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whitehexagon parent
Great clean video link thanks, but I cant work out the scale, first it looks like a toy rocket, then from the distance shot it looks huge, like spaceX huge, and then landing it looks quite small again, especially with the lawn sprinklers.

But an impressively smooth landing regardless, and I would imagine maybe harder the smaller the rocket is.

perihelions
It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles. If it's 6.3 meters, the smallest Starhopper was 18 meters; Blue Shepherd 19 m; China's Hyperbola-2Y 17 m; the Zhuque-3 VTVL test vehicle 18.3 m. Also the Grasshopper from 2012 was 32 m and even 1993's DC-X was 12 m.
SECProto
> It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles.

You likely weren't being exhaustive in your listing, but I first started watching aerospace development with Armadillo Aerospace, and some of their rockets were much smaller. Their largest one was still shorter than the dc-x.

http://www.astronautix.com/q/quad.html

gpm
There's a hobbyist ~1m orbital hop vehicle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3lR2GLgT0

Pretty sure that, or some other hobbyist project, is going to take the prize for "smallest".

MrSkelter
It’s harder to land shorter vehicles. If you can land a short one the taller ones are easier.
throwaway562if1
Electron is an 18m orbital delivery rocket (14.5m+payload without the optional third stage).
kryptiskt
Japan holds the record for the smallest rocket to reach orbit with the SS-520, which put a cubesat into orbit in 2018.

Its dimensions according to Wikipedia:

Height – 31 feet (9.54 meters)

Weight – 2.9 tons (2.6 metric tons)

Diameter – 20 inches (52 centimeters)

Payload to Low-Earth Orbit – ~9 lbs (4 kg)

muziq
I believe they can do 140kg to 800km, but #5 was only 4kg to a 180km x 1800km orbit..
mr_toad
The important thing about Starhopper was that it had a Raptor engine. And the Falcon 1 had a Merlin engine. They were testing with the engines they intended to put into orbit. Blue Origin are also going with orbital class engines.

I doubt that this rocket has an engine intended for orbit? So it makes me wonder how serious this program is.

tw04
> successfully landed its 6.3-metre (20.6-foot) experimental reusable launch vehicle

From another article.

imzadi
About the height of a giraffe
xarope
there are giraffes that are 6m tall?!?
adrian_b
It is said that many males exceed 5.5 m in height.

A record height for a giraffe in a UK zoo was 5.8 m, but the tip of his horns was said to have reached close to 6.1 m.

So 6 m is about in this ballpark.

hbrav
Or in natural units: three very tall men stood on top of one another, wearing a top hat.
RattlesnakeJake
Are all three men wearing individual top hats, or does one cover all of them?
ryandrake
Oh jeez, how many football fields is that?
Someone
Let’s see. 2 cm of grass on top of, say, 10 cm of earth would make the height of a football field 12cm. That would make it as high as about 50 football fields.
TeMPOraL
It's not a rocket, but three men in a trench coat?
peterlada
And under the French cost is an African swallow.
lowestprimate
How many bananas?
hnburnsy
>6.3 m in length, 85 cm in diameter, 900 kg dry weight/1,312 kg wet weight
ricardobeat
That's just a tad longer than a north-american SUV (Escalade, Navigator) standing on it's back. Accurate to say it's a car-sized rocket.
xarope
I'm a bit confused, most cars aren't more than 3m in length. This rocket is 6.3m.

Or are there really SUVs which are > 6m in length?

numpad0
Current gen Prius is about 4.5m in length, 1.8m in width, 1.5m in height. "Slightly under 5 x 2 x 1.5m" has been the standard size of a sedan for past few decades.
la_oveja
the mentioned suvs are 5.7m and 5.6m long, respectively
xarope
wow, and I thought F350s were big
cyxxon
Huh? Even in Europe most cars are longer than 4m (a VW Golf is 4.28m for example).
voxic11
Its like half the size of a Trident missile.
gnatolf
Which inexplicably isn't know for soft landings

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