General Question

Ltryptophan's avatar

If humans were the size of hamsters would our rockets for space travel be much smaller?

Asked by Ltryptophan (12091points) December 24th, 2021 from iPhone

This is a question about scale. Since artificial intelligence, and robots need not be the size we are perhaps this has real world applications.

Would small humans need the same size rockets?

If so, would traveling to the moon at the level of 60’s technology be possible for these Lilliputians?

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12 Answers

Zaku's avatar

The human-related components and supplies could all be proportionally smaller. Or in an unmanned vessel, they can be non-existent. Otherwise, what you put on a space vessel is about what you want to send into space, and also on what it takes to get that stuff off the planet and on the course you want.

See for example the unmanned ships we’ve been sending to Mars.

Love_my_doggie's avatar

If hamsters were the size of humans, hamster wheels would be enormous.

Dutchess_III's avatar

I’d say no. You need a certain boost to get your hamster ass into space. The living quarters and controls would be smaller though.

ragingloli's avatar

I doubt it.
Most of the rocket is fuel. And most of the fuel is to transport that fuel.

Even the Rocket that launched Sputnik, which was a 60cm wide ball, was over 30m tall, at a 270 ton weight.

kritiper's avatar

Yes but the distance to get to space would be like we humans having to go 2880 miles to get there. So you would need enough hamster spaceship fuel to just go that far.

Kropotkin's avatar

No.

It can be a little smaller, but most of what you’re carrying into space is the fuel and the rest of the rocket.

Blackwater_Park's avatar

Escape velocity does not depend on size. Food for thought, if the earth was much larger conventional rockets would not work.

Dutchess_III's avatar

SBlackwater_Park f the earth was much larger lots and lots of things wouldn’t work.
Earth is a marvel of perfection for life.

RocketGuy's avatar

Small humans would need proportionally smaller amounts of supplies. That reduces weight. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation says getting into orbit is exponential to mass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation
So tiny humans would drastically reduce the size of the rocket needed.

Ltryptophan's avatar

@RocketGuy

So, if we scaled the humans down by 6:1. The rocket they could use would also go down in a comparable proportion? TIA

Dutchess_III's avatar

No it wouldn’t @RocketGuy. It would take the same amount of force and fuel to send an empty rocket into space as a manned one. The weight of the humans is an after thought.

RocketGuy's avatar

Well, F=ma so less mass will require less force to achieve the same acceleration. At least two launch providers I know will charge an extra $40,000 per kg if we exceed the mass agreed to in the launch contract. The current trend is to build really small but cheap satellites so as to be able to use smaller (cheaper) launch vehicles. Advances in miniaturizing sensors has been helping a lot.

So if you reduce the passenger size to 1/6x you will need that much less equipment and supplies. That could go with a smaller rocket or you could add a lot of supplies and get a longer mission with a big rocket.

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