The top 10 best rockets in history

 Hi! It's the RocketKid/AndrewtheGreat and today we are talking about the greatest rockets of all time. (This is not biased toward the west and includes the east)

1. Saturn V ( Apollo missions )

You know it, you love it it's the SATURN V. This rocket is still currently the largest rocket in history. (For now.....) This beast of a rocket took humans to the moon, including Apollo 11. The Saturn V is one of the only rockets in the world with a 100% success rate. Compared to the shuttle which had about 40% of success rate.  Some people might say that Apollo 13 was a Saturn V failure. But, that was the Service module that had the problem. Not the Saturn V's S-IVB stage/Stage3. Apollo 1 is also sometimes mistaken for a Saturn V fail. But, that rocket was a Saturn-1B, also the problem was the command module. Not the rocket itself.

 

2. The Falcon-9

You know this rocket... Elon Musk's company SpaceX has mastered the propulsive landing method with this rocket. Before, rocket stages just splashed down into the sea. But, the Falcon-9's first stage comes back down to earth and lands by firing its engines. I... haven't succeeded in doing that in KSP...

R.I.P KSC, you will be misssed... Falcon-9 is much better at this. Note to self: Don't land a rocket with a 50-degree tilt. Here's the Falcon-9

This is how the pros do it. Also, fun fact: landing a falcon-9 is like throwing a pencil over the empire state building and landing it eraser first on the ground. So HARD. Also, this is a medium-class launch vehicle, 70 meters in height. It's the cheapest ride to space so far. (Besides Electron... I'll talk about it later, GO MUSK!)

3. Falcon heavy

This is the most powerful launch vehicle in operation. Since 2018, the Falcon Heavy, a 3 core version of the Falcon-9, has been the most powerful rocket in operation. With 27 Merlin 1-D engines, this rocket sends power and reuse out of the window. If 3 cores are reused, this may be your best experience ever! I... was too young back then. I wish I saw it. It produces more than 5 million pounds of thrust. Also, it lifted Musk's personal Tesla roadster into orbit, with a mannequin named Starman. here's a bunch of Pics:

So... yeah, this Falcon heavy landed BOTH cores. Not the center one. It got dunked by gravity. No pic of that though.

4. SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM

This is NASA's upcoming rocket called the SLS, this rocket is more powerful than the Saturn V, but has less payload capability, no idea why. This rocket is part of NASA's Artemis program to send humans back to the moon in 2025 at the very least. This is the rocket:

Using a modified space shuttle RS-25, this rocket has all the NASA qualities, lots of tests, and also, this took like what, FOREVER to make, so if the launch scheduled for late this year fails, we may have to push the deadline to 2026, the time SpaceX is planning to land on MARS. So, yeah the SLS is pretty expensive. At over 1.6 billion US dollars, this launch cost towers over the Saturn V, Why is NASA using old space shuttle parts to design a 21st-century moon rocket? Well, CONGRESS. The reason is that when the space shuttle was built, many new jobs were created, and congress liked it because the economy would grow strong. So now that the shuttle program was ended, all those people who held the special jobs lost them. So, congress forced NASA to make a rocket using old shuttle parts. Comment what you think of that down below.

5. The Energia

Let's be honest, the Energia is a decent rocket for the 1960s. We don't have much info on this other than that it's weird. The payload goes on the side of the rocket and not on the top like most rockets, Like this:

It's also time to mention that it carried the Soviet copy of the space shuttle, Buran. You can learn more in this video by Primal Space:

Anyway, the Energia was a heavy lift launcher, which means it was in the same ballpark as rockets like the SLS, Saturn V, Falcon heavy, etc. If you want to learn more specifically about the Energia, just Wikipedia it. Is that a real word? Well, next one!

6. New Glenn

This is a rocket being developed by a company by the name "Blue Origin" founded by the ex-richest man on earth, Jeff Bezos. this company started out as a rocket think tank and has evolved from a tiny suborbital rocket to A GIANT MONSTER ROCKET rivaling even the Saturn 5 in height terms. It can carry 45 metric tons to low earth orbit. With a 7-meter wide payload fairing, this thing is a beast. You can learn more on everyday astronaut's video on New Glenn:

New Glenn will be powered by 7 Be-4 engines, also used in ULA's upcoming Vulcan rocket. The Be-4 is racing against SpaceX's raptor engine to be the first methane-powered rocket engine to send a rocket to orbit.

7. Electron

One you might haven't even heard of, this small-sat launcher created a rookie rocket company, Rocket Lab, founded by Peter beck in about 2000, it began launching small rockets named the Atea-1, soon he was comfortable enough to build bigger rockets. That first step is Electron, it may look big to the camera, but it's barely bigger than Falcon-9's landing legs. Here's a size comparison:

Standing only 18 meters tall, it's smaller than almost every rocket in history. It can launch a small-sat, mainly cube-sats, into orbit.

8. Soyuz

Okay, let's be brutally honest, the Soyuz is probably the longest-lasting rocket ever, beginning to launch way back in the 60s 70s, and 80s. It has evolved over time and now Russia is stealing payloads that were supposed to launch on the Soyuz because of the conflict in Ukraine. This is how it looks:

Before the SpaceX Dragon capsule, the Soyuz was the only way to send humans to orbit. So, the Soyuz is basically your car, nothing else could replace it besides a better, cheaper car. The Soyuz FG is the model being used today. The Soyuz is Russia's main launcher, along with the Proton-M rocket.

9. The Atlas 5

This rocket is the most used rocket by Boeing and Lockheed Martin's joint company, ULA. It launched NASA's Presurverance rover and is the rocket planning to launch Boeing's Starliner near the end of the year. In military contracts, however, it's falling behind because it's using Russian engines, luckily, the conflict in Ukraine didn't stop ULA, they had bought enough to last all the launches until retirement. Go, Percy!

There are a lot of combinations of upper stages, solid rocket boosters, and fairing. I can't go into detail but the configuration that launched Percy was a 541 config. So the Atlas 5 is a great choice for NASA launches.

10. STARSHIP

This one is self-explanatory, the Starship is SpaceX's upcoming super-heavy launcher. It can launch about 150 metric tons into orbit, more than any rocket in history, standing more than 100 meters in height, this truly is the king of rockets. This is also the only rocket right now designed to go to Mars. It is 9 meters wide with more than 37 raptor engines on the bottom of the first stage. It all accomplishes this while being FULLY REUSABLE. The only other rocket I can think that's fully reuseable is the New Shepard rocket. Kind of a bad comparison because the New Shepard is barely bigger than 1/100 of the first stage. The design for Starship has changed a lot, it wasn't even called Starship back then. The design changes looked like this:

The starship is a rocket capable of reaching mars. With refueling of course. You can learn more on youtube. So, this is the finale, the biggest and in my opinion, the best rocket ever!!!!!

This is the RocketKid, signing off!