With the impending (hopefully successful) launch of Starship, I saw this informational picture. It is too large to post so I’m just putting it as a link (which apparently converted into an image anyway ). Starship is, of course, the largest rocket to date. It is not much taller than the Saturn V, but quite a bit heavier. The Falcon 9 has been remarkably successful. Plus, I had never even heard of the Energia (a Soviet space shuttle). It is fascinating as well looking at just all the other rockets.
That chart was a lot smaller 60 years ago. Amazing progress in my lifetime. The earliest space event I have just a glimmer of recalling was Alan Shepard sub-orbital flight. There was something on the TV covering the launch. A little later John Glenn’s historic orbital flight had more coverage, I think there was grainy B&W video on our staticy B&W TV of Glenn in his space suit somewhere on the way to the capsule.
Very cool chart, thanks! Great to see our (NZ) rocket on there (the Electron, at 18m tall, one of the smallest shown). I checked to see what size the upcoming Neutron rocket (also by RocketLab) is and it’s approximately the same size as Antares at 42.8m tall. So quite a step up and hopefully a game-changer for the company in the reusable rocket business (I have a modest amount of shares in RocketLab).
There was an xkcd cartoon a while ago that pointed out spaceships have been around for longer than airplanes had been at the time of the first spaceship. So this chart certainly helps get your mind around that fact.
When I was a kid, I had a card game, that I think I bought in the gift shop at the Smithsonian. Every card had a picture of a rocket on it, together with a number of statistics: Height, payload weight, thrust, number of stages, year completed. You’d play a War-like game with them, except you’d look at your card, and take turns choosing which stat to compete on. So, for instance, if you were holding “Ariane - Awaiting Launch”, you might say “Thrust: 540,000 lbs”, and if your opponent was holding “Titan II - Preparing for Launch”, you’d win, because the Titan II only had 430,000 lbs of thrust.
And man, the Saturn V won almost everything.
I wonder if Discovery Toys (if they even still exist) has ever considered revamping those cards?
I had a question when I went to the Kennedy Space Center, but couldn’t find anyone to answer. Was the Vehicle Assembly Building (now known as the Vertical Assembly Building, I think) built to just the size needed for the Saturn V, or did they give themselves a little extra room with the idea that they’d be assembling larger rockets someday in the future?
I haven’t been following the development of Starship very closely, really only since the Artemis missions have started to become reality. So I’d never really seen how freaking big that thing is.
This is going to be sooooo cool, particularly when the lunar lander version finally touches down. I mean, this is some Kerbal-level stuff here!
I’ve been re-watching the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon. I recall the episode with Alan Shepard, showing some scenes of him training for Gemini, where he remarked that the Gemini capsule was like a little two-seater hot rod, and in looking at it, he was right. That was a cool little ship!
Actually, the “shuttle” part was Buran. Energia was the disposable super-heavy lift system. (The Soviets engineered it to be used to hypothetically launch other payloads than Buran, unlike the American STS.)
Not just volume, but mass: Starship uses methane fuel compared to the Saturn V’s hydrogen (on the upper stages). Liquid hydrogen is extremely low density compared to methane.
It needs it, though. Although Starship would have somewhere around double Saturn V’s payload when flying as an expendable rocket, it spends about half that on reusability, so that the net payload is similar.
But propellant is cheap, while rockets are not, so it makes sense to spend that to have a fully reusable system.
The first launches I remember seeing on TV were the Geminis, back in 1964 or 65. And when I was a young teen-ager I had a plastic model of the capsule. You’re right - sort of a rocket Miata.
I recall reading or seeing something stating that the original intent was to have them “hang-glide” back to Earth under a giant Rogalo wing and land horizontally.
Between that wiki article and this one I have pieced together a conjecture that might, or might not, be accurate. Vostok (spacecraft) - Wikipedia
The Vostok was effectively the Soviet equivalent to Mercury: the early one-man sub-orbital and orbital capsule. The actual “capsule” / descent module was a ~7’ diameter sphere with the cosmonaut loaded inside. They did not have an escape tower to separate the sphere from the booster in the event of a launch mishap. Instead they’d “eject” the capsule and rely on gravity and parachutes to generate enough separation and also make a soft enough landing to maybe have the cosmonaut survive.
I think what we’re seeing in these pics is the port on the side of the top-stage aero-shroud through which they both load the cosmonaut and would eject the capsule if that became necessary. Kinda backyard engineering, but a lot of early spaceflight on both sides was that way. But the Soviet backyard was even more Bubba-n-ducttape-ish than was the US backyard.
The impression I get from that link and others is that the opening is just for a door–the capsule itself doesn’t eject. The capsule was never meant to land with a cosmonaut inside, anyway–the parachutes were inadequate. The ejection seat was the primary way of landing. May as well reuse it for emergency purposes, too.
As the wiki link notes, the ejection seat didn’t have enough oomph to get away from the rocket within the first 20 seconds of flight. Too bad if the rocket explodes in that case. At least you get to be a Hero of the Soviet Union.
). Starship is, of course, the largest rocket to date. It is not much taller than the Saturn V, but quite a bit heavier. The Falcon 9 has been remarkably successful. Plus, I had never even heard of the Energia (a Soviet space shuttle). It is fascinating as well looking at just all the other rockets.
