5 ms·
Falcon 9’s engines combined produce ~7,500,000,000 millinewtons of force (at sea level) per SpaceX’s website (converted from their figure of 1.7M lb/foot of for
by jsjohnst 6y ago
Falcon 9’s engines combined produce ~7,500,000,000 millinewtons of force (at sea level) per SpaceX’s website (converted from their figure of 1.7M lb/foot of force).
So doing some napkin math with the article’s 12mN/kW, that’s close to a terawatt. For reference, I think worldwide electrical power generation capacity is around 10x that.
edit: made the math more explicit due to child comments and fixed spelling error
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago7,500,000,000 millinewtons = 7.500 Meganewtons 1 Watt = 1 Newton-meter/second You're missing some values.
- tremon 6y agoThe missing value would be the 12mN/kW that the top post opened with. Getting 7.5 MN output thrust with that conversion ratio requires 625GW of input power.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jsjohnst 6y agoExactly! To belabor the point further, the Falcon Heavy would be around 2 terawatts and the Saturn V would be around 3 terawatts by comparison.
- robocat 6y agoI think your calculations must be out. The work achieved (lifting some tons of rocket) is orders of magnitude less work than the power extracted from falling water (hydro, thousands of tons per second). And the heat output of burning hydrocarbons and nuclear reactions worldwide were concentrated into a few rocket nozzles, that would be rather mind boggling!
- Aeolun 6y agoIf you don’t need all the falcon’s fuel, you don’t need nearly as much thrust either.
- anamexis 6y agoSure, just something that can generate a terawatt of power.