Question: What Is The Largest Fictional Spacecraft

[The Xeelee]

I recently came across some files on my computer which contained my old super soft science fiction that had star sized Battleships with trillions of fighters battling each other, this made me wonder, what is the largest spacecraft in published fiction?

Additionally, have you got any in your own settings that qualify?

[Captain Seafort]

Probably V'Ger - it's about the same size as the entire solar system.

[tezunegari]

Jeff Russels Starship Dimensions Take your pick.

Probably V'Ger - it's about the same size as the entire solar system.

How could V'Ger be the size of a solar system when it goes into orbit of earth?

It was never stated in the movie but how big it was but if memory serves right the novelization of TMP stated something in the 20 to 30 km range.

[Lord Revan]

I think the "cloud" portion of V'ger is said to be 82 AU or 2 AU in diameter depending on the version you're using, but the actual ship seems signifigantly smaller.

[Bedlam]

Possibly the TARDIS on the inside, I dont know if its full size has ever been defined. For all we know it has a whole universe of space.

[Stark]

Yeah I bet, a whole universe! Jesus Christ.

Some robots in Gurren Lagann are the size of a galaxy so you'd hope super wank scifi has something bigger than a planet. In my fanfictio every spaceship is armoured with plates forged from infinite quantum universes. Making shit up is easy, which makes this sort of question p dumb.

[Connor MacLeod]

How are we even defining 'spacecraft' anyhow? I mean its not a term that is exactly consistent in sci fi anyhow.

[Stark]

Uh oh Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann apparently 'ten million light years' tall. Sounds like an exaggeration to me but hey, there you go.

[The Xeelee]

How are we even defining 'spacecraft' anyhow? I mean its not a term that is exactly consistent in sci fi anyhow.

A vessel or machine designed to travel through Space.

[Ted C]

I'll cast a vote for Taa II, the world-ship of Galactus from Marvel Comics. It makes a solar system look small.

[Stark]

Dude, we're already talking 'bigger than galaxy' ITT.

I mean serious

[NeoGoomba]

What horrible design. That robit would get no traction with those boots.

[Stark]

When your so large every movement is FTL and killing uncountable trillions you don't need traction.

[Ford Prefect]

That's that the Cho Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann which is actually ten billion lightyears tall. :v

e: the little blue flame by its foot is the Granzeboma, which was about the same size as the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

[Stark]

Look pal there's no good shots of the 10 million light year one out there. I wanted to stay with galaxy size stuff but Internet failed me.

Surely there's bigger stuff than this in xeelee or culture wank?

[Flagg]

I wonder if galaxies are just that Robbits clumped ejaculate.

[Stark]

I think you'll find the technical term is 'spiral energy'. :v

[Starglider]

Surely there's bigger stuff than this in xeelee or culture wank?

Not in the books. Culture ships go up to 200km long, DS1 class at best. Biggest things ever mentioned in the Culture novels are Ringworld-equivalent structures and Dyson spheres, not clear how solid the later are. There are a few hundred precursor-built artificial planets implied to be able to put a forcefield around the Milky Way. Don't recall any giant ships from the Xeelee stuff. There is the Ring, which is a few million light years across and sufficiently massive to cause the eventual collapse of the universe, but it's a stationary loop of cosmic strings (topological defects).

I'm sure there's ridiculous fanfic somewhere though.

[Stark]

Oh. All I know about the stuff the Xeelee are from is that they use galaxies as weapons; in Gurren Lagann they do they same thing... but uh, pretty much by throwing them. :V

[The Imperator]

Oh. All I know about the stuff the Xeelee are from is that they use galaxies as weapons; in Gurren Lagann they do they same thing... but uh, pretty much by throwing them. :V

Xeelee operate on a large scale, not necessarily large ships. IIRC, the ship in Timelike infinity had hundreds of miles long "wings," but the craft itself is not that big.

[Starglider]

Oh. All I know about the stuff the Xeelee are from is that they use galaxies as weapons; in Gurren Lagann they do they same thing... but uh, pretty much by throwing them. :V

They throw around galaxies and other ridiculous objects but only at low relativistic speeds, as part of battles that take many millions of years to play out. The Xeelee don't seem to need giant ships or engines to do this, their standard contemporary-destroyer-sized spacecraft can easily blow up a star or compress interstellar gas into a new planet.

Baxter's follow up series is even more ridiculously overpowered, it features what is essentially a TARDIS with the exterior dimensions similar to earth's moon and the ability to create/destroy/travel between universes, teleport anything anywhere, omniscient unlimited range sensors etc. Still not up there with Taa II on the raw size scale though.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yeah I bet, a whole universe! Jesus Christ.

Some robots in Gurren Lagann are the size of a galaxy so you'd hope super wank scifi has something bigger than a planet. In my fanfictio every spaceship is armoured with plates forged from infinite quantum universes. Making shit up is easy, which makes this sort of question p dumb.

To be "fair" the TTGL and the "Chu" TTGL existed in some "between the 11th and 12th dimension" in a place where mental will basically become physical form, so any laws of physics goes right out the window. So yeah in THAT Place, a giant robot/ship a billion light years tall? No problem...

Now in the "Real" world of the same series, the largest ship that existed was the Cathedral Terra a ship of roughly the same size and MASS as Earth's Moon.

THAT is big. I mean "V'Ger" for all it's super powers, is aprox 100km long.
The Death Star was aprox 120km, and of the Death Star II was aprox 900k.
Cathedral Terra is estimated to be around 1700 km in size.

So yeah, as far as actual "space ships" goes, thats rather freaking huge.

[Terralthra]

Surely there's bigger stuff than this in xeelee or culture wank?

Not in the books. Culture ships go up to 200km long, DS1 class at best. Biggest things ever mentioned in the Culture novels are Ringworld-equivalent structures and Dyson spheres, not clear how solid the later are. There are a few hundred precursor-built artificial planets implied to be able to put a forcefield around the Milky Way.

Are Orbitals actually Ringworld-equivalent? My interpretation was that they were much smaller, as they don't revolve around a star at the center, as that's where Hub is. They orbit a star in the goldilocks zone, almost edge-on to the star.

Shellworlds were 45k-80k km across, but constructed in hyperspace, so the interior and exterior dimensions don't match.

[Starglider]

Biggest things ever mentioned in the Culture novels are Ringworld-equivalent structures and Dyson spheres, not clear how solid the later are.

Are Orbitals actually Ringworld-equivalent? My interpretation was that they were much smaller, as they don't revolve around a star at the center, as that's where Hub is. They orbit a star in the goldilocks zone, almost edge-on to the star.

The Cultureverse has actual ringworlds as a completely separate thing from orbitals. The summary of the Culture-Idiran war at the end of Consider Phlebas describes the damage as '91,215,660 starships (all classes above interplanetary), 14,334 orbitals, 53 planets and major moons, 1 ring and 3 spheres, as well as the significant mass-loss or sequence-position alteration of 6 stars'. Presumably ringworlds are much much less common than orbitals (understandable as they are much more engineering effort for no obvious benefit).

[Terralthra]

Ah, fair enough. Must not've stuck in my mind, since they have yet to show up in narrative.