Rocket Lab

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A community for discussing Rocket Lab, the US/New Zealand aerospace company. All posts related to Rocket Lab are welcome.

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Dave@lemmy.nz

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Rocket Lab-built Mars smallsats arrive at launch site (spacenews.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by llamacoffee@lemmy.world to c/rocketlab@lemmy.nz

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I was thinking a cubesat was a small satellite 😃. I guess thats micro or something.

I guess I've never considered how big the satellites were until seeing that picture next to the people.

I guess with the square-cube law, one 10 times as heavy might only be twice as tall.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I’ve never considered how big the satellites were until seeing that picture next to the people

Yeah, humans for scale definitely help:

Here's ViaSat-3 Americas:

And here's a 1:1 scale model of the unfolded JWST:

Spacecraft can be surprisingly large.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

This is going to sound weird given my surprise, but JWST seems smaller than I expected! I definitely expected the mirror array to be like 10 or 20 people tall or more, not 3.

To be fair, I also didn't expect Hubble's mirror to be not much bigger than a person.

All the ground based telescopes throw off my expectations.

Edit: Actually, I think it's the radio telescopes throwing off my expectations