Fun Facts

Here are a collection of fun facts we discovered about the Space Program while doing our research.

• Tidal forces between the Earth and Moon are slowing the Earth down and pushing the Moon further away.
• An unprotected human can survive up to 1.5 minutes in space with no permanent bodily damage.
• Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years.
• If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together.
• One pinhead of the sun's energy is enough to kill a person at a distance of 160 kilometers.
• The light hitting the earth right now is 30 thousand years old.
• The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant glass of water it would float.
• Sound doesn't travel in space.
• It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.
• Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets combined.
• The Space Shuttle main engine weighs 1/7th as much as a train engine but delivers as much horsepower as 39 locomotives.
• Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
• Today's top fuel dragsters take off with more force than the space shuttle.
• There are two golf balls sitting on the moon.
• There are approximately 3,500 astronomers in the U.S. - but over 15,000 astrologers.
• The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.
• The typical spec of dust that you see floating in the air is half way in size between the Earth and a subatomic particle.
• The temperature of the earth's interior increases by 1 degree every 60 feet down.
• The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!
• The population of the Earth has more than doubled since 1950.
• The moon is actually moving away from Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches per year.
• The heart of an astronaut actually gets smaller when in outer space.
• The Earth weighs around 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons (5,940 billion billion metric tons)!
• The earth travels through space at 660,000 miles per hour.
• The earth rotates more slowly on its axis in March than in September.
• The earth is .02 degrees hotter during a full moon.
• The Earth gets heavier each day by tons, as meteoric dust settles on it.
• The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.
• Saturn's rings are about 500,000 miles in circumference but only about a foot thick.
• Only 55% of Americans know that the sun is a star.
• More than 20 million meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere every day.
• Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet!
• Jupiter's moon Ganymede, is larger than the planet Mercury!
• It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.
• In space, astronauts cannot cry properly, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow down their faces!
• If you went out into space, you would explode before you suffocated because there's no air pressure.
• Astronauts cannot burp in space.
• Approximately 115 tons of ocean salt spray enters the earth's atmosphere each second.
• Any space vehicle must move at a rate of 7 miles per second in order to escape the earth's gravitational pull.
• All of the Earth's continents are wider at the north than in the south - and nobody knows why.