this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Context hat
Back when NASA was flinging things into space for the first time, the tolerances that were even possible were extremely tight. Every pound mattered (every pound still matters, but because we have other things to do once we get to space nowadays, plus every pound is expensive).
600 pounds of white paint for the fuel tank was considered unnecessary, once the engineering team figured that it didn't actually protect the special foam covering of the fuel tank anyway. Thus the distinctive orange color!
For all the people in the world except the ones from the United States, 600 freedom units = ~272 kg
To many significant digits. It's 300kg
That's 4 and half men. Or a minivan's worth of kids. Or 100 buckets of KFC
So about 31 adult badgers.
Tsss, it's barely 1/6th of a skateboarding rhino.
Thank you, finally something sensible
also Canada. because we don't use metric in contexts like this
You weigh in beavers?
You can just give a conversion without being snarky about it
You can just be quiet, what has snarky ever done to you?
Oh, I thought the pictures were backwards. The orange being the natural color and the white being paint is really critical information for it to make sense lol
Yeah same. Orange is much more iconic, glad this happened.
Oh my eyes glossed over the word "paint". Thanks.
This is such a cool fact; I'm a sucker for these things, I'm saving this post.