| 1 | [[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/{{X}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/milelongship_5585.jpg]]]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:And that's not even the largest ship![[note]]Any resemblance to four 1/25 scale engine blocks glued together is [[OffTheShelfFX purely unavoidable]].[[/note]]]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"The ship is too big. If I walk, the movie will be over."'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''President Skroob''', ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Your starship is big, very big. Now how do you get this across to people? By stating how big it is in miles or [[TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay kilometers]]. It may be a StarshipLuxurious or so packed full of people or machinery that the interior resembles that of a submarine. These ships are generally too massive to land, so they're built in space and stay there; in case they do see the interior of a planet's atmosphere, it's usually because something's gone horribly wrong -- usually emphasized by the very agitated crew bracing for impact. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | Often, mile-long starships are considered to be "harder" than small ones, partially because a slower-than-light ship would need to be huge to carry all the fuel and supplies needed for a decades-long voyage. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | The most realistic designs—the ones that are very clear how lethal most high-powered spaceship engines are—tend to be very ''long'', specifically, in order to maximize distance between the habitat section and the engine. In order to minimize mass (since [[SquareCubeLaw mass is proportional to volume]] and one dimension is already determined), long ships will often be very thin. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | No one knows how big ships will be when/if humankind takes to the stars, but it is worth noting that big spaceships do make sense if you are dealing with GenerationShips -- the occupants will want and need space to run around. And because space is so vast it is even called "space," the only limits to single spaceship size would be structural strength and propulsion capacity. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Has nothing to do with]] long-distant fanmade romances. Supertrope to PlanetSpaceship. See also TheBattlestar, BigDumbObject, CoolStarship, GenerationShip, and UnnecessarilyLargeVessel. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ---- |
| 18 | !!Examples: |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 21 | |
| 22 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 23 | * ''Anime/{{Macross}}'': |
| 24 | ** The eponymous Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross is a city-sized alien spaceship which crash lands on Earth, which is then used by humans to go into space. 1,210 meters (3,970 feet) long. |
| 25 | ** The assorted sequel series introduce the New Macross Class colonisation ships separated into 'Battle' sections that are at ''least'' the same approximate size of the original SDF-1, attached to massive 'City' sections which are exactly what the name suggests, massive, space going cities. |
| 26 | ** Zentraedi ships are even bigger, since their crews are 9 meter giants (except when they undergo "micronization" to human-size). A Nupetiet-Vergnitzs flagship, for instance, is about 4 kilometers long, and a Thuverl-Salan cruiser is 2300 meters. |
| 27 | ** [[AllThereInTheManual Within the setting's background]], the [[{{Precursors}} original builders]] classified the design as a small capital ship with the primary purpose of being a mobile WaveMotionGun... and not much else. This is why the Zentraedi, who possessed true battle fleets, had larger warships. The New Macross vessels, more or less, demonstrate that humans adapted the class to their original function: though they retain humanity's TransformingMecha technology. |
| 28 | * In ''Anime/{{Gunbuster}}'' the [[spoiler: Earth evacuation ship-turned-warship]] Eltreum is said to be '''70 km''' long. |
| 29 | * Gundam contains multiple large ships although large ships tend to be rare |
| 30 | ** The Jupitris-class which first appeared in Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam are 2km long tankers that bring Helium-3 from Jupiter to Earth to be used as fuel for Nuclear Fusion. |
| 31 | ** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam00'' features the [[spoiler:Celestial Being]] mothership, which measures roughly 15 km in length. |
| 32 | ** Though not technically "ships" per-se, space colonies in [[Franchise/{{Gundam}} all Gundam series]] that feature them are roughly 6.4km in diameter and 36km in length, because they are historically based on a Gerard O'Neil's ''Island-3'' design. O'Neil's ''Literature/TheHighFrontier'' was one of the chief influences on Creator/YoshiyukiTomino when he first conceived the series. However we do see Colonies being transformed into proper space ships: The first is in the Victory Gundam Gaiden manga where a group of newtypes leave the Solar System in the Dandelion, a colony ship and the second is Liteiria in Gundam Astray where they put a giant thruster on the Colony to travel to Jupiter. |
| 33 | ** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing''[='s=] Peacemillion is a Mile-'''Wide''' Ship; 3 kilometers wide, to be precise. Since it's intended to be a deep space exploration ship with facilities to accommodate a civilian crew (including what looks like a food court), it presumably needs plenty of room for quarters and supplies. The space fortress Libra (which is supposedly a Peacemillion-class vessel, despite the fact that they look nothing alike) is also three kilometers wide. |
| 34 | * ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' has the Cathedral Terra, later named the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren, is a big-ass ship that ''was the moon for a while.'' It's roughly half the size of earth, and it is piloted by Simon, piloting Gurren Lagann, that pilotes Arc-Gurren Lagann. It also transforms into its own giant robot. This is taken even bigger, reaching the point where galaxies are used as throwing stars. ''And that's not even the limit.'' |
| 35 | * When we first see the alien ship in ''Anime/ProjectAKo'', careful blocking makes us think it's about the size of an Earth battleship. (Specifically, the ''[[Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato Yamato]]'', which it deliberately resembles.) then we see the whole thing. [[spoiler: The "battleship" is little more than a ''figurehead'', on a ship the size of a city 6,500 meters in length.]] |
| 36 | * ''Anime/AldnoahZero'': The Landing Castles used by Orbital Knights of Mars are some two kilometers in length. Unlike most examples of this trope, they - [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin as the name implies]] - are ''designed'' to land on planets. (That is to say, Earth.) As this "landing" involves simply dropping down from orbit, the impact is powerful enough to generate a practically nuclear-level blast. The Castle itself - presumably protected from the crash by [[AppliedPhlebotinum Aldnoah-related technology]] - then unfolds, allowing the Knights and their forces to begin the invasion in earnest. |
| 37 | * While its exact measurements are never given, the [[AllThereInTheManual supplemental materials]] for ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers'' estimate the Saint's Cradle--the flagship and mobile palace of the Ancient Belkan Saint Kings--to be "several kilometers" in length. |
| 38 | * In ''Manga/HunterXHunter'', there is a ''nautical'' ship that's enormous in size, built to traverse the long journey to the Dark Continent. This thing is so large, from the perspective of its passengers, it functions more as a self-contained city than a vehicle. It includes several dining areas, a courthouse, and even what appears to be a shantytown that popped up on one of the lower decks, and, when the journey begins, it carries about 100,000 passengers (though the number may be higher due to there being many stowaways). |
| 39 | * In ''Anime/GirlsUndPanzer'', the all highschool carrier ships are pretty much [[ElaborateUniversityHigh "cities floating on the sea"]]. While the series itself gives a rough image of the Ooarai carrier's size, the third OVA and other supplementary materials go in length about it. Ooarai carrier is a self-sufficient city with population about 30.000 people. The distance between the waterline and its main deck is 400m, and is around 7.5km in length depending on the definition of the main deck, whether it's from the lower deck or just the surface deck. The carrier is so large, there's a phenomenon of urban decay in its bowel. Also, Ooarai is one of the smaller schools; [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gup/images/f/f6/SSW3.png/revision/latest?cb=20170304090413 all other schools]] with the exception of Maginot (which has a submarine as their school ship), are larger than Ooarai. Black Forest Peak is said to have a population of more than 100.000 people. |
| 40 | * ''Manga/OnePiece'': |
| 41 | ** Thriller Bark is a megalithic ship that serves as an entire island (in fact, it's an island retrofitted into a ship). It's so big, there's an entire castle, forest, graveyard, and mansion on top of it, and it's very difficult to see the entirety of it from the ground, to the point [[ThatsNoMoon the fact it's a ship isn't apparent at first]]. |
| 42 | ** The Noah is a gargantuan wooden ship located near Fish-Man Island built eight-hundred years ago for an unknown purpose. It's half the size of Fish-Man Island itself and built to be pulled by multiple [[SeaMonster Sea Kings]], since even the entire population of the island pulling on its chains at the same time don't have to strength to budge it even a single millimetre. Vander Decken IV is able to use his Devil Fruit powers to lift the ship in an attempt to perform a ColonyDrop on Fish-Man Island with it. |
| 43 | * ''Anime/HeroicAge'': The main ship, the ''Argonaut'', is around 10km long. It is noted to be one of the largest warships the human race has ever built, but even their standard battleships aren't that much smaller. To say nothing of their mobile artillery weapons, which dwarf the ''Argonaut'' multiple times over, but 99% of their bulk is made up of a single gigantic energy cannon. |
| 44 | [[/folder]] |
| 45 | |
| 46 | [[folder:Arts]] |
