The biggest ship to ever launch?

[B15hop]

Hello Kerbonites,

I’ve been working on this for quite a while, and it was more than a little difficult to get stable, but I finally managed to get this monster into orbit and beyond. Just thought I would share this with you. So, without further ado, I give you.

Biguns…

 

[Dakitess]

Night, wouhou. So convenient to see anything else than plume

[B15hop]

You

13 minutes ago, Dakitess said:

Night, wouhou. So convenient to see anything else than plume

You’re welcome. 
And thank you for making an effort to make my post feel warm and inviting.

Edited March 9 by B15hop

[twich22]

Very nice, well done. I spent 3 days trying to build a stable ship of similar size and was unable to make it work. Im glad at least one person was able to figure it out. 

The biggest I made was 24 engines. That one worked fairly quickly. 

 

The one that took 3 days, seen below, was roughly the same size as yours, 36 engines. I could get it to launch and get it flying to mid kerbin altitude but would always lose control of it because of SAS bugs and such. eventually I gave up on it and stopped playing the game. I think I could have gotten it to orbit if I really wanted to. 

[Dakitess]

32 minutes ago, B15hop said:

You

You’re welcome. 
And thank you for making an effort to make my post feel warm and inviting.

Yeah, sorry, a bit rude but if you're willing to share something, it's even nicer to get it right so that people can enjoy it, discuss about it. It's quite a tendancy to screenshot / record during night-time and it's not the most appealing content I'd say. Anyway, nice Specs Proofing craft

[B15hop]

1 hour ago, twich22 said:

Very nice, well done. I spent 3 days trying to build a stable ship of similar size and was unable to make it work. Im glad at least one person was able to figure it out. 

The biggest I made was 24 engines. That one worked fairly quickly. 

 

The one that took 3 days, seen below, was roughly the same size as yours, 36 engines. I could get it to launch and get it flying to mid kerbin altitude but would always lose control of it because of SAS bugs and such. eventually I gave up on it and stopped playing the game. I think I could have gotten it to orbit if I really wanted to. 

Omg lol. Dude that’s awesome! I don’t even care if it launched. That looks bad ass.
Great job man.

Ok, I see I have to step up my game lol.

1 hour ago, Dakitess said:

Yeah, sorry, a bit rude but if you're willing to share something, it's even nicer to get it right so that people can enjoy it, discuss about it. It's quite a tendancy to screenshot / record during night-time and it's not the most appealing content I'd say. Anyway, nice Specs Proofing craft

All good buddy. I like night time launches sometimes. But I will take your statement into account and try to get some daytime in there.

Edited March 9 by B15hop

[KrakenBait]

6 minutes ago, B15hop said:

I like nighttime lunches sometimes

I prefer my lunch around noon, but whatever works for you! 

Your ship looks suitably impressive. I haven't tried to go that big yet in KSP 2. I'll probably wait until things stabilize a bit more before I do that.
I do like the lighting they have added in KSP 2 for night launches. It reminds me of a large photo I used to have of a night time space shuttle launch.

[twich22]

8 minutes ago, B15hop said:

Ok, I see I have to step up my game lol.

The thing I found that was useful was that it seems like attaching large tanks together radially is an extremely weak connection. The tanks will fall apart immediately, its basically as if they are not connected together at all. So I was using radial attachment points and the main nodes of tanks to provide a much stronger connection. The alternative is lots of struts like you did.

The problem with mine was I couldnt get it to flight straight after getting up to speed. Probably too top heavy. It would probably fly straighter if I put the payload on the bottom and 'pulled' the ship up into orbit. Thats what I used to do way back in the old old KSP 1 days when flying a top heavy ship through soup was just not very easy. I would put the lifting engines up, vertically, above the payload, or at least much closer to it, so that it was no longer top heavy.

But honestly, I just got sick of all the bugs and all the loading screens, plus my GPU is not strong enough so it takes me forever to launch a vessel into orbit. In the end I just spent too much time doing things besides enjoying the game so I gave up on it and decided to wait until the next patch to play any more. 

[B15hop]

40 minutes ago, KrakenBait said:

I prefer my lunch around noon, but whatever works for you! 

Your ship looks suitably impressive. I haven't tried to go that big yet in KSP 2. I'll probably wait until things stabilize a bit more before I do that.
I do like the lighting they have added in KSP 2 for night launches. It reminds me of a large photo I used to have of a night time space shuttle launch.

Lol you got me.. Launches. Speech to text strikes again.

