SortStack #1386 — 2030-03-26

By weight · Order from lightest to heaviest.

1. A common housefly 12 mg

   Houseflies beat their wings around 200 times per second, which produces their signature buzzing pitch near the note F.

2. The Hope Diamond 9.1 g

   The famous blue gem glows an eerie red-orange for minutes after exposure to ultraviolet light — a quirk of trace boron inside.

3. A regulation golf ball 46 g

   The dimples — usually 300 to 500 of them — cut drag so effectively that a smooth ball would fly only about half as far.

4. A Space Shuttle orbiter, empty on the runway 78 t

   Returning from orbit, the shuttle was a glider with no engines for a second try — every landing had to work the first time.

5. Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose flying boat 113 t

   It held the record for largest wingspan of any aircraft until 2019, yet flew exactly once, in 1947 — for about 26 seconds.

6. A Saturn V rocket, fully fueled for a Moon launch 3K t

   Apollo crews rode atop a small warship's worth of kerosene, hydrogen, and oxygen — most of it burned within minutes.

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