I’m not sure how much you’ve heard about this, but if you’re outside and are the sort of person that doesn’t like getting struck by bits of charred metal falling out of the sky, you likely have heard that the core of the Long March 5B booster rocket that carried China’s Wentian orbital lab to dock with its Tiangong space station re-entered the atmosphere in an uncontrolled re-entry. The good news is that despite a re-entry trajectory that had “a non-zero probability of the surviving debris landing in a populated area—over 88 percent of the world’s population lives under the reentry’s potential debris footprint,” the rocket broke up and crashed into the Indian and Pacific oceans, hurting nobody except maybe making some fish more religious, per the Aerospace Corporation. The even better news is that some reporting on the event has given me hope that the greatest vehicular size standard known to humankind, the Volkswagen Beetle, is not dead yet.
Yes, that’s my takeaway from all this. And it comes from a line in this widely-syndicated article about the rocket’s uncontrolled re-entry from Sky News:
In the case of the Long March booster, which weighs 23 metric tonnes, this means between 4.6 and 9.2 metric tonnes will hit the Earth – the equivalent of a dozen 1963 Volkswagen Beetle cars.
See that size – well, in this case, mass – reference to a Volkswagen Beetle? There’s a long, rich tradition of that, with the classic Volkswagen Beetle having become a nearly universal standard of size and weight and interior volume and so, so much more. So much so that years ago I encouraged a friend of mine to write an article about it, and I think he expressed the strange universality of the Beetle as a unit of measurement remarkably well:
Most other objects are limited in their comparative function. For example, Mack trucks are exclusively used to describe objects we are to think of as large. But Volkswagens are used to describe things as too small and too large and, more importantly, as they really are.
While Beetles have been used to illustrate the size of things as varied as “whale hearts to heavy artillery,” space hardware especially has long been compared to the Beetle:
As such, science writers make the most use of the vehicle, deeming everything in or from space, made or conceived by man or God to be about the size of a Bug. The VW-size Mars Global Surveyor looked down at the planet with cameras capable of resolving VW-size objects such as the “nearly” VW-size Spirit and Opportunity, which themselves captured images of VW-size rocks in their travels.
Soyuz capsules are the “Volkswagen Beetle of the space program” due to their size and workhorse longevity, Gemini capsules had the seating room of a Volkswagen, and Apollo capsules were “Beetles from the 1960s, cramped but useful.”
For a time, you could experience the thrill of the VW-size International Space Station capsule as projected by the advanced VW-size IMAX projector.
Here’s some of the referenced quotes in there that equate various space exploration hardware and objects to Beetles, primarily to get my editor David off my back:
From The New Atlantis:
and from Malin Space Science Systems:
and from this guy Norbert’s blog, to show how pervasive it is and not just journalists, even if the context here is more conceptual and less scale-oriented:
“The Soyuz is the Volkswagen Beetle of the space program, and it’s still running strong.”
and from Discovery.com:
and from SpaceRef:
See, David? It’s everywhere.
So, the comparison of the mass of the Long March 5B rocket’s core segment to 12 VW Beetles is a return to an established form for this sort of writing. What doesn’t really make sense is the inclusion of the year of the Beetles referenced, because a 1963 Beetle really isn’t that much heavier or lighter or bigger or smaller than a 1953 or 1973 Beetle at all. It’s about the same.
In fact, the inclusion of a specific year works against the use of the Beetle as a universal size standard, because one of the key reasons why the car works so well as an easy analogy for size/volume/weight is that it remained so consistent for such a long period of time, from 1938 to 2003. Almost no other car can make that same claim, which is why the Universal Automotive Size Analogy isn’t, say, a Toyota Corolla, because Corollas vary wildly in size and weight over their various generations.
Before I saw this, I was wondering if the era of the Beetle as universal metric may be passing, as vintage Beetles are no longer an ubiquitous sight on modern roads. But now I’m thinking that maybe they’ve managed to build up enough cultural capital and influence that their form and size is now a true part of the Collective Unconscious, and if we’re still comparing Chinese rockets in 2022 to old VW Beetles, then maybe, just maybe, that’s how it’ll always be.
I look forward to a time in the future when people selling you cargo teleporters help you decide what size you need by explaining that the Basic model can handle two VW Beetles at a time, but if you go up to a Beyoncé-class one, you can send out four to five VW Beetles, easy.
Makes me wonder with these fun analogies to objects flying through outer space, if – looking up on a clear night – those are not stars but Beetle headlights winking back at me.
With all due respect, the VW Beetle is no longer a good measure of volume and mass because many people have no longer have a daily connection with them.
