Public Progress Thread (Off-topic SFS)

Pink · Jul 28, 2022

Giving IRIS a try, baby steps...
I'm amazed how this rocket barely made it.
I could have turned more aggressively, but no matter which way you slice it, IRIS is

Altaïr · Jul 28, 2022

Mooncrasher said:

It's not easy right?

I used to say that you can expect the payload to be 5% of the total rocket mass in IRIS. The capsule and the probe are 7 tons. With the separator and the little extra fuel you have it's a very correct performance.

KaiserRedGamer · Jul 29, 2022

Altaïr said:

That looks concerningly unstable

ACSA from China · Aug 5, 2022

And... How about my SLS?

Marmilo · Aug 5, 2022

Well, I thought 600t to orbit w/ engine heat is an achievement. But then Altair did it too. Well, two days ago I learned that epic chicken did 650t. So I decided I must -beat him- do better. This is the rocket I used to get 600t into orbit originally:

It has this extension mechanism that allows me to extend the titans so I don't need to sacrifice launcher mass to prevent engines destroying fuel. (Sorry for the grainy gif)

Well, I was looking at it yesterday to think how to optimize it.

See all these red circles? That could be fuel!
But idiot me from January decided "it works so it doesn't need improvement". Anyway, this is what I got:

It looks less wonky and has a smaller part count. I flew it with a quite aggressive ascent profile, I got 31% fuel left in the third stage. According to my calculations, this means I could add like 175t of fuel to it, that would be 775t

So, I redid the second stage. And I ended up with this:

The payload only weighed 764t instead of the planned 775t, but it got into a 30x55 orbit with 5% fuel left. So, that's at least 20t of fuel to add! So, more mass launcher upcoming! I want to have at least 785t in raw fuel to orbit, but I wanna make a variant that can send max. 600t, but with a bigger payload room for stuff that is less dense than fuel tanks.

Pink · Aug 5, 2022

SRLB USA CH said:

It's quite detailed, I have no idea if the sizes are right but this has a lot of detail.

Does it fly ok without cheats?

Marmilo said:

Well, I thought 600t to orbit w/ engine heat is an achievement. But then Altair did it too. Well, two days ago I learned that epic chicken did 650t. So I decided I must -beat him- do better. This is the rocket I used to get 600t into orbit originally:
View attachment 88657
It has this extension mechanism that allows me to extend the titans so I don't need to sacrifice launcher mass to prevent engines destroying fuel. (Sorry for the grainy gif)
View attachment 88659
Well, I was looking at it yesterday to think how to optimize it.
View attachment 88658
See all these red circles? That could be fuel!
But idiot me from January decided "it works so it doesn't need improvement". Anyway, this is what I got:
View attachment 88660
It looks less wonky and has a smaller part count. I flew it with a quite aggressive ascent profile, I got 31% fuel left in the third stage. According to my calculations, this means I could add like 175t of fuel to it, that would be 775t
View attachment 88661
So, I redid the second stage. And I ended up with this:
View attachment 88662
The payload only weighed 764t instead of the planned 775t, but it got into a 30x55 orbit with 5% fuel left. So, that's at least 20t of fuel to add! So, more mass launcher upcoming! I want to have at least 785t in raw fuel to orbit, but I wanna make a variant that can send max. 600t, but with a bigger payload room for stuff that is less dense than fuel tanks.

Great to see you using that mechanism to its full advantage.

It was wasted on a 600t rocket.

Pink · Aug 5, 2022

Trying something new.

Pink · Aug 7, 2022

Mooncrasher said:

Eventually developed into 218t voyager quest rocket

What next, I wonder. (Obviously besides mars mission and station mission)
Perhaps update my kilotonne lifter for 1.5.7... it doesn't work anymore because of engine heat.

Also working on a spreadsheet...