the.com/spacecraft
a sealed bubble of Earth flung at the indifferent dark, keeping fragile apes alive
means A vehicle designed to travel, operate, or carry people and instruments in outer space, beyond Earth's atmosphere.
from A transparent compound of "space" + "craft," minted in the 20th century as humans began seriously plotting to leave the planet. "Space" came to mean the cosmic void via Latin "spatium" (an extent or expanse), while "craft" has meant a vessel or vehicle for centuries — first boats, then aircraft, and finally ships for the dark above the sky. The word rode in on the same wave as "spaceship" and "spacecraft," terms that science fiction kept warm for decades before engineers made them real.
- top speed
- Parker probe hit 430,000 mph near the sun
- slow build
- Voyager 1 still phoning home after 47 years
- old tech
- Apollo guidance had less power than a calculator
- escape velocity
- needs 25,000 mph to ditch Earth entirely
- farthest object
- Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles away
apollo 11 — landed humans on the moon on july 20, 1969
voyager 1 — launched 1977, still transmitting from interstellar space
perseverance rover — exploring mars crater jezero since february 2021
international space station — continuously inhabited orbiting laboratory since november 2000