A.R.L Heavy [D]

[Nogens]

A.R.L Heavy [D]

BP Editing : No
Overlapping : Yes
Cheats Required : No

This is a Rocket with a Lander and Orbiter.
Equipped with docking parts for refueling when traveling long distances. It's really easy to go into LEO. You only need the two stages + boosters to get into moon orbit. Lander is equipped with parachutes for Venus and Mars landings.

Sorry for my bad English I'm from Austria

It's my first BP in posting so tell me if I can improve something. ^^

I wasn't able to upload the compressed BP...
If someone knows why this this works like this, I posted a threat on Help on Support ( https://jmnet.one/sfs/forum/index.php?threads/uploading-zip-not-working.5282/ )

 

[Nogens]

Oh sorry I didn't meant to post this meme xD

 

[Nogens]

Oh and I forgot Screenshots

 

[Pink]

Your TWR is a little, heh, high.
Interesting aesthetics, potential for a 100t lifter!

 

[Altaïr]

That's a heavy rocket!

However you could make it much lighter and efficient. Especially, you could use less engines.

Let's have a look at the upper stages first. The priority for upper stages is to have efficient engines (which means with high specific impulse): Valiant or Frontier.
Your third stage has 1 Frontier and 2 Valiant. The engines themselves are a good choice, but the combination is overpowered: 1 Frontier will be enough to do the job here. Adding 2 Valiant adds mass and lower your specific impulse. Of course they add thrust, but thrust is not that important in space, you can just compensate by burning longer.
If you want more thrust, 3 Valiant and no Frontier are also a defendable choice, though you lose in efficiency.

For the second stage: 1 Frontier and 2 Hawk. The Frontier is ok, but the Hawk are too inefficient for a second stage. That stage should also be designed for space navigation. I suggest to use 3 Frontier instead. You'll have a slightly lower thrust, but it will be way more efficient.

First stage and boosters: 7 Titans. Titans are ok, but... seven of them?! Did you have a discount or a special offer on Titan engines to use that much?
2 Titan for the 1st stage itself and 1 for each booster will be largely enough, it still gives you a very decent Thrust/Weight Ratio (around 1.45). Having a TWR above 2 is overkill, it's generally a sign that your launcher is inefficient. By inefficient, I mean here that with such power you could lift way more mass to orbit. Of course it will work, but you don't need that much.

Generally speaking it's a good practice to learn to optimize a launcher, because that will allow you to carry much heavier payloads on the long term.

 

[Nogens]

That's a heavy rocket!

However you could make it much lighter and efficient. Especially, you could use less engines.

Let's have a look at the upper stages first. The priority for upper stages is to have efficient engines (which means with high specific impulse): Valiant or Frontier.
Your third stage has 1 Frontier and 2 Valiant. The engines themselves are a good choice, but the combination is overpowered: 1 Frontier will be enough to do the job here. Adding 2 Valiant adds mass and lower your specific impulse. Of course they add thrust, but thrust is not that important in space, you can just compensate by burning longer.
If you want more thrust, 3 Valiant and no Frontier are also a defendable choice, though you lose in efficiency.

For the second stage: 1 Frontier and 2 Hawk. The Frontier is ok, but the Hawk are too inefficient for a second stage. That stage should also be designed for space navigation. I suggest to use 3 Frontier instead. You'll have a slightly lower thrust, but it will be way more efficient.

First stage and boosters: 7 Titans. Titans are ok, but... seven of them?! Did you have a discount or a special offer on Titan engines to use that much?
2 Titan for the 1st stage itself and 1 for each booster will be largely enough, it still gives you a very decent Thrust/Weight Ratio (around 1.45). Having a TWR above 2 is overkill, it's generally a sign that your launcher is inefficient. By inefficient, I mean here that with such power you could lift way more mass to orbit. Of course it will work, but you don't need that much.

Generally speaking it's a good practice to learn to optimize a launcher, because that will allow you to carry much heavier payloads on the long term.

OK thank you I'll upgrade the Rocket...
Is there something I can make better about the Lander/Orbiter?

