Topic Battle

The rocket exists in an entirely different velocity category. The Saturn V achieved speeds of 25,053 miles per hour—sufficient to escape Earth's gravitational influence entirely. Modern rockets routinely accelerate from stationary to orbital velocity in under ten minutes.

SpaceX's Starship, currently in development, aims to reach Mars at velocities approaching 15,000 miles per hour sustained over months of interplanetary transit. The Parker Solar Probe holds the current speed record at 430,000 miles per hour, making it humanity's fastest object.

At rocket velocities, an IKEA warehouse would blur past in approximately 0.003 seconds—insufficient time to even contemplate the meatballs.

The rocket occupies mythic status in human imagination. From Jules Verne to SpaceX, rockets represent humanity's most literal aspirations—the physical manifestation of the desire to transcend earthly limitations.

The Moon landings remain humanity's singular greatest achievement, watched by 600 million people in 1969. Rocket launches continue to inspire wonder, their ascending flames representing possibility, progress, and the frontier spirit that defines our species.

Rockets have shaped geopolitics, accelerated technology development, and provided the satellite infrastructure upon which modern civilisation depends. GPS, weather forecasting, and global communications all orbit thanks to rocket technology.

Rocket assembly operates in a rather different paradigm. The Space Shuttle program employed over 2.5 million individual parts, each requiring documentation, testing, and installation by teams of specialists across multiple facilities and years of construction.

Where IKEA provides a single Allen key, NASA provides thousands of engineers, climate-controlled clean rooms, and assembly procedures spanning hundreds of thousands of pages. A single misaligned component can result in catastrophic failure rather than merely a wobbly shelf.

The rocket does not arrive in a flat-pack. It does not fit in a Volvo estate. And crucially, one cannot abandon assembly halfway through to order takeaway and reconsider one's life choices.

Rocket launches present rather more challenging environmental arithmetic. A single Falcon 9 launch consumes approximately 440 tonnes of kerosene and liquid oxygen, producing substantial carbon dioxide emissions alongside various combustion byproducts.

The solid rocket boosters historically used by NASA released aluminium oxide and hydrogen chloride into the upper atmosphere, where their effects remain subjects of ongoing study. Modern liquid-fuelled rockets improve upon this, but launches remain energy-intensive events.

SpaceX's reusable rocket programme represents genuine progress—landing and reusing boosters significantly reduces per-launch environmental costs. Yet even optimistically, rockets will never achieve the gentle footprint of a sustainably-sourced pine bookshelf.

Rocket accessibility remains somewhat more restricted. Currently, only eleven nations possess indigenous orbital launch capability, and the waiting list for personal rocket ownership consists primarily of billionaires engaged in what sociologists term 'competitive space ambition syndrome.'

The average citizen's interaction with rockets is limited to watching launches on television or, if fortunate, witnessing a distant contrail from 200 miles away. One cannot purchase a rocket at the weekend, transport it home, or assemble it in the living room—though attempting such would certainly make for memorable content on social media.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 costs approximately $67 million per launch—roughly equivalent to 4.2 million MALM dressers, or one very well-furnished planet.