. It really needs a spot more fuel to be comfortable to use - a ROUND-8 would probably do. (Stock, & the rocket engines are on the wingtips btw)

38 funds

16,200 with fuel.

16,162 on recovery.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Cirocco]

Built this STTO a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't designed explicitly to get to 100km, doing a rendezvous at ~90km might be roughly comparable in terms of fuel. It really needs a spot more fuel to be comfortable to use - a ROUND-8 would probably do. (Stock, & the rocket engines are on the wingtips btw)

38 funds

16,200 with fuel.

16,162 on recovery.

http://imgur.com/a/xEgEw

veeeery nice. I have some ideas to possibly make it even lighter, will try to replicate and improve once I get back home to my gaming PC

[GoSlash27]

oooooh, now THIS I find intriguing. I've never tried ion-based spaceplanes before... I do foresee some structural difficulties in putting several ion thrusters in a cluster. And possibly electricity problems when having to manouver/de-orbit on the darkside of Kerbin, but ion-spaceplanes may prove as an interesting method of cheap travel to orbit and back.

Speaking as a guy who has as much experience with ion gliders as anyone else on this forum... it's not worth your time.

Stock physics and parts can't get a manned ion glider into orbit without staging, infiniglide, or some combination thereof. And xenon is prohibitively expensive, so even an SSTO is going to be much more expensive per launch than a comparable kerosene jet/ rocket.

Best,

-Slashy

[WWEdeadman]

Not counting SSTO planes that literally only cost me the fuel, cause I land them back at the runway, I'd say this low-tech version of a 100% reuseable launcher Scott Manley used back in his "reuseable spaceprogram" series. Scott used Ram-intakes and a mainsail, which makes this even more efficient. (I actually used the original design later in that career, once I had unlocked the parts)

As for the "challenge" I don't have the exact numbers of what it cost me, and I didn't really make it go to a 100km circular orbit, but it did rescue missions, which are all pretty close to a 100 km orbit, usually. And I always had fuel to spare at the end, especially once I had it updated to using a mainsail and ram intakes.

[Cirocco]

right, I built an even lighter version of Bill Zarr's SSTO plane:

test flights show it can do a 100km orbit and come back on 36 funds. I made it in my career mode however and seeing as I am playing on permadeath I didn't want to risk a kerbal's life. A few sidenotes:

-even though it only has two delta wings, this thing actually starts to suffer from infiniglide effects in low altitudes because it's so light.

- it only has 1 radially attached ant engine just behind the cockpit glass. So yes, it does have an unaligned center of thrust, but the cockpit itself has enough torque to compensate.

Also, a quick check showed that while ion engines are super efficient, xenon gas is pretty expensive. No way you can use it for a "cheap as possible" challenge. So yeah, I really think 36-38 funds is the limit of what you can do in stock without exploits.

P.S.: It occurs to me now that I did equip it with a probe core, guess I might be able to do it.

[katateochi]

down to 36 funds! awesome! I was pretty pleased with getting mine down to 1500, but I guess I'm not the EZ-Jet of KSP!

nice entries all, I didn't really intend this to be a challenge, just interested to see what ultra cheep designs you had, (lol Tw1, just lol).