• Question: How much fuel is in a soyuz rocket?

    Asked by DJSRio to Stephen, Hannah, Lucy, Phil, rochellevelho on 9 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by DJSFreddie, DJSAnkit.
    • Photo: Phil Sutton

      Phil Sutton answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I actually haven’t worked with any rockets but I can tell you that the amount of energy it takes to place a rocket or anything into space is vast. This means that with a rocket like Soyuz the majority of the mass at takeoff will be fuel. It might take 10 – 20kg of fuel per 1kg of payload just to get it into space. You can start to see why it is very expensive to put people and objects into space when it takes huge amounts of energy.

    • Photo: Lucy Kissick

      Lucy Kissick answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      Something like 150 tonnes of fuel in the form of kerosene and liquid oxygen.

    • Photo: Hannah Sargeant

      Hannah Sargeant answered on 12 Mar 2017:

      by comparison, the biggest rocket ever built was the Saturn-5 which sent astronauts to the Moon, and it used 2500 tonnes of fuel!

Comments