What's the heaviest ascent stage you've landed on another planet?

[JordanL]

By that I mean, what's the largest tonnage you've landed on a planet that made it back into orbit. So if you landed 100t on a planet, and 20t made it back into orbit, the answer would be 20t.

[Jouni]

If kethane miners count, I had one that refueled my Eve lander by mining kethane from Gilly. It was probably around 450 tonnes in orbit.

Otherwise the the biggest is probably my general-purpose interplanetary ship from 0.23.5. If I carried too much fuel with the lander, and couldn't bother leaving the command module in orbit, it could have weighted 25-30 tonnes after returning to orbit.

[Torquemadus]

Due to my fixation with hardcore custom difficulty, I usually focus on making my payloads smaller, not bigger.

This is my Kestrel direct ascent lander, launched by one of my Kerbooster shuttles. It's the largest lander I've used since Project Krapollo in my earliest KSP days. I was messing around with it in 0.25 to see if the Mk2 parts were any good for use as landers.

It uses frictionless wheels, and small amounts of rocket thrust where needed, to travel long distances over the Munar surface. It performs far better than any conventional rover I ever designed. Importantly, it's quite heavy, so it doesn't flip and bounce about when I drive it at fairly high speeds.

The two FL-T400 tanks contain the reserve fuel needed to return to Kerbin. Take off from the Mun is achieved by using a hill to "ski jump" off the surface.

[NoPanShabuShabu]

Don't really remember how heavy this was, but for scale the probe cores and the main tank are 3.5m. It's an AI probe thinking station on Eeloo.

Edited January 21, 2015 by NoPanShabuShabu
Imgur link and a word

[PB666]

Over 100t, using scale modified stock parts. The lander I am currently building is 124T and has a capacity of 41. It will only land on celestials with g less than 0.15, but can to atmospheric science on some planets without landing. It uses a collection of VASMIR, and SSME like thrusters. I'm guessing it will get 105T back into orbit. For Mun like celestials it needs to be refueled on the surface. I have landers that could land and take off from 4 different Mun craters before needing to refuel in orbit. I used a single lander in a cycle of 4 refuelings to collect science from all the biomes of the mun. I'm guessing its mass was around 50T. At its core was a scale modified NERVA-like thruster, The entire ship was build around the engine (literally) and scaled down and rescale parts inorder to optimize storage a minimize mass.

[Kelderek]

I just put 1500t into LKO and sent it on its way to Eve. About a third of that is the transfer portion, and ~1050t of it is my lander. The entire ship with its launcher was 11,500t on the launchpad at Kerbin. I've already tested the landing and ascent on Eve using hyperedit with success. The ship is actually en route right now with a long-ass transfer burn (lag is making it 10x slower than normal), and I'm trying to keep myself occupied until it gets there. If all goes well, I may have an entry in the Eve Rocks challenge, so wish me luck! It may take me another full day of working on it though since it is so slow.

[RocketPilot573]

Well....

I forgot to undock that lander there from the mothership.

[GoSlash27]

My heaviest ascent vehicle was 52 tonnes. Single occupant Eve surface to orbit.

Best,

-Slashy

[Frohike]

Don't really remember how heavy this was, but for scale the probe cores and the main tank are 3.5m. It's an AI probe thinking station on Eeloo.

Wow nice looking probe!

May I ask what mod are those Solar(?) Panels from?

[bs1110101]

Wow nice looking probe!

May I ask what mod are those Solar(?) Panels from?

Interstellar, and they're radiators not solar panels.

[Pecan]

About 120t when I was interested in building bases, in three 40t-modules though.

[NoPanShabuShabu]

Wow nice looking probe!

May I ask what mod are those Solar(?) Panels from?

Like bs1110101 said, they are the large radiators from Interstellar mod (not to be confused with the movie or Astronomer's pack.) Even on Eeloo, the brains were mining science so hard they were overheating. Not really, it was just for looks, as was the 10 sided polyhedron they probe cores are configured as. Launching it from Kerbin using FAR was actually kind of silly, who says you need fairings? Also, unless things have changed since a year ago, when people say that it's so hard to earn enough science to unlock all the Interstellar stuff, they are wrong.

[Edit] Actually it's a 14 sided polyhedron.

Edited January 22, 2015 by NoPanShabuShabu

[magnemoe]

Have build some very heavy ore and kethane miners, think larges was 500 ton fully loaded. Currently use karbonite and as the deposits never run dry its more practical with upgradeable bases than landers.

[cptdavep]

I built a 177t Eve ascent stage, it was successful too. Here it is on it's rather dramatic launch from Eve (that's all the landing legs and chutes decoupling and exploding!)

