Hello all. Query has probably been asked before, but perhaps not as here with these variants.
I believe the answer to “most massive” has always been Saturn V, and I’ll get back to that in a moment.
The other variant is simply on square foot coverage, so to speak. Ie, there are connected organisms are actually one organism, but spread out over vast areas. Not the most massive, but if transported, they would be a contender for my variation.
The first part of query in this old standby of a list, altered a bit–hell, an iceberg is a thing, and hasn’t somebody somewhere tugged one from point a to b?–and included because I’d like someone to rationalize the question better with real physics knowledge.
But then, a question for physicists
A) the energy of a nuke explosion is a mass equivalent, so under these terms a nuke could be added to the list. Right? Obviously with a broadened set of allowable objects than the old standby list.
B) back to the fave Saturn V. First off, I think the cited event should not be transporting that thing from the hangar (“the world’s largest…”) on the crawler (“the world’s largest…”) but the greater applied thrust at launch. That is, the event of that stack (far far heavier, of course, than unfurled) off the ground.
I’m not saying this to be difficult, but to try to understand the simplest idea of the rocket equation.
Furthermore, following up on this idea–actually, what prompted the whole line of thought for this post, the NASA SLS [NASA home; Wiki is here] soon will have a thrust 8.8 M lbs, and the Block II configs 11.9 M lbs, both of which blow Saturn V out of the water (so to speak).
The mass of the Orion stack will be less than the Saturn V stack, but shouldn’t it (won’t it) take its rightful place as #1 on the “most massive thing moved” list?
Clickbait site has the Troll A natural gas platform as the most massive object moved by man, at 1.2 million tons (ballasted). Basically a gigantic concrete shell that an oil/gas production platform was strapped to the top of.
Seawise Giant, fully loaded with crude, had to be up there too.
If you stop to think about it he mass equivalent of a nuclear bomb explosion is only a fraction of the mass of the original bomb. So it won’t be close to being the most massive. In fact I’m pretty sure there were conventional bombs that out-weighed the most massive nuclear bomb.
Yeah, just had a sobering thought about that whole line of thought in my post, mainly prompted (wrongly) because the last few weeks I’ve been crazy into NASA stuff: my proposition re the SLS stack, like my throwaway thought about the nuke, devolves into a “how much energy has man ever created and released in one go”–which is an interesting question also, but is not pertinent to this idea of enhancing the usual query about mass.
Emily Litella voice* …Never mind…
[still hope for the dimensional top-10 list, though]
[and still sticking to the full stack launch of Saturn V, not the crawl to the pad]
Darren, I think you have a winner for both questions. The OP doesn’t seem to care how far the objects have been moved, just that humans have moved them. There’ve been at least 7 space probes that have done graviational slingshots at Jupiter, possibly more. Each one has changed Jupiter’s orbit by some very small amount.
Until someone figures out how to do a slingshot maneuver at the Sun, that answer is going to stand.
Believe it or not, I was going to post a similar case in OP, but retreated to avoid scorn and calumny from the usual suspects. Consider both of yourselves scorned and calumniated.
An interpretive variation, on the bang-for-buck mass-movement (aka the Newtonian List, as well as the Archimedes Lever one) I was going to suggest was the causative one: eg, Toss a rock (minor mass movement)–>Start an avalanche.
Hey, if you don’t want an answer, you need to say so in the OP. And I snear at your calumnifications.
BTW, slingshot maneuvers are no different in principle than using levers.
It would appear the most massive object moved by man on earth would be an iceberg. Icebergs up to about 4 million tons have been towed to prevent them striking oil rigs:
Detailed plans have been made for towing icebergs up to 125 million tons to supply fresh water to areas needing it, although this hasn’t been done yet.
The world’s heaviest freight train masses about 100,000 tons total, however this is much less than the worlds heaviest oil tanker which massed about 646,000 long tons (656,000 metric tons): Seawise Giant - Wikipedia
The heaviest floating liquified natural gas platform is also about 600,000 tons, but I’m not sure that counts as a moving object unless it is towed when at full displacement. It is probably towed or steered at lighter weight: Prelude FLNG - Wikipedia
On this scale the 3,100 ton Saturn V is positively tiny.
The closest it’s come to the sun so far is 24.4 million km. I’m not sure this is fair, unless we’re going to count every spacecraft that has ever left the Earth’s sphere of influence, all of which would have had some kind of effect on the sun’s position, even if inappreciable.
(Pardon me if I get some stuff wrong about the OP. I find it hard to parse.)
Re: Saturn V. The Portland Fremont Bridge center span weighs twice as much as a loaded Saturn V rocket. It was floated to under its eventual position and lifted by rods into place 1973. So moving bigger stuff wasn’t an issue even at the time of the Saturn V.
As to thrust/bombs and such. Hmm. What? The Tsar Bomba was the biggest nuke. It had to have moved a whole lot of air around. While the mass might not have been that great, the volume shifted had to be pretty decent.