When trying to impress young women with my Corvair, I mention that it has a rear engine like the VW Beetle. That fascinating and historical nugget of information is often met with a blank stare, and even occasionally with a restraining order.
Just last weekend, a buddy and I watched a largeish hit-and-miss engine run and were speculating about how many VW Beetles it weighed, vs. what fraction of a single Beetle’s horsepower it produced.
What’s a Beetle in Danzigs though?
http://hudsonhongo.com/danzig/
They probably used the model year to distinguish the size from the two New Beetles.
I have it on good authority that the eminent sage and philosopher of our time, Alfred Yankovic, has personally witnessed Charles Nelson Reilly “unhinge his jaw and swallow a Volkswagen whole.”
Here’s one of my favorites:
A picture of the 30 mm rotary cannon from an A-10 Warthog airplane shown next to a VW Beetle for size and weight comparison:
The gun is the size of Volkswagen
https://i.redd.it/onhvhn5ds7u51.jpg
100 TorchinskiUnit (TU) =
1 BeetleUnit (BU) and
12 BU = 1 LongMarchUnit (LMU)
So…there was an estimated 1,200 Torchinskis falling from space and landed peacefully in ocean.
Thank God. It could’ve been “dinosaur-mageddon 2.0”
In Better Call Saul Gene told Jeffrey the cab driver that “One day a high school science teacher came into my office so poor he couldn’t pay his mortgage. A year later he had a pile of cash the size of a Volkswagen”
Alright Jason, fess up now. You deliberately made the ‘74 bigger for the Super, didn’t you?
“What, like the back of a Volkswagen?”
Way back when SkyLab crashed to earth the media also used Beetles as units of measurement. I remember a local morning show on the radio converting it into Pintos, since it burned up on reentry.
While I am not an expert of Jason’s standing on the changes to Beetles over the years, it appears that this chart shows the 1958 model with the small rear window. IIRC, the 1958 was the first Beetle with the larger rear window.
T Beam’s reference to battleships firing projectiles that had the weight of a Beetle may be a little modest. My recollection, having owned a 1960 Beetle and having been in the Navy when the New Jersey was brought back for Vietnam, is that the Beetles of that era weighted in the neighborhood of 1800 pounds and that 16-inch projectiles started at 2200 pounds and went up.
How many bread boxes is a VW Beetle?
A typical loaf of bread is about 420 cubic in., or .24 cubic ft. Allow a larger volume for a breadbox, say an even 500 cu. in., and we get a volume of 0.29 cu.ft. for a breadbox.
A VW Beetle is 85.2 cubic ft.
Therefore a Beetle can hold 294 breadboxes.
Sources:
https://www.cookbookpeople.com/blog/breadbox-buying-guide/#:~:text=Loaves%20this%20will%20fit%3A%20A,are%20getting%20for%20your%20dollar.
https://www.google.com/search?q=volume+of+a+volkswagen+beetle&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS869US869&oq=volume+of+a+volkswagen+beetle&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160j33i22i29i30.12942j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Thank you.
One BeetleUnit (BU) of mass works conceptually with humans of any culture throughout time immemorial because all VW beetles are pure real-life (existential) representation of a 5 year old’s drawing of any plain old car.
Allegedly, even Pythagoreus drew on a clay tablet the standard 3 lumps on 4 wheels as a 5 year old!!!
Math never lies.
It has been used for sea life as well. My wife tells the story of the time she saw Oscar, the legendary giant black sea bass that lives off the coast of Catalina, on a diving trip. She described him as being “the size of a Volkswagen.”
https://www.nps.gov/chis/learn/nature/images/960-diver-adjusted2_1.jpg
I figured Russians would use Lada’s instead of Beetles. ” That capsule weighs 2 Lada’s. A whole lotta nada, for 2 Lada’s…”
Hopefully the Beetle will be like the diskette symbol for the act of saving a file, talking about “dialling” phones that have push buttons for decades now, or even using an envelope to signify (e)mail.
Actually, scratch that. Those things disappeared and live on only on their skeuomorphic/anachronistic use – hopefully the Beetle will continue to grace our streets with some regularity, and maybe even get a new generation (yes, I liked the old New one and the new New one that had no New in the name).
“See, David? It’s everywhere.” I’m really surprised there was no note to the effect of: “(I never disagreed on this point. You’re arguing with a fictional version of me you made up to pad your article. – DT)”
The 16-inch guns on a battleship could lob a shell the weight of a Beetle about 24 miles.
And I know from extensive experience with both vehicles that the interior of a Cessna 172 is almost identical to the interior of a 1968 VW Beetle. Probably most other Beetles as well.
Pop-culture also uses the VW standard… Last week’s Better Call Saul (not really spoilers) references “(…) a pile of money the size of a Volkswagen.”