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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

> rocket that size

I think the paint job (or lack of paint job) on Artemis makes it look smaller to me than the Saturn V rockets. When I saw a diagram showing the relative sizes of different rockets I was surprised that it was around the same size as the Saturn V.

Same goes for SpaceX’s super heavy. I don’t get much of a sense of the size from photos.

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I think you don't really appreciate how big the Saturn V (and similar) are unless you see the museum pieces in person. I grew up near a place that had one of the engines up on poles so you could walk under the bell and look up... kind of spooky to stand there and imagine the violence of the thing running.

Johnson Space Center near Houston has one and it truly is an awesome thing to see.

Same for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Saturn V is truly jaw-dropping to see in person, especially as you round the corner and see the gargantuan engines fill your view. The rocket is hung from the ceiling horizontally, allowing you to walk underneath its entire length. An unforgettable experience.

Yeah getting the sense of scale from SpaceX rockets is really hard. The various Starbase streams usually have a "woah" moment for me when you finally see people standing next to our working on some of the features of the various hulls as a point if comparison.

Starship has a decent built in scale with each of the welded ring sections being around human heigth... and then you see how many are stacked.

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