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What is your biggest and smallest ship in KSP?


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We've all built a minuscule rocket and a humongous rocket, right? I remember in Sandbox (Yes, rockets built in sandbox are allowed. Career isn't the only game mode!) I built a ship using only extra large radial size parts. Then in Career mode I... hmmmm... I don't remember any small rockets. Anyway, post your smallest and biggest crafts here. Just down there. My thumb is a pointer. icon13.png. Hey... I'm not wearing red!

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Probably this rocket from playing with Real Solar System qualifies as my biggest. It's a WIP shot; a later revision brought it to 26,500 dV. It is pretty much as tall as the VAB, and weighs almost 2,100 metric tons.

To give you a sense of scale, this is a shot of the payload inside the fairing on top, with standard sized sciene jr's and goo canisters... observe the curve of the fairing, and look again at the first image.

P.S.: I could not build it any wider because FAR makes that impractical. As it was, this thing already struggled with aerodynamic drag.

Edited by Streetwind
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My standard "heavy" lifter is ~4500t. I've made some bigger, but it's not often I need to. Generally my payloads are no more than about 250t, going to 650x650, so they don't need all that much to get where they're going.

Smallest craft to orbit was ~4t, using only a turbojet.

Biggest spaceplane that successfully orbited was ~450t, which had something like three dozen turbojets.

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I don't build very big, I have a quite a few small ships however. . . small is beautiful!

This probably take the record, its less that 5 tons and is my very light "Return from Jool" module. . . holds a single Kerb has about 7-8000m/s DeltaV, and since the Ion Drive upgrade doesn't take hours to burn any more and had one less large solar panel.

C6081EB8A54FA3D2EC3EDA964E7F0D979B486FB1

Quite a few off my SSTO's are around the 5-7 ton mark.

866A10833513808B347B92ECCCD1AE65F0273029

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My biggest ship is my current Eve lander:

eve_ship_1.jpeg

It's single-stage-to-Eve, weighting almost 1600 tonnes at launchpad. The ship is currently waiting for the last two fuel tankers at Eve orbit, before it can begin its landing attempt.

My biggest rocket was the one I used to launch my heavy asteroid tug a while ago:

asteroid_wheel_1.jpeg

The launch mass was almost 3600 tonnes.

The smallest useful ship I've ever built was the test vehicle for finding the limits of 1:1 intake-to-turbojet ratio:

turbojet_test1.jpg

It reached a 171x36 km orbit, and its launch mass was probably less than 2.2 tonnes.

If we consider payload ships, this kethane probe is probably the smallest:

probe_pol.jpg

The mass of the probe should be around 0.5 tonnes.

Edited by Jouni
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My biggest "ship" could technically be my Jebrock space station, when I dock an engine to it:

2oK7Em9.png

If that doesn't count as a ship, then it would likely be my orbit-assembled base builder. Inside the fairing is a bunch of components for building a self-sustaining Kethane mining base. First is in transit, second one is after landing and deployment:

2iTkwe1.png

R8B4pqk.png

Smallest ship, aside from just simple probes of course, would likely be my Ion Fighter:

dQbT8IM.png

Or my small orbital bus SSTO. Works on Kerbin and Laythe:

BvLv6dm.png

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I don't have any pics lying around, but my first probes to the other planets tend to be about the size of a Kerbal. My heavy lifters on the other hand... let's just say with a 5% payload fraction, sending 65 tons to orbit means a big ship, even with Kerbodyne engines.

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I just made this 0,45t Minmus lander: rEQ2elf.png

If i have calculated correctly, it should be able to land on the Mun and return to orbit with good piloting. I barely made it with Minmus, mostly because i only noticed the transfer stage had a retrograde orbit after takeoff :P

Edited by Michaelo90
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I just made this 0,45t Minmus lander: http://i.imgur.com/rEQ2elf.png

If i have calculated correctly, it should be able to land on the Mun and return to orbit with good piloting. I barely made it with Minmus, mostly because i only noticed the transfer stage had a retrograde orbit after takeoff :P

Ditch the RCS. Use a donuts tank or two and an ant engine. It will be lighter and more efficient then using RCS alone.

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One of the smallest without resorting to the *cough* improved *cough* ion engines and weightless parts:

Micro Minmus, brings one Kerbal to Minmus and back just nicely.

36 parts, 17161kg launch weight, and a real pleasure to fly. Quite a bit of delta-V to spare makes it really safe. I'm sure I can shave off another 10% of the weight somehow but TBH this is nice as it is.

42hIiZn.jpg

And one of my more absurd derp-crafts, the "Pfffffff... I don't think so" landed on Minmus with its crew of three:

29 parts and a bit over 133 tons landing weight.

mapb8Ol.jpg

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My biggest thing is probably my Kerbal space station. I really should give that guy some limbs some time.

vUJeCB6.png

My smallest would be the ladderlift frame. SSTO to most places, as long as you only need so many burns....

UXxLof1.gif

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Ditch the RCS. Use a donuts tank or two and an ant engine. It will be lighter and more efficient then using RCS alone.

I guess that would be more efficient if it was meant to only go to minmus and back, but it's really made for landing on bop/pol/gilly on interplanetary missions where you need to dock back to the mothership, so it would need RCS anyway. I was just testing it on minmus :)

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I'm quite a bit behind on the "heavy lifting" aspect of the game compared to some of you.

My biggest comes from my last save in .23, the KSS Trident. ~8000 DV depending on what you're doing with it (that figure is with only a small lander I think), slow as Christmas, and completely useless for taking most payloads out of Kerbin SOI due to the 3 way symmetry. Here it is awkwardly loaded down with base supplies for Duna:

KSP2014-01-1416-55-33-58.jpg~original

And my smallest isn't really a ship per se, it's an experimental lander that I haven't used at all other than making sure I could get it somewhat stable. It's in developmental hell on a back-burner somewhere but the final version (if it ever makes it that far) will probably have the command chair moved to the side and the docking port moved to the top, to solve a couple problems at once.

KSP2014-05-0921-51-43-59.jpg~original

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