| 47 | * ''Art/SpaceFantasyCommemorativeStampBooklet'': The ship in the lower background of the centre and centre-right stamps is the largest ship on the entire [[IdiosyncraticCoverArt pane of stamps]]. The red spaceships give a general idea for how large it is. |
| 48 | [[/folder]] |
| 49 | |
| 50 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 51 | * The whole story of ''ComicBook/{{Pouvoirpoint}}'' takes place on board the ''Entreprise-2061'', a starship so big that it extends beyond the frames and we never see the full picture. |
| 52 | * ''ComicBook/StarWarsLegacy'': Ships of super star destroyer scale are seen as AwesomeButImpractical in this time period (without a galaxy-sized tax base they cost too much to operate - a ''small'' SSD requires a crew of a quarter million people to run) and are no longer in use. The Fel Empire's warship of choice is the ''Pellaeon''-class star destroyer, which is about the same length as a movie-era ''Imperial''-class but more massive (taller profile). But when Darth Krayt seizes power, his Empire introduces the larger ''Imperious''-class (exactly how it compares to the previous era's Super Star Destroyers is uncertain, but it's bigger than any contemporary warships)… and [[LaResistance the Alliance]] [[GrandTheftPrototype promptly steals the first ship from him]]. |
| 53 | * ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'': |
| 54 | ** The ''Lost Light'' is mentioned to be ''15 miles long'', although this is probably due more to SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale than anything else given the resulting size implications for some of the much bigger spaceships. |
| 55 | ** While scales aren't given often (and when they are, they are seldom reliable), the Galactic Council ship [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial Benign Intervention]] and the various [[HumongousMecha Titans]] both dwarf the ''Lost Light''. By way of justification, the ''Lost Light'' is crewed by giant transforming robots, the Benign Intervention is crewed by aliens even bigger than the giant robots, and Titans transform into entire mobile cities scaled for giant robots. |
| 56 | [[/folder]] |
| 57 | |
| 58 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 59 | * ''Fanfic/TheButcherBird'': [[spoiler:''Prometheus'', the second Nightmare ship,]] is a whopping 603 meters at the waterline. For reference, that's about twice the length of the ''Gerald R. Ford'' class supercarrier in real life, and over three times the length of the Marine battleships of the ''Manga/OnePiece'' world. This escalates still further as it [[TheAssimilator eats]] the wrecks of the ships it kills, until it's over a kilometer and a half long MechanicalAbomination. |
| 60 | * ''Fanfic/MassEffectClashOfCivilizations'': The UNSC and Covenant ships, whose scale astounds the Council team sent to investigate them, especially the Covenant supercarrier they dub "the Leviathan". |
| 61 | * ''Fanfic/{{Fractured|SovereignGFC}}'': The Trans-Galactic Republic has the ''Revenant''-class [[TheBattlestar Star Dreadnaughts]] that measure 35 kilometers (21.748 miles) from end to end. The ''Mass Effect'' races have their large ships, but they're typically smaller due to being more realistic with known physics and lacking AppliedPhlebotinum that lets ''Franchise/StarWars'' ships grow so astronomically huge. A regular capital ship from the Trans-Galactic Republic [[InsistentTerminology Spacelane Protection Force]][[note]]They seem to see themselves similarly to RealLife Japan's [[UsefulNotes/KaijuDefenseForce Self-Defense Force]], at least on paper, though characters lampshade how silly a "defense" force seems with constantly-growing ships and massive firepower. This becomes important later.[[/note]] actually is larger than a ''Reaper'' but it's considered "ordinary." Later on, ships derived from [[spoiler:Eridian/Forerunner]] technology are seen to reach 4 and 32.5 kilometers in length respectively. |
| 62 | * ''Fanfic/TheNextFrontier'' gives us the ''Starfarer 1''. It's not a mile long, but an overall length of slightly under 300 metres is quite something for a society whose technology is TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture relative to contemporary Earth. She ''has'' to be that size to carry enough fuel and other consumables for a multi-year interstellar mission. |
| 63 | * ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902145 Civil Wars, Whistleblower Tactics, Schematic Drafting, and the Finer Points of Sith Adoption: The Essential How-To Guide for the Engineering Jedi]]'': The canonical ''Executor'' Star Destroyer is stated to be so large that it has multiple rail stations just so people can get around in a reasonable timeframe. |
| 64 | * The 260-kilometer "Ultra" Star Destroyer ''[[https://imgur.com/gallery/e2qDGVs SDSD Freudian Nightmare]]'', which in the attached account of the maiden voyage took six days to tour, had the crew forming tent cities at their stations, and the chief engineer declared himself "Chief Marshal of the sovereign nation of Ree'Ak'tor" and started a war with the infantry detachment. |
| 65 | [[/folder]] |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 68 | * The ISV ''Venture Star'' in ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' is stated [[AllThereInTheManual in some sources]] to be about 1500 meters long (almost a mile). The same is true for its 11 sister ships of the ''Capital Star'' class. In fact, the length is considered ''small' and is only possible with the use of {{Unobtainium}}. The original ship sent from Earth to Alpha Centauri was 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long in order to make room for massive refrigeration units for the magnets keeping AntiMatter contained. |
| 69 | * ''Film/TheFinalCountdown'': USS ''Nimitz'' is introduced by the camera traversing the length of the ship. While not actually a mile long, it's a a real vessel, and all the more impressive for it. |
| 70 | * In ''Film/IndependenceDay'', the "city-killer" {{Flying Saucer}}s that detach from the mothership are about 15 miles in diameter. The mothership itself is a PlanetSpaceship at several hundred kilometers in diameter. |
| 71 | * ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'': |
| 72 | ** In ''Film/{{Guardians of the Galaxy|2014}}'', [[BigBad Ronan]]'s ship, the ''Dark Aster''(and similar Accuser vessels seen in ''Film/{{Captain Marvel|2019}}'') is three kilometers ''wide'' as opposed to long. |
| 73 | ** [[spoiler: Thanos' personal ship first appears in TheStinger of ''Film/ThorRagnarok''. It dwarfs the ship on which entire Asgard evacuated. It reappears in ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar''.]] |
| 74 | * The opening scene of ''Film/Saturn3'' features an enormous spaceship, meant to visit outposts on various moons and planets in the solar system at sub-light speeds. |
| 75 | * ''Spaceball One'' in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' has a similar scale, {{justified|Trope}} by [[spoiler:the fact that it needs to be capable of storing the entire atmosphere of an Earth-like planet]]. The movie opens with a shot of the ship flying past the camera -- and it takes almost ''two minutes'' to pass, with the shot functioning as an OverlyLongGag. And it's ''still'' not as long as Creator/MelBrooks [[WhatCouldHaveBeen originally wanted it to be]]. There's also a number of jokes about how big the ship is, such as: |
| 76 | -->'''Colonel Sanderz:''' Prepare ship for Ludicrous speed. Fasten all seatbelts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, [[RuleOfFunny cancel the three-ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo...]]\ |
| 77 | '''President Skroob:''' ''[out of breath from having run from his quarters to the bridge]'' Ship is too big. ''[pant]'' If I walk, ''[pant]'' [[NoFourthWall the movie will be over]]. |
| 78 | * The ''Franchise/StarTrek'' films, being generally larger in scope than the TV shows, have provided a few examples: |
| 79 | ** The all-powerful V'Ger from ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' is possibly the most standout example; the ''Enterprise'' is an insect next to it, and cut dialogue places its length at 48 miles while non-canon sources have gone as high as 60 (making it roughly three times the size of Manhattan). [[note]]In a [[Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse expanded novel]] set right after V'Ger's visit to Earth a character mentions that V'Ger was about the size of Maui.[[/note]] |
| 80 | ** The mysterious whale probe from ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'' is almost as long (fitting since it was probably built by a race of alien whales). |
| 81 | ** ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' features the return of the famous Borg Cube mentioned below. |
| 82 | ** And of course the entire Kelvin timeline owes its existence to the [[Film/StarTrek2009 Narada]], which has been officially stated to be 5 or 6 miles long and dwarves anything Starfleet can throw at it. It's a mining ship, which partially explains its size but not its [[EldritchStarship bizarre appearance]]. |
| 83 | ** ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' gave us the ''[[EvilIsBigger USS Vengeance]]''. [[spoiler:Khan]] calls it "twice the size" of ''Enterprise''; given how much bigger the latter ship is in that universe, this puts the ''Vengeance'' at just over a kilometre and a half. Which makes one wonder how [[spoiler: Kirk and Khan]] managed to walk from one end of it to the other in just a few minutes, but that's a discussion for another page. |
| 84 | * ''Franchise/StarWars'': |
| 85 | ** The infamous ''Imperial''-class Star Destroyers are 1,600 meters long, or approximately one mile, while Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer ''Executor'' was 19 kilometers. As a real-world comparison, this makes ''Executor'' roughly the size of [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity Manhattan]]. [[http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-super-star-destroyer-is-manhattan-sized-1726012171 Literally.]] Then we come to the sequel trilogy and Supreme Leader Snoke's personal flagship, the Mega Star Destroyer ''Supremacy'', which is a whopping 60 kilometers, or ''thirty-seven miles'', from port to starboard, meaning it would span the exact width of ''Rhode Island''. |
| 86 | ** Certain Rebel ships match the Star Destroyers in length: Admiral Ackbar's flagship ''Home One'' is about 1,300 meters long, though as Mon Calamari Star Cruisers are custom-built they vary pretty widely in length. The most common variety (the "winged" cruiser exemplified by ''Liberty'', the second Death Star's first victim) are 1,200 meters long. |
