Launch Vehicle Infographic

youmagine

The infographic features three key pieces of information: (1) The total cost to customers for one flight in US dollars for cargo, with humans being a separate story altogether; the shuttle is included purely for entertainment purposes ($3 million/mm on the x-axis). (2) The amount of mass that can be carried into Low Earth Orbit, measured in kilograms (500kg/mm on the y-axis). (3) The physical height of the assembled launch stack, in meters (1m/mm on the z-axis). The values used are approximate and within the 'rough-order-of-magnitude' range. Due to a lack of public information and varying pricing methods, this project falls into the category of 'interesting but useless'. If you're relying on these figures for crucial decisions, you're taking a huge risk. To gather this data, I consulted Wikipedia, Marspedia.org, russianspaceweb.com, spaceandtech.com, and spacelaunchreport.com. If I get motivated enough, I might cross-check the numbers against ILS', ESA's, and ULA's websites. There's a valid argument for dividing the rockets into low, medium, and heavy lift categories to highlight their differences in cost and payload capacity. However, with only a few rockets in each category, it wasn't worth my time. A unified scale provides a better understanding of the range of available spacecraft. Currently, the following rockets are available for printing: Name Mass/LEO Stack Height Cost Ariane 5 18,000 kg 52m $165 million Atlas 5 HLV 29,420 kg 58.3m $349.6 million Delta IV Heavy 22,560 kg 72m $275.6 million Falcon 9 10,450 kg 54.3m $56 million Proton Breeze M 20,700 kg 53m $89 million Zenit-2 (Sea Launch) 13,740 kg 59.6m $42.5 million Soyuz 8,400 kg 49.3m $44.8 million Space Shuttle 28,800 kg 56m $300 million lv_scale - The map key! All the rockets can be viewed in the 'lv_all' stl file, but it's intended to print them separately. Each rocket has a version number at the end that should give an idea of its development stage, along with the picture. The latest versions are attached, including a zip of the older versions. A zip of the pro/e files for this project is also available. Sorry, OpenSCAD users - I know this project would benefit from scalable goodness, but I don't have time to learn it right now. Maybe another time.