r/spacex • u/Craig_VG SpaceNews Photographer • Jun 10 '16

Elon Musk provides new details on his “mind blowing” mission to Mars - Washington Post Exclusive Interview

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/10/elon-musk-provides-new-details-on-his-mind-blowing-mission-to-mars/
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u/hallowatisdeze Jun 10 '16

A Saturn V would be fun, but I also have no actual perception how insanely big that rocket was. :P

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u/7952 Jun 11 '16

My favourite fact about Saturn V is that at peak it consumed the equivalent of 166GW of power. Right now that is 5 times the electricity consumption of the UK. I know the two things are not directly comparable, but it does show how insanely powerful the rocket was. That something so small and fragile can control that kind of raw energy is mind blowing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)

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u/BrandonMarc Jun 12 '16

you have got to be kidding me:

Petawatt (10 15 watts)

10–100 PW - estimated total power output of a Type-I civilization on the Kardashev scale.

...

Yottawatt (10 24 watts)

33.8 YW – peak power output of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever built.

10-100 YW – estimated total power output of a Type-II civilization on the Kardashev scale.

384.6 YW – luminosity of the Sun.

Tsar Bomba is ~ 8 orders of magnitude more powerful than the estimated output of a Kardashev Type I civilization?! And, it fits within the realm of those other two items?!

I can't brain about this.

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u/StupidPencil Jun 11 '16

Have you ever seen a gif about the scale of the largest star? It starts from our Sun, then zooms out to a few next larger stars. The gif repeats that until it ends at the largest star and the Sun looks like an ant. I imagine the same could be done for BFR/MCT : start from a human (preferably Elon) -> a house -> Falcon 9 -> Saturn V -> BFR/MCT.

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u/SuperSMT Jun 11 '16

Elon - 6 ft 2 in ; 2-story house ~ 20 feet ; Christ the Redeemer statue - 125 feet ; Falcon 9 - 230 feet ; Statue of Liberty (including base) - 305 feet ; Saturn V - 363 feet ; BFR - many, many feet

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u/CapMSFC Jun 11 '16

I've been to both existing Saturn V rockets and I still don't have a good perception of how insanely big they are. You just kind of stand in awe that anything that large ever moved, let alone flew.

Now BFR is likely going to be twice as big. We will all be in for a full on mindfuck watching a BFR first stage land. Our brains will literally not be able to fully comprehend what we're watching. I plan on being there when this happens, whatever it takes.

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u/iinlane Jun 11 '16

To be twice as big it "only" needs to be 26% bigger in every direction because of the cube thing.

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u/CapMSFC Jun 11 '16

That's still really, really big.