I don’t know what possessed someone to do an in-depth comparison of the new Ram 3500 Heavy Duty pickup with a Delta IV Heavy rocket…but I like it!
The truck actually compares very favorably with the rocket when it comes to payload, defined for the pickup as towing capacity (25,400 pounds) and for the rocket as, um, payload (28,650 pounds). Of course, the rocket is delivering that payload to a thousand miles above the earth, and on one fuel fill-up.
And speaking of fuel, you might also want to choose the Ram based on this comparison, as the rocket gets only .00087 miles per gallon and costs $600,000 to fill up. I’m thinking the cash pay-at-the-pump option won’t get used much by rocket owners. On the other hand, the rocket’s tank holds 483,500 gallons of fuel (liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen…take those warnings about static electricity serious, bubba) which means you’re paying less than $1.50 per gallon. Of course, that’s probably without taxes.
So, what kind of performance do you get for the >$100 million price (MSRP, of course; options like running boards and chrome wheels extra but it comes with a killer GPS, standard)? Try 17 million horsepower per engine – and the rocket uses three of those bad boys – vs. the Ram’s measly 350 hp. (No one’s figured out how to measure torque from a rocket engine but we can assume it’s full of awesomeness.) The Ram is only three seconds slower in a 0-100 mph showdown, but it sort of gets hammered in the all-important 0-17,500 mph category.
Still, as cool as it would be to pilot a Delta IV Heavy, they won’t fit next to a Sonic Drive-In ordering speaker, and you can’t hear the stereo once you have lift-off, so there’s some significant downsides.