[EdFred]

By that I mean, what's the largest tonnage you've landed on a planet that made it back into orbit. So if you landed 100t on a planet, and 20t made it back into orbit, the answer would be 20t.

My heaviest ascent vehicle was 52 tonnes. Single occupant Eve surface to orbit.

I built a 177t Eve ascent stage, it was successful too. Here it is on it's rather dramatic launch from Eve (that's all the landing legs and chutes decoupling and exploding!)

My answers were going to be similar, except what I was left with from Eve was much, much less than what was landed. Like less than 2t that actually made it to orbit. So for me the actual answer would be something that departed Duna and then went to Ike. Everything else that lands on another planet ends up being very light. I try not to carry more into orbit than absolutely needed.

[cantab]

For mass back in orbit, my old exploration/mining ship. Designed to cruise around low gravity moons hovering on the ions, and also fully capable of flying back into orbit.

I don't have the exact mass to hand though. Just thinking about fuel, the grey tank stays empty but there's 13 tons of xenon (hidden in the adapters), six tons of monoprop, and I think 30 or so of kethane when full.

For mass landed, my Tylo lander: https://flic.kr/p/qK65LP Even down to about 2 1/2 tanks full per column it's still a heavy thing! Unfortunately it didn't quite make orbit afterwards because of a delta-V miscalculation; Jeb proceeded on the jetpack but the lander slammed back into Tylo's surface.

[Renegrade]

My very first Eve-return lander was 85 kg upon return to orbit. Final stage is ant-powered! (pure stock)

Oh wait biggest.. uh, my Duna lander from that same save is 4,355kg dry mass (it's actually bigger than my Tylo lander, which is only 1,500 kg, as it's designed to do all science for pre-biome Duna in one landing).

(not including BTSM landers, which can easily be like 8 tons dry, or my BTSM ground study base which was probably in the 80t-range and COULD re-enter orbit around Minmus)

For mass landed, my Tylo lander: https://flic.kr/p/qK65LP Even down to about 2 1/2 tanks full per column it's still a heavy thing! Unfortunately it didn't quite make orbit afterwards because of a delta-V miscalculation; Jeb proceeded on the jetpack but the lander slammed back into Tylo's surface.

WHYYY!?!?! It's .. so huge >.<

[Gargamel]

I had to sit and think about this thread title for a bit, it's quite like the old catch 22 question: When did you stop beating your wife?

[merendel]

When I'm runing EPL the tankers hauling metal up to the orbital shipyard tend to be prety heavy, 200-300 ton range. Usualy only make em that heavy for really low gravity bases such as on minmus though. the fuel tankers tend to be lighter just cause fuel is alot lighter unless I really pad the part count.

[LordBaryon]

My Minmus kethane-base fuel transporter:

View of ship

Vessel Info

I'm not sure what its mass was when it landed, but it was 1400 tons after taking off and rendezvousing with the station in orbit around Minmus.

[KerbMav]

Well....

http://i.imgur.com/eg03WIG.png

I forgot to undock that lander there from the mothership.

I would like to see a bit more of your ship, always looking for different designs, as I think mine are getting a bit repepetititive.

[Kelderek]

By that I mean, what's the largest tonnage you've landed on a planet that made it back into orbit. So if you landed 100t on a planet, and 20t made it back into orbit, the answer would be 20t.

Doesn't this vary a lot based on the planet chosen? A lot of the responses so far are not comparable since they are all different planets.

I had a ~1060t lander on Eve that put about 7-8t of payload in orbit there. You can see the whole thing in my Eve Rocks Challenge submission

[Camaron]

Grabbed straight from an older post

"Mun revisions complete, and tested. Banefire can now successfully leave The Mun with over 400,000 units of Kethane onboard. Banefire weighed in at 1,331 tons at Mun takeoff. It did not use converters to refuel. (because they don't work - Kethane isn't fully supported in 0.24.2 yet).

I will be making finishing touches in the next day or two and work on officially submitting it.

Smile, Barlock."

[NecroBones]

Heh, you know, this is something I haven't really kept track of. But most of my landers are pretty small, except for the ones I've taken to Eve, but of course only a tiny fraction of the Eve lander makes it back to orbit.

[LaytheAerospace]

I think my first successful Laythe rescue picked 12 Kerbals up in a 60t lander, which barely made it back to orbit. These days I fly planes literally everywhere. Typical weight for a landing configuration (pair of rapiers) would be around 12-15t. Interplanetary configuration (pair of LV-Ns) is more like 20t.