Orbital mechanics of very large things, and the craters made when they land
I'm watching 2001, and during the approach to the space station, the engineer part of me started wondering how they lifted it. Obviously in small pieces; most likely 260,000 pounds at a time, assuming they kept the heavy-lifter Saturn V instead of the pansy-ass Shuttle. But how many launches would it take? I'll assume for the purposes of this discussion that there's no limit on shape or size of the payloads, just mass. Of course, this makes the math simple division.
So I guess the real question is "How heavy do you think the space station in the movie is?" Scale is hard to determine in space, especially in Kubrik's minimalist compositions, and I don't really know what a bit over a quarter of a million pounds looks like. That's 118,000 kg for you Europeans/science nerds. I know it's not really correct to talk of pounds in space, but I like pounds, so nyah.
Also, tell me things that weigh 260,000 pounds (130 tons), or a nice even large part thereof. E.g., a cube of steel just a hair over eight feet on a side. Could a Saturn V lift a medium-sized house into low earth orbit?
It works out to 1.87 M1A2 Abrams tanks; take off the gun barrels and little fiddly bits (smoke grenade launchers, mahcine guns, etc) and you could probably get two up there. Which raises (ha!) an interesting question: how well would a main battle tank fare on the trip down from orbit? Assume the most aerodynamically favorable angles and that anything normally held on by gravity is bolted down. Secondary question: if enough of it would melt off to make part 1 disappointing, rework and leave out the air resistance: what kind of kinetic energy are we looking at if it made it to the ground whole? The tank is 63,000 kg.
The rocket itself weighs 6,699,000 lb/3,038,500 kg. If that were to hit you at full speed (alas, rather impossible, since most of that is fuel expended in the acelleration process), it'd ruin your day and that of everyone around you.
So I guess the real question is "How heavy do you think the space station in the movie is?" Scale is hard to determine in space, especially in Kubrik's minimalist compositions, and I don't really know what a bit over a quarter of a million pounds looks like. That's 118,000 kg for you Europeans/science nerds. I know it's not really correct to talk of pounds in space, but I like pounds, so nyah.
Also, tell me things that weigh 260,000 pounds (130 tons), or a nice even large part thereof. E.g., a cube of steel just a hair over eight feet on a side. Could a Saturn V lift a medium-sized house into low earth orbit?
It works out to 1.87 M1A2 Abrams tanks; take off the gun barrels and little fiddly bits (smoke grenade launchers, mahcine guns, etc) and you could probably get two up there. Which raises (ha!) an interesting question: how well would a main battle tank fare on the trip down from orbit? Assume the most aerodynamically favorable angles and that anything normally held on by gravity is bolted down. Secondary question: if enough of it would melt off to make part 1 disappointing, rework and leave out the air resistance: what kind of kinetic energy are we looking at if it made it to the ground whole? The tank is 63,000 kg.
The rocket itself weighs 6,699,000 lb/3,038,500 kg. If that were to hit you at full speed (alas, rather impossible, since most of that is fuel expended in the acelleration process), it'd ruin your day and that of everyone around you.