What's the Largest Rocket you've ever built? Interplanetary and Launchers Mostly

[Mr. Rogue Ace]

It's a Saturn V I made a few days ago with Procedural Parts, just for the heck of it.

http://i.imgur.com/Eg7tMddh.png

Check that out, and this actually had a LEM Lander too. (and it popped off and used RCS to return to the capsule)

[Guest]

Copy and Paste from my Apollo Applications Mission Reports:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123221-Challenge-My-attempt-at-The-Apollo-Applications-Program-1-0-Edition

Stock Career Mode:

The S-5 Block I Rocket:

It contains 236 parts.

It weighs in at 538.5 tons.

It stands at 53.7 meters tall.

It costs an unbelievable 226,968 SpaceBucks!

Rumor has it, Jebediah was so excited he threw himself off the control tower, rather than walk down the stairs.

Mortimer took one look towards the Launchpad and submitted his resignation.

Meanwhile, Gene sat back in his chair and said, "aww-wight!"

[Hagen von Tronje]

My entry to the One Million Club - one million liquid fuel alone, plus proportionate oxidizer. Check out the first stage separation, it's a blast!

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[Guest]

Check out the first stage separation, it's a blast!

Now that is some serious hardware. What are you launching, a planet?

[Hagen von Tronje]

Now that is some serious hardware. What are you launching, a planet?

Pretty much. This is a "I'm new to this" design lifting a 1000t+ surface base into direct ascent to interplanetary trajectory. No orbiting Kerbin, no refueling, just line up the time of day (and time of year), and fire it straight into Kerbin escape, then correction burn. Highly inefficient? You betcha. To the credit of either the design or my insanity, I was able to fire this thing to pretty much every planet in the system.

Strangely, the main thing that stopped me wasn't impracticality, since I could care less if it bankrupts Scrooge McDuck to launch, but the fact that launch takes about an hour (for a five minute ascent) due to lag. I still build novelty sized landers, just with a quarter the part count.

[TimePeriod]

780 tons on the launchpad, 200 parts and a 100t payload.

Now, the MK2 version will be a lot bigger.

[Spacetraindriver]

MY Saturn V.

[purpleivan]

The biggest thing I ever launched was the "Eve Party Boat", a four kerbal Eve return mission.

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The lander that I set down on Eve had 29 orange tanks for the ascent from the surface.

I sent up the lander about 25% fueled so I could lift it into Kerbin orbit, then I flew up two pusher vehicles to get it to Eve, plus five launches of fueling vehicles to fill up the lander before departure.

[ecat]

Some true monster craft to be seen in this thread. Love them all

Flicking thought my scrap book I can find nothing of truly humungus proportions, but a small selection of interesting 'experiments' (Yeah, don't worry Jeb, it's just an experiment )

This one landed on Mun (from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/22251-Showcase-SPACE-STATIONS!-Post-your-pictures-here?p=531483&viewfull=1#post531483 )

This was fun, I forget the part count but at 450 Ion engines and enough batteries to run for even a short while, it was far from trivial. Just lower left of centre you can see the launch stage, an Orion nuclear pulse drive (from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom?p=498648&viewfull=1#post498648 )

One of my favorates and my only large, true SSTO (from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/33503-Show-off-your-B9-Designs!?p=508910&viewfull=1#post508910 )

... it was the culmination of experiments with jet launchers (from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/35743-200-kerbal-tons-to-LKO-worth-it?p=463563&viewfull=1#post463563 )

... and its humble beginnings (from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/35743-200-kerbal-tons-to-LKO-worth-it?p=451799&viewfull=1#post451799 )

Edited August 23, 2015 by ecat

[Gaarst]

My lunar rocket (yes, lunar) "Alba", weighing 3297t on the launchpad, using 5m parts, courtesy of SpaceY:

[Feradose]

I present to you, the unnamed giant.

It costs 2.842617E+07 funds and its 620.6m tall. 68,198.6 tons.

[Hagen von Tronje]

I present to you, the unnamed giant.

http://i.imgur.com/HH4DytJ.png

It costs 2.842617E+07 funds and its 620.6m tall. 68,198.6 tons.

But does it even lift, bro?

[Feradose]

But does it even lift, bro?

It does. Its also a SSTO, because it had problems with decouplers.

[Gaarst]

I present to you, the unnamed giant.

[snip]

It costs 2.842617E+07 funds and its 620.6m tall. 68,198.6 tons.

At this point, I think you'd be better off with a ladder to space...

[Gargamel]

@ecat... Welcome to the church of whackjob. Us fellow whackjobians welcome you with open arms and fully appreciate your contributions to spreading the word, in many pieces, rapidly, over a large and now burnt, area.

