What is the largest number of engines ever used on an orbital class rocket?

Question

Specifically the number of engines simultaneously ignited. So not summing up over different stages. I am interested in the max for both number of engines and number of combustion chambers.

What I have found so far:

Soyuz: 20 chambers (+12 vernier chambers) / 5 engines
Energia: 20 chambers / 8 engines
Falcon 9: 9 chambers / 9 engines

Disqualified rockets:

N1: 30 chambers / 30 engines / No successful launches
This: 44 engines / Sounding rocket; majority of engines were part of scientific payload; this is an upper bound though

Will the Falcon Heavy have more chambers / engines then any successful rocket to date? Does any other successful rocket have 9 or more engines? or has SpaceX already claimed that record?

Is this question, an answer, in the question itself? https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10361/why-is-there-so-much-variation-in-the-number-of-engines-on-launchers — geoffc, Nov 29 '17 at 17:55
Soyuz has 4 chambers per set of turbo pumps for fuel and oxidizer. 5 engines instead of 4. — Uwe, Nov 29 '17 at 17:56
@geoffc I saw that question, but it only lists those as examples, not record holders. — Lex, Nov 29 '17 at 18:27
@RussellBorogove I hadn't seen that question. It discounts strap on boosters, but the answers seem to give sufficient coverage that if I had seen it, I probably wouldn't have asked my question. — Lex, Nov 29 '17 at 18:30
The number of vernier chambers of Soyuz is 12, not 8. 4 at the core stage and 2 for each of 4 boosters. — Uwe, Nov 29 '17 at 18:41
I think this xkcd What if? should count at 65,000 for suborbital hops, even if it wasn't actually built :) — Cody, Nov 29 '17 at 23:04

What is the largest number of engines ever used on an orbital class rocket?

0 Answers0