| ▲ | stinkbeetle 3 days ago | |
The numbers on rocket engines are just ridiculous. The turbine on the F1 engines on the Saturn V's first stage generate about 40MW just to pump the fuel and oxygen. 5 of them on the rocket is 200MW which is a respectablly sized power plant, or about 1/2 of a Nimitz aircraft carrier (which is able to push a floating city through the water at nearly 40mph). | ||
| ▲ | dredmorbius 2 days ago | parent [-] | |
The comparisons which stick in my head are that the Saturn V's first-stage fuel pumps were roughly equal in power to a naval destroyer's engines, and the five F1 engines delivered as much energy as France's entire electrical grid (presumably contemporaneously). This from books read as I was a wee lad. | ||