• Question: Which spaceship is the most powerful and what can it do?

    Asked by pierslydon to Kristian, Tim, Zachary on 21 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Zachary Williamson

      Zachary Williamson answered on 21 Nov 2013:

      Hi Pierslydon.

      The most powerful spaceship that’s ever existed was the Saturn V rocket, used to get astronauts to the moon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

      What can it do? Well, it has enough power to get a ton of men and machinery to the moon. We’ve never tried anything remotely as ambitious as the moon landing so the need for a more powerful rocket has never arisen.

    • Photo: Kristian Harder

      Kristian Harder answered on 21 Nov 2013:

      I guess it boils down to what exactly you mean by “power”. Power in a strict scientific sense of the word? Well, then probably the Saturn V that Zachary mentioned, with its huge rocket engines may be hard to beat indeed. Saturn V, on its way to the moon, used real brute force, lots of rocket engines burning huge amounts of fuel, to get to a maximum speed of almost 11 kilometers per second. That’s fast.

      But now look at Voyager 1. This cute little space probe was launched with a much smaller rocket, used some smart flyby manoeuvres past a few big planets to pick up speed, and is now steaming ahead at 17 kilometers per second, and has traveled further than any other manmade object – in fact, it’s the first and only space probe so far that seems to have left the solar system.

      Or if speed counts, look at the Helios probes. Those two did pretty much the mother of all nose-dives, pretending to crash into the sun and picking up 70 kilometers per second (!!!) of speed in the process. This is the absolute speed record for spaceships so far, at least out of the ones we know of. 🙂

      The lesson is: big engines aren’t everything. Sometimes being smart brings you a lot further, faster. 😉

    • Photo: Tim Hollowood

      Tim Hollowood answered on 21 Nov 2013:

      Well the most powerful rocket will be on the drawing board of NASA. Although it’s been designed they don’t have the money to build it yet. But if they do it could take people to Mars. I guess it will make the Saturn V rocket look like a firework….let’s hope it gets built soon!

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