I know, I know, the week is still young and many surprises await ahead, but I think I’m not exaggerating when I say the video attached below this text is the most spectacular thing you’ll see all week.
For a number of years now a space animation specialist called Hazegrayart has been enchanting our senses with incredible views of space tech projects that never came to pass in real life, but also other space events and phenomena we need visual aids to properly comprehend. This time though, we’re in for something totally different.
Hazegrayart got together on the computer screen no less than nine of the most potent rockets in existence today, for something it calls Rocket Olympics. That would be two minutes of space extravaganza during which we get to see a 400-meter (1,312 feet) dash upward and a 1,500-meter (4,921 feet) virtual sprint to the heavens.
The nine rockets used in the animation are the ULA Atlas V (America’s longest-serving active rocket), the Space Launch System (SLS, fresh from kickstarting the Artemis Moon exploration program), Arianespace Ariane 5 (Europe’s space workhorse), the Rocket Lab Electron (one of the newcomers to the space exploration table), the Saturn V of Apollo program fame, ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy (the largest in its family), the retired Space Shuttle, and the immensely popular Blue Origin New Shepard and SpaceX Falcon 9.
Hazegrayart used acceleration numbers and times taken from various data sheets, and video replays of actual launches to come up with a visual representation of how fast each rocket would climb to said altitudes in a sort of space drag race the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
We won’t go into the details of which rocket won each race (the video is just two minutes long and worth the watch), but we’ll tell you there’s a single winner in both cases, and the most powerful rocket ever made, the SLS, is not it.
Hazegrayart got together on the computer screen no less than nine of the most potent rockets in existence today, for something it calls Rocket Olympics. That would be two minutes of space extravaganza during which we get to see a 400-meter (1,312 feet) dash upward and a 1,500-meter (4,921 feet) virtual sprint to the heavens.
The nine rockets used in the animation are the ULA Atlas V (America’s longest-serving active rocket), the Space Launch System (SLS, fresh from kickstarting the Artemis Moon exploration program), Arianespace Ariane 5 (Europe’s space workhorse), the Rocket Lab Electron (one of the newcomers to the space exploration table), the Saturn V of Apollo program fame, ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy (the largest in its family), the retired Space Shuttle, and the immensely popular Blue Origin New Shepard and SpaceX Falcon 9.
Hazegrayart used acceleration numbers and times taken from various data sheets, and video replays of actual launches to come up with a visual representation of how fast each rocket would climb to said altitudes in a sort of space drag race the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
We won’t go into the details of which rocket won each race (the video is just two minutes long and worth the watch), but we’ll tell you there’s a single winner in both cases, and the most powerful rocket ever made, the SLS, is not it.