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Sunday Punch and Silisko Industries. It flies...interestingly. From stage one to stage three (a good 3/4 of the rocket), the rocket is traveling at only a few hundred m/s. Despite that, the burn lasts for so long that the rocket ends up something like 100,000 m away from the planet. By the end of stage 3, the lack of fuel means that the engines are finally pushing a bit more and the rocket is maybe at 2k m/s. Stage four is when the rocket picks up speed rather dramatically; it'll end up at ~7k m/s. Stage six... Well, I haven't actually let stage six burn to completion, but I suspect that it'll go pretty fast. Consider; starting speed is 7k m/s, the rocket is already outside of the planet's gravity well, and you've got three large fuel tanks with 1000 fuel each. On top of that, the engine is a NERVA thruster which means it has a thrust of 100 with a fuel burn of 2. So we've got about 25 minutes of burn time at max thrust. The way the rocket flies, I'd venture that this is actually *easier* to put in orbit than most rockets. The very slow ascent means you end up well outside the atmosphere but only traveling a few hundred m/s. If you wanted orbit, you could toss away whatever remains of stage 3 before you start to gain any more speed. That means once you've discarded the stages 1-3, you're left with a normal sized rocket with a powerful engine, already outside of the atmosphere, and with only slight vertical velocity. It's easy to tip it over intentionally and put it into orbit from there. As for the struts, you are correct.

Want an incredibly inefficient but awesomely TALL and LARGE rocket? Look no further! 1st stage: 2 SRB's + 1 heavy LFE under three 2 meter fuel tanks form a custom booster. There are 8 of these boosters. All 16 SRB's and 8 LFE's ignite. 2nd stage: The SRB's are discarded. 3rd stage: The huge booster stacks are discarded. 8 nuclear engines ignite. The nuclear engines are fueled by 4 super tall 3 meter fuel tanks and a set of small tanks. 4th stage: The main fuel stack is discarded. A smaller stack of two tall 2 meter fuel stacks sits on top of a heavy LFE. The heavy LFE ignites. 5th stage: The secondary fuel stack is discarded. What remains of the (tallest?) KSP rocket is a flight pod, 3 tall fuel containers, and a low thrust NERVA engine. By this time, the rocket is traveling faster than escape velocity. 6th stage: NERVA engine ignites. Rocket goes to the stars.

Yes. I'm aware of that, they are doing their purpose: Keeping the rocket from falling apart. There are in fact numerous crisscrossing strut connectors on the SRB's. The amount of force put out by them tore the rocket apart multiple times before I figured out exactly how many extra supports I needed.

Mine is not as heavy as those others but it is certainly *taller*... Murphy's Rocket (final speed is 8k m/s): http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=1691.0

Presenting: Murphy's Rocket! I wanted to build the tallest rocket I could and have it still be able to reach orbit\escape velocities. This actually performed better than I expected. Btw, this rocket is taller than the VAB-- even when editing it I have to tear off parts and set them to the side in order to be able to see what I'm doing. There are five stages: 1. Lift-off. Eight SRB's, attached to the rocket through decouplers and crisscrossing support beams, bring the rocket to 1000 m above Kearth and 50 m/s. 2. Initial boost. Four LFE boosters use sixteen tall tanks of fuel to bring the rocket to 250 m/s. 3. Secondary boost. Four heavy LFE's use twelve tall tanks of fuel to bring the rocket to 1k m/s and out of the atmosphere. 4. Primary thrust. One heavy LFE uses five tall tanks of fuel to bring the rocket to 3k m/s and escape velocity. 5. Secondary thrust. One NERVA engine with one tall tank of fuel. By the end of this stage, the rocket is traveling at 8k m/s. Overall, I'm quite happy with the latest KSP experimental release. Before support struts and the stability changes, I'm not sure that a rocket this tall would've been possible. Has anyone seen one this height?