You know you overbuilt your rocket when...

[Tex_NL]

You overbuilt your SSTO space plane when removing fuel before flight actually increases the dV left after it reaches orbit.

[Jovus]

When you get to escape velocity during the solid booster portion of your launch.

[Spacepetscompany]

When you leave for a minute, and come back to find your lifter on an interstellar trajectory....... And you haven't even staged...

[LABHOUSE]

When you meant to just make a replica of a real life rocket and be the same size but it can go to eeloo without using the payload fuel (happened to my orion in my signature)

[Guest]

You know your rocket's overpowered when it doesn't crash into Kerbin, Kerbin crashes into it.

Okay, maybe that's (a little) too much. Feels good to be back on the forums though.

[tetryds]

You know your rocket's overpowered when it doesn't crash into Kerbin, Kerbin crashes into it.

Okay, maybe that's (a little) too much. Feels good to be back on the forums though.

Got it, let me rephrase:

You know you overengineered your rocket when inversions don't sound that weird anymore.

[mythic_fci]

You know you've overbuilt your rocket when you can see your rocket while zoomed out to the maximum.

And when the launch pad, water tank, tracking center, SPH and VAB all go boom at once.

[cantab]

When your Gilly lander *needs* Mainsails to take off.

[Starman4308]

When your Gilly lander *needs* Mainsails to take off.

You simply don't have enough ion engines. What is this "part count limitation" that you speak of?

For myself, I don't have any huge examples, but my latest Apollo-style mission used the S-IVB equivalent to achieve low Munar orbit before giving up the ghost and switching to the service module's engine.

[arkie87]

http://imgur.com/LAWGFb2

[henryrasia]

When you you plan a booster stage, a lifting stage, an ascent and circularization stage, and a interplanetary transfer stage and end up transferring with you lifting stage...

What is this overengineering you speak of?

[Gargamel]

Working on a simple turbo jet booster stage for small (1.25m) rockets. Boosters are so effecient, that after slapping legs on the second (and only stage, since it was designed to be only a bit of ballast and dead weight), it has enough gas to orbit, land on Mun, return, and land upright, without parachutes, on the KSC pad.

[SpaceLaunchSystem]

Your interplanetary trajectories are straight lines.

What engine were you using?!

[Deadpangod3]

What engine were you using?!

judging by the resource panel, id guess some sort of engine from the interstellar mod

on topic:

when you tap the throttle and go from the muns surface to a 500 km apoapsis.

[Cupcake...]

...it won't fit in the garage.

Cupcake...

[cantab]

judging by the resource panel, id guess some sort of engine from the interstellar mod

Close. Near Future Technology actually, using the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters with an Isp of 3200 s. The ship was a 1500-ton asparagus-staged monster propelling a 65-ton payload. Launched in one piece fully fuelled. The hard part was getting the TWR as well as the delta-V, since I didn't really want a day-long burn.

The second trajectory was from the return, with just the core stage remaining albeit pushing a much lighter payload.

It was part of the Magellan mission, see the album linked to in my sig for more.

[Prof. Endwalker]

...the cockpit is on Minmus before you even launch.

[kahlzun]

The launchpad explodes before you launch it, and the ship is not damaged.

[edit; damn, someone did that one]

If it's anything made by Whackjob

Edited November 20, 2014 by kahlzun

[Bill Phil]

... When Jool has to use your ship for a gravity assist.

[LABHOUSE]

When you can reach a trajectory out of the sun (some of my debris has... It was only meant to be able to go to mun but the debris went far...)

[Jovus]

When you reach escape velocity while trying to circularize around Kerbin only by overburning for 1 second.

[RainDreamer]

When it is faster to just reattach stuff in the editor because using the redo function would be even slower with a chance to crash.

[Belphegor]

when you attempt to send a satellite to the mun and the last boosters of the lifting stage burn out when you're in an elliptic orbit with the furthest point halfway between the mun and minmus

[CattyNebulart]

When your ship mounts multiple Orion Engines.

[BAPBAP]

When your ship mounts multiple Orion Engines.

As part of RCS