 I've said it before and I'll say it again. Rockets are the best thing ever. They're better than cars, they're better than planes, they're better than breathing, they are just the best things ever. Now they are also one of the few ways you can actually get about a ton of exotic metals off of this planet. You got to stick them on top of a big fuel tank that rides a column of fire that is mostly controlled explosion. Now not every rocket is created equal and in fact we are going to take a look at some of the best of the best rockets and this is your space pod for June 26, 2015. First off let me say this, this is an opinion piece. This is by no means a definitive guide for what are the best rockets ever and in fact if you disagree with me good, you should let me know in the comments. Now before we get into the best rockets I want to go over a couple honorable mentions that I have. Boeing's Delta IV Heavy. I've been lucky enough to see two of these go off from Vandenberg Air Force Base here in California and whoa it can best be described as brute force to orbit. Currently the largest rocket flown by anyone anywhere on this planet and putting out nearly two million pounds of thrust it can place a ridiculous 28,000 kilograms into low earth orbit 14,000 kilograms to GTO and it could lob 8,000 kilograms to Mars. Its most recent mission was launching NASA's Orion capsule on its first test flight but it's been limited to a small number of missions mostly lifting Hubble sized electro optical spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office but don't tell anyone I told you that. Our other honorable mention is SpaceX's Falcon 9. Yes it is changing the game when it comes to just about everything we thought we knew about the spaceflight industry and it does that carrying up to 13,000 kilograms to low earth orbit with just some change under 5,000 kilograms to GTO. Its impressive manifesto far has been a mix of commercial satellites, NASA cargo and NASA science missions and hey let's face it if SpaceX really does get rapid reuse out of its rockets it'll cement itself as one of the greatest engineering efforts ever accomplished but it's got a lot to live up to. There's quite a lot that still needs to be done when it comes to meeting the things that Elon has said falcons will do but it's not given us a reason yet to have serious doubt so in Elon's thrust we trust. Let's get this second stage kerosene party started. So about that top five let's go ahead and kick it off proper. Number five Rockwell's Space Shuttle touted as a space on the cheap reliably and often option the space shuttle program was born as a response to the lavish expensive project Apollo in a political climate that was squarely focused on Southeast Asia. The program included the guttiest test flight ever flown in STS-1, incredible successes with the Hubble Space Telescope repair and upgrade missions, assembling the International Space Station and also providing a platform by which science could be conducted in low earth orbit and return to earth. But the expense well over a billion dollars per flight mixed with the idea of flying solid rocket motors on a manned vehicle a big no-no having a design that exposes your heat shield for all of your flight profile and being way too complicated to have a simple refurbishment to reflight sets back the space shuttle in my eyes. It gave us quite a lot but it also cost us a lot as well a bittersweet vehicle. Number four the Ariane family if you want to talk about commercial space flight and you're not going to talk about Ariane space's set of launchers get out and don't return Ariane's one through five are exceptional pieces of engineering the absolute best of the Ariane series was undoubtedly the Ariane four its 97% success rate along with capturing 60% of the commercial launch market during its career has made it the king of commercial launch services. We'll see how long it holds that title for but even with the modern Ariane 5 it's hard to not consider it an impressive system that has sent payloads from low earth orbit to around the solar system and it holds the record for the largest payload ever delivered to geosynchronous transfer orbit 10 317 kilograms mercy it lifts number three Boeing North American and Mcdonald Douglas the Saturn 5 the biggest the most powerful the largest payload delivered to orbit around the earth and the loudest non nuclear noise humanity has ever made what hasn't been said about the Saturn 5 it's a flying superlative that can hoist 118,000 kilograms to low earth orbit and the only rocket that has ever sent humans out of low earth orbit so I'm sure you're wondering why it's sitting at number three instead of number one well for starters it didn't really fly all that much it only had 13 flights during its service career and it was also horrendously expensive and with every single piece of a Saturn 5 thrown away at every launch but it did do a lot too and oh that sound number two TSSKB progresses Soyuz it's not very big and it sure ain't new but the longevity of the Soyuz has no compare it's been flying since 1966 nearly 50 years it's a product of my favorite school of engineering kiss keep it simple stupid it's what currently all astronauts headed to the international space station take a ride on it's sent a multitude of crews to multiple russian space stations throughout its career its launch cadences during the 1980s was something to behold averaging nearly 60 launches per year and its 98 success rate is among the best of all the launch vehicles that we use and here it is my number one rocket of all time mcdonald douglas delta 2 I heard you yelling now what are you kidding me the delta 2 is the best rocket of all time what are you thinking Jared well hey hold up let me explain the delta 2's heritage can be traced back to 1950s us icbm's and the current generation of delta 2's that we're all most familiar with began flying back in 1988 it's only suffered two failures and it's currently sitting at 98 consecutive successful launches the only other launcher even close to that is 74 launches from the arian 4 its most famous payload is something that you and I use every day because the delta 2 was the workhorse for the development of the gps constellation in addition here's a short list of payloads that the delta 2 is actually carried we've got 2001 just much much much much more it's not the most powerful rocket it's not the biggest and it hasn't sent payloads everywhere in the solar system but in terms of affecting exploration in our everyday lives it's had a profound impact and it's not done yet two more launches of the delta 2 are scheduled and if successful the delta 2 will wrap up an incredible career with an unprecedented and probably untouchable 100 consecutive successful launches thanks for watching this space pod i'm jared head don't forget to like comment and subscribe on social media and if you would like to help us continue to make these awesome space pods we do have a patreon campaign so if you can help out a little bit help us because we like making these pods so that you can enjoy watching them so until the next space pod keep exploring