How big can a ship be?

[MedwedianPresident]

I'm sure Whackjob will answer this question.

Let's assume that we have got Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and that flying things at one frame every 10 seconds is no problem for us. What is the maximum size for a vessel in KSP?

[Hotblack Desiato]

as far as I know: it can be as large as the physics bubble. 2.5 km in every direction.

you can look into ubiozur part welding, and weld parts till they are insanely large.

and there was once a mod that allowed to expand the physics bubble to 100km radius.

[Richy teh space man]

Size in terms of parts or length?

Length is limited by physics rendering distance iirc. After around 2km weird things start to happen, such as parts of the ship not rendering.

Parts wise, I've managed 2000 parts before although not without lag. Really depends on the machine you're using.

[A35K]

Wouldn't the limit be the size of the VAB? Of course, you could dock together to ships each as large as the VAB...

[federicoaa]

The physics bubble was extended to 25km while in atmosphere.

Also, I remember WJ talking about corrupted files when going over 5000 parts

[r4pt0r]

It would be a fun project to try, creating a ship that can just assemble a long train of:

:Orange tank: : Docking Port Sr: : Docking Port Sr: : Orange tank: : Docking Port Sr: : Docking Port Sr: : Orange tank: : Docking Port Sr: : Docking Port Sr: : Orange tank:

and so on... Just make sure your assembly craft has all the thrusters, putting them on the orange tanks would add up very quickly.

[katateochi]

It would be a fun project to try, creating a ship that can just assemble a long train of:

:Orange tank: : Docking Port Sr: : Docking Port Sr: : Orange tank: : Docking Port Sr: : Docking Port Sr: : Orange tank: : Docking Port Sr: : Docking Port Sr: : Orange tank:

and so on... Just make sure your assembly craft has all the thrusters, putting them on the orange tanks would add up very quickly.

and see what happens when you get out of the 2.5km range? I've often wondered that.

And for this experiment I think it would be acceptable to hyper-edit tank-port modules to near where you're docking.

[Bubbadevlin]

I know you can make almost 300m long parts with fairings, I have actually been thinking of trying to make a space elevator with em (although not really)

[Frozen_Heart]

Is the physics bubble the limit? Ships don't load in a part at a time as they cross the threshold, they spawn in all at once.

[HoloYolo]

Hopefully to the physics range. By the way guys, since 1.0, the physics bubble is 22.5km

[magnemoe]

Hopefully to the physics range. By the way guys, since 1.0, the physics bubble is 22.5km

Only inside the atmosphere as far as I know.

[Bev7787]

Somebody made a tower 2.5km high made out of srbs and lit it

[lukethecoder64]

The proper question is: How much RAM do you have?

I was able to build something over 7km before KSP crashed.

(I had to hack gravity and enable unbreakable parts to prevent it exploding immediately.)

It's so big it hit the hill behind KSC

I EVA'd jeb just to push it around... (keep in mind that I have gravity hacked)

But then It hit the runway (and then KSP crashed)

So yeah. Pretty big.

[More Boosters]

-snip-

Now build a ringworld.

[zekes]

I've seen ships tweakscaled to be bigger than Gilly.

As for stock ships, this one was over 1000 tons.

The largest lifter I made was 9,000 tons all up.

The largest Shuttle I made was 2400 tons.

[Bev7787]

The largest lifter I made was my Mars probe RSS with RO lifter.

[A35K]

My largest craft ever (other than lifters) is a 2000 ton Jool mothership.

[Spartwo]

Is the physics bubble the limit? Ships don't load in a part at a time as they cross the threshold, they spawn in all at once.

I built a tower of tanks 2.6km long, it didn't live long enough for me to get an answer:/

The proper question is: How much RAM do you have?

I was able to build something over 7km before KSP crashed.

(I had to hack gravity and enable unbreakable parts to prevent it exploding immediately.)

http://i.imgur.com/wy5UVz9.png

It's so big it hit the hill behind KSC

http://i.imgur.com/gI22NS4.png

I EVA'd jeb just to push it around... (keep in mind that I have gravity hacked)

http://i.imgur.com/zgx4JhP.png

But then It hit the runway (and then KSP crashed)

http://i.imgur.com/2bKdSnG.png

So yeah. Pretty big.

Pretty much this but with Big reds as they were the biggest option then.