| 87 | ** ''Film/TheLastJedi'': Snoke's ''Mega''-class destroyer ''Supremacy'' is - outside the Death Stars - if not one of the largest then the largest ship ever built. The ship is about 13.23 kilometers long, 60.54 kilometers wide, and about 39.75 kilometers tall. The ship served as the capital of the First Order, had a crew of over two million, and could dock with up to 8 ''Resurgent'' class Star Destroyers. [[spoiler: That is, until, she was rammed at lightspeed by a Mon Calamari cruiser and the damage was so severe she was evacuated and scuttled.]] |
| 88 | ** The ''Franchise/StarWars'' [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]] adds many more examples, some of which are found under Literature. |
| 89 | * ''Film/DarkCity'' is revealed [[spoiler:to be set on a city-sized spaceship.]] |
| 90 | * ''Film/TheBlackHole'': The ''USS Cygnus'' is stated in [[TheMerch supplementary materials]] as being one mile long. |
| 91 | [[/folder]] |
| 92 | |
| 93 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 94 | * The colony ship ''Intrepid'' in ''Literature/Aeon14'' is thirty kilometers in length and carries a crew/population of millions of {{Human Popsicle}}s, and can carry its own multi-hundred-meter defense fleet ships docked internally. The ship has robot-tended farms and entire forests with game animals that produce food for the crew: protagonist Tanis Richards often snacks on [[TrademarkFavoriteFood BLT sandwiches]] with bacon from ''Intrepid''s own hogs. And it's not even the biggest in the setting: besides ''Intrepid'''s sister ''I''-class ships (built later based on ''Intrepid'' to be war-winning [[TheMothership motherships]]), {{terraform|ing}}er worldships are significantly larger and used to rearrange planets. The series also features a number of orbital mega-structures with populations in the hundreds of billions: a 1600-kilometer SpaceStation with a population topping a hundred billion, seen in book four, is merely ''average'' by Richards' standards. |
| 95 | * The mothership ''Aniara'' from the poem cycle of the same name. Justified because it is meant to be an "arc ship", carrying a good bulk of humanity towards a new home. |
| 96 | * Creator/MikhailAkhmanov's ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDark'': In ''Invasion'', the [[HumanAlien Bino Faata]] starship is a cylinder several kilometers long. It's actually TheMothership for hundreds of large combat units (each 3 times the size of a human cruiser) and thousands of smaller units. In the sequel, the new human-built cruisers are a kilometer long. For bonus points, it takes only 6-7 years to build five of these. And that's only 30 years after humans get access to the technology required. |
| 97 | * ''Literature/ChakonaSpace'': Captain Neal Foster's ship ''Folly'' is described as being something like 2 km long. |
| 98 | * Some of the starships in Iain M. Banks' ''Literature/TheCulture'' novels are quite large -- a GSV (General Systems Vehicle) can be 25 to 200 kilometers long, with millions of passengers and enough on-board manufacturing capacity to match a ''planet'' in production. ''Literature/ConsiderPhlebas'' shows the megaships of [[RingworldPlanet Vavatch]], which are massive oceangoing city ships that are at least 4 kilometers long, and are so massive that it takes years for them to accelerate to their max speed. The megaships use enormous cruise ships as tenders. One scene taking place on a GSV contains a throwaway observation by one of the characters of a megaship being neatly tucked away for storage in one of the GSV's smaller storage bays. |
| 99 | * In Creator/CordwainerSmith's ''Instrumentality of Mankind'' story 'Golden the Ship was, Oh, Oh, Oh!', there was the Golden Ship, a megaship ''1 AU'' (93 ''million'' miles) in length, and reputed to be the most dangerous warship in existence. [[spoiler: It's all a bluff - the 'ship' is an immense shell with a small single-operator cabin at the center, designed to intimidate and distract the enemy forces while the ''real'' attack comes from somewhere else.]] |
| 100 | * ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' has Heighliners, immense ships that are the primary means to transport everything in the known universe, as they are piloted by Guild Navigators who can navigate and teleport the ship to planets lightyears away from each other. Then there's the No-ships, which are able to transport a full grown SandWorm (200 to 400 meters long) in their cargo holds. The prequel series ''Literature/PreludeToDune'' reveals that Heighliners are manufactured ''underground''. Specifically, in the vast caverns under the surface of Ix. How does the ship then get into space? Why, a Navigator simply folds space right from the cave. Immediately after that, the workers start laying down the framework of the next Heighliner. The contract for building Heighliners keeps switching between Richese and Ix, the only two planets with enough technology and industry to build them. |
| 101 | * In ''Literature/EarthUnaware'' the Formic mothership is at least a kilometer in diameter. Except at the end it's revealed that the "mothership" is just a scoutship. The real mothership is ''much'' larger, although the Formics are busy cannibalizing it to build an armada while on approach to the Solar System. |
| 102 | * The ''Literature/{{Eldraeverse}}'' has several multi-kilometer ships, such as the 2.3 km-long ''[[https://eldraeverse.com/2018/09/29/covered-in-bees/ Hurricane]]''-class drone carrier, 3 km ''[[https://eldraeverse.com/2018/09/05/leviathan-awake/ Leviathan]]'' dreadnought, and '''1,600''' km ''[[https://eldraeverse.com/2018/10/16/youll-want-us-high-and-clear/ Iced Fire]]''-class [[MadeOfExplodium antimatter]] transport. |
| 103 | * ''Literature/FoundationSeries''' "Literature/TheMayors": The [[LostTechnology ancient]] two miles long Imperial battlecruiser is described as single-handedly out-massing the entire Anacreonian navy, the largest navy in the Four Kingdoms. It is implied the Foundation has the ''theoretical'' knowledge of how to make ships like that, but lacks the resources (Terminus, being a single world lacking in metals, has to build small and efficient, while the Galactic Empire, having at its height the resources of the entire galaxy, can afford to build in massive scale). By the time the Foundation ''does'' have such a large domain that it could afford to build ships like it, they've developed miniaturisation and efficiency far enough that there's no point. |
| 104 | * In ''Literature/{{Voidskipper}}'' this is a JustifiedTrope; achieving safe FasterThanLightTravel requires a very large and expensive power plant and a very sturdily-built ship, meaning that for operating a Voidskipper to be economical it needs to be huge. |
| 105 | * In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/{{Genome}}'', the main character notices a [[VestigialEmpire Taii]] ship, a Moon-sized sphere, patroling their ancient borders (which now belong to younger races). Subverted in that this ship is a relic of bygone times. The Taii ship is escorted by a tiny human destroyer that can incinerate the giant sphere with a single volley. |
| 106 | * According to the website of the author of ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' series, ships in that 'verse tend to be fairly large, almost absurdly so, especially since the stated crew complement is ''very'' small (although that could be justified by mass-produced AI modules that can be used to replace crew). The largest warships of the StandardSciFiFleet, flag cruisers, are 7 kilometers (almost 4.5 miles) long... with a standard crew of 150. Slightly justified by a fifth of the ship being taken up by its AntiMatter WaveMotionGun (it's almost never used and really only serves as a deterrent). The first human extrasolar colony ship, the ''Alpha'', was even larger. However, the ''Alpha'' was built before the discovery of [[SubspaceOrHyperspace Hypersphere]] and was supposed to have been propelled by three massive fusion engines. A large chunk of the ship was devoted to the engines and their hydrogen fuel. Even then, half the colonists/crew were supposed to be kept in [[HumanPopsicle stasis]] at any given time, with shifts rotating every couple years. |
| 107 | * Ships in the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series are usually denoted by their tonnage rather than their length, but one book had a diagram that showed their main warships as being 2 kilometers in length for a battleship to 3 km for a Superdreadnought. Then two programmers for the ''Saganami Island Tactical Simulator'' couldn't make the models work with the specs they were given. They found at the current scale they were only as dense as ''cigar smoke''. After this revlation, Weber re-scaled them so they top out at just over 1500 m for an SD and 1200 m for a battleship. This is known as the "[[https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Resizing Great Resizing]]". |
| 108 | ** It's stated that, over the course of the conflict between Manticore and Haven, both sides have steadily increased the sizes of their ships without reclassifying them (classification here is more based on tactical and strategic role than tonnage): late war Light Attack Craft (similar in role to fighters or gunboats) are nearly as big as prewar destroyers, the better to carry a spinal graser worthy of a battlecruiser. This doesn't really come into play until later, when the Solarian League Navy realizes that Manticoran destroyers should by all rights be classified as cruisers in terms of size, mass, and firepower. Like much of ''Honor Harrington'', this loosely follows real-world evolution of naval architecture: modern US Navy destroyers are as big or bigger than pre-dreadnought battleships, though lighter-weight. |
| 109 | * In Mark S. Geston's ''Lords of the Starship'', the eponymous [[spoiler:fake]] ship is 7 miles long and almost 1 mile in diameter, and has HTOL wings with a span of 3 miles. It's designed to [[spoiler:con people into thinking it will]] carry millions of people away from its CrapsackWorld. |