As does my lack of review skills. 
 it was really difficult to get that together, no doubt. I don’t blame anybody for waiting. It failed so many times. I was pulling my hair out.

lol

37 minutes ago, twich22 said:

The thing I found that was useful was that it seems like attaching large tanks together radially is an extremely weak connection. The tanks will fall apart immediately, its basically as if they are not connected together at all. So I was using radial attachment points and the main nodes of tanks to provide a much stronger connection. The alternative is lots of struts like you did.

The problem with mine was I couldnt get it to flight straight after getting up to speed. Probably too top heavy. It would probably fly straighter if I put the payload on the bottom and 'pulled' the ship up into orbit. Thats what I used to do way back in the old old KSP 1 days when flying a top heavy ship through soup was just not very easy. I would put the lifting engines up, vertically, above the payload, or at least much closer to it, so that it was no longer top heavy.

But honestly, I just got sick of all the bugs and all the loading screens, plus my GPU is not strong enough so it takes me forever to launch a vessel into orbit. In the end I just spent too much time doing things besides enjoying the game so I gave up on it and decided to wait until the next patch to play any more. 

You might try using some reaction wheels to help keep it more stable. But yeah, what you tried to put into the air was one hell of a ship. That’s going to be difficult no matter what you do. But I still think it looks awesome. I look forward to seeing it fly.

oh and as for radial connections. I found it to work best for me when I set it to create 6 at a time, not mirrored or anything, 6 and centered the very first one on the center of the tank is connected to. I don’t know why, but it just seem to work out better and more stable. Then I would do six at a time  to fill in the gaps off to the left and right. Adding layers of struts as I went.

 

[TechDragon]

I've definitely decided to take some inspiration from this. It would be good to try and quantify the different join strengths... but with the launch clamps not having infinite power it makes it much harder to isolate single joints and test... some of the mods that are beginning to appear might make it a bit easier. But its definitely something that people trying to build large ships would benefit from. 

Radially connecting tanks is... ridiculously fragile compared to most other methods which is really weird compared to KSP1

[B15hop]

10 hours ago, TechDragon said:

I've definitely decided to take some inspiration from this. It would be good to try and quantify the different join strengths... but with the launch clamps not having infinite power it makes it much harder to isolate single joints and test... some of the mods that are beginning to appear might make it a bit easier. But its definitely something that people trying to build large ships would benefit from. 

Radially connecting tanks is... ridiculously fragile compared to most other methods which is really weird compared to KSP1

Yea, radial decouplers are very fragile as well. Can't even use them with medium solid boosters without struts and they are extremely unstable regardless.

But I absolutley destroyed my biggest ship to ever launch this week..lol. 1546 parts in this one.

 

[TechDragon]

Wow... I'm constantly on the edge of giving up with my massive launches because I usually start with a vehicle design and then try to work out how to launch it... and I suspect I'm missing out on some of the favorable physics behavior I suspect is going on in your designs. I'm definitely going "too tall". And need to find a "payload" design I'm happy with that lets me design a more flat layout like your castle has there... And inspiration has already struck I think... 

 

[B15hop]

5 hours ago, TechDragon said:

Wow... I'm constantly on the edge of giving up with my massive launches because I usually start with a vehicle design and then try to work out how to launch it... and I suspect I'm missing out on some of the favorable physics behavior I suspect is going on in your designs. I'm definitely going "too tall". And need to find a "payload" design I'm happy with that lets me design a more flat layout like your castle has there... And inspiration has already struck I think... 

 

Awesome! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[Vortygont]

I like launching huge ships, it saves much time, which you could waste on docking and refueling your ship. And in the future there will be more big parts, like 7.5 m tanks. But launch pad becomes too small for these ships. I had situations when stabilizers on ship and its boosters touched launch tower and lost parts. I would like to have special launch site for gigantic ships, which could be inspired by N-1 launch site, maybe Starship launch complex or something else. The most important that it must be suitable for big crafts

[Lyneira]

11 hours ago, Vortygont said:

I like launching huge ships, it saves much time, which you could waste on docking and refueling your ship. And in the future there will be more big parts, like 7.5 m tanks. But launch pad becomes too small for these ships. I had situations when stabilizers on ship and its boosters touched launch tower and lost parts. I would like to have special launch site for gigantic ships, which could be inspired by N-1 launch site, maybe Starship launch complex or something else. The most important that it must be suitable for big crafts

Colonies are on the roadmap, which will include orbital colonies. We'll have to have some patience for now, but there will be no better place to build a huge interplanetary or interstellar ship than an orbital colony!