3 ms·
A really stupid simple way to think of it is -- Imagine you're hovering a hundred feet off the ground. You still need to be burning your engine at a full g, b
by CydeWeys 8y ago
A really stupid simple way to think of it is --
Imagine you're hovering a hundred feet off the ground. You still need to be burning your engine at a full g, but you're not going anywhere. You're spending LOTS of fuel for zero movement. Now imagine you can only burn at 1.01 g; you will VERY slowly start moving upwards, but you'll be spending a colossal amount of fuel for the same result.
Now imagine instead you're burning at 3g; suddenly you're actually accelerating quite quickly, and you're overall burning much less fuel to go the same distance.
- saagarjha 8y agoYeah, I forgot that staying in place in the air requires burning fuel :/
- walrus01 8y agoa really good way to visualize this is to build some fat, awkward vessel in Kerbal Space Program that has a thrust-weight ratio of only 1.2 or thereabouts, and use mechjeb to watch the data during launch. It'll eventually get to orbit (enough struts and boosters will do that, in KSP) but you'll see how inefficient and slow it is, how much time it spends in the lower atmosphere, compared to a properly optimized rocket.