[DocMoriarty]

I don't go explicitely for large assemblies, though some of my recent designs were either a bit tall or fat:

A new interplanetary tug named Klipper with a luxury class passenger compartment and lots of fuel (Note: tanks of tug are nearly empty and fueled up at Minmus):

A new space station called Kudgel Station for Eve that serves as first payload for Klipper (Note: tanks of station are nearly empty and fueled up at Minmus):

A new asteroid mining and moving barge ... oooops this one didn't make it:

So here goes - a new asteroid mining and moving barge named Marge:

[Geher]

Mine is this one:

In theory this should get me to Laythe and back. I wanna try this soon. I was able to get it into orbit, so the hardest bit is done, I guess.

The fun thing is, that it's only so big, because I didn't want to use the LV-N anymore, because it takes so long to burn. But I'm not so sure if I have even saved time now. The launch into orbit takes ages, because every game second takes about 5 real seconds. Maybe I should split it up into 2 launches ...

... naaaahh

Edit: Found out this rocket was waaay too big, because I've read the deltaV map wrong . The "Boost to Laythe"-stage and the return-stage have incredibly much fuel left when they've their job done. But the lander could just barely make it back to orbit again, because it wasn't very aerodynamic.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Geher

[viktor19]

I present to you, the unnamed giant.

http://i.imgur.com/HH4DytJ.png

It costs 2.842617E+07 funds and its 620.6m tall. 68,198.6 tons.

Wow, this is actually the first time I saw an amount of money written with scientific notation! Wait a minute, that's 28 million funds. *mind blown*

Anyways, my biggest was a Moon direct ascent mission in RO. As it was in .90, I lost craft file, and I didn't take pictures.

Edited August 25, 2015 by viktor19

[Goddess Bhavani]

Mine is tiny, but it can be argued cats aren't very large creatures although most of the habitable space on board the Cat Exploration Vessel is filled with various types of premium fish, cardboard boxes and pillows. Yes there are actually pillows in the IVA.

The CEV was built in the latter stages 0.90 and was intended to forge a new feline presence in interplanetary space, but never made it past the Mun due to release of KSP 1.0.

Considering I never get out of Kerbin SOI in time for the next update, the Catnip Everclean is certainly huge, by kitten standards.

Meow go see the video if you're curious, I don't keep screenshots of old versions handy :3

[Geher]

I present to you, the unnamed giant.

http://i.imgur.com/HH4DytJ.png

It costs 2.842617E+07 funds and its 620.6m tall. 68,198.6 tons.

I think you've just won this thread ...

[Mikki]

... Welcome to the church of whackjob. Us fellow whackjobians welcome you with open arms and fully appreciate your contributions to spreading the word, in many pieces, rapidly, over a large and now burnt, area.

What a wonderfull tell... a little tear starts dropping off my right eye...

Greetings to all Whackjobian worshippers... successful explosions to all of you!

[Sharpy]

But does it even lift, bro?

It does. Its also a SSTO, because it had problems with decouplers.

I 'm putting this in my signature.

[KerikBalm]

The biggest thing I ever launched was the "Eve Party Boat", a four kerbal Eve return mission.

http://imgur.com/a/r6I0M

The lander that I set down on Eve had 29 orange tanks for the ascent from the surface.

I sent up the lander about 25% fueled so I could lift it into Kerbin orbit, then I flew up two pusher vehicles to get it to Eve, plus five launches of fueling vehicles to fill up the lander before departure.

Good lord.... streamline those tanks.

what was the mass/kerbal of that eve ascent vehicle?

The minimum ascent altitude?

[March Unto Torment]

Largest thing I've ever actually used was this:

http://s1194.photobucket.com/user/Zero_Reaper_00/media/screenshot0.png.html

Around 4,900 tonnes on the launchpad, 700t to LKO and 350t to Geostationary Kerbin Orbit. It's carrying the main liquid hydrogen fuel block for my refuelling station, from Nertea's Near Future Tech. It allows me to launch massive magnetoplasmadynamic-engined interplanetary ships with empty tanks, then fuel them in GKO before sending them to other bodies.

Surprisingly, the rocket mostly works great. Its bottom stage is x7 5m engines (many thanks to SpaceY), which boosts it to 100km. Second stage is x1 5m and x4 3.75m engines, which serves to circularise orbit. Third stage is x1 3.75m engine and x6 2.5m engines which I use to boost the payload to GKO. The third's intentionally got a little fuel left over with which to deorbit itself after it's done.

One problem during the initial launch of the Station Core (a slightly lighter payload) was that the original second stage was underpowered, which led to a low TWR. This meant that the circularisation burn took much longer than expected - and resulted in atmospheric re-entry during the circularisation burn. It dropped as low as 41,000m, where I managed to move the Periapsis to. After that, it managed to emerge from the atmosphere and I circularised, then pushed through to GKO. Still, it was definitely the most dramatic orbit I've ever attempted!

I've altered the original third-stage engines to Mammoths to boost TWR, and we're in much better shape now. The thing works great; I just need to finish docking the hydrogen block, and then I'll lift the LFO refuelling block to dock to the station as well, using this same rocket. It's a great and reliable all-purpose lifter.

[Othuyeg]

I used tweakscale to make one massive rocket with four 5m antimatter reactors + thermal turbojets. It was a single stage to everywhere. With fuel to spare.