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Posts tagged soyuz

emu family

emu family published on No Comments on emu family

this is my sneaky way of showing the size differences between some famous rockets.

for those who don’t know, the ‘v-2’ rocket (aka a4) on the far left was 14 metres tall and was the first rocket to ever reach space in 1944. it was built by the nazis to bomb london (but luckily they mostly missed).

the ‘saturn v’ on the right was the rocket that brought people to the moon in 1968-72, and is still the largest rocket ever launched as of now (2021/08) at 110 metres tall. however, spacex’s 120m tall ‘starship’ is going to break that record when it launches (hopefully) later this year.

soyuz

soyuz published on No Comments on soyuz

confusingly, the soyuz is both the name of the rocket and the spacecraft, the latter of which has had 148 crewed missions as of this post (more than the space shuttle’s 135), with the first one being in 1966! if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, the russians say, especially when you’re working on a soviet budget.

there’s something so kerbal about landing in the middle of the desert with a single enormous parachute and tiny landing rockets firing just before touchdown to soften the impact. spare a thought for boris volynov, who rode soyuz 5 in 1969 when its parachute tangled and landing rockets failed, resulting in the spacecraft hitting the ground so hard it broke volynov’s teeth.