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Size doesn’t matter — except when it does

I ran into a few images lately that help to give an appreciation of how all the various existing, developing, and conceptual space launching systems compare. Of course, size doesn’t always translate directly into payload capacity, but it’s a good general indicator of oomph (this is a technical term I like to use).

Here is the SpaceX Super Heavy (the first stage) and Starship (the second stage) stack, compared to the version of the mighty Saturn V that launched astronauts to the Moon and back (click to get full size):

Here is a nice comparison of a range of versions of the Space Launch System (SLS), currently the favorite of US Senators everywhere. Since the artist left off both the SpaceX SH/SS and Blue Origin New Glenn, I’m guessing he’s not really a fan of commercial space (yet he included the Iron Giant, go figure). Still, it shows where NASA was planning to go with variants of the Saturn V:

Because I don’t want to leave out the other player in our nascent competitive commercial space industry, here is a comparison that includes Blue Origin developmental efforts. Jeff Bezos has been quite secretive about his space company, and I’m not certain how far along he is with the New Glenn. So far, except for the BE-4 engine that will power it, it is conceptual vaporware. This chart also shows how the large SpaceX system has evolved over the last few years as the financial realities of building such a monster sink in. Note that in this chart, SS/SH is still called the BFR (theoretically, “Big Falcon Rocket”). The first idea, the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), was conceived in Elon-space but ultimately turned out to be impractical to accomplish, even in Elon-time. Looking closely, you might notice that the SH booster doesn’t have any landing legs, and you might realistically wonder how it plans to land. The answer is that it will come down on a cradle that catches it and prevents it from falling over. This is as-yet-undemonstrated capability.

Finally, because it’s currently being built in a field and very shortly to be tested in flight, here is how the “Starhopper” vertical landing test vehicle compares to the Starship upper stage:

If you are at all into space, this is an exciting time to be alive.

7 replies on “Size doesn’t matter — except when it does”

Jack it up, put a cluster of big enough engines under, and you’re set to go. I wouldn’t tip it over much, though…

If we’re talking conceptual, we could take a few of those Super Heavy’s along as shuttles on an Orion. One of those designs was 20 km in diameter. 🙂

I know that there is a conceptual design out there for a large rotating space station that is ringed with Dreamchasers as emergency lifeboats.

A giant ship that can be launched cheaply opens up all sorts of possibilities. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to build a rotating space station simply by hooking up a dozen Starships around an axle hub and set it to spinning.

An Orion wouldn’t exactly be cheap but you could deliver a payload in the hundreds to thousands of tons on an interplanetary mission. It’ll probably never be politically feasible though.

Yeah, the neighbors generally don’t take well to being showered by radioactive debris.

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