Tuesday, January 17, 2017

The SpaceX rocket is much bigger than I thought

You can get an idea of the size when people are walking right next to it.  For some reason, I imagined it about the size of a large telephone pole.


In contrast, here is Werner Von Braun next to the motors for the gigantic Saturn V



3 comments:

  1. I was also of the opinion that it was much smaller than it is. Nice seeing it in context

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Falcon 9 is 230 feet tall (both stages together) and 12 feet diameter (the payload faring is over 17 feet in diameter and can hold a full sized school bus.)

    Capable of 50k lbs LEO, 18k lbs GTO, and 8.8k lbs to MARS!!!

    Falcon Heavy is 3 Falcon9 cores hooked together. 30k lbs to Mars, over 6k lbs to PLUTO!!!!!!

    NASA might have had something comparable ready in the next 5 years if the soon to be not-president hadn't killed the Constellation program (a series of rockets with common parts designed for a relatively (for NASA) fast production and launch.)

    They are big rockets, capable of delivering

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interestingly, both the Saturn V and the Falcon 9 use Kerosene and liquid O2. The Merlin engine on the Falcon 9 has a specific impulse only slightly better than the mighty F1 engine on the Saturn V.

    ReplyDelete