 

[Altaïr]

OK thank you I'll upgrade the Rocket...
Is there something I can make better about the Lander/Orbiter?

As is there's nothing shocking to me. If you want to improve them, the optimal design will depend on your mission. Landing on Mercury, on the Moon or on Venus doesn't come with the same requirements... As is I guess it's rather adapted for a mission to Mars for example, though having 2 stages for the lander is probably not necessary. It would be fine for Mercury and the Moon too, but the parachutes are useless in this case. You could land on Venus but you wouldn't come back
For Jupiter's moons it should be fine too, except for Ganymede, because of its huge gravity.

See, it really depends on your objectives in the end. A generic lander can't be optimal for everything...

 

[smol]

It's my first BP in posting so tell me if I can improve something.

I took a crack at optimizing your build. Assumption was you wanted to enter low earth orbit with those orbiters, landers, and the first big fuel tank full. That's ~136T payload to LEO. Looks like you are assuming a rocket with an upper stage that can take up to 12-wide of engines, and a lower stage that can take up to 20-wide of engines (I see you are using overlapping parts so you can cram them in narrower as needed).

If we assume 2 stages (and no boosters!) to LEO, delta-V total requirement 2900m/s, needing TWR 1.2 at launch, and 1.0 at the upper stage, and 8-wide separators between stages, here is a possible solution from my python program:

Stage upper Report:
  Bill Of Materials
    1 x 136T ton payload
    1 x separator-8w
    3 x Frontier engines
    145.0 tons of fuel tank
  thrust=300.0T; TWR(earth)=1.00 (>=1.00); burn time=126 (>=126s)
  total weight 299.80 tons; deltaV=1624m/s (>=1624)

Stage lower Report:
  Bill Of Materials
    1 x (299.80T stage upper)
    1 x separator-8w
    2 x Titan engines
    282.5 tons of fuel tank
  thrust=800.0T; TWR(earth)=1.32 (>=1.20); burn time=76 (>=76s)
  total weight 607.10 tons; deltaV=1276m/s (>=1276)

607.1T is slightly over half the weight of your original proposal.

There are some other 2-stage solutions out there, depending on how many engines you are willing to put on each stage. For instance, if you are willing to stuff 7 Frontier engines on the bottom stage, you can get the weight just below half your initial blueprint. During my investigations I found some other edge-case solutions that put 4 Frontiers on top plus 6 Hawks on the bottom, and an extreme one with 18 Valiants on the bottom stage (but that's kind of silly).

I also tried adding boosters to the bottom stage like you originally had, but I wasn't really seeing any major benefits beyond a simple 2 stage rocket design without boosters (using the TWR, delta_v, and engine-build-width assumptions as stated above). For example, I saw one with 5 Frontiers in the main rocket and a hawk on each booster, total weight under 581T (the main + boosters burned for 68s, and after dropping the boosters the main rocket burned for 20s more) lifting the aforementioned upper 299.8T upper stage and producing at least 1276m/s delta V:

Stage main (boostee) Report:
  Bill Of Materials
    1 x 299.8T ton payload
    1 x separator-8w
    5 x Frontier engines
    34.4 tons of fuel burned in tanks that hold 150.75T of fuel (23%)
  thrust=500.0T; TWR(earth)=1.00 (>=1.00); burn time=20
  starting weight 381.72 tons; deltaV=268m/s (>=268)

Stage boosters-main (booster-boostee) Report:
  Bill Of Materials
    2 x side-separator
    1 x (498.10T stage main)
    2 x Hawk booster engines burning 67.5T fuel (0% remain)
    5 x Frontier boostee engines burning 116.4T fuel (23% remain)
    183.9 tons of fuel burned total
  thrust=740.0T; TWR(earth)=1.27 (>=1.20); burn time=68
  starting weight 580.50 tons; deltaV=1014m/s (>=1008)

boost combo total delta v=1282m/s

If we loosen the requirements ever so slightly, there are some more solutions with 5 frontiers on the main rocket and another frontier on each booster and it weighs less than 573T.

Optimized fully assembled rockets are all coming in around 600T +/- 25T. I'm running SFS 1.5, if that matters.