| 110 | * While ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' is no stranger to big ships, things like Terran 1500- and 2500-meter diameter respective super- and ultra-battleships look positively modest compared to many other examples on this list. At least until one takes into account that (a) yes, these vessels are basically spherical and correspondingly ''massive'' next to more slender designs elsewhere and (b) they're also still entirely capable of extending landing struts and setting down on planetary surfaces. More extreme to outrageous examples exist, but are either singular vessels (such as the fourteen kilometers long [[TheBattlestar [=BASIS=]]]) or sufficiently advanced alien technology like the Cosmocratic "spore ships" that at a diameter of 1,126 km are both very much the size of not-so-small moons and, for all that they're very high-tech and were intended to help spread life and sapience throughout the universe, could well be summed up as "just" glorified freighters. |
| 111 | * Starships in Creator/HBeamPiper's [[StandardSciFiHistory "Terro-Human Future History"]] are invariably described as spherical. In ''Space Viking'' the starship ''Enterprise'' ([[Franchise/StarTrek no, not that one]]) is described as a "two thousand-foot globe"; assuming this is the ship's diameter, this works out to a circumference of over a mile. In the short story "A Slave is a Slave" (set in the same universe, but several centuries later) an "Empire ship-of-the-line" is explicitly described as being "almost a mile in diameter"; in terms of ''volume'' this works out to being well over a hundred times bigger than the largest building ever constructed (the Boeing aircraft factory in Everett, Washington). |
| 112 | * When Peter boards the alien ship in book #3 of Bruce Coville's ''Literature/MyTeacherIsAnAlien'' series, he's told that the name of the ship is "New Jersey". Not because the aliens have any particular fondness for the Garden State, but because the ship is ''literally the size of New Jersey.'' Part of the rationale is that the ship is essentially a travelling outpost of the Interplanetary Council, and needs to house species with very different physical needs. |
| 113 | * In ''Chindi'', part of Creator/JackMcDevitt's ''Literature/PriscillaHutchins'' series, the alien ship known as the ''chindi'' is over 16 km long, and apparently uninhabited, but still intent on its unknown mission. |
| 114 | * In Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Literature/RendezvousWithRama'', Rama is a [[BigDumbObject mysterious cylinder]] entering the Solar System that is over 50 km long and 20 km in diameter. ''Literature/RamaII'' is the same. |
| 115 | * Creator/AlastairReynolds has: |
| 116 | ** Lighthuggers in the ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'' are roughly 2-5 kilometers tall.[[note]]The ships fly "upwards", as the engines point "down". Decks on the ships are arranged much like that of a skyscraper.[[/note]] Most of the space is taken up by vast cargo holds, [[HumanPopsicle cryogenic sleeper]] vaults, hangars, and weapon systems. The Nostalgia For Infinity's engineer knows of at least 1050 decks, almost all of which is [[UsedFuture abandoned and exposed to vacuum or rogue defense sentries]]. A Lighthugger is shown "landed" in an ocean in a later novel, with most of it [[StarScraper sticking straight out of the ocean]]. |
| 117 | ** In Reynolds' standalone novel, ''Literature/HouseOfSuns'', the ships are even longer - the protagonist's ship is 50 kilometers long. Most of the mass and length is taken up by the slower-than-light propulsion systems, but the ship still has room for an 8 mile long cargo hold which carries [[MatryoshkaObject smaller interstellar ships inside]]. The novel also briefly shows [[PlanetSpaceship moon-sized ships]], though their mass makes them agonizingly slow, especially for the already slow, non-FTL interstellar travel. |
| 118 | * In the ''Rings of the Master'' mega-novel by Creator/JackChalker, the small band of rebels who oppose Master System are based aboard the ''Thunder'', a former colony ship that's fourteen kilometers long. |
| 119 | * ''Literature/{{Ringworld}}'': The Kzinti of the Ringworld, who live in the Map of Kzin, a life-sized replica of their homeworld in the Ring's immense oceans, live in a united society ruled from the ''Behemoth'', a 1.6-kilometer-long seagoing vessel driven by hydrogen power. |
| 120 | * ''Literature/SkylarkSeries'': In ''Skylark of Valeron'', the ''Skylark'' was a sphere over 1000km in radius and has a crew of four, it needed to be that big to contain the navigational instruments necessary to cross intergalactic space. |
| 121 | * ''Literature/StarCarrier'' by Ian Douglas: The eponymous vessel ''America'' is a kilometer long and not very wide, while the railgun cruiser ''Kinkaid'' is of similar size or bigger, given the barrel for main weapon is a klick long. There are also several [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Turusch]] vessels built from hollowed-out asteroids that are several times larger. H'rulka vessels are an interesting version: they initially look 20 klicks long but are actually several single-crewperson ships docked together that are individually several klicks in length (the creature flying it is [[BizarreAlienBiology a 200-meter colony organism]] that finds itself cramped by the "small" vessel). |
| 122 | * ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' adds enough of these that it seems kilometer-plus is fairly standard for heavy capital ships in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, particularly in the Imperial and post-Imperial eras. These are just some of the biggest examples. |
| 123 | ** "Super star destroyer" is basically a catchall term for ships following the star destroyer design philosophy and larger than about three kilometers. The Empire built many of these, but most were one-offs and only the ''Executor''-class went into (relatively) wide production with around a dozen known. |
| 124 | ** The ''Eclipse''-class star dreadnaught from ''ComicBook/DarkEmpire'' is 17 kilometers long, outmasses the ''Executor''-class, and mounts [[WaveMotionGun a superlaser capable of cracking a planet's crust]]. This won't destroy the planet, but the seismic effects will depopulate it quite handily. |
| 125 | ** By the ''Literature/NewJediOrder'' series the New Republic saw the need to have a counter for Super Star Destroyers and the like, and the Mon Calamari supplied the 17 km ''Viscount''-class battleship. For their part the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong]] had their ''koros-stronha'' or "worldships", 10 km in diameter and primarily colony ships but quite capable of defending themselves against GFFA capital ships. They also had a couple different types of ''kor chokk''[[note]]"grand cruiser"[[/note]] of similar size that served much the same command-and-control/heavy battleship role as super star destroyers. |
| 126 | * In ''Literature/HayvenCelestia'' by Rick Griffin, the ''White Flower II'' is basically a mobile stargate three miles in diameter with the habitat modules for the ten thousand crew wrapped around the outer edge of the ring. |
| 127 | * In John Ringo's ''Literature/TroyRising'' series, Troy, Thermopylae, and Malta are mobile battle stations 9 to 13 km wide, each using rapid-fire 50-megaton nukes to power their {{Orion Drive}}s and carrying an entire fleet of cruisers, fighters, and millions of missiles. They make the Rangora (the enemy aliens) Assault Vectors (which are pretty impressive battleships in their own right) look puny. |
| 128 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': |
| 129 | ** In ''Literature/CiaphasCain: The Emperor's Finest'' the space hulk ''Spawn of Damnation'' is said to be about five kilometers in diameter. As space hulks go that's fairly small[[note]]in fact it's at least an order of magnitude too small to make sense; the class of ship the heroes arrive in is about that size itself but the text says they're tiny next to it and ships of even bigger classes can be seen poking out of the mess. See the franchise' entry in the tabletop section.[[/note]], but one of Amberley Vail's footnotes comments that it's "quite big enough under the circumstances." |
| 130 | ** ''Literature/ForgesOfMars'': The [[LostTechnology archaeotech]] Mechanicus Ark ''Speranza'' is large enough that its hangar bays can accomodate kilometers-long Imperial warships, the training bays have room for [[HumongousMecha Titans]] to freely maneuver, and mag-lev bullet trains are needed to move between compartments. |
| 131 | * In Creator/StephenBaxter's ''Literature/XeeleeSequence'' universe: the Xeelee Nightfighter. The cockpit is small, about the size of a room, but its ''wings'' stretch out for kilometers in either direction, like vast sails. The purpose of these wings are never made evident, as the ship itself travels via teleportation. |
| 132 | * Creator/KateWilhelm's "Literature/TheMileLongSpaceship": Although [[ImpliedTrope implied]] by the title, only [[TitleDrop one line in the story]] indicates the size of the titular ship; "the mile-long spaceship in his dream". |
| 133 | * ''Literature/LaszloHadronAndTheWargodsTomb'': Plenty appear in this novel: |
| 134 | ** The SNV Orion, flagship of the Solar Navy, is thirty kilometres long. |
| 135 | ** The Ouroboros is a space station that completely encircles Earth. |
| 136 | ** [[spoiler:The Wargod dwarfs the Orion, at three hundred kilometres long.]] |
| 137 | [[/folder]] |
| 138 | |
| 139 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 140 | * In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' 'verse, jump capable ships tend to be ''massive'' due both the size and power requirements of jump drives. Some specific examples: |
| 141 | ** The spinoff ''Series/{{Crusade}}'' had the ''Excalibur'', which was 3000 meters in length, and had an internal rail line (similar to that on the Babylon 5 space station) running along its length for transportation within the ship. |
| 142 | ** Also, the Babylon 4 station, which preceded Babylon 5, had a propulsion system (unlike its successor), so it could serve as a mobile base-ship and carrier that was 6 miles in length (Babylon 5, meanwhile, was 5 miles in length). |
| 143 | ** There were also the ''Explorer''-class vessels. Their task was to travel to unexplored systems, identify those worth permanently occupying, and deploy jumpgates. At 6.1km/4.8 miles long they're about three quarters the length of Babylon 5 itself, making them by far the largest ships operated by [=EarthForce=] and significantly larger than any other ship seen in the show not operated by one of the First Ones. They are so large that the pylons of the Babylon 5 jumpgate had to be moved apart to create a jump point large enough for one to pass. We're told that they're incredibly rare, mainly because they're ''incredibly expensive'' to build and operate, and those that do exist will spend most of their time out in the furthest reaches of explored space. Even most [=EarthForce=] officers will never see one in person. |
