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Sunday 7 December 2014

Rocket power

The launch of NASA's Orion Spacecraft has had idiots saying how this was launched by the most powerful ever rocket. 

Hmmmm.......

This Delta IV is configured with three massive liquid-fuel rocket engines in a row.  Each of the three rocket engines produces 702,000 pounds of thrust, which means this vehicle has 51 million horsepower to get the craft into space.

The first stage of the Saturn 5 that powered the Apollo Spacecraft had five bell-shaped F-1 engines which each weighed over nine tons and generated 1.5 million pounds of thrust.

So each Delta IV engine produces less than half the power of each Saturn 5 engine. Also there are just three engines per Delta IV, but there were five engines per Saturn 5.

I make that a total of just over 2.1 million pounds of thrust from a Delta IV but around 7.5 million pounds of thrust from a Saturn 5.

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