One of the largest man-made moving objects ever is a ship that’s reshaped our sense of what's possible

About the same size as four and a half soccer fields, the Seawise Giant was an incredibly large ship, and it was about five or six times heavier than the Titanic.

It was also nearly twice as large as the Titanic.

Definitely one of the biggest man-made things ever built.

But the ship’s size, ironically, was also a problem for a reason that almost sounds comical.

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Imagine a ship that makes the Titanic look small

Depending on who you ask, the answer to the question ‘What’s the largest man-made object?’ will probably include the word ‘space’ somewhere.

But this giant was certainly a contender.

Dubbed the Jahre Viking, and sometimes also known as the Seawise Giant, this is a 458-meter supertanker that’s roughly the same size as four and a half soccer fields lined up together.

It was also twice as long as the Titanic, and six times heavier.

Fully loaded, it displaced more than 650,000 tons, more than any other vessel before it.

It was launched in 1979 and rebuilt a couple of times, but ironically, the ship’s size was also its biggest flaw.

The giant was simply too large for most straits, including the English Channel, the Suez Canal, and the Panama Canal.

Even so, it remained in service for 31 years, which is just about average for an oil tanker.

And now there’s an even bigger one.

It’s called the ‘Prelude FLNG‘, and it’s a 488-meter sea giant.

The largest man-made objects

The main problem with questions including words like ‘largest’ is that it always depends on how you measure it.

As in, largest by size, weight, or both?

In terms of weight, the International Space Station technically counts as the heaviest and largest thing ever built by humans.

But some people argue that the ‘largest’ man-made thing is the Great Wall of China.

It’s basically impossible to measure its weight, but we know it’s 13.17 miles long.

Others would include skyscrapers in this conversation.

We generally measure buildings based on height, not weight or ‘size’.

But the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper, is 828 meters tall.

So we could probably get away with calling it a ‘fairly large’ man-made object.