| 144 | ** Minbari ''Sharlin''-class war cruisers are about the same size as a star destroyer, though that's in height, not length (they're taller than they are long). |
| 145 | ** The largest ships to date are Vorlon ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Eclipse]]''-class planet killers. Estimates put them at 26-36 miles in diameter (they're circular). And they're definitely visible from planetary surface as one partially eclipses the sun when it briefly arrives over Centauri Prime. |
| 146 | ** Pretty much every major [=EarthForce=] warship measures around a kilometer, with the ''Omega''-class destroyer breaking the mile barrier at 1700m, it's successor, the ''Warlock''-class making over 2000, and the ''Poseidon''-class supercarrier being of similar length to the ''Warlock'' but much wider. |
| 147 | ** One of the smallest jump-capable ships known is the ''Asimov''-class luxury liner, at 600 meters. Due the power requirements it only mounts small anti-fighter weapons. |
| 148 | ** As stated above, jump drives are generally massive and are power hogs anyway, forcing jump-capable ships not built by the First Ones to be large (the Vorlon have been able to build a jump-capable ship the size of a ''Cessna'', showing the massive technological disparity). Aside the First Ones, only Vree, Centauri and Minbari have shown the ability to manufacture jump drives for ships smaller than the ''Asimov'', and given the power requirements the Vree and the Centauri are limited to barely armed transports. Only the Minbari can make jump-capable ''practical'' warships, and even they prefer either small non-jump capable warships or large jump-capable ones for anything but recon duty. |
| 149 | * The ''Franchise/BattlestarGalactica'' was over 1.5 km, the ''Pegasus'' over 1.7 in the 2003 series. |
| 150 | ** In the 2003 series, the Battlestar ''Galactica'' is 4740 feet long, while the Battlestar ''Pegasus'' is 5872 feet, making it more than a mile long and the largest battlestar class in the series. |
| 151 | ** WordOfGod from Glen Larson is that the original ''Galactica'' was "a mile long". A collector of the series props and costumes worked out, using screen grabs and the known size of the full-scale Viper mock-ups, that the ship was 6080 feet long, which is one ''nautical'' mile (or was before the unit was revised to 1852 m). There's obviously a huge margin of error in this because of the large amount of extrapolation required, and similar calculations using other screenshots have led to smaller figures around 4100 feet (approximately 1250 m), which is very close to the length of the 2003 version as quoted on merchandise. Against that, early pre-production and merchandising for the original series had the ''Galactica'' as being 2000 feet long, though this is generally considered to have been superseded by the later, larger figures. |
| 152 | ** Even the ''scale model'' used in the Classic series was over 6 feet long! 76 inches, in fact. |
| 153 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "World Enough and Time" the TARDIS lands on an unnamed ship that's ''400'' miles long and 100 miles wide. The bridge is caught on the edge of a black hole and is trying to reverse back out but that's a lot of ship to move. Meanwhile the top levels are undergoing TimeDilation compared to the lower levels, for every minute that passes on the bridge ''years'' are passing for the people further down. |
| 154 | * In ''Series/TheExpanse'' the LDS Church commissioned the ''Nauvoo'', a two-kilometer GenerationShip, to take them to the next "promised land." In season 2 the Outer Planets Alliance commandeered it to knock Protomolecule-infested Eros into the Sun, but missed. They retrieve it in season 3, [[spoiler:and refit it into the solar system's biggest warship. Though the engineers doubt it could actually hold its own, it just looks intimidating.]] |
| 155 | * In the show ''Series/{{Lexx}}'', the ''Lexx'' itself is an insect-like ship that is 10 kilometers in length. The cast use dragonfly-like helicopters to get around inside it. On several occasions they were boarded and it took multiple episodes before anyone noticed. |
| 156 | * The ''Series/RedDwarf'' is 6 miles long, 4 miles tall, and 3 miles wide, according to the novels. The TV show states "5 miles long" repeatedly, but we might assume this refers to the ship's habitable volume, and the 6 mile figure includes the ram scoop and main engines at the front and back of the ship respectively. It originally had a crew complement of 169. Then in series 3 it was {{retcon}}ned to [[SerialEscalation 1,169]]. |
| 157 | ** Of course in most series it has an organic crew complement of "two", plus several robots, the ship's computer, and a VirtualGhost, none of whom use anywhere near all of the ship. So the inconsistencies might be excusable. |
| 158 | *** The first Red Dwarf novel, ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', isn't limited by a BBC cast and effects budget and gave the original crew size as 11,169. |
| 159 | * ''Franchise/StargateVerse'': |
| 160 | ** The Ori warships in ''Series/StargateSG1'' were established by ancillary materials as 1.1 kilometers long. |
| 161 | ** Wraith hive ships in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' were described as roughly thirteen times larger than an SGC ''Daedalus''-class battlecruiser. This gives a ship around 2.9 kilometers long. The super-hive that appears on the series finale is much larger, making it the largest known starship in the setting. Meanwhile, Ancient city-ships such as Atlantis are about 3 kilometers in diameter. |
| 162 | * ''Franchise/StarTrek'': |
| 163 | ** The ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "Valiant" provides a Jem'Hadar battleship described as twice as the size of a ''Galaxy''-class starship. A quick calculation based on the ''[=DS9=] Technical Manual'' results in a ship just under 1.3 kilometers long. Another Jem'Hadar capital ship that is similar but much larger is seen during the Battle of Cardassia in "What You Leave Behind" (though this may simply have been a scaling error in the special effects: the ''Defiant'' herself changed size practically every other shot). |
| 164 | ** Borg cubes are generally built around 27 cubic km. (That means 3km for all twelve edges) The Borg Tactical Cube shown in one of the final episodes of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' is five times larger. |
| 165 | ** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': |
| 166 | *** "Azati Prime" has Captain Archer being taken through time and brought on board the USS ''Enterprise''-J. Due to time constraints with making the episode, the designer of the ship admits that they only had a couple of weeks to flesh out a concept, which is only very briefly shown in a fuzzy holographic computer display in the episode itself. The ship was never shown from the outside in the episode, so supplementary material filled in for that. The ''Enterprise''-J was built as a generational ship, capable of folding space to instantly travel to other galaxies. It is so large that its turbolifts are replaced with site to site transporters, and it features massive parks and even an entire university on board. Its saucer is roughly 26 miles in diameter. |
| 167 | *** "Countdown"'s script describes the Xindi-Aquatic cruiser as five times the size of the NX-01. This puts it in the ballpark of 1,125 meters (official sources put it around 1800 meters). |
| 168 | ** The Romulan D'deridex class warbird is slightly over a kilometer in length. Most of it is empty space though. |
| 169 | ** Even Starfleet is close to the trope, with the ''Enterprise''-D and -E being close to half a mile in length. |
| 170 | ** The Voth city ship shown in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' beamed the entire titular ship into its cargo hold, which has plenty of space for dozens of such ships. It's no wonder some EU material suggests the Voth might make good allies against the Borg. |
| 171 | [[/folder]] |
| 172 | |
| 173 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 174 | * The first season finale of ''Podcast/MissionToZyxx'' sees the crew visit the ''Delegator'', flagship of the Federated Alliance. |
| 175 | -->'''Commander Voltor:''' The ''Delegator'' is the pride of the Federated Alliance, one of the most incredible ships we have at our disposal... Should anything happen to this vessel the Federated Alliance would feel a crippling blow.\ |
| 176 | '''Dar:''' Is that part of every entry speech?\ |
| 177 | '''Voltor:''' I say that to everyone who comes in. Why wouldn't I? It's an incredible ship. |
| 178 | [[/folder]] |
| 179 | |
| 180 | [[folder:Radio]] |
| 181 | * In Creator/TheBBC's ''Radio/{{Earthsearch}}'', the starship ''Challenger'' [[spoiler:and its sister ship ''Challenger II'']] is 10 miles long and capable of terraforming entire planets. Pity it's ruled by a pair of psychotic computers. |
| 182 | [[/folder]] |
| 183 | |
| 184 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 185 | * ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': The Clans have the largest ships in Inner Sphere, such as the [[http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Leviathan_(Heavy_Transport) Leviathan]], [[http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Black_Lion Black Lion]] and [[http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Potemkin Potemkin]]. Even ordinary [=JumpShips=] tend to be over a kilometer in diameter, though that's just the "sail" used to gather solar energy, the ship proper is usually around half a kilometer long, with the bulk of that being the jump drive- the actual part of the ship that the crew stays on is considerably smaller. |
| 186 | * ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones'': Capital ships are listed as ranging from 5,000–6,000 feet in length. They're also the only ships that can't land on planets, or even dock with space stations. ~Half-mile "large" ships can land, in water, but can't maneuver in atmosphere unless made by Pulse. |
| 187 | * ''TabletopGame/StarFleetBattles'': There are two monsters, The Planet Eater (Based on the Doomsday Machine from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'') at kilometer in size, and the ''Juggernaut'', an automated giant ship over 1.6 km long capable of wiping out small fleets. The largest regular starships are under 500m |
| 188 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' loves this trope, given its habit of {{exaggerat|edTrope}}ing almost everything. |
| 189 | ** GW eventually gave the exact measurements of several ship classes in the ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'' books. As it turns out, even the smallest sloops are almost a kilometer long and have crews numbering in thousands. Escort ships, such as destroyers, raiders, corvettes and frigates, usually do not exceed 2 km, and light cruisers are usually between 3 and 4,5 km. Heavy and battle- cruisers[[note]]Miniatures for these types in the Imperial Navy use the same hull[[/note]] are somewhere around 5 km, and grand cruisers are about 7,5 km. There is no canon specs for Battleships, Battlebarges and Mechanicum Arcs, but they must be around 8 km[[note]]Battleships have one weapon section more than heavy cruisers, and a weapon section is about 1,5 km long[[/note]]. Other races' ships have comparable sizes. One of the ''Horus Heresy'' books from Forge World refers to a Mechanicum transport designed to carry [[HumongousMecha Titans]]; this transport vehicle is a giant slab of metal measuring 2 km long. |
| 190 | ** Less confirmed is information about Gloriana-type[[note]]Each Gloriana was/is a unique vessel, united only with their purpose to serve as their legion's flagship, so they are not really a class[[/note]] (20–28 km long), various Xeno ships (i.e. Interex) that were 2-3 times bigger, Eldar Craftworlds (DependingOnTheAuthor and on exact craftworld, they might be the size of a planet or "just" 40 km long), the Rock (size of a city and accompanying bedrock), the Phalanx (small moon sized) and World Engine (planet made into spaceship). |
| 191 | ** Bigger than even the Gloriana-class Battleships is the ''Imperator Somnium''[[note]]Imperial Dream[[/note]], second flagship of the Emperor after the ''Bucephulus''. For some context, the largest Gloriana was the ''Invincible Reason'' at 28 km. |
| 192 | ** The Abyss-class battleship, created by the forces of Chaos in preparation for the Horus Heresy was said to dwarf the aforementioned 28km long ships, being mentioned as rivalling the Phalanx in size and firepower. |
| 193 | ** Then there are Space Hulks, which are a random collection of asteroids, comets, planetoids and various spaceships and stations (some of which may count as mile long ships in their own right) which fell into the Warp, ran into each other, and fused together instead of smashing apart because of the strange properties of the Warp. They frequently get used by Orks as spacecraft in their own right. |
| 194 | ** One rumored Ork ship is also a planet, which moves around as needed. It is also a massively overgrown Ork, since the species in theory never stops growing. |
| 195 | [[/folder]] |
| 196 | |
| 197 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 198 | * ''VideoGame/FirstStrike'', a ''VideoGame/Battlefield2142'' mod, prides itself on modelling all ''Star Wars'' assets to scale -- from 300 metres long corvettes and other small ships to the immobile, but very heavily armed 1600 metres Imperial Star Destroyer. To get a sense of how big this is, a BF veteran can consider that BF 2142 maps were typically one to two kilometres in length. |
| 199 | * ''Franchise/MassEffect'': |
| 200 | ** Reaper capital ships like Sovereign and Harbinger are around two kilometers long and so massive that their kinetic barriers are severely weakened while they're landed in Earth-like gravity (due to the mass effect field strength needed to reduce their mass to the point where they don't crumple under their own weight). Citadel dreadnoughts vary by race, but average one kilometer. Ditto the much more common and expendable carriers. Ships of that size are {{justified|Trope}} by the setting's [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter reliance on kinetic weapons]]: a longer ship means the spinal [[MagneticWeapons mass accelerator]] can be longer, [[ShownTheirWork meaning it can fire its slugs with greater energy]]. The yield of the gun at the scale of warships is implied to scale more or less linearly with length, as the codex directly states "a dreadnought's power lies in the length of its main gun" and the description for the Thanix cannon in ''2'' reveals that even a frigate canonically has enough power generation to power the main gun of a cruiser a hundred times its volume. For these reasons, massive dreadnoughts are used like self-propelled artillery pieces, remaining at the rear line of a fleet battle and exploiting their greater muzzle velocity to take down targets while smaller, lighter ships either screen their flanks or maneuver in around the enemy's flank. (At least, that was the idea. Nobody apparently told the VFX artists, who in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' showed Citadel dreadnoughts engaging Reapers [[SeeTheWhitesOfTheirEyes well within visual range]].) Cruisers, the main combatants, are basically just down-scaled dreadnoughts (500-700 meters instead of a kilometer). |
| 201 | ** ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda'' has the Remnant ships. A good sample of their scale comes with the one crashed on Elaaden. It's halfway submerged in sand, and it still ''looms'' over everything around it. The regular colony ships (Arks) in ''Andromeda'' are also pretty big at 1.7 kilometers long and 17 million tons in mass; the Nexus is technically a ship as well, being capable of self-propulsion and FTL travel, even if the characters call it [[InsistentTerminology a space station]] instead. It's 15.47 kilometers long and 5.3 kilometers in diameter, and weighs probably tens of billions of tons. [[NGOSuperpower All of this was built with funding from a set of niche corporate donors]]. |
| 202 | * ''VideoGame/{{X}}'': |
| 203 | ** The series doesn't explicitly give lengths for its ships. However, in 2009, a forum member in [[http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=244972 this thread]] scaled their in-game models and determined that the largest destroyers average 3 kilometers, with the [[TheBattlestar ATF Valhalla]] being the outlier at 5. The Valhalla's [[UnnecessarilyLargeVessel sheer size makes it wildly impractical to use normally]], because its engine nacelles will impact the rim of a [[PortalNetwork jump gate]] upon exit, causing it to get stuck inside the event horizon. This is fixed by the expansion pack ''X3: Albion Prelude'', but it still has size-related problems with its turret firing arcs. Our page picture is the more manageably sized Teladi Phoenix, which is approximately 4 kilometers long. The games also features some truly enormous space stations, such as the Terran Military Outpost, a station so large that the entirety of Rhode Island could fit within its bulk, or the [[RingworldPlanet Torus Aeternal]], a station large enough to wrap around the Earth. |
| 204 | ** ''VideoGame/XRebirth'': Mile-long ships return in force, where the humble SpaceTrucker trading ships have been largely replaced by massive freighters that operate independently of the [[PortalNetwork Highway system]]. The Arawn battleship is large enough to have two hangars -- one landing pad on the front for the ''Albion Skunk'', and an internal hangar for URV drones which is large enough to have ''internal'' point-defense turrets. |
| 205 | * The capital ships in ''VideoGame/EliteDangerous'' are all several kilometers long, including the Federation and Imperial battlecruisers, various megaships, and the player-owned fleet carriers. Most of them are equipped with frameshift drives, though these operate differently than those of smaller ships, opening a stationary hyperspace portal and then moving into it. None of them can be piloted by players directly. |
| 206 | ** Some very few starports, city-sized space stations many kilometers in diameter, are also fitted with hyperdrives in lore, though they have almost never been known to move in-game. |
| 207 | * ''[[VideoGame/EscapeVelocity Escape Velocity Nova]]'': |
| 208 | ** Aurora Carriers are 1.2 km long, compared to the Federation Carriers which are only 500 m long. Note they carry many more fighters than their counterparts and the Aurorans love their railguns. |
| 209 | ** Polaris Ravens are 1.2 km long and about 1 km wide making them the biggest playable ship in the game[[note]]although roughly half of the length is taken up by its [[ConvergingStreamWeapon Capacitor Pulse Laser]] prongs[[/note]]. Strangely, they have a crew of less than a hundred. |
| 210 | ** ''Deimos''-Class Colony Ships are approximately 3×3×3 km, as the hypergates they traveled through had to be reconfigured to form wormholes with a diameter of 5 km. |
| 211 | * Titan class ships in ''VideoGame/EVEOnline'' can be as long as 18 kilometers. Other ships (Battleships and larger), while only a fraction of the size of a Titan, are still in excess of a mile long. The exceptions are the Force Auxiliary carriers and the Naglfar dreadnought, which are in stead several miles ''tall''. |
| 212 | * The Mothership from ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'', which the fluff says is [[WildMassGuessing somewhere]] between 7 and 15 kilometers "tall."[[note]]Relative to the direction its main engines face, see its entry's page picture for details[[/note]] It has a major case of UnitsNotToScale in-game, however, but still measures a good three in-universe kilometers... Or rather [[FantasticMeasurementSystem "kloms"]], whose relationship to an Earth kilometer is never mentioned. The [[{{Precursors}} Progenitor]] Mothership, whose remains are discovered in one mission of the second game, is utterly ''huge''. The "Dreadnought" that the Hiigarans recover from the remains was actually once stored in the Progenitor Mothership's ''cargo bay''. Then again, everything the Progenitors did was on a massive scale. |
| 213 | * ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': |
| 214 | ** The trope becomes evident as early as the final level of ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' when one of the waypoints during your escape from the ''Pillar of Autumn'' is over a kilometer away. The ''Autumn's'' official length is [[MythologyGag 1.17]] km. It's considered a large capital ship; something like 80-95% of the UNSC's ships[[note]]''The Fall of Reach'' gives a few figures. In the initial mustering for Reach, there are 100 warships, of which 3 are cruisers, 2 are carriers, and the rest destroyers and frigates. At Sigma Octanus IV, there are 48 ships, of which 1 is a carrier, 2 are cruisers, and 45 are destroyers or frigates. ''Evolutions'' also gives us the composition of Battle Group India, the largest fleet the UNSC ever assembled in its history: 212 ships, of which 126 are destroyers, frigates, or corvettes, and an additional 50 are non-combat supply and repair vessels.[[/note]] are the much smaller (though still big) corvette, frigate, and destroyer classes, which are 500 meters on average. The colony ship ''Spirit of Fire'' from ''VideoGame/HaloWars'' is 3.5 km long (which is justified as it's actually a civilian ship that's been hastily retrofitted), and the experimental vessel ''Infinity'' is 5.7 km long, with the latter capable of carrying an army and ten internally docked frigates, as it was meant to be Plan B if Earth was destroyed (again, justified; it took decades and half of the Navy's entire budget to build this thing). Human ships' main weapons are magnetic accelerator cannons (read: coilguns), so the trope makes sense for similar reasons as in ''Franchise/MassEffect''. |
| 215 | ** Covenant capital ships are even bigger; their corvettes and frigates are around a kilometer long with similar tonnage to the UNSC's capital ships, while their actual capital ships are each over a mile long and outmass their UNSC counterparts by an order of magnitude or more. The shining example is ''CSO''-class supercarrier that appeared during the Battle of Reach (''VideoGame/HaloReach''), an utter behemoth at just under 29 kilometers long. Notably, despite being comically huge, one good MAC round from UNSC frigate or destroyer can usually destroy it ([[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter as the rounds really are that powerful]])...once you get through the shields. |
| 216 | ** Then there's the Forerunner ''Fortress''-class vessels, which are 50 kilometers long. Later, in the Forerunner-Flood war, ''Fortress''-classes reach new height with 100 km long vessels, pushing them into PlanetSpaceship territory. There's also the Forerunner Keyship/Dreadnought from the original trilogy, which is "only" 11.41 km long. |
| 217 | ** All the above are topped in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'' by ''Mantle's Approach'', the Didact's personal flagship, which is vertically oriented and is a truly absurd 371.4 km tall, 142.7 km long, and 138.6 kilometers wide. The Visual Guide casually mentions that it isn't even the largest Forerunner ship. |
| 218 | * Common in ''VideoGame/FreeSpace'', in which any Destroyer-class or above ship is going to be at least 1.5 kilometers long. The ''Colossus'' and ''Sathanas'' measure in at nearly six kilometers long as the largest ships in the game. Fan-made expansions sometimes feature even larger ships (the current record-holder being the ''Gargant'', at over 60 km). |
| 219 | * In ''VideoGame/GroundControl'', the CSS ''Astrid'' is a massive warship[[note]][[http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/how-big-is-the-css-astrid.133584/ a rough fan estimate]] puts it at almost exactly one mile. [[/note]] that contains enough men and materiel to lay siege to an entire planet by itself, and in the sequel, [[spoiler: evacuate the majority of the populace of Morningstar Prime.]] |
| 220 | * ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'': |
| 221 | ** The Borg Unimatrix 0047 Command Ships, hexagonal juggernauts roughly 20 kilometers in length. They're so big they don't even maneuver: they just sit there and spam various attacks at you. |
| 222 | *** The Unimatrix ships are based on the similarly large ship at the centre of the V'Ger Cloud, mentioned above, in ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', in reference to the long-standing speculation of a relationship between it and the Borg. |
| 223 | ** According to [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bkt7TE1CIAAH3Fm.jpg:large an image in one of the devs' Twitter feeds]], Voth ''Citadel''-class dreadnoughts measure up at a bit less than nine kilometers long and nearly five kilometers wide, while the ''Bulwark''-class battleship is just short of a kilometer. And then there's the Fortress ship in "The Breach", which is in PlanetSpaceship territory, measuring in at 134 kilometers. |
| 224 | ** On a smaller scale, Klingon ''Vo'Quv''-class carriers sit at around a klick in length and can deploy Birds-of-Prey instead of conventional fighters. Federation ''Odyssey''-class cruisers are of a similar scale. Then there's the Romulan Republic's ''Ha'apax''-class warbird and its kin, which are instead a couple kilometers ''wide''. |
| 225 | * ''VisualNovel/{{Sunrider}}'': The PACT super dreadnought, Legion, which is three kilometers long. |
| 226 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty''[='s=] Arsenal Gear and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots''' Outer Haven, although their exact sizes aren't mentioned in-game, are two impractically-sized warships. |
| 227 | * ''VideoGame/VectorThrust'' boasts the EOS-04-01 Leviathan arsenal ship, which measures at just over 1,500 metres long. |
| 228 | * ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' has almost every ship beat, save those the size of actual planets with the 270 kilometer long colony ship 'Eldridge' which crashes in the beginning of the games ten thousand year backstory. |
| 229 | * ''Videogame/StarCitizen'''s Bengal-class carrier is precisely one kilometer long. |
| 230 | * As players progress through ''Videogame/StarRuler'''s LensmanArmsRace, ships become progressively larger and larger. Starting with humble cruisers with sub-1000 crews, players can eventually build multi-kilometer long ships with crew numbering in the tens of thousand as their primary combatants. PlanetSpaceShip designs - both literal planets with engines and ships the size of planets - are generally reserved for flagships and as a DoomsdayDevice. The mile-long ships return in ''Videogame/StarRuler2'', albeit generally used as rarer, more powerful flagships supported by hundreds of smaller gunships and SpaceFighter-esque escorts, rather than the dozens or hundreds of individual mile long ships of the original game. |
| 231 | * ''VideoGame/StarCraft'': |
| 232 | ** General ship size ranges are similar to something like later ''Star Trek'', ''Mass Effect'', the lesser factions in ''Halo'', or prequel-era ''Star Wars''. Standard capital ships like battlecruisers and Void Rays are around 600 meters, smaller support craft like Valkyries, Scouts, and Arbiters are under 200 meters, and standard capital ships are 1-1.5 kilometers. Protoss carriers, supercarriers, and the largest terran battlecruisers fall into the latter size range, though standard carriers are vulnerable in spite of their size because they carry no ship-to-ship weapons. [[UnitsNotToScale Don't expect any of this to be apparent in gameplay, though.]] |
| 233 | ** ''VideoGame/StarCraftIILegacyOfTheVoid'': The ''Spear of Adun'', a 74 kilometer long arkship which serves as Artanis' flagship and base of operations during the fight against Amon. The size is a little justified by it being mostly empty space (it would probably be only about 50% that size if you squeezed down all the huge voids in its hull) and it being meant to carry the entire Protoss civilization in case of HomeworldEvacuation. Also, Zerg Leviathans which can reach the size of a small moon - though [[CripplingOverspecialization have no weapons]] other than smacking things with their tentacles or deploying fighters. They serve the role of massive transports among the zerg, along with the unseen Behemoths, as the zerg otherwise have no real ships (just [[ZergSwarm swarms]] of Mutalisks and Overlords). |
| 234 | * In the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' series, Dr. Eggman's philosophy of building large vehicles is "go big or go home," though he is more likely to build ''airships'' that are miles long, such as Wing Fortress in ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2'', Flying Battery in ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'', Egg Carrier and Egg Carrier 2 in ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'', and Final Fortress in ''VideoGame/SonicHeroes'', than spaceships. If Eggman wants to operate from space, most of the time, he builds a space station instead. The series is also no stranger to enormously large ocean-faring vessels too: In addition to the Egg Carriers being able to travel by sea if needed, there is Huge Crisis from ''VideoGame/SonicRush'' and [[GhostPirate Haunted Ship]] from ''VideoGame/SonicRushAdventure''. |
| 235 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', while it is ultimately up to the interpretation of the player, Battleships and especially the gigantic Titan ships are implied to be in the several-kilometer range. |
| 236 | ** DownloadableContent later introduced even bigger ships like Juggernauts, which are one-of-a-kind mobile shipyards packing serious firepower, and the moon-sized Colossus PlanetKiller. Both are so enormous that only starbases with a special Colossal Shipyard upgrade can construct them. One loading screen shows a Juggernaut hovering over an alien metropolis, [[Film/IndependenceDay City Destroyer]]-style, with the ship taking up the entire width of the artwork despite being at least a couple kilometers away from the observer and being viewed at an angle. |
| 237 | ** The Leviathan-class Automated Dreadnought dwarfs any ship a player can build, including the Juggernaut. Weirdly, if you decide to rebuild it after you disabled it, it retains its look but shrinks down to about half its initial size. |
| 238 | * The ''Mikasa'' in the ''VideoGame/SakuraWars'' series is an 8,047 meter long airship, which dwarves the 131 meter long ''Skywhale''. |
| 239 | * In ''VideoGame/SierraOps'', the UTV’s flagship ''Beerkelium'' is 800 meters long and one of the largest ships in the setting. It's so big because it was originally built to make regular supply runs to the fledgling Martian colonies, and was later retrofitted for warfare. In Episode 2, you learn that the Ares Confederation has secretly built an even bigger ship, the 1.2-kilometer dreadnought ''Leviathan''. |
| 240 | * Most of the capital ships fielded by the major factions in ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'' are this. A standard Grineer Galleon is just over 4 kilometers long, while Corpus Obelisks appear to be significantly larger. Once the player unlocks a Railjack and is able to travel to the Veil Proxima region, they can board Sentient Murex ships, which aside from [[LivingShip being techno-organic]], are big enough to make the Galleons and Obelisks look downright puny by comparison. |
| 241 | * In ''VideoGame/CryingSuns'', the player's default Excelsior-class battleship is 1.2 kilometers long [[AllThereInTheManual according to the Steam trading cards]]. Other battleship classes are of similar length. |
| 242 | * Information from third party sources indicates the [=USG=] Ishimura is 1.6 kilometers long in ''VideoGame/DeadSpace''. |
| 243 | * The [[BaseOnWheels Rhodes Island landship]] from ''VideoGame/{{Arknights}}'' measures roughly 655 meters or 0.4 miles in length, judging from an official scale model. The first few pages of the spinoff comic ''Records of Originium - Rhine Lab'' really highlight just how big this is, with a convoy of trucks delivering supplies being utterly dwarfed in comparison and a logistics operator casually mentioning the ship has its own onboard network of shuttle buses. |
| 244 | [[/folder]] |
| 245 | |
| 246 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 247 | * The cloud-shaped Zauther ships in ''Webcomic/TheRedacverse'' come in varied sizes, but the Supreme Ship is by far the most enormous. According to the Zauther leader, it is 1 parsec[[note]]3.26 light years[[/note]] long and 1 light year wide. Only its front end is seen. |
| 248 | * ''Webcomic/LeavingTheCradle'': While it's definitely not [[PlanetSpaceship planet-sized]], the Dawn mothership is around the size of a small mobile city. Needless to say, it's ''[[https://wiki.leavingthecradle.com/raharrwiki/images/2/25/Dawn_ship.jpg very big.]]'' Just compare the human's satellite and shuttle to the mothership itself. |
| 249 | * ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': Let's just go in order of size, shall we? |
| 250 | ** The ''Sword of Inevitable Justice'' (which would later be renamed the ''Post-Dated Check Loan'') was almost a kilometer tall, and looked to be about the same in both width and length. This seems to be a typical size for Ob'enn Thunderhead-class ships. |
| 251 | ** Battleplates are, well, giant plate-shaped ships a kilometer thick and maybe eight or so kilometers on a side. Too big to fit through a [[PortalNetwork wormgate]], they were originally intended for defensive purposes, until Kevyn's invention of the teraport allowed them to be deployed offensively. |
| 252 | ** Once Petey gets his hands on the [[spoiler:core generator]], he starts cranking out some truly massive ships. One of his ''earlier'' designs is called the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "Extortionator" class]], just the powerplant of which is nearly as big as an entire battleplate. |
| 253 | ** "Worldship" is the name given to a DysonSphere built around a white dwarf star that someone has attached a drive to. (The more literal choice of "starship" had already been taken.) |
| 254 | ** The Pa'anuri deploy an unnamed ship class that's the size of a gas giant. Though, since the Pa'anuri are themselves the size of a gas giant, it's debatable whether they count as ships or as {{powered armor}}. |
| 255 | [[/folder]] |
| 256 | |
| 257 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 258 | * ''[[https://www.deviantart.com/dirkloechel/art/Size-Comparison-Science-Fiction-Spaceships-398790051 The Ultimate Starship Size Comparison Chart]]'' lines up notable ships and space stations from several different science fiction franchises (along with a few real-life ships for the sake of argument) side-by-side to compare their length. They're all dwarfed by the aforementioned ''Executor''-class star dreadnought from ''Franchise/StarWars''. [[https://www.deviantart.com/moreorlesser/art/Spaceship-Size-Comparison-Updated-903959442 More recently, an updated version with ships from after 2014 has been created using the original as a foundation.]] |
| 259 | * [[http://www.merzo.net/indexSD.html Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions]] has many examples, sorted by orders of magnitude. |
| 260 | * ''WebOriginal/BosunsJournal'': The ''Nebukadnezar'' is immense; each of its four rotating habitats is a full [=McKendree=] cylinder 600km in length and diameter and capable of supporting an independent country and, later, of acting as its own miniature world and ecosystem. |
| 261 | * ''Literature/ChrysalisBeaverFur'': A 27-kilometer long rocket full of drone hangars, automatic factories, and nuclear warheads is built by a massive underground supercomputer -- [[BrainUploading uploaded on which]] is [[SoleSurvivor the last human consciousness]] -- to escape Earth and [[GenocideBackfire go to war against the aliens who destroyed it]]. Mount Everest had to be hollowed out to hide the construction of the rocket from any aliens still surveying Earth, and its launch process was violent enough to cause a mass extinction -- [[ApocalypseHow if there was any life on Earth left to extinguish, that is]]. Once in space, the vessel terrified aliens, as, even before realizing it had been built by a a vengeful AI, they thought only an impossibly advanced civilization could put such a thing together. |
| 262 | [[/folder]] |
| 263 | |
| 264 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 265 | * Parodied in one of Website/CollegeHumor's ''WebVideo/{{Troopers}}'' videos where Lord Sinister repeatedly sends one of the troopers to a coffee shop on the far side of the planet-sized ''Dread Cruiser'', only to change his mind when he returns three days later. |
| 266 | [[/folder]] |
| 267 | |
| 268 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 269 | * ''WesternAnimation/Primal2019'' has a three-episode arc set on board the ''Colossaeus'', an absolutely immense pre-modern naval ship that is apparently home to an entire [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Ancient Egypt-esque]] kingdom. The ship's exact size is never stated, but in scale with the characters it seems to be at least a mile long, and probably much more, and even holds a fleet of smaller ships. The second episode shows that it's not the only one on the seas, as it comes under attack by a second, near-identical ''Colossaeus'', this one populated by a kingdom inspired by the Sea Peoples. |
| 270 | [[/folder]] |
| 271 | |
| 272 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 273 | * There are currently no RealLife examples of a mile-long space ship, but that doesn't mean that there aren't currently some impressively large ocean-going ships. In the US, football fields are often used as a stock unit of measurement of measurement for such ships, with a particular vessel being described as [[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure 'x' football fields in length]]. |
| 274 | * For reference, the biggest ship ever built was the 650,000-ton supertanker ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant Seawise Giant.]]'' She was 1,500 feet long (just over a quarter mile, or 0.46 km), 458 m to be exact. Meanwhile, the biggest military capital ships currently in use are the ''Ford''-class supercarriers, which are a comparatively paltry 337m and 100,000 tons. |
| 275 | ** ''Seawise Giant'' possessed the greatest deadweight tonnage ever recorded. Fully laden, her displacement was 657,019 tonnes (646,642 long tons; 724,239 short tons), the heaviest ship of any kind, and with a draft of 24.6 m (81 ft), she was incapable of navigating the English Channel, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca, or the Panama Canal, and incapable of entering the Baltic Sea. Overall, she was generally considered the largest ship ever built, as well as the largest self-propelled human-made object ever built. Her design approached the practical limit of ship design -- larger ships than ''Seawise Giant'' are physically possible to be built, but they would be too impractical and uneconomical to use. |
| 276 | *** She ended her days as a permanently moored floating petroleum storage. Her draught and beam (68.8 m) were simply too much for passing the important channels, canals and waterways and calling important ports, making her economically unfeasible. |
| 277 | * Slightly longer than the ''Seawise Giant'', but not as massive, is the ''Prelude'' floating liquified natural gas facility--a ship that serves as combination of a drilling rig and a refinery for natural gas. It measures 1,600 feet long and displaces 600,000 tons, and is capable of processing enough natural gas in a year to power a city the size of Hong Kong. |
| 278 | * There has been an apparently serious proposal made to build a mile-long floating city ship, known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Ship Freedom Ship]]. Buoyancy would be from a system of interlocking modules that would each have their own buoyancy tanks and propulsion units. This should allow a ship much larger than conventional construction methods would allow. (A normal ship in rough seas can flex to a degree quite alarming to those not familiar with modern vessels. The flexing limits the practical size of conventional vessels as well.) The project has been on and off with various financiers for nearly twenty years. |
| 279 | ** Then there's the [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks United States']] thought experiments on the concept of the [[BaseOnWheels Mobile Offshore Base]], with the primary selling point of all designs being a landing strip long enough to accept C-17 and C-5s full of tanks -- which is at least as long as this trope requires (for reference, a standard carrier can only accept a single empty C-130 after special preparation). |
| 280 | ** It's not like the Japanese [[http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-largest-floating-airport-in-tokyo-bay/3684 planned to build a 4 km floating airstrip and had a 1 km prototype.]] So, as always, only the budget prevents the UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks from going to RuleOfCool levels. |
| 281 | * JPL scientist Robert Frisbee wrote a paper called [[http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/38278/1/03-1942.pdf How to Build an Antimatter Rocket for Interstellar Missions.]] His interstellar antimatter rocket involves a ship not merely a mile long, but ''435'' miles long (700 km). This is necessitated by the need for lots and lots of room both for storing antimatter and for a rocket fueled by it. |
| 282 | * The International Space Station, our current largest spaceship (technically; its rockets are only to help keep it in orbit), is around a tenth of a kilometer wide, and around 1/14 kilometer long (according to Website/TheOtherWiki). This sounds more impressive than it is, due to the space station's shape (some of the length comes from the arrays of solar panels on either end). The living space has been described as a six-bedroom house. |
| 283 | [[/folder]] |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Main / MileLongShip
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
